"Please to go back to the letter, Mr. Franklin. I tell you plainly, I
can't find it in my heart to distress you, after what you have had to
bear already. Let her speak for herself, sir. And get on with your grog.
For your own sake, get on with your grog."
I resumed the reading of the letter.
"It would be very disgraceful to me to tell you this, if I was a living
woman when you read it. I shall be dead and gone, sir, when you find my
letter. It is that which makes me bold. Not even my grave will be left
to tell of me. I may own the truth--with the quicksand waiting to hide
me when the words are written.
"Besides, you will find your nightgown in my hiding-place, with the
smear of the paint on it; and you will want to know how it came to be
hidden by me? and why I said nothing to you about it in my life-time?
I have only one reason to give. I did these strange things, because I
loved you.
"I won't trouble you with much about myself, or my life, before you came
to my lady's house. Lady Verinder took me out of a reformatory. I
had gone to the reformatory from the prison. I was put in the prison,
because I was a thief. I was a thief, because my mother went on the
streets when I was quite a little girl. My mother went on the streets,
because the gentleman who was my father deserted her. There is no need
to tell such a common story as this, at any length. It is told quite
often enough in the newspapers.
"Lady Verinder was very kind to me, and Mr. Betteredge was very kind
to me. Those two, and the matron at the reformatory, are the only good
people I have ever met with in all my life. I might have got on in
my place--not happily--but I might have got on, if you had not come
visiting. I don't blame you, sir. It's my fault--all my fault.
"Do you remember when you came out on us from among the sand hills,
that morning, looking for Mr. Betteredge? You were like a prince in
a fairy-story. You were like a lover in a dream. You were the most
adorable human creature I had ever seen. Something that felt like the
happy life I had never led yet, leapt up in me at the instant I set eyes
on you. Don't laugh at this if you can help it. Oh, if I could only make
you feel how serious it is to ME!
"I went back to the house, and wrote your name and mine in my work-box,
and drew a true lovers' knot under them. Then, some devil--no, I ought
to say some good angel--whispered to me, 'Go and look in the glass.' The
glass told me--never mind what. I was too foolish to take the warning.
I went on getting fonder and fonder of you, just as if I was a lady in
your own rank of life, and the most beautiful creature your eyes ever
rested on. I tried--oh, dear, how I tried--to get you to look at me.
If you had known how I used to cry at night with the misery and the
mortification of your never taking any notice of me, you would have
pitied me perhaps, and have given me a look now and then to live on.