He looked up slowly, with a heavy sigh.
"There is nothing to guide you, Mr. Franklin," he answered. "If you
take my advice you will keep the letter in the cover till these present
anxieties of yours have come to an end. It will sorely distress you,
whenever you read it. Don't read it now."
I put the letter away in my pocket-book.
A glance back at the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of Betteredge's
Narrative will show that there really was a reason for my thus sparing
myself, at a time when my fortitude had been already cruelly tried.
Twice over, the unhappy woman had made her last attempt to speak to me.
And twice over, it had been my misfortune (God knows how innocently!)
to repel the advances she had made to me. On the Friday night,
as Betteredge truly describes it, she had found me alone at the
billiard-table. Her manner and language suggested to me and would have
suggested to any man, under the circumstances--that she was about to
confess a guilty knowledge of the disappearance of the Diamond. For her
own sake, I had purposely shown no special interest in what was coming;
for her own sake, I had purposely looked at the billiard-balls, instead
of looking at HER--and what had been the result? I had sent her away
from me, wounded to the heart! On the Saturday again--on the day when
she must have foreseen, after what Penelope had told her, that my
departure was close at hand--the same fatality still pursued us. She had
once more attempted to meet me in the shrubbery walk, and she had found
me there in company with Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff. In her hearing,
the Sergeant, with his own underhand object in view, had appealed to my
interest in Rosanna Spearman. Again for the poor creature's own sake, I
had met the police-officer with a flat denial, and had declared--loudly
declared, so that she might hear me too--that I felt "no interest
whatever in Rosanna Spearman." At those words, solely designed to warn
her against attempting to gain my private ear, she had turned away and
left the place: cautioned of her danger, as I then believed; self-doomed
to destruction, as I know now. From that point, I have already traced
the succession of events which led me to the astounding discovery at
the quicksand. The retrospect is now complete. I may leave the miserable
story of Rosanna Spearman--to which, even at this distance of time, I
cannot revert without a pang of distress--to suggest for itself all
that is here purposely left unsaid. I may pass from the suicide at the
Shivering Sand, with its strange and terrible influence on my present
position and future prospects, to interests which concern the living
people of this narrative, and to events which were already paving my way
for the slow and toilsome journey from the darkness to the light.