to confront her. The scene took place at the
lawyer's office, and came out in the evidence at the police court. The
woman was handsome, and the sailor was a good-natured man. He wanted, at
first, if the lawyers would have allowed him, to let her off. He said
to her, among other things: "You didn't count on the drowned man coming
back, alive and hearty, did you, ma'am?" "It's lucky for you," she said,
"I didn't count on it. You have escaped the sea, but you wouldn't have
escaped _me_." "Why, what would you have done, if you _had_ known I was
coming back?" says the sailor. She looked him steadily in the face, and
answered: "I would have killed you." There! Do you think such a woman as
that would have written to tell me I was pressing her further than she
had courage to go? A handsome woman, too, like yourself. You would drive
some men in my position to wish they had her now in your place.'

"I read no further. When I had got on, line by line, to those words, it
burst on me like a flash of lightning. In an instant I saw it as plainly
as I see it now. It is horrible, it is unheard of, it outdares all
daring; but, if I can only nerve myself to face one terrible necessity,
it is to be done. _I may personate the richly provided widow of Allan
Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, if I can count on Allan Armadale's death in
a given time_.

"There, in plain words, is the frightful temptation under which I now
feel myself sinking. It is frightful in more ways than one; for it has
come straight out of that other temptation to which I yielded in the
by-gone time.

"Yes; there the letter has been waiting for me in my box, to serve a
purpose never thought of by the villain who wrote it. There is the Case,
as he called it--only quoted to taunt me; utterly unlike my own case at
the time--there it has been, waiting and lurking for me through all the
changes in my life, till it has come to be like _my_ case at last.

"It might startle any woman to see this, and even this is not the worst.
The whole thing has been in my Diary, for days past, without my knowing
it! Every idle fancy that escaped me has been tending secretly that one
way! And I never saw, never suspected it, till the reading of the letter
put my own thoughts before me in a new light--till I saw the shadow of
my own circumstances suddenly reflected in one special circumstance of
that other woman's case!

"It is to be done, if I can but look the necessity in the face. It is to
be d