"A great deal more than enough."

"Do you mean that you have made up your mind about me without stopping to think?"

"That is exactly what I mean. An act of treachery, Miss Helena, is an act of treachery; no honest person need hesitate to condemn it. I am sorry you sent for me."

I got up to go. With an ironical gesture of remonstrance, she signed to me to sit down again.

"Must I remind you, dear sir, of our famous native virtue? Fair play is surely due to a young person who has nobody to take her part. You talked of treachery just how. I deny the treachery. Please give me a hearing."

I returned to my chair.

"Or would you prefer waiting," she went out, "till my sister comes here later in the day, and continues what Miss Jillgall has begun, with the great advantage of being young and nice-looking?"

When the female mind gets into this state, no wise man answers the female questions.

"Am I to take silence as meaning Go on?" Miss Helena inquired.

I begged her to interpret my silence in the sense most agreeable to herself.

This naturally encouraged her. She made a proposal:

"Do you mind changing places, sir?"

"Just as you like, Miss Helena."

We changed chairs; the light now fell full on her face. Had she deliberately challenged me to look into her secret mind if I could? Anything like the stark insensibility of that young girl to every refinement of feeling, to every becoming doubt of herself, to every customary timidity of her age and sex in the presence of a man who had not disguised his unfavorable opinion of her, I never met with in all my experience of the world and of women.

"I wish to be quite mistress of myself," she explained; "your face, for some reason which I really don't know, irritates me. The fact is, I have great pride in keeping my temper. Please make allowances. Now about Miss Jillgall. I suppose she told you how my sister first met with Philip Dunboyne?"

"Yes."

"She also mentioned, perhaps, that he was a highly-cultivated man?"

"She did."

"Now we shall get on. When Philip came to our town here, and saw me for the first time—Do you object to my speaking familiarly of him, by his Christian name?"

"In the case of any one else in your position, Miss Helena, I should venture to call it bad taste."

I was provoked into saying that. It failed entirely as a well-meant effort in the way of implied reproof. Miss Helena smiled.

"You grant me a liberty which you would not concede to another girl." That was how she viewed it. "We are getting on better already. To return to what I was saying. When Philip first saw me—I have it from himself, mind—he felt that I should have been his choice, if he had met with me before he met with my sister. Do you blame him?"

"If you will take my advice," I said, "you will not inquire too closely into my opinion of Mr. Philip Dunboyne."

"Perhaps you don't wish me to say anymore?" she suggested.

"On the contrary, pray go on, if you like."

After that concession, she was amiability itself. "Oh, yes," she assured me, "that's easily done." And she went on accordingly: "Philip having informed me of the state of his affections, I naturally followed his example. In fact, we exchanged confessions. Our marriage engagement followed as a matter of course. Do you blame me?"

"I will wait till you have done."

"I have no more to say."

She made that amazing reply with such perfect composure, that I began to fear there must have been some misunderstanding between us. "Is that really all you have to say for yourself?" I persisted.

Her patience with me was most exemplary. She lowered herself to my level. Not trusting to words only on this occasion, she (so to say) beat her meaning into my head by gesticulating on her fingers, as if she was educating a child.

"Philip and I," she began, "are the victims of an accident, which kept us apart when we ought to have met together—we are not responsible for an accident." She impressed this on me by touching her forefinger. "Philip and I fell in love with each other at first sight—we are not responsible for the feelings implanted in our natures by an all-wise Providence." She assisted me in understanding this by touching her middle finger. "Philip and I owe a duty to each other, and accept a responsibility under those circumstances—the responsibility of getting married." A touch on her third finger, and an indulgent bow, announced that the lesson was ended. "I am not a clever man like you," she modestly acknowledged, "but I ask you to help us, when you next see my father, with some confidence. You know exactly what to say to him, by this time. Nothing has been forgotten."

"Pardon me," I said, "a person has been forgotten."

"Indeed? What person?"

"Your sister."

A little perplexed at first, Miss Helena reflected, and recovered herself.

"Ah, yes," she said; "I was afraid I might be obliged to trouble you for an explanation—I see it now. You are shocked (very properly) when feelings of enmity exist between near relations; and you wish to be assured that I bear no malice toward Eunice. She is violent, she is sulky, she is stupid, she is selfish; and she cruelly refuses to live in the same house with me. Make your mind easy, sir, I forgive my sister."

Let me not attempt to disguise it—Miss Helena Gracedieu confounded me.

Ordinary audacity is one of those forms of insolence which mature experience dismisses with contempt. This girl's audacity struck down all resistance, for one shocking reason: it was unquestionably sincere. Strong conviction of her own virtue stared at me in her proud and daring eyes. At that time, I was not aware of what I have learned since. The horrid hardening of her moral sense had been accomplished by herself. In her diary, there has been found the confession of a secret course of reading—with supplementary reflections flowing from it, which need only to be described as worthy of their source.

A person capable of repentance and reform would, in her place, have seen that she had disgusted me. Not a suspicion of this occurred to Miss Helena. "I see you are embarrassed," she remarked, "and I am at no loss to account for it. You are too polite to acknowledge that I have not made a friend of you yet. Oh, I mean to do it!"

"No," I said, "I think not."

"We shall see," she replied. "Sooner or later, you will find yourself saying a kind word to my father for Philip and me." She rose, and took a turn in the room—and stopped, eying me attentively. "Are you thinking of Eunice?" she asked.

"Yes."

"She has your sympathy, I suppose?"

"My heart-felt sympathy."

"I needn't ask how I stand in your estimation, after that. Pray express yourself freely. Your looks confess it—you view me with a feeling of aversion."

"I view you with a feeling of horror."

The exasperating influences of her language, her looks, and her tones would, as I venture to think, have got to the end of another man's self-control before this. Anyway, she had at last irritated me into speaking as strongly as I felt. What I said had been so plainly (perhaps so rudely) expressed, that misinterpretation of it seemed to be impossible. She mistook me, nevertheless. The most merciless disclosure of the dreary side of human destiny is surely to be found in the failure of words, spoken or written, so to answer their purpose that we can trust them, in our attempts to communicate with each other. Even when he seems to be connected, by the nearest and dearest relations, with his fellow-mortals, what a solitary creature, tried by the test of sympathy, the human being really is in the teeming world that he inhabits! Affording one more example of the impotence of human language to speak for itself, my misinterpreted words had found their way to the one sensitive place in Helena Gracedieu's impenetrable nature. She betrayed it in the quivering and flushing of her hard face, and in the appeal to the looking-glass which escaped her eyes the next moment. My hasty reply had roused the idea of a covert insult addressed to her handsome face. In other words, I had wounded her vanity. Driven by resentment, out came the secret distrust of me which had been lurking in that cold heart, from the moment when we first met.

"I inspire you with horror, and Eunice inspires you with compassion," she said. "That, Mr. Governor, is not natural."

"May I ask why?"

"You know why."

"No."

"You will have it?"

"I want an explanation, Miss Helena, if that is what you mean."

"Take your explanation, then! You are not the stranger you are said to be to my sister and to me. Your interest in Eunice is a personal interest of some kind. I don't pretend to guess what it is. As for myself, it is plain that somebody else has been setting you against me, before Miss Jillgall got possession of your private ear."

In alluding to Eunice, she had blundered, strangely enough, on something like the truth. But when she spoke of herself, the headlong malignity of her suspicions—making every allowance for the anger that had hurried her into them—seemed to call for some little protest against a false assertion. I told her that she was completely mistaken.

"I am completely right," she answered; "I saw it."

"Saw what?"

"Saw you pretending to be a stranger to me."

"When did I do that?"

"You did it when we met at the station."

The reply was too ridiculous for the preservation of any control over my own sense of humor. It was wrong; but it was inevitable—I laughed. She looked at me with a fury, revealing a concentration of evil passion in her which I had not seen yet. I asked her pardon; I begged her to think a little before she persisted in taking a view of my conduct unworthy of her, and unjust to myself.

"Unjust to You!" she burst out. "Who are You? A man who has driven your trade has spies always at his command—yes! and knows how to use them. You were primed with private information—you had, for all I know, a stolen photograph of me in your pocket—before ever you came to our town. Do you still deny it? Oh, sir, why degrade yourself by telling a lie?"

No such outrage as this had ever been inflicted on me, at any time in my life. My forbearance must, I suppose, have been more severely tried than I was aware of myself. With or without excuse for me, I was weak enough to let a girl's spiteful tongue sting me, and, worse still, to let her see that I felt it.

"You shall have no second opportunity, Miss Gracedieu, of insulting me." With that foolish reply, I opened the door violently and went out.

She ran after me, triumphing in having roused the temper of a man old enough to have been her grandfather, and caught me by the arm. "Your own conduct has exposed you." (That was literally how she expressed herself.) "I saw it in your eyes when we met at the station. You, the stranger—you who allowed poor ignorant me to introduce myself—you knew me all the time, knew me by sight!"

I shook her hand off with an inconsiderable roughness, humiliating to remember. "It's false!" I cried. "I knew you by your likeness to your mother."

The moment the words had passed my lips, I came to my senses again; I remembered what fatal words they might prove to be, if they reached the Minister's ears.

Heard only by his daughter, my reply seemed to cool the heat of her anger in an instant.

"So you knew my mother?" she said. "My father never told us that, when he spoke of your being such a very old friend of his. Strange, to say the least of it."

I was wise enough—now when wisdom had come too late—not to attempt to explain myself, and not to give her an opportunity of saying more. "We are neither of us in a state of mind," I answered, "to allow this interview to continue. I must try to recover my composure; and I leave you to do the same."

In the solitude of my room, I was able to look my position fairly in the face.

