She had asked herself the
question, 'Am I so wicked in my thoughts as to conceive a
wickedness that others cannot imagine?' Then she had considered,
Did the suspicion come of her previous recoiling from him before
the fact? And if so, was not that a proof of its baselessness?
Then she had reflected, 'What motive could he have, according to my
accusation?' She was ashamed to answer in her mind, 'The motive of
gaining ME!' And covered her face, as if the lightest shadow of
the idea of founding murder on such an idle vanity were a crime
almost as great.
She ran over in her mind again, all that he had said by the sun-
dial in the garden. He had persisted in treating the disappearance
as murder, consistently with his whole public course since the
finding of the watch and shirt-pin. If he were afraid of the crime
being traced out, would he not rather encourage the idea of a
voluntary disappearance? He had even declared that if the ties
between him and his nephew had been less strong, he might have
swept 'even him' away from her side. Was that like his having
really done so? He had spoken of laying his six months' labours in
the cause of a just vengeance at her feet. Would he have done
that, with that violence of passion, if they were a pretence?
Would he have ranged them with his desolate heart and soul, his
wasted life, his peace and his despair? The very first sacrifice
that he represented himself as making for her, was his fidelity to
his dear boy after death.
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