y as
he returned to the narrative. He had incurred his own severe
displeasure--he had caught himself in the act of secretly pitying her.

"I have said"--the letter proceeded--"that Ingleby was admitted to my
closest confidence. I was sorry to leave him; and I was distressed by
his evident surprise and mortification when he heard that I was going
away. In my own justification, I showed him the letter and the likeness,
and told him the truth. His interest in the portrait seemed to be hardly
inferior to my own. He asked me about Miss Blanchard's family and
Miss Blanchard's fortune with the sympathy of a true friend; and he
strengthened my regard for him, and my belief in him, by putting himself
out of the question, and by generously encouraging me to persist in my
new purpose. When we parted, I was in high health and spirits. Before
we met again the next day, I was suddenly struck by an illness which
threatened both my reason and my life.

"I have no proof against Ingleby. There was more than one woman on the
island whom I had wronged beyond all forgiveness, and whose vengeance
might well have reached me at that time. I can accuse nobody. I can only
say that my life was saved by my old black nurse; and that the woman
afterward acknowledged having used the known negro antidote to a known
negro poison in those parts. When my first days of convalescence came,
the ship in which my passage had been taken had long since sailed. When
I asked for Ingleby, he was gone. Proofs of his unpardonable misconduct
in his situation were placed before me, which not even my partiality for
him could resist. He had been turned out of the office in the first days
of my illness, and nothing more was known of him but that he had left
the island.

"All through my sufferings the portrait had been under my pillow. All
through my convalescence it was my one consolation when I remembered the
past, and my one encouragement when I thought of the future. No words
can describe the hold that first fancy had now taken of me--with time
and solitude and suffering to help it. My mother, with all her interest
in the match, was startled by the unexpected success of her own project.
She had written to tell Mr. Blanchard of my illness, but had received no
reply. She now offered to write again, if I would promise not to leave
her before my recovery was complete. My impatience acknowledged no
restraint. Another ship in port gave me another chance of leaving for