"Never mind, Aunt Phœbe," I said. "Come home, and I will tell you all about it."
Aunt Phœbe passed her hand over her eyes, and as she did so I glanced inquiringly from Sclamowsky's face to the jewellery case in his hands. What was to be the end of it all? I had certainly heard my aunt distinctly give this man her diamonds as a present, but could a gift made under such circumstances hold good for a moment? He evidently saw the query in my face.
"You judge me even more hastily than did your aunt," he said. "She called me an impostor; you think me a rogue and a swindler. Here are your jewels, madam," he said, turning to Aunt Phœbe. "I shall be more than satisfied if the result of this evening's experiment prove to you that, as your poet says, 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"
"I don't understand it all," said Aunt Phœbe piteously, as she mechanically took the morocco case into her hands.
"Don't try to do so now," I said. "You must come home with me as quickly as you can;" for I was feverishly anxious to escape from this house—from this man with this horrible, terrifying power.
He bowed silently to us as I hurried Aunt Phœbe out of the room; but as I was going down the stairs an irresistible impulse came over me to look back.
He was standing on the landing, politely holding the little lamp so that we might see our way down the uneven, irregular stairs, and the light fell upon his face. Was the expression I saw upon it one of triumph, or one of defeated dishonesty? I could not say. Even now, though I have thought it all over and over till my head has got dazed and confused, I cannot make up my mind whether he had hoped, by means of his strange mesmeric power, to obtain possession of the Anstruther diamonds—a design only frustrated by my unlooked-for appearance—or whether his action was altogether prompted by a determination to demonstrate and vindicate the truth of the phenomena connected with his science.
Sometimes I lean to one view, sometimes to the other. I have now told the facts of the case simply and without exaggeration just as they occurred, and my readers must judge for themselves whether Dmitri Sclamowsky was, in the matter of Aunt Phœbe's heirlooms, a disappointed swindler or a triumphant enthusiast.
