He kept him in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed,
Raffles all the while amusing himself with the annoyance he was
causing this decent and highly prosperous fellow-sinner, an amusement
which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend's pleasure
in entertaining a man who had been serviceable to him, and who had
not had all his earnings. There was a cunning calculation under this
noisy joking--a cool resolve to extract something the handsomer
from Bulstrode as payment for release from this new application
of torture. But his cunning had a little overcast its mark.
Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles could
enable him to imagine. He had told his wife that he was simply taking
care of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might otherwise
injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of falsehood,
that there was a family tie which bound him to this care, and that
there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged caution.
He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next morning.
In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode
with precautionary information for his daughters and servants,
and accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter the room
even with food and drink. But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles
should be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts--
lest Mrs.
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