But the inmate! There he is; but the frenzied alarm in which we last saw him seems to have changed its character. No throb, now; no passion; no frenzy of fear or despair. He sits dull and motionless. See; his cheek is very pale; his hair long and dishevelled. His beard has grown, and curls round his face. He has on a sleeping-gown, a long robe as of one who abides within doors, and has nothing to do with outward elements; a pair of slippers. A dull, dreamy reverie seems to have possessed him. Hark! there is again a stealthy step on the floor, and the serving-man is here again. There is a peering, anxious curiosity in his face, as he struts towards him, a sort of enjoyment, one would say, in the way in which he looks at the strange case.
“I am here, you know,” he says, at length, after feasting his eyes for some time on the spectacle.
“I hear you!” says the young man, in a dull, indifferent tone.
“Will not your honor walk out to-day?” says the man. “It is long now since your honor has taken the air.”
“Very long,” says the master, “but I will not go out to-day. What weather is it?”
“Sunny, bright, a summer day,” says the man. “But you would never know it in these damp walls. The last winter’s chill is here yet. Had not your honor better go forth?”
It might seem that there was a sort of sneer, deeply hidden under respect and obeisance, in the man’s words and craftily respectful tone; deeply hidden, but conveying a more subtile power on that account. At all events, the master seemed aroused from his state of dull indifference, and writhed as with poignant anguish—an infused poison in his veins—as the man spoke.
“Have you procured me that new drug I spoke of?” asked the master.
“Here it is,” said the man, putting a small package on the table.
“Is it effectual?”