Mr. Gracedieu's wife had come to me, in the long-past time, without her husband's knowledge. Tempted to a cruel resolve by the maternal triumph of having an infant of her own, she had resolved to rid herself of the poor little rival in her husband's fatherly affection, by consigning the adopted child to the keeping of a charitable asylum. She had dared to ask me to help her. I had kept the secret of her shameful visit—I can honestly say, for the Minister's sake. And now, long after time had doomed those events to oblivion, they were revived—and revived by me. Thanks to my folly, Mr. Gracedieu's daughter knew what I had concealed from Mr. Gracedieu himself.

What course did respect for my friend, and respect for myself, counsel me to take?

I could only see before me a choice of two evils. To wait for events—with the too certain prospect of a vindictive betrayal of my indiscretion by Helena Gracedieu. Or to take the initiative into my own hands, and risk consequences which I might regret to the end of my life, by making my confession to the Minister.

Before I had decided, somebody knocked at the door. It was the maid-servant again. Was it possible she had been sent by Helena?

"Another message?"

"Yes, sir. My master wishes to see you."



CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE GIRLS' AGES.

Had the Minister's desire to see me been inspired by his daughter's betrayal of what I had unfortunately said to her? Although he would certainly not consent to receive her personally, she would be at liberty to adopt a written method of communication with him, and the letter might be addressed in such a manner as to pique his curiosity. If Helena's vindictive purpose had been already accomplished—and if Mr. Gracedieu left me no alternative but to present his unworthy wife in her true character—I can honestly say that I dreaded the consequences, not as they might affect myself, but as they might affect my unhappy friend in his enfeebled state of body and mind.

When I entered his room, he was still in bed.

The bed-curtains were so drawn, on the side nearest to the window, as to keep the light from falling too brightly on his weak eyes. In the shadow thus thrown on him, it was not possible to see his face plainly enough, from the open side of the bed, to arrive at any definite conclusion as to what might be passing in his mind. After having been awake for some hours during the earlier part of the night, he had enjoyed a long and undisturbed sleep. "I feel stronger this morning," he said, "and I wish to speak to you while my mind is clear."

If the quiet tone of his voice was not an assumed tone, he was surely ignorant of all that had passed between his daughter and myself.

"Eunice will be here soon," he proceeded, "and I ought to explain why I have sent for her to come and meet you. I have reasons, serious reasons, mind, for wishing you to compare her personal appearance with Helena's personal appearance, and then to tell me which of the two, on a fair comparison, looks the eldest. Pray bear in mind that I attach the greatest importance to the conclusion at which you may arrive."

He spoke more clearly and collectedly than I had heard him speak yet.

Here and there I detected hesitations and repetitions, which I have purposely passed over. The substance of what he said to me is all that I shall present in this place. Careful as I have been to keep my record of events within strict limits, I have written at a length which I was far indeed from contemplating when I accepted Mr. Gracedieu's invitation.

Having promised to comply with the strange request which he had addressed to me, I ventured to remind him of past occasions on which he had pointedly abstained, when the subject presented itself, from speaking of the girls' ages. "You have left it to my discretion," I added, "to decide a question in which you are seriously interested, relating to your daughters. Have I no excuse for regretting that I have not been admitted to your confidence a little more freely?"

"You have every excuse," he answered. "But you trouble me all the same. There was something else that I had to say to you—and your curiosity gets in the way."

He said this with a sullen emphasis. In my position, the worst of evils was suspense. I told him that my curiosity could wait; and I begged that he would relieve his mind of what was pressing on it at the moment.

"Let me think a little," he said.

I waited anxiously for the decision at which he might arrive. Nothing came of it to justify my misgivings. "Leave what I have in my mind to ripen in my mind," he said. "The mystery about the girls' ages seems to irritate you. If I put my good friend's temper to any further trial, he will be of no use to me. Never mind if my head swims; I'm used to that. Now listen!"

Strange as the preface was, the explanation that followed was stranger yet. I offer a shortened and simplified version, giving accurately the substance of what I heard.

The Minister entered without reserve on the mysterious subject of the ages. Eunice, he informed me, was nearly two years older than Helena. If she outwardly showed her superiority of age, any person acquainted with the circumstances under which the adopted infant had been received into Mr. Gracedieu's childless household, need only compare the so-called sisters in after-life, and would thereupon identify the eldest-looking young lady of the two as the offspring of the woman who had been hanged for murder. With such a misfortune as this presenting itself as a possible prospect, the Minister was bound to prevent the girls from ignorantly betraying each other by allusions to their ages and their birthdays. After much thought, he had devised a desperate means of meeting the difficulty—already made known, as I am told, for the information of strangers who may read the pages that have gone before mine. My friend's plan of proceeding had, by the nature of it, exposed him to injurious comment, to embarrassing questions, and to doubts and misconceptions, all patiently endured in consideration of the security that had been attained. Proud of his explanation, Mr. Gracedieu's vanity called upon me to acknowledge that my curiosity had been satisfied, and my doubts completely set at rest.

No: my obstinate common sense was not reduced to submission, even yet. Looking back over a lapse of seventeen years, I asked what had happened, in that long interval, to justify the anxieties which still appeared to trouble my friend.

This time, my harmless curiosity could be gratified by a reply expressed in three words—nothing had happened.

Then what, in Heaven's name, was the Minister afraid of?

His voice dropped to a whisper. He said: "I am afraid of the women."

Who were the women?

Two of them actually proved to be the servants employed in Mr. Gracedieu's house, at the bygone time when he had brought the child home with him from the prison! To point out the absurdity of the reasons that he gave for fearing what female curiosity might yet attempt, if circumstances happened to encourage it, would have been a mere waste of words. Dismissing the subject, I next ascertained that the Minister's doubts extended even to the two female warders, who had been appointed to watch the murderess in turn, during her last days in prison. I easily relieved his mind in this case. One of the warders was dead. The other had married a farmer in Australia. Had we exhausted the list of suspected persons yet? No: there was one more left; and the Minister declared that he had first met with her in my official residence, at the time when I was Governor of the prison.

"She presented herself to me by name," he said; "and she spoke rudely. A Miss—" He paused to consult his memory, and this time (thanks perhaps to his night's rest) his memory answered the appeal. "I have got it!" he cried—"Miss Chance."

My friend had interested me in his imaginary perils at last. It was just possible that he might have a formidable person to deal with now.

During my residence at Florence, the Chaplain and I had taken many a retrospective look (as old men will) at past events in our lives. My former colleague spoke of the time when he had performed clerical duty for his friend, the rector of a parish church in London. Neither he nor I had heard again of the "Miss Chance" of our disagreeable prison experience, whom he had married to the dashing Dutch gentleman, Mr. Tenbruggen. We could only wonder what had become of that mysterious married pair.

Mr. Gracedieu being undoubtedly ignorant of the woman's marriage, it was not easy to say what the consequence might be, in his excitable state, if I informed him of it. He would, in all probability, conclude that I knew more of the woman than he did. I decided on keeping my own counsel, for the present at least.

Passing at once, therefore, to the one consideration of any importance, I endeavored to find out whether Mr. Gracedieu and Mrs. Tenbruggen had met, or had communicated with each other in any way, during the long period of separation that had taken place between the Minister and myself. If he had been so unlucky as to offend her, she was beyond all doubt an enemy to be dreaded. Apart, however, from a misfortune of this kind, she would rank, in my opinion, with the other harmless objects of Mr. Gracedieu's distrust.

In making my inquiries, I found that I had an obstacle to contend with.

While he felt the renovating influence of the repose that he enjoyed, the Minister had been able to think and to express himself with less difficulty than usual. But the reserves of strength, on which the useful exercise of his memory depended, began to fail him as the interview proceeded. He distinctly recollected that "something unpleasant had passed between that audacious woman and himself." But at what date—and whether by word of mouth or by correspondence—was more than his memory could now recall. He believed he was not mistaken in telling me that he "had been in two minds about her." At one time, he was satisfied that he had taken wise measures for his own security, if she attempted to annoy him. But there was another and a later time, when doubts and fears had laid hold of him again. If I wanted to know how this had happened, he fancied it was through a dream; and if I asked what the dream was, he could only beg and pray that I would spare his poor head.

Unwilling even yet to submit unconditionally to defeat, it occurred to me to try a last experiment on my friend, without calling for any mental effort on his own part. The "Miss Chance" of former days might, by a bare possibility, have written to him. I asked accordingly if he was in the habit of keeping his letters, and if he would allow me (when he had rested a little) to lay them open before him, so that he could look at the signatures. "You might find the lost recollection in that way," I suggested, "at the bottom of one of your letters."

He was in that state of weariness, poor fellow, in which a man will do anything for the sake of peace. Pointing to a cabinet in his room, he gave me a key taken from a little basket on his bed. "Look for yourself," he said. After some hesitation—for I naturally recoiled from examining another man's correspondence—I decided on opening the cabinet, at any rate.

The letters—a large collection—were, to my relief, all neatly folded, and indorsed with the names of the writers. I could run harmlessly through bundle after bundle in search of the one name that I wanted, and still respect the privacy of the letters. My perseverance deserved a reward—and failed to get it. The name I wanted steadily eluded my search. Arriving at the upper shelf of the cabinet, I found it so high that I could barely reach it with my hand. Instead of getting more letters to look over, I pulled down two newspapers.

One of them was an old copy of the Times, dating back as far as the 13th December, 1858. It was carefully folded, longwise, with the title-page uppermost. On the first column, at the left-hand side of the sheet, appeared the customary announcements of Births. A mark with a blue pencil, against one of the advertisements, attracted my attention. I read these lines:

"On the 10th inst., the wife of the Rev. Abel Gracedieu, of a daughter."

The second newspaper bore a later date, and contained nothing that interested me. I naturally assumed that the advertisement in the Times had been inserted at the desire of Mrs. Gracedieu; and, after all that I had heard, there was little difficulty in attributing the curious omission of the place in which the child had been born to the caution of her husband. If Mrs. Tenbruggen (then Miss Chance) had happened to see the advertisement in the great London newspaper, Mr. Gracedieu might yet have good reason to congratulate himself on his prudent method of providing against mischievous curiosity.

