The paltry means by which the fraud had been effected, the magnitude and daring of the crime that it represented, the horror of the consequences involved in its discovery, overwhelmed me.  Who could wonder now at the brute-restlessness of the wretch’s life—­at his desperate alternations between abject duplicity and reckless violence—­at the madness of guilty distrust which had made him imprison Anne Catherick in the Asylum, and had given him over to the vile conspiracy against his wife, on the bare suspicion that the one and the other knew his terrible secret?  The disclosure of that secret might, in past years, have hanged him—­ might now transport him for life.  The disclosure of that secret, even if the sufferers by his deception spared him the penalties of the law, would deprive him at one blow of the name, the rank, the estate, the whole social existence that he had usurped.  This was the Secret, and it was mine!  A word from me, and house, lands, baronetcy, were gone from him for ever—­a word from me, and he was driven out into the world, a nameless, penniless, friendless outcast!  The man’s whole future hung on my lips—­and he knew it by this time as certainly as I did!

That last thought steadied me.  Interests far more precious than my own depended on the caution which must now guide my slightest actions.  There was no possible treachery which Sir Percival might not attempt against me.  In the danger and desperation of his position he would be staggered by no risks, he would recoil at no crime—­he would literally hesitate at nothing to save himself.

I considered for a minute.  My first necessity was to secure positive evidence in writing of the discovery that I had just made, and in the event of any personal misadventure happening to me, to place that evidence beyond Sir Percival’s reach.  The copy of the register was sure to be safe in Mr. Wansborough’s strong room.  But the position of the original in the vestry was, as I had seen with my own eyes, anything but secure.

In this emergency I resolved to return to the church, to apply again to the clerk, and to take the necessary extract from the register before I slept that night.  I was not then aware that a legally-certified copy was necessary, and that no document merely drawn out by myself could claim the proper importance as a proof.  I was not aware of this, and my determination to keep my present proceedings a secret prevented me from asking any questions which might have procured the necessary information.  My one anxiety was the anxiety to get back to Old Welmingham.  I made the best excuses I could for the discomposure in my face and manner which Mr. Wansborough had already noticed, laid the necessary fee on his table, arranged that I should write to him in a day or two, and left the office, with my head in a whirl and my blood throbbing through my veins at fever heat.

It was just getting dark.  The idea occurred to me that I might be followed again and attacked on the high-road.