“Let me look at the letter once more.”
On a second view, the handwriting produced the same effect on me as before, ending too with just the same result. I returned the letter again.
“I respect your scruples, Susan, but I am not the person to remove or to justify them. Why should you not apply in this difficulty to your master?”
“I dare not, Sir; I dare not for my life. He’s been worse than ever, lately; if I said as much to him as I’ve said to you, I believe he’d kill me!” She hesitated, then continued more composedly; “Well, at any rate I’ve told you , Sir, and that’s made my mind easier; and—and I’ll give her the letter this once, and then take in no more—if they come, unless I hear a proper account of them.”
She curtseyed; and, bidding me farewell very sadly and anxiously, returned to the house with the letter in her hand. If I had guessed at that moment who it was written by! If I could only have suspected what were its contents!
I left Hollyoake Square in a direction which led to some fields a little distance on. It was very strange; but that unknown handwriting still occupied my thoughts: that wretched trifle absolutely took possession of my mind, at such a time as this; in such a position as mine was now.
I stopped wearily in the fields at a lonely spot, away from the footpath. My eyes ached at the sunlight, and I shaded them with my hand. Exactly at the same instant, the lost recollection flashed back on me so vividly that I started almost in terror. The handwriting shown me by the servant at North Villa, was the same as the handwriting on that unopened and forgotten letter in my pocket, which I had received from the servant at home—received in the morning, as I crossed the hall to enter my father’s room.