I turned toward the bed and looked at him. His eyes were closed. Was he sleeping? Or was he trying to remember what he had desired to say to me, when the demands which I made on his memory had obliged him to wait for a later opportunity?

Either way, there was something that quickened my sympathies, in the spectacle of his helpless repose. It suggested to me personal reasons for his anxieties, which he had not mentioned, and which I had not thought of, up to this time. If the discovery that he dreaded took place, his household would be broken up, and his position as pastor would suffer in the estimation of the flock. His own daughter would refuse to live under the same roof with the daughter of an infamous woman. Popular opinion, among his congregation, judging a man who had passed off the child of other parents as his own, would find that man guilty of an act of deliberate deceit.

Still oppressed by reflections which pointed to the future in this discouraging way, I was startled by a voice outside the door—a sweet, sad voice—saying, "May I come in?"

The Minister's eyes opened instantly: he raised himself in his bed.

"Eunice, at last!" he cried. "Let her in."



CHAPTER XXXIX. THE ADOPTED CHILD

I opened the door.

Eunice passed me with the suddenness almost of a flash of light. When I turned toward the bed, her arms were round her father's neck. "Oh, poor papa, how ill you look!" Commonplace expressions of fondness, and no more; but the tone gave them a charm that subdued me. Never had I felt so indulgent toward Mr. Gracedieu's unreasonable fears as when I saw him in the embrace of his adopted daughter. She had already reminded me of the bygone day when a bright little child had sat on my knee and listened to the ticking of my watch.

The Minister gently lifted her head from his breast. "My darling," he said, "you don't see my old friend. Love him, and look up to him, Eunice. He will be your friend, too, when I am gone."

She came to me and offered her cheek to be kissed. It was sadly pale, poor soul—and I could guess why. But her heart was now full of her father. "Do you think he is seriously ill?" she whispered. What I ought to have said I don't know. Her eyes, the sweetest, truest, loveliest eyes I ever saw in a human face, were pleading with me. Let my enemies make the worst of it, if they like—I did certainly lie. And if I deserved my punishment, I got it; the poor child believed me! "Now I am happier," she said, gratefully. "Only to hear your voice seems to encourage me. On our way here, Selina did nothing but talk of you. She told me I shouldn't have time to feel afraid of the great man; he would make me fond of him directly. I said, 'Are you fond of him?' She said, 'Madly in love with him, my dear.' My little friend really thinks you like her, and is very proud of it. There are some people who call her ugly. I hope you don't agree with them?"

I believe I should have lied again, if Mr. Gracedieu had not called me to the bedside.

"How does she strike you?" he whispered, eagerly. "Is it too soon to ask if she shows her age in her face?"

"Neither in her face nor her figure," I answered: "it astonishes me that you can ever have doubted it. No stranger, judging by personal appearance, could fail to make the mistake of thinking Helena the oldest of the two."

He looked fondly at Eunice. "Her figure seems to bear out what you say," he went on. "Almost childish, isn't it?"

I could not agree to that. Slim, supple, simply graceful in every movement, Eunice's figure, in the charm of first youth, only waited its perfect development. Most men, looking at her as she stood at the other end of the room with her back toward us, would have guessed her age to be sixteen.

Finding that I failed to agree with him, Mr. Gracedieu's misgivings returned. "You speak very confidently," he said, "considering that you have not seen the girls together. Think what a dreadful blow it would be to me if you made a mistake."

I declared, with perfect sincerity, that there was no fear of a mistake. The bare idea of making the proposed comparison was hateful to me. If Helena and I had happened to meet at that moment, I should have turned away from her by instinct—she would have disturbed my impressions of Eunice.

The Minister signed to me to move a little nearer to him. "I must say it," he whispered, "and I am afraid of her hearing me. Is there anything in her face that reminds you of her miserable mother?"

I had hardly patience to answer the question: it was simply preposterous. Her hair was by many shades darker than her mother's hair; her eyes were of a different color. There was an exquisite tenderness and sincerity in their expression—made additionally beautiful, to my mind, by a gentle, uncomplaining sadness. It was impossible even to think of the eyes of the murderess when I looked at her child. Eunice's lower features, again, had none of her mother's regularity of proportion. Her smile, simple and sweet, and soon passing away, was certainly not an inherited smile on the maternal side. Whether she resembled her father, I was unable to conjecture—having never seen him. The one thing certain was, that not the faintest trace, in feature or expression, of Eunice's mother was to be seen in Eunice herself. Of the two girls, Helena—judging by something in the color of her hair, and by something in the shade of her complexion—might possibly have suggested, in those particulars only, a purely accidental resemblance to my terrible prisoner of past times.

The revival of Mr. Gracedieu's spirits indicated a temporary change only, and was already beginning to pass away. The eyes which had looked lovingly at Eunice began to look languidly now: his head sank on the pillow with a sigh of weak content. "My pleasure has been almost too much for me," he said. "Leave me for a while to rest, and get used to it."

Eunice kissed his forehead—and we left the room.



CHAPTER XL. THE BRUISED HEART.

When we stepped out on the landing, I observed that my companion paused. She looked at the two flights of stairs below us before she descended them. It occurred to me that there must be somebody in the house whom she was anxious to avoid.

Arrived at the lower hall, she paused again, and proposed in a whisper that we should go into the garden. As we advanced along the backward division of the hall, I saw her eyes turn distrustfully toward the door of the room in which Helena had received me. At last, my slow perceptions felt with her and understood her. Eunice's sensitive nature recoiled from a chance meeting with the wretch who had laid waste all that had once been happy and hopeful in that harmless young life.

"Will you come with me to the part of the garden that I am fondest of?" she asked.

I offered her my arm. She led me in silence to a rustic seat, placed under the shade of a mulberry tree. I saw a change in her face as we sat down—a tender and beautiful change. At that moment the girl's heart was far away from me. There was some association with this corner of the garden, on which I felt that I must not intrude.

"I was once very happy here," she said. "When the time of the heartache came soon after, I was afraid to look at the old tree and the bench under it. But that is all over now. I like to remember the hours that were once dear to me, and to see the place that recalls them. Do you know who I am thinking of? Don't be afraid of distressing me. I never cry now."

"My dear child, I have heard your sad story—but I can't trust myself to speak of it."

"Because you are so sorry for me?"

"No words can say how sorry I am!"

"But you are not angry with Philip?"

"Not angry! My poor dear, I am afraid to tell you how angry I am with him."

"Oh, no! You mustn't say that. If you wish to be kind to me—and I am sure you do wish it—don't think bitterly of Philip."

When I remember that the first feeling she roused in me was nothing worthier of a professing Christian than astonishment, I drop in my own estimation to the level of a savage. "Do you really mean," I was base enough to ask, "that you have forgiven him?"

She said, gently: "How could I help forgiving him?"

The man who could have been blessed with such love as this, and who could have cast it away from him, can have been nothing but an idiot. On that ground—though I dared not confess it to Eunice—I forgave him, too.

"Do I surprise you?" she asked simply. "Perhaps love will bear any humiliation. Or perhaps I am only a poor weak creature. You don't know what a comfort it was to me to keep the few letters that I received from Philip. When I heard that he had gone away, I gave his letters the kiss that bade him good-by. That was the time, I think, when my poor bruised heart got used to the pain; I began to feel that there was one consolation still left for me—I might end in forgiving him. Why do I tell you all this? I think you must have bewitched me. Is this really the first time I have seen you?"

She put her little trembling hand into mine; I lifted it to my lips, and kissed it. Sorely was I tempted to own that I had pitied and loved her in her infancy. It was almost on my lips to say: "I remember you an easily-pleased little creature, amusing yourself with the broken toys which were once the playthings of my own children." I believe I should have said it, if I could have trusted myself to speak composedly to her. This was not to be done. Old as I was, versed as I was in the hard knowledge of how to keep the mask on in the hour of need, this was not to be done.

Still trying to understand that I was little better than a stranger to her, and still bent on finding the secret of the sympathy that united us, Eunice put a strange question to me.

"When you were young yourself," she said, "did you know what it was to love, and to be loved—and then to lose it all?"

It is not given to many men to marry the woman who has been the object of their first love. My early life had been darkened by a sad story; never confided to any living creature; banished resolutely from my own thoughts. For forty years past, that part of my buried self had lain quiet in its grave—and the chance touch of an innocent hand had raised the dead, and set us face to face again! Did I know what it was to love, and to be loved, and then to lose it all? "Too well, my child; too well!"

That was all I could say to her. In the last days of my life, I shrank from speaking of it. When I had first felt that calamity, and had felt it most keenly, I might have given an answer worthier of me, and worthier of her.

She dropped my hand, and sat by me in silence, thinking. Had I—without meaning it, God knows!—had I disappointed her?

"Did you expect me to tell my own sad story," I said, "as frankly and as trustfully as you have told yours?"

"Oh, don't think that! I know what an effort it was to you to answer me at all. Yes, indeed! I wonder whether I may ask something. The sorrow you have just told me of is not the only one—is it? You have had other troubles?"

"Many of them."

"There are times," she went on, "when one can't help thinking of one's own miserable self. I try to be cheerful, but those times come now and then."

She stopped, and looked at me with a pale fear confessing itself in her face.

"You know who Selina is?" she resumed. "My friend! The only friend I had, till you came here."

I guessed that she was speaking of the quaint, kindly little woman, whose ugly surname had been hitherto the only name known to me.

"Selina has, I daresay, told you that I have been ill," she continued, "and that I am staying in the country for the benefit of my health."

It was plain that she had something to say to me, far more important than this, and that she was dwelling on trifles to gain time and courage. Hoping to help her, I dwelt on trifles, too; asking commonplace questions about the part of the country in which she was staying. She answered absently—then, little by little, impatiently. The one poor proof of kindness that I could offer, now, was to say no more.

"Do you know what a strange creature I am?" she broke out. "Shall I make you angry with me? or shall I make you laugh at me? What I have shrunk from confessing to Selina—what I dare not confess to my father—I must, and will, confess to You."

