ow this many a year, but
I had learned to love the man with a loyal affection and esteem, the
like of which I never felt for any human creature, except my wife and my
own children. It made for a good deal in my affection for him that I had
been instrumental in rescuing him from that living death he had suffered
for so many years, for I have found over and over again in my own
experience that one of the surest ways of learning to love a man is to
do him a good turn. And apart from my own affection for him, he was the
very apple of Violet's eye, and my affection for her I have never been
able to find words for. That her money should be employed to lure her
father to destruction was a thing altogether hideous and intolerable;
and when I hit upon the only method I could see to prevent so dreadful
a consummation, I accepted my own madness with a tranquillity which has
surprised me very often in remembering it. I thought it well, before
starting on the enterprise I had in hand, to set down my purpose in
writing, so that if it miscarried I might at least escape the mischief
of misconstruction. So I sat down and wrote deliberately that it was
my intention to rob Lady Rollinson of the sum of forty thousand pounds,
intrusted to her by Miss Violet Rossano for transmission to her father.
If I could have seen any other way out of it I would not have taken
this; but I had searched everywhere in my own mind, and until this one
extraordinary proposition disclosed itself I had been able to find
no road at all. I set down in the document I wrote my purpose in this
strange proceeding; I signed and sealed it in an envelope, and put it in
my pocket. Then I waited until the house was quite silent, and the
last waiter had shuffled along the corridor. It was one o'clock in the
morning before I was satisfied that the whole house had sunk to slumber,
and then I marched straight to the room in which Lady Rollinson had last
decisively refused to grant me a moment's interview. I remember very
well that there were three pairs of boots outside the door, that they
were all new and neat and fashionable, and that I thought, as I looked
at them, that in contrast with my own heavy and mud-stained footgear
they looked marvellously small and delicate. I turned the handle of
the door, and, to my surprise, it yielded. I found myself within a
dimly-lighted room, where the main illumination was refracted in a
ghostly fashion from the white ceiling, and came from