Stewart Routh was as hard a man as could readily be found, but his hardness was not proof against his meeting with George Dallas, and he showed Harriet how great a trial it was to him, and how much he feared his own constancy, when he told her he thought she had better not be present at their meeting. The curse of an unholy alliance had fallen upon these two, and was now beginning to make itself felt. Each was desirous to conceal from the other the devices to which they were compelled to resort, in order to keep up the false appearances to which they were condemned; in all their life there was no time in which they were free from restraint, except in solitude. But, though the effect was in each case the same, the origin was widely different. Harriet suffered for her husband's sake; he, entirely for his own. He had calculated that if anything in his appearance, voice, and manner, should escape his control, George would be certain to impute it to the natural feelings of horror and regret with which he would have received the intelligence conveyed to him by Harriet, of George's discovery of the identity of the murdered man.  
"You had better remain upstairs until I call you," Routh had said to Harriet, "when Dallas comes to dinner. It will be easier for you," he added. Harriet was sitting listlessly by her dressing-table while he spoke, and he stood behind her chair, and looked gloomily at the reflection of her face in the glass.
 
She smiled faintly. "Thank you, Stewart," she said; "it will be easier." Then, after a brief pause, "Would you very much mind my not going down to dinner at all?"
 
So far from minding it, Routh instantly felt that her absence would be a great relief. It would enable him to sound George thoroughly, to scheme upon whatever discoveries he should make concerning his future plans; and then, Harriet had done all the hard work, had prepared the way for him, had got over the difficulty and the danger. A little unpleasantness, some disagreeable emotion, must indeed be encountered, that was inevitable, but everything might go off well, and if so, Harriet's restraining presence, Harriet's face, with its constant reminder in it, would be much better out of sight.
 
"Not at all," he answered. "Stay upstairs if you like. I'll tell Dallas you are a little knocked up, but will be all right in the morning."
 
"He will not be surprised, I dare say," she replied, "though it was not my way to be knocked up formerly."
 
"Nor to be always harping on one string, either; and I can't say there's a change for the better," said Routh roughly. Once or twice of late the innate ruffianism of the man had come out towards her, from whom it had once been so scrupulously concealed. But she did not heed it; not a quiver crossed the drooping rigid face, at which Routh once more glanced covertly before he left the room. It would have been impossible to tell whether she had even heard him.
 
Routh went down to the well-appointed dining-room, so different to the scene of the dinners of which George had formerly partaken, in the character of his guest. Wherever Harriet was, neatness and propriety never were absent, but there was something more than neatness and propriety in Routh's house now. Nevertheless, the look which the master of the house cast upon the well-laid, well-lighted table, with its perfect, unobtrusive, unpretentious appointments, was full of gloom. He wished he had not come down so soon; the inevitable meeting assumed a more portentous aspect with every minute that it was delayed; he wished he had not told Harriet to remain in her room. The fact was, Routh was staggered by the first failure of his plans. Everything had gone so right with him; his calculations had been fulfilled so exactly, so unfailingly, until now, and this unexpected accident had befallen through a blunder of his own. True, Harriet had met it with amazing tact, and had so treated it, that if only it could be further dexterously managed, it might be turned to ultimate advantage and an incalculable strengthening of his position. Let him keep his thoughts to that view of the question, and keep his nerves still. Were they going to play him false now, his nerves, which had never failed him before? So Mr. Stewart Routh passed a very unpleasant quarter of an hour before his expected guest arrived. He had just had recourse, as much in weakness as in nervousness, to a flask of brandy which stood on the sideboard, and had drank off half a glassful, when a knock at the door was quickly answered by the grave and correct man-servant, who formed an important and eminently respectable feature of the improved household of the Rouths, and the well-known quick tread of Dallas crossed the hall.
 
"Well, Routh, old fellow!"
 
