twice spoken strangely to you, and I dreaded lest her wandering,
incoherent words might yet take in time a recognisable direction, a
palpable shape. They did not; the instinct of terror bound her tongue
to the last. Perhaps, even if she had spoken plainly, you would not have
believed her; you would have been still true to yourself and to your
confidence in Margaret. Enemy as I am to you, enemy as I will be to the
day of your death, I will do you justice for the past:--Your love for
that girl was a love which even the purest and best of women could never
have thoroughly deserved.

*****

"My letter is nearly done: my retrospect is finished. I have brought
it down to the date of events, about which you know as much as I do.
Accident conducted you to a discovery which, otherwise, you might not
have made, perhaps for months, perhaps not at all, until I had led you
to it of my own accord. I say accident, positively; knowing that from
first to last I trusted no third person. What you know, you knew by
accident alone.

"But for that chance discovery, you would have seen me bring her back to
North Villa at the appointed time, in my care, just as she went out. I
had no dread of her meeting you. But enough of her! I shall dispose of
her future, as I had resolved to dispose of it years ago; careless how
she may be affected when she first sees the hideous alteration which
your attack has wrought in me. Enough, I say, of the Sherwins--father,
mother, and daughter--your destiny lies not with _them,_ but with _me._

"Do you still exult in having deformed me in every feature, in having
given me a face to revolt every human being who looks at me? Do you
triumph in the remembrance of this atrocity, as you triumphed in the
acting of it--believing that you had destroyed my future with Margaret,
in destroying my very identity as a man? I tell you, that with the hour
when I leave this hospital your day of triumph will be over, and your
day of expiation will begin--never to end till the death of one of us.
You shall live--refined educated gentleman as you are--to wish, like a
ruffian, that you had killed me; and your father shall live to wish it
too.

"Am I trying to awe you with the fierce words of a boaster and a bully?
Test me, by looking back a little, and discovering what I have abstained
from for the sake of my purpose, since I have been here. A word or two
from my lips, in answer to the questions with whic