"What is it?" he asked himself, as he stood with the glass in his hand, looking over the red blind of a window in the bar-parlour which gave on to the passage; a window at which the landlord sometimes passed hours in the observation of those who entered and quitted his house--"what is it that is influencing me, slackening my desires?" And, being no student of ethics, he was not altogether able to tell himself how often listlessness comes, accompanied by a cessation of desire, when, at last, that which we have striven for so hard is within our grasp; is to be had for the taking. Nevertheless, he continued his musings, saying again, "What is it? Am I forgetting my hatred of the man above, forgetting all my vows of retaliation because I am growing well-to-do and am making money fast by my loathsome calling? Is that possible--or does the passion for revenge die out at last, as every other passion we possess dies in time? Shall I spare him now, at the last moment? Or tell him to-night that the plot he imagines I have concocted has failed--and--let him go free? Shall I do that, or must I force myself to think of my dead mother again, of my lost love, thereby to spur myself on to finish what I have begun?"
Meditating thus, Lewis Granger was at his best; his worst--which was what Fate and a scoundrel had made him--was away falling into the background. He was at his best! and that best was triumphing, was triumphant. He became resolved; to-night Bufton should be told that nothing could be done, that neither Ariadne nor Anne could come, that their trick had failed since the Mignonne had returned. Thus the man himself should be spared. Bufton should go free and his own vengeance sleep for ever. Truly Granger was at his best!
Deciding thus, determined that even now--at once--he would return to the room above and tell its occupant that this had happened, he was about to turn away from the window through which he was still glancing heedlessly as he ruminated, when he saw a man enter the passage, and, after looking round and about the place in a cautious manner, proceed, with an evident attempt to avoid observation if possible, towards the foot of the stairs.
"Where have I seen that fellow before?" he thought, even as he edged himself to the blind so that, thereby, he Could follow the newcomer's movements along the passage. "Where? I know him, have seen him lately. That bulldog-looking form and those earrings are familiar to me!"
Then, in a moment, he recalled who the man was. He remembered that he was the mate of the Nederland, and that he had observed him at work on the deck of the schooner, and giving orders to the sailors as to the bestowal of casks and bales in the hold only a day or so ago when he had visited the master.
Not knowing, or scarcely knowing, why this man's presence here should surprise him, or why, indeed, he should feel any surprise at all, except at the stealthy, cautious way in which he skulked along the passage in so surreptitious a manner--since the "Red Rover" was the only place of call on this side of the river for some mile or so--he determined to see where the man was going. Whereon, opening the door of the bar-parlour as quietly as might be, he looked out into the passage and was in time to observe the back of the mate vanishing round the landing of the stairs.
"Strange," he thought to himself; "strange. What business can he have up there? He is not, cannot be, living ashore in the house; who then can he desire to see, or what desire to do?"
While, as he so thought, he heard a slight rap given on a door above and a voice call out, "Who is it?"
The voice of Bufton.
Then, standing at the foot of the stairs, but sheltered from observation overhead by the dirty ceiling beneath the landing floor--sheltered too from observation by the fog that now filled the house--Granger heard the door of the room Bufton was in opened, and a whispered question and answer. After which the door was closed to again, and he heard no more. The visitor had been admitted.