of the sad event. If the landlady had found the
letter, that circumstance also would in all probability, have formed
part of the statement in the newspapers, and the secret of Mrs.
Farnaby's life and death would have been revealed to the public view.

"I can trust you, and you only," she wrote to Amelius, "to fulfil the
last wishes of a dying woman. You know me, and you know how I looked
forward to the prospect of a happy life in retirement with my child. The
one hope that I lived for has proved to be a cruel delusion. I have only
this morning discovered, beyond the possibility of doubt, that I have
been made the victim of wretches who have deliberately lied to me from
first to last. If I had been a happier woman, I might have had other
interests to sustain me under this frightful disaster. Such as I am,
Death is my one refuge left.

"My suicide will be known to no creature but yourself. Some years since,
the idea of self destruction--concealed under the disguise of a common
mistake--presented itself to my mind. I kept the means, very simple
means, by me, thinking I might end in that way after all. When you read
this I shall be at rest for ever. You will do what I have yet to ask of
you, in merciful remembrance of me--I am sure of that.

"You have a long life before you, Amelius. My foolish fancy about you
and my lost girl still lingers in my mind; I still think it may be just
possible that you may meet with her, in the course of years.

"If this does happen, I implore you, by the tenderness and pity that
you once felt for me, to tell no human creature that she is my daughter;
and, if John Farnaby is living at the time, I forbid you, with the
authority of a dying friend, to let her see him, or to let her know even
that such a person exists. Are you at a loss to account for my motives?
I may make the shameful confession which will enlighten you, now I know
that we shall never meet again. My child was born before my marriage;
and the man who afterwards became my husband--a man of low origin, I
should tell you--was the father. He had calculated on this disgraceful
circumstance to force my parents to make his fortune, by making me
his wife. I now know, what I only vaguely suspected before, that he
deliberately abandoned his child, as a likely cause of hindrance and
scandal in the way of his prosperous career in life. Do you now think
I am asking too much, when I entreat you never even to speak to my lost
darling of this