There was a look of horror in her face that alarmed me. I drew her to me so that she could rest her head on my shoulder. My own agitation threatened to get the better of me. For the first time since I had seen this sweet girl, I found myself thinking of the blood that ran in her veins, and of the nature of the mother who had borne her.

"Did you notice how I behaved upstairs?" she said. "I mean when we left my father, and came out on the landing."

It was easily recollected; I begged her to go on.

"Before I went downstairs," she proceeded, "you saw me look and listen. Did you think I was afraid of meeting some person? and did you guess who it was I wanted to avoid?"

"I guessed that—and I understood you."

"No! You are not wicked enough to understand me. Will you do me a favor? I want you to look at me."

It was said seriously. She lifted her head for a moment, so that I could examine her face.

"Do you see anything," she asked, "which makes you fear that I am not in my right mind?"

"Good God! how can you ask such a horrible question?"

She laid her head back on my shoulder with a sad little sigh of resignation. "I ought to have known better," she said; "there is no such easy way out of it as that. Tell me—is there one kind of wickedness more deceitful than another? Can it be hid in a person for years together, and show itself when a time of suffering—no; I mean when a sense of injury comes? Did you ever see that, when you were master in the prison?"

I had seen it—and, after a moment's doubt, I said I had seen it.

"Did you pity those poor wretches?"

"Certainly! They deserved pity."

"I am one of them!" she said. "Pity me. If Helena looks at me—if Helena speaks to me—if I only see Helena by accident—do you know what she does? She tempts me! Tempts me to do dreadful things! Tempts me—" The poor child threw her arms round my neck, and whispered the next fatal words in my ear.

The mother! Prepared as I was for the accursed discovery, the horror of it shook me.

She left me, and started to her feet. The inherited energy showed itself in furious protest against the inherited evil. "What does it mean?" she cried. "I'll submit to anything. I'll bear my hard lot patiently, if you will only tell me what it means. Where does this horrid transformation of me out of myself come from? Look at my good father. In all this world there is no man so perfect as he is. And oh, how he has taught me! there isn't a single good thing that I have not learned from him since I was a little child. Did you ever hear him speak of my mother? You must have heard him. My mother was an angel. I could never be worthy of her at my best—but I have tried! I have tried! The wickedest girl in the world doesn't have worse thoughts than the thoughts that have come to me. Since when? Since Helena—oh, how can I call her by her name as if I still loved her? Since my sister—can she be my sister, I ask myself sometimes! Since my enemy—there's the word for her—since my enemy took Philip away from me. What does it mean? I have asked in my prayers—and have got no answer. I ask you. What does it mean? You must tell me! You shall tell me! What does it mean?"

Why did I not try to calm her? I had vainly tried to calm her—I who knew who her mother was, and what her mother had been.

At last, she had forced the sense of my duty on me. The simplest way of calming her was to put her back in the place by my side that she had left. It was useless to reason with her, it was impossible to answer her. I had my own idea of the one way in which I might charm Eunice back to her sweeter self.

"Let us talk of Philip," I said.

The fierce flush on her face softened, the swelling trouble of her bosom began to subside, as that dearly-loved name passed my lips! But there was some influence left in her which resisted me.

"No," she said; "we had better not talk of him."

"Why not?"

"I have lost all my courage. If you speak of Philip, you will make me cry."

I drew her nearer to me. If she had been my own child, I don't think I could have felt for her more truly than I felt at that moment. I only looked at her; I only said:

"Cry!"

The love that was in her heart rose, and poured its tenderness into her eyes. I had longed to see the tears that would comfort her. The tears came.

There was silence between us for a while. It was possible for me to think.

In the absence of physical resemblance between parent and child, is an unfavorable influence exercised on the tendency to moral resemblance? Assuming the possibility of such a result as this, Eunice (entirely unlike her mother) must, as I concluded, have been possessed of qualities formed to resist, as well as of qualities doomed to undergo, the infection of evil. While, therefore, I resigned myself to recognize the existence of the hereditary maternal taint, I firmly believed in the counterbalancing influences for good which had been part of the girl's birthright. They had been derived, perhaps, from the better qualities in her father's nature; they had been certainly developed by the tender care, the religious vigilance, which had guarded the adopted child so lovingly in the Minister's household; and they had served their purpose until time brought with it the change, for which the tranquil domestic influences were not prepared. With the great, the vital transformation, which marks the ripening of the girl into the woman's maturity of thought and passion, a new power for Good, strong enough to resist the latent power for Evil, sprang into being, and sheltered Eunice under the supremacy of Love. Love ill-fated and ill-bestowed—but love that no profanation could stain, that no hereditary evil could conquer—the True Love that had been, and was, and would be, the guardian angel of Eunice's life.

If I am asked whether I have ventured to found this opinion on what I have observed in one instance only, I reply that I have had other opportunities of investigation, and that my conclusions are derived from experience which refers to more instances than one.

No man in his senses can doubt that physical qualities are transmitted from parents to children. But inheritance of moral qualities is less easy to trace. Here, the exploring mind finds its progress beset by obstacles. That those obstacles have been sometimes overcome I do not deny. Moral resemblances have been traced between parents and children. While, however, I admit this, I doubt the conclusion which sees, in inheritance of moral qualities, a positive influence exercised on moral destiny. There are inherent emotional forces in humanity to which the inherited influences must submit; they are essentially influences under control—influences which can be encountered and forced back. That we, who inhabit this little planet, may be the doomed creatures of fatality, from the cradle to the grave, I am not prepared to dispute. But I absolutely refuse to believe that it is a fatality with no higher origin than can be found in our accidental obligation to our fathers and mothers.

Still absorbed in these speculations, I was disturbed by a touch on my arm.

I looked up. Eunice's eyes were fixed on a shrubbery, at some little distance from us, which closed the view of the garden on that side. I noticed that she was trembling. Nothing to alarm her was visible that I could discover. I asked what she had seen to startle her. She pointed to the shrubbery.

"Look again," she said.

This time I saw a woman's dress among the shrubs. The woman herself appeared in a moment more. It was Helena. She carried a small portfolio, and she approached us with a smile.



CHAPTER XLI. THE WHISPERING VOICE.

I looked at Eunice. She had risen, startled by her first suspicion of the person who was approaching us through the shrubbery; but she kept her place near me, only changing her position so as to avoid confronting Helena. Her quickened breathing was all that told me of the effort she was making to preserve her self-control. Entirely free from unbecoming signs of hurry and agitation, Helena opened her business with me by means of an apology.

"Pray excuse me for disturbing you. I am obliged to leave the house on one of my tiresome domestic errands. If you will kindly permit it, I wish to express, before I go, my very sincere regret for what I was rude enough to say, when I last had the honor of seeing you. May I hope to be forgiven? How-do-you-do, Eunice? Have you enjoyed your holiday in the country?"

Eunice neither moved nor answered. Having some doubt of what might happen if the two girls remained together, I proposed to Helena to leave the garden and to let me hear what she had to say, in the house.

"Quite needless," she replied; "I shall not detain you for more than a minute. Please look at this."

She offered to me the portfolio that she had been carrying, and pointed to a morsel of paper attached to it, which contained this inscription:

"Philip's Letters To Me. Private. Helena Gracedieu."

"I have a favor to ask," she said, "and a proof of confidence in you to offer. Will you be so good as to look over what you find in my portfolio? I am unwilling to give up the hopes that I had founded on our interview, when I asked for it. The letters will, I venture to think, plead my cause more convincingly than I was able to plead it for myself. I wish to forget what passed between us, to the last word. To the last word," she repeated emphatically—with a look which sufficiently informed me that I had not been betrayed to her father yet. "Will you indulge me?" she asked, and offered her portfolio for the second time.

A more impudent bargain could not well have been proposed to me.

I was to read, and to be favorably impressed by, Mr. Philip Dunboyne's letters; and Miss Helena was to say nothing of that unlucky slip of the tongue, relating to her mother, which she had discovered to be a serious act of self-betrayal—thanks to my confusion at the time. If I had not thought of Eunice, and of the desolate and loveless life to which the poor girl was so patiently resigned, I should have refused to read Miss Gracedieu's love-letters.

But, as things were, I was influenced by the hope (innocently encouraged by Eunice herself) that Philip Dunboyne might not be so wholly unworthy of the sweet girl whom he had injured as I had hitherto been too hastily disposed to believe. To act on this view with the purpose of promoting a reconciliation was impossible, unless I had the means of forming a correct estimate of the man's character. It seemed to me that I had found the means. A fair chance of putting his sincerity to a trustworthy test, was surely offered by the letters (the confidential letters) which I had been requested to read. To feel this as strongly as I felt it, brought me at once to a decision. I consented to take the portfolio—on my own conditions.

"Understand, Miss Helena," I said, "that I make no promises. I reserve my own opinion, and my own right of action."

"I am not afraid of your opinions or your actions," she answered confidently, "if you will only read the letters. In the meantime, let me relieve my sister, there, of my presence. I hope you will soon recover, Eunice, in the country air."

If the object of the wretch was to exasperate her victim, she had completely failed. Eunice remained as still as a statue. To all appearance, she had not even heard what had been said to her. Helena looked at me, and touched her forehead with a significant smile. "Sad, isn't it?" she said—and bowed, and went briskly away on her household errand.

We were alone again.

Still, Eunice never moved. I spoke to her, and produced no impression. Beginning to feel alarmed, I tried the effect of touching her. With a wild cry, she started into a state of animation. Almost at the same moment, she weakly swayed to and fro as if the pleasant breeze in the garden moved her at its will, like the flowers. I held her up, and led her to the seat.

"There is nothing to be afraid of," I said. "She has gone."

Eunice's eyes rested on me in vacant surprise. "How do you know?" she asked. "I hear her; but I never see her. Do you see her?"

"My dear child! of what person are you speaking?"

