hundred and twenty-seven. This awkward
circumstance forced him to extend his inquiries to
our neighbourhood. There, no such danger
existed: the former clergyman at our church
having been dead for some years.

"Old Welmingham suited his purpose, as well
as Knowlesbury. His father had removed his
mother from Knowlesbury, and had lived with
her at a cottage on the river, a little distance
from our village. People who had known his
solitary ways when he was single, did not wonder
at his solitary ways when he was married. If he
had been anything but a hideous, crooked creature
to look at, his retired life with the lady might
have raised some suspicions; but, as things were,
his hiding his ugliness and his deformity in the
strictest privacy surprised nobody. He lived in
our neighbourhood till he came in possession of
the Park. After three or four and twenty years
had passed, who was to say (the clergyman being
dead) that his marriage had not been as private
as the rest of his life, and that it had not taken
place at Old Welmingham church?

"So, as I told you, the son found our
neighbourhood the surest place he could choose, to
set things right secretly in his own interests. It
may surprise you to hear that what he really did
to the marriage-register was done on the spur
of the moment—done on second thoughts.

"His first notion was only to tear the leaf out (in
the right year and month), to destroy it privately,
to go back to London, and to tell the lawyers to
get him the necessary certificate of his father's
marriage, innocently referring them of course to
the date on the leaf that was gone. Nobody
could say his father and mother had not been
married, after that—and whether, under the
circumstances, they would stretch a point or not,
about lending him the money (he thought they
would), he had his answer ready, at all events, if
a question was ever raised about his right to the
name and the estate.

"But when he came to look privately at the
register for himself, he found at the bottom of
one of the pages for the year eighteen hundred
and three, a blank space left, seemingly through
there being no room to make a long entry there,
which was made instead at the top of the next
page. The sight of this chance altered all his
plans. It was an opportunity he had never hoped
for, or thought of—and he took it, you know
how. The blank space, to have exactly tallied
with his birth-certificate, ought to have occurred
in the February part of the register. It occurred
in the April part instead. However, in this case,
if suspicious questions were asked, the answer
was not hard to find. He had only to describe
himself as a seven months' child.

"I was fool enough, when he told me his
story, to feel some interest and some pity for
him—which was just what he calculated on, as
you will see. I thought him hardly used. It
was not his fault that his father and mother
were not married; and it was not his father's
and mother's fault, either. A more scrupulous
woman than I was—a woman who had not set her
heart on a gold watch and chain—would have
found some excuses for him. At all events, I held
my tongue, and helped to screen what he was
about. He was some time getting the ink the right
colour (mixing it over and over again in pots
and bottles of mine), and some time, afterwards,
in practising the handwriting. He succeeded
in the end—and made an honest woman of his
mother, after she was in her grave. So far, I
don't deny that he behaved honourably enough
to me. He gave me my watch and chain; both
were of superior workmanship, and very expensive.
I have got them still—the watch goes
beautifully.

"You said, the other day, that Mrs. Clements
had told you everything she knew. In that case,
there is no need for me to write about the
trumpery scandal by which I was the sufferer—
the innocent sufferer, I positively assert. You
must know as well as I do what the notion was
which my husband took into his head; when he
found me and my fine-gentleman acquaintance
meeting each other privately, and talking secrets
together. But what you don't know, is how it
ended between that same gentleman and myself.
You shall read, and see how he behaved to me.

"The first words I said to him, when I saw
the turn things had taken, were, ' Do me justice
—clear my character of a stain on it which you
know I don't deserve. I don't want you to make
a clean breast of it to my husband—only tell
him, on your word of honour as a gentleman,
that he is wrong, and that I am not to blame in
the way he thinks I am. Do me that justice, at
least, after all I have done for you.' He flatly
refused, in so many words. He told me, plainly,
that it was his interest to let my husband and
all my neighbours believe the falsehood—
because, as long as they did so, they were quite
certain never to suspect the truth. I had a
spirit of my own; and I told him they should
know the truth from my lips. His reply was
short, and to the point. If I spoke, I was a
lost woman, as certainly as he was a lost man.

"Yes! it had come to that. He had deceived
me about the risk I ran in helping him. He had
practised on my ignorance; he had tempted me
with his gifts; he had interested me with his
story—and the result of it was that he had made
me his accomplice. He owned this, coolly; and
he ended by telling me, for the first time, what
the frightful punishment really was for his
offence, and for any one who helped him to
commit it. In those days, the Law was not so
tender-hearted as I hear it is now. Murderers
were not the only people liable to be hanged;
and women convicts were not treated like ladies
in undeserved distress. I confess he frightened
me—the mean impostor! the cowardly
blackguard! Do you understand, now, how I hated
him? Do you understand why I am taking all
this trouble—thankfully taking it—to gratify
the curiosity of the meritorious young gentleman
who hunted him down?

"Well, to go on. He was hardly fool enough
to drive me to downright desperation. I was
not the sort of woman whom it was quite safe
to hunt into a corner—he knew that, and