Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

BENITO CERENO 93
sort of roving cadetship in the maritime affairs of such
a house, what more likely scheme for a young knave of
talent and spirit ? But the Spaniard was a pale invalid.
Never mind. For even to the degree of simulating
mortal disease, the craft of some tricksters had been
known to attain. To think that, under the aspect of
infantile weakness, the
couched— those velvets
paw
most savage energies
of the Spaniard but
might be
the silky
to his fangs.
not
From no train of thought did these fancies come ;
from within, but from without ; suddenly, too, and in
one throng, like hoar frost ; yet as soon to vanish as
the mild sun of Captain Delano's good-nature regained
its meridian.
Glancing over once more toward his host—whose side-
face, revealed above the skylight, was now turned
toward him—he was struck by the profile, whose clear-
ness of cut was refined by the thinness, incident to ill-
health, as well as ennobled about the chin by the beard.
Away with suspicion. He was a true off-shoot of a true
hidalgo Cereno.
Relieved by these and other better thoughts, the
visitor, lightly humming a tune, now began indifferently
pacing the poop, so as not to betray to Don Benito that
he had at all mistrusted incivility, much less duplicity ;
for such mistrust would yet be proved illusory, and by
the event ; though, for the present, the circumstance
which had provoked that distrust remained unexplained.
But when that little mystery should have been cleared
up, Captain Delano thought he might extremely regret
it, did he allow Don Benito to become aware that he
had indulged in ungenerous surmises. In short, to the
Spaniard's black-letter text, it was best, for a while, to
leave open margin.
Presently, his pale face twitching and overcast, the