There are two requests contained in the letter. One of them prevents me

from showing it to Mr. Franklin Blake. I am authorised to tell him that

Miss Verinder willingly consents to place her house at our disposal;

and, that said, I am desired to add no more.

So far, it is easy to comply with her wishes. But the second request

embarrasses me seriously.

Not content with having written to Mr. Betteredge, instructing him to

carry out whatever directions I may have to give, Miss Verinder asks

leave to assist me, by personally superintending the restoration of her

own sitting-room. She only waits a word of reply from me to make the

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journey to Yorkshire, and to be present as one of the witnesses on the

night when the opium is tried for the second time.

Here, again, there is a motive under the surface; and, here again, I

fancy that I can find it out.

What she has forbidden me to tell Mr. Franklin Blake, she is (as I

interpret it) eager to tell him with her own lips, BEFORE he is put

to the test which is to vindicate his character in the eyes of other

people. I understand and admire this generous anxiety to acquit him,

without waiting until his innocence may, or may not, be proved. It

is the atonement that she is longing to make, poor girl, after having

innocently and inevitably wronged him. But the thing cannot be done. I

have no sort of doubt that the agitation which a meeting between them

would produce on both sides--reviving dormant feelings, appealing to old

memories, awakening new hopes--would, in their effect on the mind of Mr.

Blake, be almost certainly fatal to the success of our experiment. It is

hard enough, as things are, to reproduce in him the conditions as they

existed, or nearly as they existed, last year. With new interests and

new emotions to agitate him, the attempt would be simply useless.

And yet, knowing this, I cannot find it in my heart to disappoint her. I

must try if I can discover some new arrangement, before post-time, which

will allow me to say Yes to Miss Verinder, without damage to the service

which I have bound myself to render to Mr. Franklin Blake.

Two o'clock.--I have just returned from my round of medical visits;

having begun, of course, by calling at the hotel.

Mr. Blake's report of the night is the same as before. He has had some

intervals of broken sleep, and no more. But he feels it less to-day,

having slept after yesterday's dinner. This after-dinner sleep is the

result, no doubt, of the ride which I advised him to take. I fear I

shall have to curtail his restorative exercise in the fresh air. He must

not be too well; he must not be too ill. It is a case (as a sailor would

say) of very fine steering.




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