e affairs, and for the
language you have allowed yourself to use to me at this conference.
The time and place, abroad, to be fixed in a letter from my hand when I
am safe on the Continent, and that letter to contain a strip of paper
measuring accurately the length of my sword. Those are my terms.
Inform me if you accept them--Yes or No."

The extraordinary mixture of prompt decision, far-sighted cunning, and
mountebank bravado in this speech, staggered me for a moment--and only
for a moment. The one question to consider was, whether I was
justified or not in possessing myself of the means of establishing
Laura's identity at the cost of allowing the scoundrel who had robbed
her of it to escape me with impunity. I knew that the motive of
securing the just recognition of my wife in the birthplace from which
she had been driven out as an impostor, and of publicly erasing the lie
that still profaned her mother's tombstone, was far purer, in its
freedom from all taint of evil passion, than the vindictive motive
which had mingled itself with my purpose from the first. And yet I
cannot honestly say that my own moral convictions were strong enough to
decide the struggle in me by themselves. They were helped by my
remembrance of Sir Percival's death. How awfully, at the last moment,
had the working of the retribution THERE been snatched from my feeble
hands! What right had I to decide, in my poor mortal ignorance of the
future, that this man, too, must escape with impunity because he
escaped ME? I thought of these things--perhaps with the superstition
inherent in my nature, perhaps with a sense worthier of me than
superstition. It was hard, when I had fastened my hold on him at last,
to loosen it again of my own accord--but I forced myself to make the
sacrifice. In plainer words, I determined to be guided by the one
higher motive of which I was certain, the motive of serving the cause
of Laura and the cause of Truth.

"I accept your conditions," I said. "With one reservation on my part."

"What reservation may that be?" he asked.

"It refers to the sealed letter," I answered. "I require you to
destroy it unopened in my presence as soon as it is placed in your
hands."

My object in making this stipulation was simply to prevent him from
carrying away written evidence of the nature of my communication with
Pesca. The fact of my communication he would necessarily discover,
when I gave the address to his agent in