there was a Secret she knew who was connected
with it – she knew who would suffer by its being
known – and, beyond that, whatever airs of
importance she may have given herself, whatever
crazy boasting she may have indulged in with
strangers, she never to her dying day, knew
more.

"Have I satisfied your curiosity? I have
taken pains enough to satisfy it, at any rate.
There is really nothing else I have to tell you
about myself, or my daughter. My worst
responsibilities, so far as she was concerned,
were all over when she was secured in the
Asylum. I had a form of letter relating to the
circumstances under which she was shut up,
given me to write, in answer to one Miss
Halcombe, who was curious in the matter, and who
must have heard plenty of lies about me from a
certain tongue well accustomed to the telling of
the same. And I did what I could afterwards
to trace my runaway daughter, and prevent her
from doing mischief, by making inquiries,
myself, in the neighbourhood where she was
falsely reported to have been seen. But these
are trifles, of little or no interest to you after
what you have heard already.

"So far, I have written in the friendliest
possible spirit. But I cannot close this letter
without adding a word here of serious
remonstrance and reproof, addressed to yourself. In
the course of your personal interview with me,
you audaciously referred to my late daughter's
parentage, on the father's side, as if that
parentage was a matter of doubt. This was highly
improper and very ungentlemanlike on your
part! If we see each other again, remember, if
you please, that I will allow no liberties to be
taken with my reputation, and that the moral
atmosphere of Welmingham (to use a favourite
expression of my friend the rector's) must not
be tainted by loose conversation of any kind.
If you allow yourself to doubt that my husband
was Anne's father, you personally insult me in
the grossest manner. If you have felt, and if
you still continue to feel, an unhallowed curiosity
on this subject, I recommend you, in your own
interests, to check it at once and for ever. On
this side of the grave, Mr. Hartright, whatever
may happen on the other, that curiosity will
never be gratified.

"Perhaps, after what I have just said, you
will see the necessity of writing me an apology.
Do so; and I will willingly receive it. I will,
afterwards, if your wishes point to a second
interview with me, go a step farther, and receive
you. My circumstances only enable me to
invite you to tea – not that they are at all altered
for the worse by what has happened. I have
always lived, as I think I told you, well within
my income; and I have saved enough, in the
last twenty years, to make me quite comfortable
for the rest of my life. It is not my intention
to leave Welmingham. There are one or two
little advantages which I have still to gain in
the town. The clergyman bows to me – as you
saw. He is married; and his wife is not quite
so civil. I propose to join the Dorcas Society;
and I mean to make the clergyman's wife bow
to me next.

"If you favour me with your company, pray
understand that the conversation must be
entirely on general subjects. Any attempted
reference to this letter will be quite useless – I am
determined not to acknowledge having written
it. The evidence has been destroyed in the fire,
I know; but I think it desirable to err on the side
of caution, nevertheless. On this account, no
names are mentioned here, nor is any signature
attached to these lines: the handwriting is
disguised throughout, and I mean to deliver the
letter myself, under circumstances which will
prevent all fear of its being traced to my house.
You can have no possible cause to complain of
these precautions; seeing that they do not
affect the information I here communicate, in
consideration of the special indulgence which
you have deserved at my hands. My hour for tea
is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for
nobody."

XI.

MY first impulse, after reading this extraordinary
letter, was to destroy it. The hardened,
shameless depravity of the whole composition,
from beginning to end – the atrocious perversity
of mind which persistently associated me with a
calamity for which I was in no sense answerable,
and with a death which I had risked my
own life in trying to avert – so disgusted me,
that I was on the point of tearing the letter,
when a consideration suggested itself, which
warned me to wait a little before I destroyed it.

This consideration was entirely unconnected
with Sir Percival. The information communicated
to me, so far as it concerned him, did little
more than confirm the conclusions at which I
had already arrived. He had committed his
offence as I had supposed him to have
committed it; and the absence of all reference, on
Mrs. Catherick's part, to the duplicate register
at Knowlesbury, strengthened my previous
conviction that the existence of the book, and the
risk of detection which it implied, must have
been necessarily unknown to Sir Percival. My
interest in the question of the forgery was
now at an end; and my only object in keeping
the letter was to make it of some future
service, in clearing up the last mystery that
still remained to baffle me – the parentage of
Anne Catherick, on the father's side. There
were one or two sentences dropped in her
mother's narrative, which it might be useful to
refer to again, when matters of more immediate
importance allowed me leisure to search for the
missing evidence. I did not despair of still finding
that evidence; and I had lost none of my
anxiety to discover it, for I had lost none of my
interest in tracing the father of the poor creature
who now lay at rest in Mrs. Fairlie's grave.

Accordingly, I sealed up the letter, and put
it away carefully in my pocket-book, to be
referred to again when the time came.

The next day was my last in Hampshire.
When I had appeared again before the