La historia continuada por la señora Catherick

own, and I told him they should know the truth from my lips. His reply was short, and to the point. If I spoke, I was a lost woman, as certainly as he was a lost man. > > Yes! it had come to that. He had deceived me about the risk I ran in helping him. He had practised on my ignorance, he had tempted me with his gifts, he had interested me with his story⁠—and the result of it was that he made me his accomplice. He owned this coolly, and he ended by telling me, for the first time, what the frightful punishment really was for his offence, and for anyone who helped him to commit it. In those days the law was not so tenderhearted as I hear it is now. Murderers were not the only people liable to be hanged, and women convicts were not treated like ladies in undeserved distress. I confess he frightened me⁠—the mean impostor! the cowardly blackguard! Do you understand now how I hated him? Do you understand why I am taking all this trouble⁠—thankfully taking it⁠—to gratify the curiosity of the meritorious young gentleman who hunted him down? > > Well, to go on. He was hardly fool enough to drive me to downright desperation. I was not the sort of woman whom it was quite safe to hunt into a corner⁠—he knew that, and wisely quieted me with proposals for the future. > > I deserved some reward (he was kind enough to say) for the service I had done him, and some compensation (he was so obliging as to add) for what I had suffered. He was quite willing⁠—generous scoundrel!⁠—to make me a handsome yearly allowance, payable quarterly, on two conditions. First, I was to hold my tongue⁠—in my own interests as well as in