"George, my boy; delighted to see you!" and the meeting was over; and Routh, looking into the young man's face, saw that not a trace of suspicion rested upon it, and that the material before him was as plastic as ever.
 
"Harriet is not very well this evening," said Routh, "and begs you will excuse her if she does not make her appearance. I undertook to make it all right, and indeed I am rather glad we should be alone just at first. I have so much to say and to hear, and Harriet has had a long talk with you already."
 
"Yes," said George, and his smile was at once overcast, and his face darkened into gloom, "I had a long talk with her. Of course, Routh, she told you the dreadful discovery I have made, and the curious way in which I am implicated in this ghastly affair."
 
"She told me all about it, my dear fellow," returned Routh. "But here comes dinner, and we must postpone discussion until afterwards. I can only say now that I think Harriet's view of the matter perfectly correct, and her advice the soundest possible; it generally is, you know of old." And then Routh made a slight signal suggestive of caution to his guest, and the two men stood by the fireplace and talked of trifles while the irreproachable man-servant set the dishes upon the table, assisted by a neat parlour-maid.
 
While far more serious thoughts were busy in George's mind, over the surface of it was passing observation of the changed order of things, and an amused perception of the alteration in Routh himself. It was as he had said in his letter--he had assumed the responsibility, the pose, the prosperity of the genuine plodding "City man;" and he looked the part to absolute perfection. "And yet," George thought, "he knows that one who was with us two the last time we met has met with a violent death; he knows that I am in a position as painful and perilous as it is extraordinary, and that he is indirectly mixed up with the dreadful event, and he is as cool and unconcerned as possible. I suppose it is constitutional, this callousness; but I'm not sure it is very enviable. However, one thing is certain--it makes him the very best adviser one can possibly have under such circumstances. He won't be carried away by the horror of the circumstances, anyhow."
 
The dinner proceeded, and George yielded rapidly to the influences which had been so powerful, and which he had been so determined to resist, when out of Routh's presence and under the sway of his penitence and his determination to reform. The conversation of Routh asserted all its old charm; the man's consummate knowledge of the world, his varied experience, the perfect refinement and tact which he could display at will, the apparent putting off of old things, the tone of utter respectability which abled George's newly-sharpened conscience to consent to the fascination as readily as his predilections, had more than ever an irresistible attraction for the young man. During dinner, which, in the altered state of affairs, involved the presence of the servant, Routh kept the conversation almost entirely to Dallas's own doings, plans, and prospects. He knew Amsterdam well, and talked of Dutch art and the history of the Low Countries with much skill and fluency. Without an allusion which could supply material for the curiosity and the gossip of the servants, he made George understand that the Bohemian element had been completely banished from his life and its associations; he sketched a plan of London life for George, moderately prosperous, quite practical, and entirely inoffensive. He made him, in short, as ready to congratulate himself on the resumption of their intimacy in the present phase of his moral being as he had been to rejoice in its formation under former conditions.
 
Routh's spirits rose with his senses. He felt a depraved pride in the devilish skill he possessed in his grand faculty of deception. He excelled in it, he revelled in its exercise, and he had not enjoyed it, in this orthodox way, of late. He had been making money, it is true, and doing some real work as well as a good deal of swindling in the process, but he had had only the opportunity of using a certain set of his faculties. His persuasive eloquence, his personal influence, his skilful and expansive but shrewd falsehood had lain dormant for some time. As a singer who has lost his voice for a time suddenly finds the liquid notes filling the air with all their accustomed power and sweetness, and exults in the recovered faculty, so Stewart Routh marked the pleasure, the enthusiasm, almost enabling George to forget the coming painful topic of discussion from which only a few minutes divided them, as he listened to the voice of the charmer, who had never before charmed him so wisely nor so well.
 
At length the wine was set upon the table, and then they were alone; and by this time, so complete did Routh feel his resumption of power over George Dallas, that it was with indifference only very little feigned that he said:
 
"And now, George, let us go into this sad business about poor Deane. It has quite floored Harriet, as I dare say you guessed."
 
