"All this time I knew that I was not my aunt's only niece; that Dorothy Camerden, of whom I knew little but her name, was as closely related to her as I was. For, true to her heartless code, my aunt had placed us in separate schools and we had never met. When she found that I was to leave her and that soon there would be nobody to see that her dresses were bought with discretion, and her person attended to with something like care, she sent for Dorothy. I shall never forget my first impression of her. I had been told that I need not expect much in the way of beauty and style, but from my first glimpse of her dear face, I saw that my soul's friend had come and that, marriage or no marriage, I need never be solitary again. "I do not think I made as favorable an impression on my cousin as she did on me. Dorothy was new to elaborate dressing and to all the follies of fashionable life, and her look had more of awe than expectation in it. But I gave her a hearty kiss and in a week she was as brilliantly equipped as myself. "I loved her, but, from blindness of eye or an overwhelming egotism which God has certainly punished, I did not consider her beautiful. This I must acknowledge to you, if only to complete my humiliation. I never imagined for a moment, even after I became the daily witness of your many attentions to her, that it was on her account you visited the house so often. I had been so petted and spoiled since entering society that I thought you were kind to her simply because honor forbade you to be too kind to me; and seeing in you a man different from the others--one--who--who pleased me as the heroes of my old romances had pleased me, I gave you all my heart and, what was worse, _confided my folly to Dorothy_. "You will have many a talk with her in the future, and some day she may succeed in proving to you that it was vanity and not badness of heart which led me to misunderstand your feelings. Having repressed my own impulses so long, I saw in your reticence the evidences of a like struggle; and when, immediately upon my break with Mr. Sinclair, you entered here and said the words you did--Well, we have finished with this subject for ever. "The explanations which I gave below, of the part I played in my aunt's death were true. I only omitted one detail, which you may consider a very important one. The fact which paralyzed my hand and voice when I saw her lift the drop of death to her lips was this: I had meant to die by this drop myself, in Dorothy's room, and with Dorothy's arms about me. This was my secret--a secret which no one can blame me for keeping as long as I could, and one which I should hardly have the courage to disclose to you now if I had not already parted with it to the coroner, who would not credit my story till I had told him the whole truth."