the more that I do not believe you any more crazy than I am; I half suspected this before, but I know it now.”  She paused, then continued:  “I should have to tell you my life’s secret if I were to explain to you why Mr. Bainrothe’s interests are so dear to me, so vital even, and I will not conceal from you that I knew your guardeen’s good name depends on your confinement here until you come of age.  After that it will only be necessary for you to sign a few papers, and all will be straight again—­no harm or insult is designed.  To these I would never have lent myself in any way—­ill as you think of me.  And as long as we continue together I will guard your good name as I would do that of my own dear daughter—­that is, if I had one.  You shall receive no visitor alone.”

She spoke with a feeling and dignity of which I had scarcely believed her capable, shrewd and sensible as I knew her to be, and far above the woman she called her mistress, in a certain retenu of manner and delicacy of deportment, usually inseparable from good-breeding.

I could not then guess how acceptable, to her and the person she was chiefly interested in, were these signs of my aversion for Basil Bainrothe, and what sure means they were of access to the only tender spot in the obdurate heart of Rachel Clayton.

Certain it is that, from these expressions, I derived the first consolation that had come to me in my immurement, and from that hour the solemn farce of keeper and lunatic ceased to be played between us two.

From such freedom of communication on my jailer’s part, I began to hope for additional information, which never came.  It was in vain that I conjured her to tell me where my prison was situated, whether at the edge of the city, or far away in the country, or to suffer me to have a glimpse from a window of my vicinity.  To all such entreaties she was pitiless, and I was left to that vague and vain conjecture which so wears the intellect.

In the absence of all possibility of escape, it became a morbid and haunting wish with me to know my exact locality.  That it could be no great distance from the city of New York, if not within its limits, I felt assured, from the expedition with which my transit from the ship had been effected.

During the first three weeks of my confinement the deep silence that prevailed about me had led me to adopt the opinion that I was the occupant of a maison de sante.  I had once driven past one on Staten Island, where a friend of my father’s—­about whose condition he came to inquire personally—­had been immured for years.  I did not alight with him when he left the carriage to make these inquiries, but I perfectly remembered the old gray stone building, with its ancient elms, and the impression of gloom and awe it had left on my mind.  But this idea was presently dispelled.