She answered: "Of no person. I am speaking of a Voice that whispers and tempts me, when Helena is near."

"What voice, Eunice?"

"The whispering Voice. It said to me, 'I am your mother;' it called me Daughter when I first heard it. My father speaks of my mother, the angel. That good spirit has never come to me from the better world. It is a mock-mother who comes to me—some spirit of evil. Listen to this. I was awake in my bed. In the dark I heard the mock-mother whispering, close at my ear. Shall I tell you how she answered me, when I longed for light to see her by, when I prayed to her to show herself to me? She said: 'My face was hidden when I passed from life to death; my face no mortal creature may see.' I have never seen her—how can you have seen her? But I heard her again, just now. She whispered to me when Helena was standing there—where you are standing. She freezes the life in me. Did she freeze the life in you? Did you hear her tempting me? Don't speak of it, if you did. Oh, not a word! not a word!"

A man who has governed a prison may say with Macbeth, "I have supped full with horrors." Hardened as I was—or ought to have been—the effect of what I had just heard turned me cold. If I had not known it to be absolutely impossible, I might have believed that the crime and the death of the murderess were known to Eunice, as being the crime and the death of her mother, and that the horrid discovery had turned her brain. This was simply impossible. What did it mean? Good God! what did it mean?

My sense of my own helplessness was the first sense in me that recovered. I thought of Eunice's devoted little friend. A woman's sympathy seemed to be needed now. I rose to lead the way out of the garden.

"Selina will think we are lost," I said. "Let us go and find Selina."

"Not for the world," she cried.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't feel sure of myself. I might tell Selina something which she must never know; I should be so sorry to frighten her. Let me stop here with you."

I resumed my place at her side.

"Let me take your hand."

I gave her my hand. What composing influence this simple act may, or may not, have exercised, it is impossible to say. She was quiet, she was silent. After an interval, I heard her breathe a long-drawn sigh of relief.

"I am afraid I have surprised you," she said. "Helena brings the dreadful time back to me—" She stopped and shuddered.

"Don't speak of Helena, my dear."

"But I am afraid you will think—because I have said strange things—that I have been talking at random," she insisted. "The doctor will say that, if you meet with him. He believes I am deluded by a dream. I tried to think so myself. It was of no use; I am quite sure he is wrong."

I privately determined to watch for the doctor's arrival, and to consult with him. Eunice went on:

"I have the story of a terrible night to tell you; but I haven't the courage to tell it now. Why shouldn't you come back with me to the place that I am staying at? A pleasant farm-house, and such kind people. You might read the account of that night in my journal. I shall not regret the misery of having written it, if it helps you to find out how this hateful second self of mine has come to me. Hush! I want to ask you something. Do you think Helena is in the house?"

"No—she has gone out."

"Did she say that herself? Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

She decided on going back to the farm, while Helena was out of the way. We left the garden together. For the first time, my companion noticed the portfolio. I happened to be carrying it in the hand that was nearest to her, as she walked by my side.

"Where did you get that?" she asked.

It was needless to reply in words. My hesitation spoke for me.

"Carry it in your other hand," she said—"the hand that's furthest away from me. I don't want to see it! Do you mind waiting a moment while I find Selina? You will go to the farm with us, won't you?"

I had to look over the letters, in Eunice's own interests; and I begged her to let me defer my visit to the farm until the next day. She consented, after making me promise to keep my appointment. It was of some importance to her, she told me, that I should make acquaintance with the farmer and his wife and children, and tell her how I liked them. Her plans for the future depended on what those good people might be willing to do. When she had recovered her health, it was impossible for her to go home again while Helena remained in the house. She had resolved to earn her own living, if she could get employment as a governess. The farmer's children liked her; she had already helped their mother in teaching them; and there was reason to hope that their father would see his way to employing her permanently. His house offered the great advantage of being near enough to the town to enable her to hear news of the Minister's progress toward recovery, and to see him herself when safe opportunities offered, from time to time. As for her salary, what did she care about money? Anything would be acceptable, if the good man would only realize her hopes for the future.

It was disheartening to hear that hope, at her age, began and ended within such narrow limits as these. No prudent man would have tried to persuade her, as I now did, that the idea of reconciliation offered the better hope of the two.

"Suppose I see Mr. Philip Dunboyne when I go back to London," I began, "what shall I say to him?"

"Say I have forgiven him."

"And suppose," I went on, "that the blame really rests, where you all believe it to rest, with Helena. If that young man returns to you, truly ashamed of himself, truly penitent, will you—?"

She resolutely interrupted me: "No!"

"Oh, Eunice, you surely mean Yes?"

"I mean No!"

"Why?"

"Don't ask me! Good-by till to-morrow."



CHAPTER XLII. THE QUAINT PHILOSOPHER.

No person came to my room, and nothing happened to interrupt me while I was reading Mr. Philip Dunboyne's letters.

One of them, let me say at once, produced a very disagreeable impression on me. I have unexpectedly discovered Mrs. Tenbruggen—in a postscript. She is making a living as a Medical Rubber (or Masseuse), and is in professional attendance on Mr. Dunboyne the elder. More of this, a little further on.

Having gone through the whole collection of young Dunboyne's letters, I set myself to review the differing conclusions which the correspondence had produced on my mind.

I call the papers submitted to me a correspondence, because the greater part of Philip's letters exhibit notes in pencil, evidently added by Helena. These express, for the most part, the interpretation which she had placed on passages that perplexed or displeased her; and they have, as Philip's rejoinders show, been employed as materials when she wrote her replies.

On reflection, I find myself troubled by complexities and contradictions in the view presented of this young man's character. To decide positively whether I can justify to myself and to my regard for Eunice, an attempt to reunite the lovers, requires more time for consideration than I can reasonably expect that Helena's patience will allow. Having a quiet hour or two still before me, I have determined to make extracts from the letters for my own use; with the intention of referring to them while I am still in doubt which way my decision ought to incline. I shall present them here, to speak for themselves. Is there any objection to this? None that I can see.

In the first place, those extracts have a value of their own. They add necessary information to the present history of events.

In the second place, I am under no obligation to Mr. Gracedieu's daughter which forbids me to make use of her portfolio. I told her that I only consented to receive it, under reserve of my own right of action—and her assent to that stipulation was expressed in the clearest terms.

EXTRACTS FROM MR. PHILIP DUNBOYNE'S LETTERS.

First Extract.

You blame me, dear Helena, for not having paid proper attention to the questions put to me in your last letter. I have only been waiting to make up my mind, before I replied.

First question: Do I think it advisable that you should write to my father? No, my dear; I beg you will defer writing, until you hear from me again.

Second question: Considering that he is still a stranger to you, is there any harm in your asking me what sort of man my father is? No harm, my sweet one; but, as you will presently see, I am afraid you have addressed yourself to the wrong person.

My father is kind, in his own odd way—and learned, and rich—a more high-minded and honorable man (as I have every reason to believe) doesn't live. But if you ask me which he prefers, his books or his son, I hope I do him no injustice when I answer, his books. His reading and his writing are obstacles between us which I have never been able to overcome. This is the more to be regretted because he is charming, on the few occasions when I find him disengaged. If you wish I knew more about my father, we are in complete agreement as usual—I wish, too.

But there is a dear friend of yours and mine, who is just the person we want to help us. Need I say that I allude to Mrs. Staveley?

I called on her yesterday, not long after she had paid a visit to my father. Luck had favored her. She arrived just at the time when hunger had obliged him to shut up his books, and ring for something to eat. Mrs. Staveley secured a favorable reception with her customary tact and delicacy. He had a fowl for his dinner. She knows his weakness of old; she volunteered to carve it for him.

If I can only repeat what this clever woman told me of their talk, you will have a portrait of Mr. Dunboyne the elder—not perhaps a highly-finished picture, but, as I hope and believe, a good likeness.

Mrs. Staveley began by complaining to him of the conduct of his son. I had promised to write to her, and I had never kept my word. She had reasons for being especially interested in my plans and prospects, just then; knowing me to be attached (please take notice that I am quoting her own language) to a charming friend of hers, whom I had first met at her house. To aggravate the disappointment that I had inflicted, the young lady had neglected her, too. No letters, no information. Perhaps my father would kindly enlighten her? Was the affair going on? or was it broken off?

My father held out his plate and asked for the other wing of the fowl. "It isn't a bad one for London," he said; "won't you have some yourself?"

"I don't seem to have interested you," Mrs. Staveley remarked.

"What did you expect me to be interested in?" my father inquired. "I was absorbed in the fowl. Favor me by returning to the subject."

Mrs. Staveley admits that she answered this rather sharply: "The subject, sir, was your son's admiration for a charming girl: one of the daughters of Mr. Gracedieu, the famous preacher."

My father is too well-bred to speak to a lady while his attention is absorbed by a fowl. He finished the second wing, and then he asked if "Philip was engaged to be married."

"I am not quite sure," Mrs. Staveley confessed.

"Then, my dear friend, we will wait till we are sure."

"But, Mr. Dunboyne, there is really no need to wait. I suppose your son comes here, now and then, to see you?"

"My son is most attentive. In course of time he will contrive to hit on the right hour for his visit. At present, poor fellow, he interrupts me every day."

"Suppose he hits upon the right time to-morrow?"

"Yes?"

"You might ask him if he is engaged?"

"Pardon me. I think I might wait till Philip mentions it without asking."

"What an extraordinary man you are!"

"Oh, no, no—only a philosopher."

This tried Mrs. Staveley's temper. You know what a perfectly candid person our friend is. She owned to me that she felt inclined to make herself disagreeable. "That's thrown away upon me," she said: "I don't know what a philosopher is."

