"Nicholas, do you believe in God?"
"Will you know the truth? I have lately learnt to believe."
"By what happy chance?"
"Happy!" and his companion laughed bitterly. "Leagued with bold and desperate men, to rid the world of a knot of vipers, for months I had waited for the moment when they should assemble together, in order to annihilate at one blow the entire brood. Daily we prayed, if you will call that praying, that this moment would arrive: but months after months passed: we waited; and we despaired. At length on a day,--I remember it was at noon--in burst a friend upon us and cried out--'Triumph and glory! this night the King's ministers all meet at Lord Harrowby's.' At these words many stern conspirators fell on their knees; others folded their hands--hands (God knows!) but little used to such a folding: I could do neither; I stretched out my arms and cried aloud--There is a Providence!"
"Dreadful!"
"Spare your horrors, and your morality. Providence, we know, has willed it otherwise: the honourable gentlemen, at whom we had levelled, flourish in prosperity and honour; and my friends moulder beneath the scaffold."
"Having this origin, I presume that your faith in a Providence is at present--"
"Unshaken: my dagger was meant for Lord Londonderry: and, although he has escaped my wrath, yet I know not how, but a curse seems to cling to my blade, that whomsoever I have once devoted to it with full determination of purpose, that man ---- ----"
Bertram shuddered, and said, "So then it was a conspirator from Cato-street that I delivered from death?"
"Well, push the conspirator over the wall, if you repent."