Chapter 24

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

But why didn't you explain it all to me at the very first?" I
exclaimed, all tremulous. "When you met me at Quebec, I mean--why
didn't you tell me then? Did you and Elsie come there on purpose to
meet me?"

"Yes, we came there to meet you," Jack answered. "But we were afraid
to make ourselves known to you all at once just at first, because,
you see, Una, I more than half suspected then, what I know now to be
the truth, that you were coming out to Canada on purpose to hunt me
up, not as your friend and future husband, but in enmity and
suspicion as your father's murderer. And in any case we were
uncertain which attitude you might adopt towards me. But I see I
must explain a little more even now. I haven't told you yet why I
came at all to Canada."

"Tell me now," I answered. "I must know everything to-day. I can
never rest now till I've heard the whole story."

"Well," Jack went on more calmly, "after the first excitement wore
off in the public mind, there came after a bit a lull of languid
interest; the papers began to forget the supposed facts of the
murder, and to dwell far more upon your own new role as a
pyschological curiosity. They talked much about your strange new
life and its analogies elsewhere. I was anxious to see you, of
course, to satisfy myself of your condition; but the doctors who had
charge of you refused to let you mix for a while with anyone you had
known in your First State; and I now think wisely. It was best you
should recover your general health and faculties by slow degrees,
without being puzzled and distracted by constant upsetting
recollections and suggestions of your past history.

"But for me, of course, at the time, the separation was terrible.
Each morning, I read with feverish interest the reports of your
health, and longed, day after day, to hear of some distinct
improvement. And yet at the same time, I was terrified at every
approach to complete convalescence: I feared that if you got better
at all, you might remember too quick, and that then the sudden rush
of recollection might kill you or upset your reason. But by-and-by,
it became clear to me you could remember nothing of the actual shot
itself. And I saw plainly why. It was the firing of the pistol that
obliterated, as it were, every trace of your past life in your
disorganised brain. And it obliterated ITSELF too. Your new life
began just one moment later, with the Picture of the dead man
stretched before you in his blood on the floor, and a figure in the
background disappearing through the window."

How clever he was, to be sure! I saw in a moment Jack had
interpreted my