In this
I have been most fortunate. He is the very person for such a charge--so
punctual, so laborious, so kind, and so shrewd.
In compliance with medical advice, cousin Monica hurried me away to the
Continent, where she would never permit me to allude to the terrific scenes
which remain branded so awfully on my brain. It needed no constraint. It is
a sort of agony to me even now to think of them.
The plan was craftily devised. Neither old Wyat nor Giles, the butler, had
a suspicion that I had returned to Bartram. Had I been put to death, the
secret of my fate would have been deposited in the keeping of four persons
only--the two Ruthyns, Hawkes, and ultimately Madame. My dear cousin Monica
had been artfully led to believe in my departure for France, and prepared
for my silence. Suspicion might not have been excited for a year after my
death, and then would never, in all probability, have pointed to Bartram as
the scene of the crime. The weeds would have grown over me, and I should
have lain in that deep grave where the corpse of Madame de la Rougierre was
unearthed in the darksome quadrangle of Bartram-Haugh.
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