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.

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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.




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