He paused, as if to observe the effect of his reproof, and one glance attested its influence. In my agitated countenance the inward workings of the breast were visible; for I had never felt the agony of conscious shame and self-reproach till now. No wonder that under such feelings, this singular personage elicited step by step, every particular touching my connexion with Santonier and his confederates. There are times when men feel their positions so intolerable, that, with despairing recklessness, they court no concealment, but place their offendings in their worst light. Such feelings were mine; and, undeterred by the strongly-expressed scorn and displeasure of Mr. Hartley, I brought the confessions of my folly to a close.
“My words have pained you?--it is all the better,” continued my stern monitor, “as it affords reasonable ground for hoping that the error lies in the head, and not in the heart. Vice has no blush; and, when the cheek reddens at the recollection of past imprudence, it may be expected that future follies will be eschewed. But how could you have been plundered so unsuspectingly? I only marvel that the veriest novice ever loosed upon a vicious town, could not in one day’s acquaintance have detected the barefaced swindling of your noble friends.”
“Yes; and for that profitable knowledge I own myself indebted to Mr. Hector O’Halloran.”
“Ay, sir, to you.--Have you forgotten my letter? and have I not apprised you that every action of your life is under the strictest _surveillance?_ With all your movements, from the very night you entered London, I have been acquainted; and it is not wonderful that I should take some interest in ascertaining who were the intimate associates of a man, whose fortunes are to be made or marred by me.”
What a strange gentleman this Mr. Hartley was! He seemed to have selected me as a sort of shuttlecock wherewith to amuse himself at his own discretion, while with my future fortunes he modestly announced a determination, in Yankee parlance, to “go the whole hog.” Strange that I should passively submit to be thus painfully hectored by a stranger; and, with every inclination, want moral courage to rebel! The man was a mystery--he appeared to have a perfect knowledge of my actions, added to the gift of ubiquity. Did I ask an impertinent question, or perpetrate a kiss, he was sure to be close at my elbow. Was it not devilish hard, that a man could not commit his fooleries--as Sir Lucius O’Trigger wished to fight--“in peace and quietness?” and, when he had lost his last guinea, that a gentleman should drop in, to deliver himself of an admonition first, and require the loan of a hundred afterwards? I had got myself into “a regular fix,”--and that seemed the signal for Mr. Hartley to appear at the moment when I wished him “five fathom under the Rialto.”