"You don't know what you are doing," he said in a dreary voice. "You are destroying my life; whatever evils now drag me down, it will be your fault."
"A cowardly speech," she said in a clear, scornful voice; "because you cannot get the toy you long for you speak like a child. I have nothing to do with your life, if you yield to evil it will be through your own weak will, not through any fault of mine--not a word," she went on as he was about to speak; "leave me at once and I will try and forget what you have said."
He tried to look her in the face, but seeing her standing tall and straight as a young Greek maiden, with nothing but scorn and condemnation in her eyes, he turned away with a sigh, and letting his head fall on his breast walked slowly out of the room, careless of what happened to him now that he had placed all his chances on the casting of a die--and lost.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
THE FALL OF MAN.
Who stands so high that he may never fall,
Who lies so low that he may never rise?
The lowliest may one day win life's prize,
The highest thro' temptation lose his all.
Beaumont was a man who neglected no chance, however small, by which he could benefit himself; consequently thinking if he discovered Squire Garsworth's secret it might prove of use to him, he determined to find out all about it. He knew perfectly well that no power of persuasion would lead the madman to divulge his thoughts, so the only chance of discovering anything was to reduce him to a mere automaton, perfectly powerless in his hands. This he hoped to do by means of hypnotism, of which curious process he knew a good deal.
While in Germany, some years before, he had by accident come across Heidenheim's book on animal magnetism, which interested him so much that he pursued the subject. After reading the opinions of Grützner, Berger and Baumler on hypnosis, he turned his attention to French authorities, eagerly following the history of animal magnetism from Mesmer and Puységur downward, and led by such studies to try his hand on subjects, he became quite an adept in this strange psychological science. Taking it up at first merely as an amusement, on going deeper into the subject he soon saw that such hypnotic power would be a terrible weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous man, as, by reducing the hypnotised person to the condition of a mere instrument, it enabled him to do acts through such instrument for which he himself could not be held legally responsible.
In a book on the subject by MM. Demarquay and Giraud Teulon, entitled "Recherches sur L'Hypnotism," he had come across a case in which a lady in a condition of hypnotic hallucination began to tell aloud secrets which compromised her exceedingly. Taking this case as an illustration of what could be done during hypnosis, Beaumont determined to throw the Squire into a cataleptic trance, and by questions or suggestions lead him to reveal his secret. This being done, he could restore him to his normal condition, absolutely ignorant of his revelation, and he thought if the secret were worth anything, he could then do what he pleased.
Having thus definitely settled his plan of action, the next step to take was to guard against the possibility of Nestley surprising him in any of his hypnotic experiments, with which, as medical attendant of the Squire, he would have a perfect right to interfere. Although Nestley had become much more friendly with Beaumont, he still regarded him with a certain amount of suspicion, so the artist's aim was now to reduce him to the state of subjection in which he had been in London five years before.