Let me pause for a moment, dear Helena. I have inexcusably forgotten to speak of my father's personal appearance. It won't take long. I need only notice one interesting feature which, so to speak, lifts his face out of the common. He has an eloquent nose. Persons possessing this rare advantage are blest with powers of expression not granted to their ordinary fellow-creatures. My father's nose is a mine of information to friends familiarly acquainted with it. It changes color like a modest young lady's cheek. It works flexibly from side to side like the rudder of a ship. On the present occasion, Mrs. Staveley saw it shift toward the left-hand side of his face. A sigh escaped the poor lady. Experience told her that my father was going to hold forth.

"You don't know what a philosopher is!" he repeated. "Be so kind as to look at me. I am a philosopher."

Mrs. Staveley bowed.

"And a philosopher, my charming friend, is a man who has discovered a system of life. Some systems assert themselves in volumes—my system asserts itself in two words: Never think of anything until you have first asked yourself if there is an absolute necessity for doing it, at that particular moment. Thinking of things, when things needn't be thought of, is offering an opportunity to Worry; and Worry is the favorite agent of Death when the destroyer handles his work in a lingering way, and achieves premature results. Never look back, and never look forward, as long as you can possibly help it. Looking back leads the way to sorrow. And looking forward ends in the cruelest of all delusions: it encourages hope. The present time is the precious time. Live for the passing day: the passing day is all that we can be sure of. You suggested, just now, that I should ask my son if he was engaged to be married. How do we know what wear and tear of your nervous texture I succeeded in saving when I said. 'Wait till Philip mentions it without asking?' There is the personal application of my system. I have explained it in my time to every woman on the list of my acquaintance, including the female servants. Not one of them has rewarded me by adopting my system. How do you feel about it?"

Mrs. Staveley declined to tell me whether she had offered a bright example of gratitude to the rest of the sex. When I asked why, she declared that it was my turn now to tell her what I had been doing.

You will anticipate what followed. She objected to the mystery in which my prospects seemed to be involved. In plain English, was I, or was I not, engaged to marry her dear Eunice? I said, No. What else could I say? If I had told Mrs. Staveley the truth, when she insisted on my explaining myself, she would have gone back to my father, and would have appealed to his sense of justice to forbid our marriage. Finding me obstinately silent, she has decided on writing to Eunice. So we parted. But don't be disheartened. On my way out of the house, I met Mr. Staveley coming in, and had a little talk with him. He and his wife and his family are going to the seaside, next week. Mrs. Staveley once out of our way, I can tell my father of our engagement without any fear of consequences. If she writes to him, the moment he sees my name mentioned, and finds violent language associated with it, he will hand the letter to me. "Your business, Philip: don't interrupt me." He will say that, and go back to his books. There is my father, painted to the life! Farewell, for the present.

.......

Remarks by H. G.—Philip's grace and gayety of style might be envied by any professional Author. He amuses me, but he rouses my suspicion at the same time. This slippery lover of mine tells me to defer writing to his father, and gives no reason for offering that strange advice to the young lady who is soon to be a member of the family. Is this merely one more instance of the weakness of his character? Or, now that he is away from my influence, is he beginning to regret Eunice already?

Added by the Governor.—I too have my doubts. Is the flippant nonsense which Philip has written inspired by the effervescent good spirits of a happy young man? Or is it assumed for a purpose? In this latter case, I should gladly conclude that he was regarding his conduct to Eunice with becoming emotions of sorrow and shame.



CHAPTER XLIII. THE MASTERFUL MASSEUSE.

My next quotations will suffer a process of abridgment. I intend them to present the substance of three letters, reduced as follows:

Second Extract.

Weak as he may be, Mr. Philip Dunboyne shows (in his second letter) that he can feel resentment, and that he can express his feelings, in replying to Miss Helena. He protests against suspicions which he has not deserved. That he does sometimes think of Eunice he sees no reason to deny. He is conscious of errors and misdeeds, which—traceable as they are to Helena's irresistible fascinations—may perhaps be considered rather his misfortune than his fault. Be that as it may, he does indeed feel anxious to hear good accounts of Eunice's health. If this honest avowal excites her sister's jealousy, he will be disappointed in Helena for the first time.

His third letter shows that this exhibition of spirit has had its effect.

The imperious young lady regrets that she has hurt his feelings, and is rewarded for the apology by receiving news of the most gratifying kind. Faithful Philip has told his father that he is engaged to be married to Miss Helena Gracedieu, daughter of the celebrated Congregational preacher—and so on, and so on. Has Mr. Dunboyne the elder expressed any objection to the young lady? Certainly not! He knows nothing of the other engagement to Eunice; and he merely objects, on principle, to looking forward. "How do we know," says the philosopher, "what accidents may happen, or what doubts and hesitations may yet turn up? I am not to burden my mind in this matter, till I know that I must do it. Let me hear when she is ready to go to church, and I will be ready with the settlements. My compliments to Miss and her papa, and let us wait a little." Dearest Helena—isn't he funny?

The next letter has been already mentioned.

In this there occurs the first startling reference to Mrs. Tenbruggen, by name. She is in London, finding her way to lucrative celebrity by twisting, turning, and pinching the flesh of credulous persons, afflicted with nervous disorders; and she has already paid a few medical visits to old Mr. Dunboyne. He persists in poring over his books while Mrs. Tenbruggen operates, sometimes on his cramped right hand, sometimes (in the fear that his brain may have something to do with it) on the back of his neck. One of them frowns over her rubbing, and the other frowns over his reading. It would be delightfully ridiculous, but for a drawback; Mr. Philip Dunboyne's first impressions of Mrs. Tenbruggen do not incline him to look at that lady from a humorous point of view.

Helena's remarks follow, as usual. She has seen Mrs. Tenbruggen's name on the address of a letter written by Miss Jillgall—which is quite enough to condemn Mrs. Tenbruggen. As for Philip himself, she feels not quite sure of him, even yet. No more do I. Third Extract.

The letter that follows must be permitted to speak for itself:

I have flown into a passion, dearest Helena; and I am afraid I shall make you fly into a passion, too. Blame Mrs. Tenbruggen; don't blame me.

On the first occasion when I found my father under the hands of the Medical Rubber, she took no notice of me. On the second occasion—when she had been in daily attendance on him for a week, at an exorbitant fee—she said in the coolest manner: "Who is this young gentleman?" My father laid down his book, for a moment only: "Don't interrupt me again, ma'am. The young gentleman is my son Philip." Mrs. Tenbruggen eyed me with an appearance of interest which I was at a loss to account for. I hate an impudent woman. My visit came suddenly to an end.

The next time I saw my father, he was alone.

I asked him how he got on with Mrs. Tenbruggen. As badly as possible, it appeared. "She takes liberties with my neck; she interrupts me in my reading; and she does me no good. I shall end, Philip, in applying a medical rubbing to Mrs. Tenbruggen."

A few days later, I found the masterful "Masseuse" torturing the poor old gentleman's muscles again. She had the audacity to say to me: "Well, Mr. Philip, when are you going to marry Miss Eunice Gracedieu?" My father looked up. "Eunice?" he repeated. "When my son told me he was engaged to Miss Gracedieu, he said 'Helena'! Philip, what does this mean?" Mrs. Tenbruggen was so obliging as to answer for me. "Some mistake, sir; it's Eunice he is engaged to." I confess I forgot myself. "How the devil do you know that?" I burst out. Mrs. Tenbruggen ignored me and my language. "I am sorry to see, sir, that your son's education has been neglected; he seems to be grossly ignorant of the laws of politeness." "Never mind the laws of politeness," says my father. "You appear to be better acquainted with my son's matrimonial prospects than he is himself. How is that?" Mrs. Tenbruggen favored him with another ready reply: "My authority is a letter, addressed to me by a relative of Mr. Gracedieu—my dear and intimate friend, Miss Jillgall." My father's keen eyes traveled backward and forward between his female surgeon and his son. "Which am I to believe?" he inquired. "I am surprised at your asking the question," I said. Mrs. Tenbruggen pointed to me. "Look at Mr. Philip, sir—and you will allow him one merit. He is capable of showing it, when he knows he has disgraced himself." Without intending it, I am sure, my father infuriated me; he looked as if he believed her. Out came one of the smallest and strongest words in the English language before I could stop it: "Mrs. Tenbruggen, you lie!" The illustrious Rubber dropped my father's hand—she had been operating on him all the time—and showed us that she could assert her dignity when circumstances called for the exertion: "Either your son or I, sir, must leave the room. Which is it to be?" She met her match in my father. Walking quietly to the door, he opened it for Mrs. Tenbruggen with a low bow. She stopped on her way out, and delivered her parting words: "Messieurs Dunboyne, father and son, I keep my temper, and merely regard you as a couple of blackguards." With that pretty assertion of her opinion, she left us.

When we were alone, there was but one course to take; I made my confession. It is impossible to tell you how my father received it—for he sat down at his library table with his back to me. The first thing he did was to ask me to help his memory.

"Did you say that the father of these girls was a parson?"

"Yes—a Congregational Minister."

"What does the Minister think of you?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Find out."

That was all; not another word could I extract from him. I don't pretend to have discovered what he really has in his mind. I only venture on a suggestion. If there is any old friend in your town, who has some influence over your father, leave no means untried of getting that friend to say a kind word for us. And then ask your father to write to mine. This is, as I see it, our only chance.

.......

There the letter ends. Helena's notes on it show that her pride is fiercely interested in securing Philip as a husband. Her victory over poor Eunice will, as she plainly intimates, be only complete when she is married to young Dunboyne. For the rest, her desperate resolution to win her way to my good graces is sufficiently intelligible, now.

My own impressions vary. Philip rather gains upon me; he appears to have some capacity for feeling ashamed of himself. On the other hand, I regard the discovery of an intimate friendship existing between Mrs. Tenbruggen and Miss Jillgall with the gloomiest views. Is this formidable Masseuse likely to ply her trade in the country towns? And is it possible that she may come to this town? God forbid!

Of the other letters in the collection, I need take no special notice. I returned the whole correspondence to Helena, and waited to hear from her.

