Neville’s sufferings under the suspicion are unmistakable and cruel. When Crisparkle saw him he wished that his eyes were not quite so large and quite so bright. ‘I want more sun to shine upon you.’ Neville tells him that he feels marked and tainted even when he goes out at night, and he never goes out in the day. He says, though Dickens did not mean us to read the sentence: ‘It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake, and innocent; but I don’t complain.’ Such are the main reasons that induce me to believe that Helena is Datchery. It is admitted on all hands that she was meant to play an important part in the story. What part does she play if she is not Datchery? DATCHERY’S WISTFUL GAZE But the proof that impresses me as much as any other is to be found in the passage: ‘John Jasper’s lamp is kindled and his lighthouse is shining when Mr. Datchery returns alone towards it. As mariners on a dangerous voyage, approaching an iron-bound coast, may look along the beams of the warning light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be reached, so Mr. Datchery’s wistful gaze is directed to this beacon and beyond.’ The detective of whom this is written cannot possibly be a mere detective. His heart is engaged in the search. This fits Helena, and Helena only, of all the characters that have been brought forward. A professional detective paid by Grewgious could never have behaved in that way. Helena’s whole heart was in the business. She had to relieve her fondly-loved brother from a cruel weight of anxiety and suspicion. She had to bring a villain whose baseness she thoroughly knew to justice. She had to liberate the girl friend she loved from persecution, and she looked to a beyond, to the haven—the haven of Crisparkle’s love. DATCHERY’S WIG Datchery wears a wig, and it is unusually large, as though a woman’s hair were concealed under it. As Mr. Cuming Walters also points out, Helena undoubtedly had a strong motive for not sacrificing her hair to the disguise, for she was unmistakably in love with Crisparkle. DATCHERY’S HANDS There is no doubt that if Datchery was Helena, one of her chief difficulties must have been with her hands. Miss Stirling Graeme, the author of _Mystifications_, had a marvellous power of disguising herself. ‘There was nothing extraordinary about her,’ says Dr. John Brown, ‘but let her put on the old lady; it was as if a warlock spell had passed over her; not merely her look, but her nature was changed: her spirit had passed into the character she represented; and jest, quick retort, whimsical fancy, the wildest nonsense flowed from her lips, with a freedom and truth to nature which appeared to be impossible in her own personality.’