brown mustache.  “As to my having ‘no legal claim to a cent,’ I knew that before.  What puzzles me is, ’There is no consideration—­not a shadow of relationship, or affection, or generosity—­nothing to give you the least prospect of receiving any thing.’  How can that be?  And yet what she says at the end—­it sounds more like a threat she knows she can fulfil than an attempt to humbug.”  Bressant took his right hand from his forehead, and tapped with his finger on the envelope as he repeated the words:  “If this is enough—­convinces you without your requiring proof—­it would be much pleasanter for you, and a great relief to me.  Oh! beyond words!  But if not—­if you will go on entangling yourself with this foolish girl, Sophie, and this boarding-house keeper, and all—­I shall be obliged—­I shall hate to do it, but there will be no alternative—­to give you the explanation of what I tell you now.”

“Well! let her!” cried the young man, rising roughly from his chair, and shouldering backward and forward across his room with short, incensed steps.  “If her proofs can prevent my marriage, let her bring them.  She’d better be quick about it!  Four days from now!  They’d better never have come at all.  It’s her interest as much as mine—­more than mine.  She’s a half-crazy old creature.  She can do nothing for herself.  If she has any thing to say, let her say it.  I’m no baby, to shape my life after an old woman’s story.  Who is she?  What is she to me?

“Let something happen, I say,” continued he, stretching out his great arms, with the fists clinched.  “I’m tired of this—­the life of a dog with his tail between his legs.  Is it I who go about, afraid to look man or woman in the face?  Am I the same who came here six months ago?  Did I come here to learn this?  Who was it taught it to me, then?  I say, I’ve been deceived; it’s no work of mine.  Professor Valeyon—­he’s made me a subject for experiment; he’s tried his theories on me; dissected me, and filled in the parts that were wanting.  It’s a dangerous business, Professor Valeyon.  You’ve lost one daughter; the other may go too.”

Bressant’s voice, which had been growing hoarser and more rapid as he went on, abruptly sank, at this last sentence, into a whisper; yet, had any one been there to listen, the whisper would have sounded louder and more terrible than the most violent vociferation of angry passion.  It breathed a sudden concentration of evil intelligence, that startled like the hiss of a serpent.

He stopped his short, passionate walk, and leaned against his table, with his arms once more folded.  The idea that he had been tampered with had gained possession of him, and nothing tends more to demoralize a man, and make him unmanageably angry.  His was an uncandid position, without doubt:  he was attempting to lay upon others the responsibility which—­the greater part of it, at least—­should have been borne by himself; but still, the vein of reasoning he pursued was connected, and comprehensible, and was rendered awkward by an ugly little thread of something like truth and justice, which showed here and there along its course.