Chapter 18

--Last scene of all,
To close this strange eventful history.--AS YOU LIKE IT.

On the next morning, Mr. Ratcliffe presented Miss Vere with a letter
from her father, of which the following is the tenor:--

"MY DEAREST CHILD, The malice of a persecuting government will compel
me, for my own safety, to retreat abroad, and to remain for some time
in foreign parts. I do not ask you to accompany, or follow me; you will
attend to my interest and your own more effectually by remaining where
you are. It is unnecessary to enter into a minute detail concerning the
causes of the strange events which yesterday took place. I think I have
reason to complain of the usage I have received from Sir Edward Mauley,
who is your nearest kinsman by the mother's side; but as he has declared
you his heir, and is to put you in immediate possession of a large part
of his fortune, I account it a full atonement. I am aware he has never
forgiven the preference which your mother gave to my addresses, instead
of complying with the terms of a sort of family compact, which absurdly
and tyrannically destined her to wed her deformed relative. The shock
was even sufficient to unsettle his wits (which, indeed, were never
over-well arranged), and I had, as the husband of his nearest kinswoman
and heir, the delicate task of taking care of his person and property,
until he was reinstated in the management of the latter by those who, no
doubt, thought they were doing him justice; although, if some parts of
his subsequent conduct be examined, it will appear that he ought,
for his own sake, to have been left under the influence of a mild and
salutary restraint.

"In one particular, however, he showed a sense of the ties of blood,
as well as of his own frailty; for while he sequestered himself closely
from the world, under various names and disguises, and insisted on
spreading a report of his own death (in which to gratify him I willingly
acquiesced), he left at my disposal the rents of a great proportion of
his estates, and especially all those, which, having belonged to your
mother, reverted to him as a male fief. In this he may have thought
that he was acting with extreme generosity, while, in the opinion of all
impartial men, he will only be considered as having fulfilled a natural
obligation, seeing that, in justice, if not in strict law, you must
be considered as the heir of your mother, and I as your legal
administrator. Instead, therefore, of considering myself as loaded
with obligations to Sir Edward on this account, I think I had reason
to complain that these remittances were only doled out to me at the
pleasure of Mr. Ratcliffe, who, moreover, exacted from me mortgages
over my paternal estate of Ellieslaw for any sums