, and who had
disappeared the day afterward. The widow alone knew, from that time
forth, why her husband had been murdered, and who had done the deed.
When she made that discovery, a false report of my death had been
previously circulated in the island. Perhaps I was indebted to the
report for my immunity from all legal proceedings; perhaps (no eye but
Ingleby's having seen me lock the cabin door) there was not evidence
enough to justify an inquiry; perhaps the widow shrank from the
disclosures which must have followed a public charge against me, based
on her own bare suspicion of the truth. However it might be, the crime
which I had committed unseen has remained a crime unpunished from that
time to this.

"I left Madeira for the West Indies in disguise. The first news that met
me when the ship touched at Barbadoes was the news of my mother's death.
I had no heart to return to the old scenes. The prospect of living at
home in solitude, with the torment of my own guilty remembrances gnawing
at me day and night, was more than I had the courage to confront.
Without landing, or discovering myself to any one on shore, I went on as
far as the ship would take me--to the island of Trinidad.

"At that place I first saw your mother. It was my duty to tell her the
truth--and I treacherously kept my secret. It was my duty to spare
her the hopeless sacrifice of her freedom and her happiness to such an
existence as mine--and I did her the injury of marrying her. If she is
alive when you read this, grant her the mercy of still concealing the
truth. The one atonement I can make to her is to keep her unsuspicious
to the last of the man she has married. Pity her, as I have pitied her.
Let this letter be a sacred confidence between father and son.

"The time when you were born was the time when my health began to give
way. Some months afterward, in the first days of my recovery, you were
brought to me; and I was told that you had been christened during
my illness. Your mother had done as other loving mothers do--she had
christened her first-born by his father's name. You, too, were Allan
Armadale. Even in that early time--even while I was happily ignorant of
what I have discovered since--my mind misgave me when I looked at you,
and thought of that fatal name.

"As soon as I could be moved, my presence was required at my estates in
Barbadoes. It crossed my mind--wild as the idea may appear to you--to
renounce the condition which compel