Hurriedly as I read over this wretched and revolting letter, I detected immediately how the new plot had been framed to keep me still deceived; to heap wrong after wrong on me with the same impunity.  She was not aware that I had followed her into the house, and had heard all from her voice and Mannion’s—­she believed that I was still ignorant of everything, until we met at the door-step; and in this conviction she had forged the miserable lie which her father’s hand had written down.  Did he really believe it, or was he writing as her accomplice?  It was not worth while to inquire:  the worst and darkest discovery which it concerned me to make, had already proclaimed itself—­she was a liar and a hypocrite to the very last!

And it was this woman’s lightest glance which had once been to me as the star that my life looked to!—–­it was for this woman that I had practised a deceit on my family which it now revolted me to think of; had braved whatever my father’s anger might inflict; had risked cheerfully the loss of all that birth and fortune could bestow!  Why had I ever risen from my weary bed of sickness?—­it would have been better, far better, that I had died!

But, while life remained, life had its trials and its toils, from which it was useless to shrink.  There was still another letter to be opened:  there was yet more wickedness which I must know how to confront.

The second of Mr. Sherwin’s letters was much shorter than the first, and had apparently been written not more than a day or two back.  His tone was changed; he truckled to me no longer—­he began to threaten.  I was reminded that the servant’s report pronounced me to have been convalescent for several days past:  and was asked why, under these circumstances, I had never even written.  I was warned that my silence had been construed greatly to my disadvantage; and that if it continued longer, the writer would assert his daughter’s cause loudly and publicly, not to my father only, but to all the world.  The letter ended by according to me three days more of grace, before the fullest disclosure would be made.

For a moment, my indignation got the better of me.  I rose, to go that instant to North Villa and unmask the wretches who still thought to make their market of me as easily as ever.  But the mere momentary delay caused by opening the door of my room, restored me to myself.  I felt that my first duty, my paramount obligation, was to confess all to my father immediately; to know and accept my future position in my own home, before I went out from it to denounce others.  I returned to the table, and gathered up the letters scattered on it.  My heart beat fast, my head felt confused; but I was resolute in my determination to tell my father, at all hazards, the tale of degradation which I have told in these pages.

I waited in the stillness and loneliness, until it grew nearly dark.  The servant brought in candles.  Why could I not ask him whether my father and Clara had come home yet?  Was I faltering in my resolution already?