I had been trying my experiment for something like three weeks, and was beginning to get heartily weary of it, when I received a letter from the lawyer. "Dear Sir,--Your odd tenant, old Mr. Toller, has died suddenly of rupture of a blood-vessel on the brain, as the doctor thinks. There is to be an inquest, as I need hardly tell you. What do you say to having the report of the proceedings largely copied in the newspapers? If it catches his daughter's eye, important results may follow." To speculate in this way on the impulse which might take its rise in my poor girl's grief--to surprise her, as it were, at her father's grave--revolted me. I directed the lawyer to take no steps whatever in the matter, and to pay the poor old fellow's funeral expenses, on my account. He had died intestate. The law took care of his money until his daughter appeared; and the mill, being my property, I gave to Toller's surviving partner--our good Gloody. And what did I do next? I went away travelling; one of the wretchedest men who ever carried his misery with him to foreign countries. Go where I might on the continent of Europe, the dreadful idea pursued me that Cristel might be dead. CHAPTER XVIII THE MISTRESS OF TRIMLEY DEEN Three weary months had passed, when a new idea was put into my head by an Englishman whom I met at Trieste. He advised turning my back on Europe, and trying the effect of scenes of life that would be new to me. I hired a vessel, and sailed out of the civilized world. When I next stood on _terra firma,_ my feet were on the lovely beach of one of the Pacific Islands. What I suffered I have not told yet, and do not design to tell. The bitterness of those days hid itself from view at the time--and shall keep its concealment still. Even if I could dwell on my sorrows with the eloquence of a practised writer, some obstinate inner reluctance would persist in holding me dumb. More than a year had passed before I returned to Trimley Deen, and alarmed my stepmother by "looking like a foreign sailor." The irregular nature of my later travels had made it impossible to forward the few letters that had arrived for me. They were neatly laid out on the library table. The second letter that I took up bore the postmark of Genoa. I opened it, and discovered that the-- No! I cannot write of him by that mean name; and his own name is still unknown to me. Let me call him--and, oh, don't think that I am deceived again!--let me call him the Penitent. The letter had been addressed to me from his deathbed, and had been written under dictation. It contained an extraordinary enclosure--a small torn fragment of paper with writing on it. "Read the poor morsel that I send to you first" (the letter began). "My time on earth is short; you will save me explanations which may be too much for my strength." On one side of the fragment, I found these words: