“Gladys!” he exclaimed, “what do you mean? What are you talking about? You look so white and strange! Sit down, darling, and tell me what you mean.” “Oh, Herbert,” I cried, with my voice suddenly full of agony, “let me tell you! Don’t stop me. If you’re angry with me and hate me, wait till I’ve finished before you say so. I’ve got to confess it all. I’ve got to, dear. You must listen to me, and not frighten me till I have done; for if I don’t tell you now, I shall certainly die.” And then I told--I told it all. I didn’t leave out a single thing. My first bills, and Bolkonsky, and the jeweler, and the pawnbroking place, and everything was in it. Once I was started, it was not so hard, and I poured it out. I didn’t try to make it better, or ask to be forgiven. But when it was all finished, I said, in a voice that I could hear was suddenly husky and trembling: “And now I suppose you’ll not like me any more. It’s quite natural that you shouldn’t. I only ask one thing, and I know, of course, I have no right to ask it--that is, that you won’t send me away from you. I have been very wicked. I suppose I ought to be put in prison. But, oh, Herbert, no matter what I’ve been, I’ve loved you! That’s something.” I could not go any further, and there was no need; for my dear husband did not seem angry at all. He took me, all weeping and trembling, into his arms, and said the sweetest things to me--the sort of things one doesn’t write down with a pen--just between him and me. And I?--I turned my face into his shoulder and cried feebly. No one knows how happy I felt except a person who has been completely miserable and suddenly finds her misery ended. It is really worth being miserable to thoroughly appreciate the joy of being happy again. Well, that is really the end of the statement. Herbert went to Paris a few days later and redeemed the diamonds, and they are now being set in imitation of the old settings, which are lost. I would not go to Paris with him. Nor will I go to London next season. Both places are too full of horrible memories. Perhaps some day I shall feel about them as I did before the diamonds were taken, but now I do not want to leave the country at all. Besides, we can economize here, and the four thousand pounds necessary to get back the stones was a good deal for Herbert to have to pay out just now. And then it is so sweet and peaceful in the country. Nothing troubles one. Oh, how delightful a thing it is to have an easy conscience! One does not know how good it is till one has lost it. This finishes my statement. I dare say it is a very bad one, for I am not clever at all. But it has the one merit of being entirely truthful, and I have told everything--just how wicked I was, and just why I was so wicked. Nothing has been held back, and nothing has been set down falsely. It is an unprejudiced and accurate account of my share in the Castlecourt diamond case. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: