'Having said so much, you must tell me more.

Put off that sardonic mask--I know very well what hides beneath it--and look me in the eye.

You have surprised some danger ?' 'I heard you spoken of--by one who seldom opens his lips but to ill purpose.

It was not difficult for me to wade through the shallows of the man's mind, and for my friend's sake to win his base confidence.
Needing a spy, and being himself a born traitor, he readily believed me at his beck; in truth he had long marked me, so I found, for a cankered soul who waited but the occasion to advance by infamy.

I held the creature in my hand; I turned him over and over, and he, the while, thinking me his greedy slave.