Chapter 41 - Page 2

the breakage. I refuse to know any thing about it. I am too busy with the other letters. Five minutes--lock the door--and I will come again."

This was a desperate conflict for me, worse even than bodily danger. My first impulse was to have nothing to do with it--even to let the letter lie untouched, and, if possible, unglanced at. But already it was too late for the eyes to turn away. The address had flashed upon me before I thought of any thing, and while Mrs. Busk held it up to me. And now that address was staring at me, like a contemptuous challenge, while the seal, the symbol of private rights and deterrent honor, lay undermost. The letter was directed to "H. W. C., Post-office, Newport, Sussex." The writing was in round hand, and clear, so as not to demand any scrutiny, and to seem like that of a lawyer's clerk, and the envelope was of thin repellent blue.

My second impulse was to break the letter open and read it without shrinking. Public duty must conquer private scruples. Nothing but the hand of Providence itself could have placed this deadly secret in my power so amazingly. Away with all squeamishness, and perhaps prevent more murder.

But that "perhaps" gave me sudden pause. I had caught up the letter, and stood near the candle to soften the wax and lift the cover with a small sharp paper-knife, when it flashed on my mind that my cousin would condemn and scorn what I was doing. Unconsciously I must have made him now my standard of human judgment, or what made me think of him at that moment? I threw down the letter, and then I knew. The image of Lord Castlewood had crossed my mind, because the initials were his own--those of Herbert William Castlewood. This strange coincidence--if it were, indeed, an accident--once more set me thinking. Might not this letter be from his agent, of whom he had spoken as my protector here, but to whom as all unseen I scarcely ever gave a thought? Might not young Stixon, who so often was at Bruntsea, be employed to call at Newport for such letters, and return with them to his master? It was not very likely, for my cousin had the strongest contempt of anonymous doings. Still it was possible, and the bare possibility doubled my reluctance to break the seal.

For one minute longer I stood in doubt, and then honor and candor and truth prevailed. If any other life had been in peril but my own, duty to another might have overridden all. But duty to one's self, if overpushed in such a case, would hold some taint of cowardice. So I threw the letter, with a sense of loathing, on a chair. Whatever it might contain, it should pass, at least for me, inviolate.

Now when Mrs. Busk came to see what I had done, or rather left undone, she flew into a towering passion, until she had no time to go on with it. The rattle of the rickety old mail-cart, on its way to Winchester that night, was heard, and the horn of the driver as he passed the church.