The one recent event in Mr. Gracedieu's family, worthy of record, is of a melancholy nature. After paying his visit to-day, the doctor has left word that nobody but the nurse is to go near the Minister. This seems to indicate, but too surely, a change for the worse.

Helena has been away all the evening at the Girls' School. She left a little note, informing me of her wishes: "I shall expect to be favored with your decision to-morrow morning, in my housekeeping room."

At breakfast time, the report of the poor Minister was still discouraging. I noticed that Helena was absent from the table. Miss Jillgall suspected that the cause was bad news from Mr. Philip Dunboyne, arriving by that morning's post. "If you will excuse the use of strong language by a lady," she said, "Helena looked perfectly devilish when she opened the letter. She rushed away, and locked herself up in her own shabby room. A serious obstacle, as I suspect, in the way of her marriage. Cheering, isn't it?" As usual, good Selina expressed her sentiments without reserve.

I had to keep my appointment; and the sooner Helena Gracedieu and I understood each other the better.

I knocked at the door. It was loudly unlocked, and violently thrown open. Helena's temper had risen to boiling heat; she stammered with rage when she spoke to me.

"I mean to come to the point at once," she said.

"I am glad to hear it, Miss Helena."

"May I count on your influence to help me? I want a positive answer."

I gave her what she wanted. I said: "Certainly not."

She took a crumpled letter from her pocket, opened it, and smoothed it out on the table with a blow of her open hand.

"Look at that," she said.

I looked. It was the letter addressed to Mr. Dunboyne the elder, which I had written for Mr. Gracedieu—with the one object of preventing Helena's marriage.

"Of course, I can depend on you to tell me the truth?" she continued.

"Without fear or favor," I answered, "you may depend on that."

"The signature to the letter, Mr. Governor, is written by my father. But the letter itself is in a different hand. Do you, by any chance, recognize the writing?"

"I do."

"Whose writing is it?"

"Mine."



CHAPTER XLIV. THE RESURRECTION OF THE PAST.

After having identified my handwriting, I waited with some curiosity to see whether Helena would let her anger honestly show itself, or whether she would keep it down. She kept it down.

"Allow me to return good for evil." (The evil was uppermost, nevertheless, when Miss Gracedieu expressed herself in these self-denying terms.) "You are no doubt anxious to know if Philip's father has been won over to serve your purpose. Here is Philip's own account of it: the last of his letters that I shall trouble you to read."

I looked it over. The memorandum follows which I made for my own use:

An eccentric philosopher is as capable as the most commonplace human being in existence of behaving like an honorable man. Mr. Dunboyne read the letter which bore the Minister's signature, and handed it to his son. "Can you answer that?" was all he said. Philip's silence confessed that he was unable to answer it—and Philip himself, I may add, rose accordingly in my estimation. His father pointed to the writing-desk. "I must spare my cramped hand," the philosopher resumed, "and I must answer Mr. Gracedieu's letter. Write, and leave a place for my signature." He began to dictate his reply. "Sir—My son Philip has seen your letter, and has no defense to make. In this respect he has set an example of candor which I propose to follow. There is no excuse for him. What I can do to show that I feel for you, and agree with you, shall be done. At the age which this young man has reached, the laws of England abolish the authority of his father. If he is sufficiently infatuated to place his honor and his happiness at the mercy of a lady, who has behaved to her sister as your daughter has behaved to Miss Eunice, I warn the married couple not to expect a farthing of my money, either during my lifetime or after my death. Your faithful servant, DUNBOYNE, SENIOR." Having performed his duty as secretary, Philip received his dismissal: "You may send my reply to the post," his father said; "and you may keep Mr. Gracedieu's letter. Morally speaking, I regard that last document as a species of mirror, in which a young gentleman like yourself may see how ugly he looks." This, Philip declared, was his father's form of farewell. I handed back the letter to Helena. Not a word passed between us. In sinister silence she opened the door and left me alone in the room.

That Mrs. Gracedieu and I had met in the bygone time, and—this was the only serious part of it—had met in secret, would now be made known to the Minister. Was I to blame for having shrunk from distressing my good friend, by telling him that his wife had privately consulted me on the means of removing his adopted child from his house? And, even if I had been cruel enough to do this, would he have believed my statement against the positive denial with which the woman whom he loved and trusted would have certainly met it? No! let the consequences of the coming disclosure be what they might, I failed to see any valid reason for regretting my conduct in the past time.

I found Miss Jillgall waiting in the passage to see me come out.

Before I could tell her what had happened, there was a ring at the house-bell. The visitor proved to be Mr. Wellwood, the doctor. I was anxious to speak to him on the subject of Mr. Gracedieu's health. Miss Jillgall introduced me, as an old and dear friend of the Minister, and left us together in the dining-room.

"What do I think of Mr. Gracedieu?" he said, repeating the first question that I put. "Well, sir, I think badly of him."

Entering into details, after that ominous reply, Mr. Wellwood did not hesitate to say that his patient's nerves were completely shattered. Disease of the brain had, as he feared, been already set up. "As to the causes which have produced this lamentable break-down," the doctor continued, "Mr. Gracedieu has been in the habit of preaching extempore twice a day on Sundays, and sometimes in the week as well—and has uniformly refused to spare himself when he was in most urgent need of rest. If you have ever attended his chapel, you have seen a man in a state of fiery enthusiasm, feeling intensely every word that he utters. Think of such exhaustion as that implies going on for years together, and accumulating its wasting influences on a sensitively organized constitution. Add that he is tormented by personal anxieties, which he confesses to no one, not even to his own children and the sum of it all is that a worse case of its kind, I am grieved to say, has never occurred in my experience."

Before the doctor left me to go to his patient, I asked leave to occupy a minute more of his time. My object was, of course, to speak about Eunice.

The change of subject seemed to be agreeable to Mr. Wellwood. He smiled good-humoredly.

"You need feel no alarm about the health of that interesting girl," he said. "When she complained to me—at her age!—of not being able to sleep, I should have taken it more seriously if I had been told that she too had her troubles, poor little soul. Love-troubles, most likely—but don't forget that my professional limits keep me in the dark! Have you heard that she took some composing medicine, which I had prescribed for her father? The effect (certain, in any case, to be injurious to a young girl) was considerably aggravated by the state of her mind at the time. A dream that frightened her, and something resembling delirium, seems to have followed. And she made matters worse, poor child, by writing in her diary about the visions and supernatural appearances that had terrified her. I was afraid of fever, on the day when they first sent for me. We escaped that complication, and I was at liberty to try the best of all remedies—quiet and change of air. I have no fears for Miss Eunice."

With that cheering reply he went up to the Minister's room.

All that I had found perplexing in Eunice was now made clear. I understood how her agony at the loss of her lover, and her keen sense of the wrong that she had suffered, had been strengthened in their disastrous influence by her experiment on the sleeping draught intended for her father. In mind and body, both, the poor girl was in the condition which offered its opportunity to the lurking hereditary taint. It was terrible to think of what might have happened, if the all-powerful counter-influence had not been present to save her.

Before I had been long alone the servant-maid came in, and said the doctor wanted to see me.

Mr. Wellwood was waiting in the passage, outside the Minister's bedchamber. He asked if he could speak to me without interruption, and without the fear of being overheard. I led him at once to the room which I occupied as a guest.

"At the very time when it is most important to keep Mr. Gracedieu quiet," he said, "something has happened to excite—I might almost say to infuriate him. He has left his bed, and is walking up and down the room; and, I don't scruple to say, he is on the verge of madness. He insists on seeing you. Being wholly unable to control him in any other way, I have consented to this. But I must not allow you to place yourself in what may be a disagreeable position, without a word of warning. Judging by his tones and his looks, he seems to have no very friendly motive for wishing to see you."

Knowing perfectly well what had happened, and being one of those impatient people who can never endure suspense—I offered to go at once to Mr. Gracedieu's room. The doctor asked leave to say one word more.

"Pray be careful that you neither say nor do anything to thwart him," Mr. Wellwood resumed. "If he expresses an opinion, agree with him. If he is insolent and overbearing, don't answer him. In the state of his brain, the one hopeful course to take is to let him have his own way. Pray remember that. I will be within call, in case of your wanting me."



CHAPTER XLV. THE FATAL PORTRAIT.

I knocked at the bedroom door.

"Who's there?"

Only two words—but the voice that uttered them, hoarse and peremptory, was altered almost beyond recognition. If I had not known whose room it was, I might have doubted whether the Minister had really spoken to me.

At the instant when I answered him, I was allowed to pass in. Having admitted me, he closed the door, and placed himself with his back against it. The customary pallor of his face had darkened to a deep red; there was an expression of ferocious mockery in his eyes. Helena's vengeance had hurt her unhappy father far more severely than it seemed likely to hurt me. The doctor had said he was on the verge of madness. To my thinking, he had already passed the boundary line.

He received me with a boisterous affectation of cordiality.

"My excellent friend! My admirable, honorable, welcome guest, you don't know how glad I am to see you. Stand a little nearer to the light; I want to admire you."

Remembering the doctor's advice, I obeyed him in silence.

"Ah, you were a handsome fellow when I first knew you," he said, "and you have some remains of it still left. Do you remember the time when you were a favorite with the ladies? Oh, don't pretend to be modest; don't turn your back, now you are old, on what you were in the prime of your life. Do you own that I am right?"

What his object might be in saying this—if, indeed, he had an object—it was impossible to guess. The doctor's advice left me no alternative; I hastened to own that he was right. As I made that answer, I observed that he held something in his hand which was half hidden up the sleeve of his dressing-gown. What the nature of the object was I failed to discover.

"And when I happened to speak of you somewhere," he went on, "I forget where—a member of my congregation—I don't recollect who it was—told me you were connected with the aristocracy. How were you connected?"

He surprised me; but, however he had got his information, he had not been deceived. I told him that I was connected, through my mother, with the family to which he had alluded.

"The aristocracy!" he repeated. "A race of people who are rich without earning their money, and noble because their great-grandfathers were noble before them. They live in idleness and luxury—profligates who gratify their passions without shame and without remorse. Deny, if you dare, that this is a true description of them."

