There is a particular kind of Ghost or Devil, which is represented by an isosceles triangle (more or less correctly drawn) for the body; straight lines turned up at the ends for legs; straight lines divided into five at the ends for arms; a round 0, with arbitrary dots for the features, for a head; with a hat, an umbrella, and a pipe. Drawn like this, it is a sufficiently terrible object. But, if you take an ace of clubs, make the club represent the head, add horns, and fill in the body and limbs as above, in deep black, with the feather end of the pen, it becomes simply appalling, and will strike terror into the stoutest heart.

Is this the place, say you, for talking such nonsense as this? If you must give us balderdash of this sort, could not you do so in a chapter with a less terrible heading than this one has? And I answer, “why not let me tell my story my own way? Something depends even on this nonsense of making devils out of the ace of clubs.

It was rather a favourite amusement of Charles’s and Lord Welter’s, in old times at Ranford. They used, on rainy afternoons, to collect all the old aces of clubs

(and there were always plenty of them to be had in that house, God help it), and make devils out of them, each one worse than the first. And now, when Charles had locked the door, and advanced softly up to Welter, he saw, over his shoulder, that he had got an ace of clubs, and the pen and ink, and was making a devil.

It was a trifling circumstance enough, perhaps; but there was enough of old times in it to alter the tone in which Charles said, “Welter,” as he laid his hand on his shoulder.

Lord Welter was a bully; but he was as brave as a lion, with nerves of steel He neither left off his drawing, nor looked up; he only said — “Charley boy, come and sit down till I have finished this fellow. Get an ace of clubs, and try your own hand. I am out of practice.”

Perhaps even Lord Welter might have started when he heard Charles’s voice, and felt his hand on his shoulder; but he had had one instant — only one instant — of preparation. When he heard the key turn in the door, he had looked in a pier-glass opposite to him, and seen who and what was coming, and then gone on with his employnent. Even allowing for this moment’s preparation, we must give him credit for the nerve of one man in ten thousand; for the apparition of Charles Ravenshoe was as unlooked for as that of any one of Charles Ravenshoe’s remote ancestors.

You see, I call him Charles Ravenshoe still. It is a trick. You must excuse it.

Charles did not sit down and draw devils; he said, in a quiet mournful tone,

“Welter, Welter, why have you been such a villain?”

Lord Welter found that a difficult question to answer. He let it alone, and said nothing.

“I say nothing about Adelaide. You did not use me well there; for, when you persuaded her to go off with you, you had not heard of my ruin.”

“On my soul, Charles, there was not much persuasion wanted there.”

“Very likely. I do not want to speak about that, but about Ellen, my sister. Was anything ever done more shamefully than that?”

Charles expected some furious outbreak when he said that. None came. What was good in Lord Welter came to the surface, when he saw his old friend and playmate there before him, sunk so far below hun in all that tills world considers worth having, but rising so far above him in his fearless honour and manliness. He was humbled, sorry, and ashamed. Bitter as Charles’s words were, he felt they were true, and had manhood enough left to” not resent them. To the sensation of fear, as I have said before. Lord Welter was a total stranger, or he might have been nervous at being locked up in a room alone, mth a desperate man, physically his equal, whom he had so shamefully wronged. He rose and leant against the chimney-piece, looking at Charles.

“I did not know she was your sister, Charles. You must do me that justice.”

“Of course you did not. If — ”

“I know what you are going to say — that I should not have dared. On my soul, Charles, I don’t know; I believe I dare do anything. But I tell you one thing — of all the men who walk this earth, you are the last I would willingly wrong. When I went off with Adelaide, I knew she did not care sixpence for you. I knew she would have made you wretched. I knew better than you, because I never was in love with her, and you were, what a heartless ambitious jade it was! She sold herself to me for the title I gave her, as she had tried to sell herself to that solemn prig, Hainault, before. And I bought her, because a handsome, witty, clever wife is a valuable chattel to a man like me, w............