having fixed on her objective began to elaborate a consistent scheme,
utilising the facts of her own surroundings as the foundation of her
imposture. She probably realised early that there must be a base
somewhere, and so proceeded to manufacture or arrange for herself a new
identity into which the demonstrable facts of her actual life could be
wrought. At the same time she manifestly realised that in a similar
way fact and intention must be interwoven throughout the whole of
her contemplated creation. Accordingly she created for herself a new
_milieu_ which she supported by forged documents of so clever a conceit
and such excellent workmanship, that they misled all who investigated
them, until they came within the purview of the great lawyers of the
day whose knowledge, logical power, skill and determination were
arrayed against her. By a sort of intellectual metabolism she changed
the identities and conditions of her own relations whom I have
mentioned, always taking care that her story held together in essential
possibilities, and making use of the abnormalities of those whose
prototypes she introduced into fictional life.
The changes made in her world of new conditions were mainly as follows:
Her uncle, the Reverend James, who as a man of learning and dignity
was accustomed to high-class society, and as a preacher of eminence
occasionally in touch with Crown and Court, became her father; and she
herself the child of a secret marriage with a great lady whose personal
rank and condition would reflect importance on her daughter. But proof,
or alleged proof, of some kind would be necessary and there were too
many persons at present living whose testimony would be available
for her undoing. So her uncle James shifted his place and became
her grandfather. To this the circumstances of his earlier life gave
credibility in two ways; firstly because they allowed of his having
made a secret marriage, since he was forbidden to marry by the statutes
of his college, and secondly because they gave a reasonable excuse for
concealing his marriage and the birth of a child, publicity regarding
which would have cost him his livelihood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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