"There's no imagination about that," thought Duff Salter. "If I could
only hear well enough my ears might counsel me."
He felt dejected, and his suspicions colored everything--a most
deplorable state of mind for a gentleman. Agnes, too, looked guilty, as
he thought, and hardly addressed a smile to him as he passed up to his
room.
Duff Salter put on his slippers, lighted his gas, drew the curtains down
and set the door ajar, for in the increasing warmth of spring his grate
fire was almost an infliction.
"I have not been wise nor just," he said to himself. "My pleasing
reception in this house, and feminine arts, have altogether obliterated
my great duty, which was to avenge my friend. Yes, suspicion was my
duty. I should have been suspicious from the first. Even this vicious
young Van de Lear, shallow as he is, becomes my unconscious accuser. He
says, with truth, that every obligation of friendship impels me to
discover the murderers of William Zane."
Duff Salter arose, in the warmth of his feelings, and paced up and down
the floor.
"Ah, William Zane," he said, "how does thy image come back to me! I was
the only friend he would permit. In pride of will and solitary purpose
he was the greatest of all. Rough, unpolished, a poor scholar, but full
of energy, he desired nothing but he believed it his.
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