"And vile as Helena is," I continued, "we cannot deny that this disgrace to her sex is a handsome young lady."
He saw it at last. "Woman's wit!" he cried. "You have hit it, Miss Jillgall. The young fool is smitten with her, and has given her a chance of making her escape."
"Do you think she will take the chance?"
"For all our sakes, I pray God she may! But I don't feel sure about it."
"Why?"
"Recollect what you and Eunice have done. You have shown your suspicion of her without an attempt to conceal it. If you had put her in prison you could not have more completely defeated her infernal design. Do you think she is a likely person to submit to that, without an effort to be even with you?"
Just as he said those terrifying words, Maria came back to us. He asked at once what had kept her so long upstairs.
The girl had evidently something to say, which had inflated her (if I may use such an expression) with a sense of her own importance.
"Please to let me tell it, sir," she answered, "in my own way. Miss Helena turned as pale as ashes when she opened the letter, and then she took a turn in the room, and then she looked at me with a smile—well, miss, I can only say that I felt that smile in the small of my back. I tried to get to the door. She stopped me. She says: 'Where's Miss Eunice?' I says: 'Gone out.' She says: 'Is there anybody in the drawing-room?' I says: 'No, miss.' She says: 'Tell Miss Jillgall I want to speak to her, and say I am waiting in the drawing-room.' It's every word of it true! And, if a poor servant may give an opinion, I don't like the look of it."
The doctor dismissed Maria. "Whatever it is," he said to me, "you must go and hear it."
I am not a courageous woman; I expressed myself as being willing to go to her, if the doctor went with me. He said that was impossible; she would probably refuse to speak before any witness; and certainly before him. But he promised to look after Philip in my absence, and to wait below if it really so happened that I wanted him. I need only ring the bell, and he would come to me the moment he heard it. Such kindness as this roused my courage, I suppose. At any rate, I went upstairs.
She was standing by the fire-place, with her elbow on the chimney-piece, and her head, resting on her hand. I stopped just inside the door, waiting to hear what she had to say. In this position her side-face only was presented to me. It was a ghastly face. The eye that I could see turned wickedly on me when I came in—then turned away again. Otherwise, she never moved. I confess I trembled, but I did my best to disguise it.
She broke out suddenly with what she had to say: "I won't allow this state of things to go on any longer. My horror of an exposure which will disgrace the family has kept me silent, wrongly silent, so far. Philip's life is in danger. I am forgetting my duty to my affianced husband, if I allow myself to be kept away from him any longer. Open those locked doors, and relieve me from the sight of you. Open the doors, I say, or you will both of you—you the accomplice, she the wretch who directs you—repent it to the end of your lives."
In my own mind, I asked myself if she had gone mad. But I only answered: "I don't understand you."
She said again: "You are Eunice's accomplice."
"Accomplice in what?" I asked.
She turned her head slowly and faced me. I shrank from looking at her.
"All the circumstances prove it," she went on. "I have supplanted Eunice in Philip's affection. She was once engaged to marry him; I am engaged to marry him now. She is resolved that he shall never make me his wife. He will die if I delay any longer. He will die if I don't crush her, like the reptile she is. She comes here—and what does she do? Keeps him prisoner under her own superintendence. Who gets his medicine? She gets it. Who cooks his food? She cooks it. The doors are locked. I might be a witness of what goes on; and I am kept out. The servants who ought to wait on him are kept out. She can do what she likes with his medicine; she can do what she likes with his food: she is infuriated with him for deserting her, and promising to marry me. Give him back to my care; or, dreadful as it is to denounce my own sister, I shall claim protection from the magistrates."
I lost all fear of her: I stepped close up to the place at which she was standing; I cried out: "Of what, in God's name, do you accuse your sister?"
She answered: "I accuse her of poisoning Philip Dunboyne."
I ran out of the room; I rushed headlong down the stairs. The doctor heard me, and came running into the hall. I caught hold of him like a madwoman. "Euneece!" My breath was gone; I could only say: "Euneece!"
He dragged me into the dining-room. There was wine on the side-board, which he had ordered medically for Philip. He forced me to drink some of it. It ran through me like fire; it helped me to speak. "Now tell me," he said, "what has she done to Eunice?"
"She brings a horrible accusation against her," I answered.
"What is the accusation?" I told him.
He looked me through and through. "Take care!" he said. "No hysterics, no exaggeration. You may lead to dreadful consequences if you are not sure of yourself. If it's really true, say it again." I said it again—quietly this time.
His face startled me; it was white with rage. He snatched his hat off the hall table.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"My duty." He was out of the house before I could speak to him again.
Third Period (concluded).
TROUBLES AND TRIUMPHS OF THE FAMILY, RELATED BY THE GOVERNOR.
CHAPTER LXII. THE SENTENCE PRONOUNCED.
MARTYRS to gout know, by sad experience, that they suffer under one of the most capricious of maladies. An attack of this disease will shift, in the most unaccountable manner, from one part of the body to another; or, it will release the victim when there is every reason to fear that it is about to strengthen its hold on him; or, having shown the fairest promise of submitting to medical treatment, it will cruelly lay the patient prostrate again in a state of relapse. Adverse fortune, in my case, subjected me to this last and worst trial of endurance. Two months passed—months of pain aggravated by anxiety—before I was able to help Eunice and Miss Jillgall personally with my sympathy and advice.
During this interval, I heard regularly from the friendly and faithful Selina.
Terror and suspense, courageously endured day after day, seem to have broken down her resistance, poor soul, when Eunice's good name and Eunice's tranquillity were threatened by the most infamous of false accusations. From that time, Miss Jillgall's method of expressing herself betrayed a gradual deterioration. I shall avoid presenting at a disadvantage a correspondent who has claims on my gratitude, if I give the substance only of what she wrote—assisted by the newspaper which she sent to me, while the legal proceedings were in progress.
Honest indignation does sometimes counsel us wisely. When the doctor left Miss Jillgall, in anger and in haste, he had determined on taking the course from which, as a humane man and a faithful friend, he had hitherto recoiled. It was no time, now, to shrink from the prospect of an exposure. The one hope of successfully encountering the vindictive wickedness of Helena lay in the resolution to be beforehand with her, in the appeal to the magistrates with which she had threatened Eunice and Miss Jillgall. The doctor's sworn information stated the whole terrible case of the poisoning, ranging from his first suspicions and their confirmation, to Helena's atrocious attempt to accuse her innocent sister of her own guilt. So firmly were the magistrates convinced of the serious nature of the case thus stated, that they did not hesitate to issue their warrant. Among the witnesses whose attendance was immediately secured, by the legal adviser to whom the doctor applied, were the farmer and his wife.