Detective and mystery stories; English fiction -- 19th century
The elder sister, now left alone, seems to have been watched with
redoubled solicitude. There is nothing, however, in the years
immediately following Miss C. Boleton's disappearance having any direct
bearing upon our case, and I have, therefore, confined my extracts from
the correspondence entrusted to me, to two or three letters from a
lady in whose charge she was placed at Hampstead, and one from an old
friend of her mother, from which we gather the fact of her marriage.
The latter is chiefly notable as pointing out the nervous and highly
sensitive temperament of the young lady's husband, the late Mr.
Anderton, to which I shall have occasion at a later period of the case,
more particularly to direct your attention. The former give evidence of
a very important fact; namely, that of the liability of Miss Boleton to
attacks of illness equally unaccountable and unmanageable, bearing a
perfect resemblance to those in which she suffered in her younger days
sympathetically with the ailments of her sister; and, therefore, to be
not improbably attributed to a similar cause.
Thus far for the preliminary portion of the evidence. The second
division places before us (II.) certain peculiarities in the married
life of Mrs. Anderton; its more especial object, however, being to
elucidate the connection between the parties whose history we have
hitherto been tracing, and the Baron R**, with whose proceedings we are
properly concerned.
It appears then, that in all respects but one, the married life of Mr.
and Mrs. Anderton was particularly happy. Notwithstanding their retired
and often somewhat nomad life, and the limits necessarily imposed
thereby to the formation of friendships, the evidence of their devoted
attachment to each other is perfectly overwhelming. I have no less
than thirty-seven letters from various quarters, all speaking more or
less strongly upon this point, but I have thought it better to select
from the mass a small but sufficient number, than to overload the case
with unnecessary repetition. In one respect alone their happiness was
incomplete. It was, as had been justly observed by Mrs. Ward, most
unfortunate that the choice of Miss Boleton should have fallen upon a
gentleman, who however eligible in every other respect, was, from his
extreme constitutional nervousness, so peculiarly ill-adapted for union
with a lady of such very similar organisation. The connection seems to
have borne its natural fruit in the increased delicacy of both parties,
their married life being spent in an almost continual search after
health. Among the numerous experiments tried with this object, they
at length appear to have had recourse to mesmerism, becoming finally
patients of Baron R**, a well known professor of that and other kindred
impositions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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