down? There would be no danger, in that case,
of my forgetting anything important. And perhaps, after all, it may be
the fear of forgetting something which I ought to remember that keeps
this story of Midwinter's weighing as it does on my mind. At any rate,
the experiment is worth trying. In my present situation I _must_ be free
to think of other things, or I shall never find my way through all the
difficulties at Thorpe Ambrose that are still to come.

"Let me think. What _haunts_ me, to begin with?

"The Names haunt me. I keep saying and saying to myself: Both
alike!--Christian name and surname both alike! A light-haired Allan
Armadale, whom I have long since known of, and who is the son of my old
mistress. A dark-haired Allan Armadale, whom I only know of now, and
who is only known to others under the name of Ozias Midwinter. Stranger
still; it is not relationship, it is not chance, that has made them
namesakes. The father of the light Armadale was the man who was _born_
to the family name, and who lost the family inheritance. The father
of the dark Armadale was the man who _took_ the name, on condition of
getting the inheritance--and who got it.

"So there are two of them--I can't help thinking of it--both unmarried.
The light-haired Armadale, who offers to the woman who can secure him,
eight thousand a year while he lives; who leaves her twelve hundred
a year when he dies; who must and shall marry me for those two golden
reasons; and whom I hate and loathe as I never hated and loathed a man
yet. And the dark-haired Armadale, who has a poor little income, which
might perhaps pay his wife's milliner, if his wife was careful; who has
just left me, persuaded that I mean to marry him; and whom--well, whom I
_might_ have loved once, before I was the woman I am now.

"And Allan the Fair doesn't know he has a namesake. And Allan the Dark
has kept the secret from everybody but the Somersetshire clergyman
(whose discretion he can depend on) and myself.

"And there are two Allan Armadales--two Allan Armadales--two Allan
Armadales. There! three is a lucky number. Haunt me again, after that,
if you can!

"What next? The murder in the timber ship? No; the murder is a good
reason why the dark Armadale, whose father committed it, should keep his
secret from the fair Armadale, whose father was killed; but it doesn't
concern _me_. I remember there was a suspicion in Madeira at the time of
something wrong. _Was_ it wrong? Was