As he sat in a chair in
front of the fire, or walked up and down the room picking a
handkerchief to pieces, you heard what poor Moriarty really thought
of Mrs. Reiver, for he raved about her and his own fall for the most
part; though he ravelled some P. W. D. accounts into the same skein
of thought. He talked, and talked, and talked in a low dry whisper
to himself, and there was no stopping him. He seemed to know that
there was something wrong, and twice tried to pull himself together
and confer rationally with the Doctor; but his mind ran out of
control at once, and he fell back to a whisper and the story of his
troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like a child of
all that a man usually locks up, and puts away in the deep of his
heart. Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of any one
who was in the room between ten-thirty that night and two-forty-five
next morning.
From what he said, one gathered how immense an influence Mrs. Reiver
held over him, and how thoroughly he felt for his own lapse. His
whisperings cannot, of course, be put down here; but they were very
instructive as showing the errors of his estimates.
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