n my part to irritate him, he suddenly
turned to me in a state of furious rage. "Not a sign of sorrow!" he
burst out. "Not a blush of shame! Wretch, you stand condemned by the
atrocious composure that I see in your face!"

A first discovery of the odious suspicion of which I was the object,
dawned on my mind at that moment. My capacity for restraining myself
completely failed me. I spoke to him as if he had been an accountable
being. "Once for all," I said, "tell me what I have a right to know. You
suspect me of something. What is it?"

Instead of directly replying, he seized my arm and led me to the table.
"Take up that paper," he said. "There is writing on it. Read--and let
Her judge between us. Your life depends on how you answer me."

Was there a weapon concealed in the room? or had he got it in the pocket
of his dressing-gown? I listened for the sound of the doctor's returning
footsteps in the passage outside, and heard nothing. My life had once
depended, years since, on my success in heading the arrest of an escaped
prisoner. I was not conscious, then, of feeling my energies weakened by
fear. But _that_ man was not mad; and I was younger, in those days, by a
good twenty years or more. At my later time of life, I could show my old
friend that I was not afraid of him--but I was conscious of an effort in
doing it.

I opened the paper. "Am I to read this to myself?" I asked. "Or am I to
read it aloud?"

"Read it aloud!"

In these terms, his daughter addressed him:

"I have been so unfortunate, dearest father, as to displease you, and I
dare not hope that you will consent to receive me. What it is my painful
duty to tell you, must be told in writing.

"Grieved as I am to distress you, in your present state of health, I
must not hesitate to reveal what it has been my misfortune--I may even
say my misery, when I think of my mother--to discover.

"But let me make sure, in such a serious matter as this is, that I am
not mistaken.

"In those happy past days, when I was still dear to my father, you said
you thought of writing to invite a dearly-valued friend to pay a visit
to this house. You had first known him, as I understood, when my mother
was still living. Many interesting things you told me about this old
friend, but you never mentioned that he knew, or that he had even seen,
my mother. I was left to suppose that those two had remained strangers
to each other to the day of her death.

"If there is any m