"I used to wonder about his age. It was a regular puzzler. Sometimes he looked quite young, and sometimes he looked as old as Methusalem. I plucked up courage once to ask him.
"'What do you say to twenty?' he answered. 'Or if that won't do, what do you say to eighty, or a couple of hunderd?'
"When my portrait was finished he pretended to go into egstacies over it, and said that it really ought to be egshibited.
"'Mind you keep it as a airloom,' he said. 'You've no notion what it's worth.'
"Then he took Lemon's picture, and it was a comfort to me that he painted my husband up-stairs. Every night for a fortnight Lemon went up to Devlin's room, and set there for two or three hours, and then he'd slide into this room looking as if he'd jest come out of his corfin. It give me such a shock when I first saw the picture that I threw my apern over my head.
"'Ah,' said Devlin with a grin, pulling my apern away, 'I thought you'd be overcome when you set eyes on it. It's a rare piece of work, ain't it? Why, it almost speaks!'
"It was as like Lemon as like could be--I couldn't deny that; but there was the sly, wicked look which you've noticed in that there stuffed bird and in the stone image on the mantelshelf. Devlin made us a present of them things after he'd painted the portraits, and told me to treasure 'em for his sake, and that whenever I looked at 'em I was to think of him. He said they was worth ever so much money, but that I was never, never to part with 'em.
"'If you do,' he said, laughing in my face, 'I'll haunt you day and night.'
"So things went on, gitting worser and worser every day, and Lemon got that thin that you could almost blow him away. And now, sir, I'm coming to the most dreadful part of the whole affair, something that has frightened me more than all the rest put together. What I'm going to speak of now is that awful murder in Victoria Park. Don't think I'm making it up out of my head. I ain't clever enough or wicked enough. If I was I should deserve a judgment to fall on me.
"I've told you of Lemon speaking in his sleep--never did he go to bed without saying things in the night that'd send my heart into my mouth. He seemed as if he was haunted by shadders and spirits, and as if there was always something weighing on his soul that he daren't let out when he was awake. When I found it was no good arguing with him I give it up, and I bore with his writhes and groans, without telling him in the morning of the dreadful night I'd passed. But the day before yesterday, sir, things come to a head.