It was really pitiable. Heartily sorry for him, I pacified him again.

"And don't suppose I forget that you are one of them. Do you hear me, my noble friend?"

There was no help for it—I made another conciliatory reply.

"So far," he resumed, "I don't complain of you. You have not attempted to deceive me—yet. Absolute silence is what I require next. Though you may not suspect it, my mind is in a ferment; I must try to think."

To some extent at least, his thoughts betrayed themselves in his actions. He put the object that I had half seen in his hand into the pocket of his dressing-gown, and moved to the toilet-table. Opening one of the drawers, he took from it a folded sheet of paper, and came back to me.

"A minister of the Gospel," he said, "is a sacred man, and has a horror of crime. You are safe, so far—provided you obey me. I have a solemn and terrible duty to perform. This is not the right place for it. Follow me downstairs."

He led the way out. The doctor, waiting in the passage, was not near the stairs, and so escaped notice. "What is it?" Mr. Wellwood whispered. In the same guarded way, I said: "He has not told me yet; I have been careful not to irritate him." When we descended the stairs, the doctor followed us at a safe distance. He mended his pace when the Minister opened the door of the study, and when he saw us both pass in. Before he could follow, the door was closed and locked in his face. Mr. Gracedieu took out the key and threw it through the open window, into the garden below.

Turning back into the room, he laid the folded sheet of paper on the table. That done, he spoke to me.

"I distrust my own weakness," he said. "A dreadful necessity confronts me—I might shrink from the horrid idea, and, if I could open the door, might try to get away. Escape is impossible now. We are prisoners together. But don't suppose that we are alone. There is a third person present, who will judge between you and me. Look there!"

He pointed solemnly to the portrait of his wife. It was a small picture, very simply framed; representing the face in a "three-quarter" view, and part of the figure only. As a work of art it was contemptible; but, as a likeness, it answered its purpose. My unhappy friend stood before it, in an attitude of dejection, covering his face with his hands.

In the interval of silence that followed, I was reminded that an unseen friend was keeping watch outside.

Alarmed by having heard the key turned in the lock, and realizing the embarrassment of the position in which I was placed, the doctor had discovered a discreet way of communicating with me. He slipped one of his visiting-cards under the door, with these words written on it: "How can I help you?"

I took the pencil from my pocketbook, and wrote on the blank side of the card: "He has thrown the key into the garden; look for it under the window." A glance at the Minister, before I returned my reply, showed that his attitude was unchanged. Without being seen or suspected, I, in my turn, slipped the card under the door.

The slow minutes followed each other—and still nothing happened.

My anxiety to see how the doctor's search for the key was succeeding, tempted me to approach the window. On my way to it, the tail of my coat threw down a little tray containing pens and pencils, which had been left close to the edge of the table. Slight as the noise of the fall was, it disturbed Mr. Gracedieu. He looked round vacantly.

"I have been comforted by prayer," he told me. "The weakness of poor humanity has found strength in the Lord." He pointed to the portrait once more: "My hands must not presume to touch it, while I am still in doubt. Take it down."

I removed the picture and placed it, by his directions, on a chair that stood midway between us. To my surprise his tones faltered; I saw tears rising in his eyes. "You may think you see a picture there," he said. "You are wrong. You see my wife herself. Stand here, and look at my wife with me."

We stood together, with our eyes fixed on the portrait.

Without anything said or done on my part to irritate him, he suddenly turned to me in a state of furious rage. "Not a sign of sorrow!" he burst out. "Not a blush of shame! Wretch, you stand condemned by the atrocious composure that I see in your face!"

A first discovery of the odious suspicion of which I was the object, dawned on my mind at that moment. My capacity for restraining myself completely failed me. I spoke to him as if he had been an accountable being. "Once for all," I said, "tell me what I have a right to know. You suspect me of something. What is it?"

Instead of directly replying, he seized my arm and led me to the table. "Take up that paper," he said. "There is writing on it. Read—and let Her judge between us. Your life depends on how you answer me."

Was there a weapon concealed in the room? or had he got it in the pocket of his dressing-gown? I listened for the sound of the doctor's returning footsteps in the passage outside, and heard nothing. My life had once depended, years since, on my success in heading the arrest of an escaped prisoner. I was not conscious, then, of feeling my energies weakened by fear. But that man was not mad; and I was younger, in those days, by a good twenty years or more. At my later time of life, I could show my old friend that I was not afraid of him—but I was conscious of an effort in doing it.

I opened the paper. "Am I to read this to myself?" I asked. "Or am I to read it aloud?"

"Read it aloud!"

In these terms, his daughter addressed him:

"I have been so unfortunate, dearest father, as to displease you, and I dare not hope that you will consent to receive me. What it is my painful duty to tell you, must be told in writing.

"Grieved as I am to distress you, in your present state of health, I must not hesitate to reveal what it has been my misfortune—I may even say my misery, when I think of my mother—to discover.

"But let me make sure, in such a serious matter as this is, that I am not mistaken.

"In those happy past days, when I was still dear to my father, you said you thought of writing to invite a dearly-valued friend to pay a visit to this house. You had first known him, as I understood, when my mother was still living. Many interesting things you told me about this old friend, but you never mentioned that he knew, or that he had even seen, my mother. I was left to suppose that those two had remained strangers to each other to the day of her death.

"If there is any misinterpretation here of what you said, or perhaps of what you meant to say, pray destroy what I have written without turning to the next page; and forgive me for having innocently startled you by a false alarm."

Mr. Gracedieu interrupted me.

"Put it down!" he cried; "I won't wait till you have got to the end—I shall question you now. Give me the paper; it will help me to keep this mystery of iniquity clear in my own mind."

I gave him the paper.

He hesitated—and looked at the portrait once more. "Turn her away from me," he said; "I can't face my wife."

I placed the picture with its back to him.

He consulted the paper, reading it with but little of the confusion and hesitation which my experience of him had induced me to anticipate. Had the mad excitement that possessed him exercised an influence in clearing his mind, resembling in some degree the influence exercised by a storm in clearing the air? Whatever the right explanation may be, I can only report what I saw. I could hardly have mastered what his daughter had written more readily, if I had been reading it myself.

"Helena tells me," he began, "that you said you knew her by her likeness to her mother. Is that true?"

"Quite true."

"And you made an excuse for leaving her—see! here it is, written down. You made an excuse, and left her when she asked for an explanation."

"I did."

He consulted the paper again.

"My daughter says—No! I won't be hurried and I won't be interrupted—she says you were confused. Is that so?"

"It is so. Let your questions wait for a moment. I wish to tell you why I was confused."

"Haven't I said I won't be interrupted? Do you think you can shake my resolution?" He referred to the paper again. "I have lost the place. It's your fault—find it for me."

The evidence which was intended to convict me was the evidence which I was expected to find! I pointed it out to him.

His natural courtesy asserted itself in spite of his anger. He said "Thank you," and questioned me the moment after as fiercely as ever. "Go back to the time, sir, when we met in your rooms at the prison. Did you know my wife then?"

"Certainly not."

"Did you and she see each other—ha! I've got it now—did you see each other after I had left the town? No prevarication! You own to telling Helena that you knew her by her likeness to her mother. You must have seen her mother. Where?"

I made another effort to defend myself. He again refused furiously to hear me. It was useless to persist. Whatever the danger that threatened me might be, the sooner it showed itself the easier I should feel. I told him that Mrs. Gracedieu had called on me, after he and his wife had left the town.

"Do you mean to tell me," he cried, "that she came to you?"

"I do."

After that answer, he no longer required the paper to help him. He threw it from him on the floor.

"And you received her," he said, "without inquiring whether I knew of her visit or not? Guilty deception on your part—guilty deception on her part. Oh, the hideous wickedness of it!"

When his mad suspicion that I had been his wife's lover betrayed itself in this way, I made a last attempt, in the face of my own conviction that it was hopeless, to place my conduct and his wife's conduct before him in the true light.

"Mrs. Gracedieu's object was to consult me—" Before I could say the next words, I saw him put his hand into the pocket of his dressing-gown.

"An innocent man," he sternly declared, "would have told me that my wife had been to see him—you kept it a secret. An innocent woman would have given me a reason for wishing to go to you—she kept it a secret, when she left my house; she kept it a secret when she came back."

"Mr. Gracedieu, I insist on being heard! Your wife's motive—"

He drew from his pocket the thing that he had hidden from me. This time, there was no concealment; he let me see that he was opening a razor. It was no time for asserting my innocence; I had to think of preserving my life. When a man is without firearms, what defense can avail against a razor in the hands of a madman? A chair was at my side; it offered the one poor means of guarding myself that I could see. I laid my hand on it, and kept my eye on him.

He paused, looking backward and forward between the picture and me.

"Which of them shall I kill first?" he said to himself. "The man who was my trusted friend? Or the woman whom I believed to be an angel on earth?" He stopped once more, in a state of fierce self-concentration, debating what he should do. "The woman," he decided. "Wretch! Fiend! Harlot! How I loved her!!!"

With a yell of fury, he pounced on the picture—ripped the canvas out of the frame—and cut it malignantly into fragments. As they dropped from the razor on the floor, he stamped on them, and ground them under his foot. "Go, wife of my bosom," he cried, with a dreadful mockery of voice and look—"go, and burn everlastingly in the place of torment!" His eyes glared at me. "Your turn now," he said—and rushed at me with his weapon ready in his hand. I hurled the chair at his right arm. The razor dropped on the floor. I caught him by the wrist. Like a wild animal he tried to bite me. With my free hand—if I had known how to defend myself in any other way, I would have taken that way—with my free hand I seized him by the throat; forced him back; and held him against the wall. My grasp on his throat kept him quiet. But the dread of seriously injuring him so completely overcame me, that I forgot I was a prisoner in the room, and was on the point of alarming the household by a cry for help.