"And so you give me the same counsel as Harriet has given me," said George, when he had to tell his story all over again, and had worked himself up into a new fit of excitement over the horror of the murder, and the dreadful idea of the ignorance of the deed in which the dead man's relatives still remained.
 
"I do, indeed, George," said Routh, solemnly: "in taking any other course you will expose yourself to certain difficulty, and, indeed, to imminently probable danger. While you have been telling all this, I have been thinking how fortunate it was that I was away at the time, and so down upon my luck that I never knew or thought about any public affairs, and so did not hear of the murder except in the vaguest way. In the peculiar lustre of our London civilization, you know, George, somebody found dead in the river is so frequent a mote, that nobody thinks about it."
 
"Not in a general way," said George; "but they made so much of this, and were so confident that it was a political affair, I cannot understand how any of us escaped hearing of it."
 
"Yes," acquiesced Routh, "it is very extraordinary, but such things do happen. And rather fortunate, it seems, that they do, for if I had dropped in on the inquest, it would have been very awkward for you."
 
"Why?" said George; "after all, the truth must have come out, and all this misery about my mother would have been avoided."
 
An evil look from Routh's eye lighted for a moment on the young man's unconscious face, then glanced away, as he said:
 
"You forget that all I could have said must have strongly favoured the notion that the man who wore the coat which the waiter swore to, and was last seen with Deane, was the last person who ever saw him alive. If I had had time to think, of course I shouldn't have said a word about it; but if I had been hurried into speaking, that is what I must have said. Come, George, you are much too sensitive about this matter. Of course, I'm sorry for Deane, but I care a great deal more for you, and I decline to look at any part of this matter except such as concerns you. As to his relatives, as that part of the business appears to distress you most keenly, I must set your mind at rest by informing you that he had not a near relation in the world."
 
"Indeed!" said George. "How do you know?"
 
"He told me so," said Routh. "You will say, perhaps, that is not very trustworthy evidence, but I think we may take it in this particular instance for more than its general worth. He was the coldest, hardest, most selfish fellow I ever knew in the whole course of my experience, which has included a good deal of scoundreldom, and he seemed so thoroughly to appreciate the advantages of such isolation, that I believe it really did exist."
 
"He was certainly a mystery in every way," said George. "Where did he live? We never knew him--at least I never did--except loafing about at taverns, and places of the kind."
 
"I don't know where he lived," said Routh; "he never gave me an address, or a rendezvous, except at some City eating-house, or West-end billiard-room."
 
"How very extraordinary that no one recognized the description! It was in every way remarkable, and the fur-lined coat must have been known to some one. If I had seen any mention of the murder, I should have remembered that coat in a moment."
 
"Would you?" said Routh. "Well, it would have thrown me off the scent, for I never happened to see it. An American coat, no doubt. However, I have a theory, which I think you will agree with, and which is this: I suspect he had been living somewhere in another name--he told me he wasn't always known by that of Deane--under not very creditable circumstances, and as he must have had some property, which, had he been identified, must have been delivered up to the authorities, those in the secret have very wisely held their tongues."
 
"You think there was a woman in the case?"
 
Routh smiled a superior smile.
 
"Of course I think so; and knowing as much or as little of the man as you and I know, we are not likely to blame her much for consulting her own interests exclusively. This seems a curious case to us, because we happen to know about it; but just think, in this enormous city, in this highly criminal age, how common such things must be. How many persons may not have dropped out of existence since you and I last met, utterly unknown and uncared for, amid the mass of human beings here? It is no such rare thing, George, believe me, and you must listen to reason in this matter, and not run absurd risks to do an imaginary piece of justice."
 
This was Harriet's counsel merely put in colder, more worldly words. Routh watched his listener keenly as he gave it, and saw that his purpose was gained. He would have been glad now to have turned the co............