Yet as she opened the manuscript and her eyes fell on the well-known handwriting, they filled with unbidden tears. Great heavens! how she had believed in him, how she had loved him! Nay, how she had sympathised unwittingly with his very frauds, and longed and prayed for their success. _Prayed_ for it—the thought of this especially appalled her. She found herself, for the first time, face to face with the mystery of life; with the difficulties of spiritual things. It is strange enough (what happens often enough), that we should fall on our knees and implore the divine assistance to avert misfortunes from our dear ones that (if we did but know) have already happened; but that we should implore it (if we did but know) on behalf of falsehood, fraud—with the intent to prosper wickedness! This man, among his other villanies, almost made her doubt of the goodness of God! The manuscript was voluminous. It was written in the form of a diary, but interspersed with reflections and protestations. ‘I protest,’ it began, ‘that I had no premeditated design or the idea of any continued course of duplicity when my first error—the production of the Hemynge note of hand—was committed.’ ‘He calls it “an error,”’ thought Margaret with a moan, and indeed the opening remark was the keynote of the whole composition, significant of all that was to come. He had been weak, it avowed, but never wicked; the victim not so much of temptation, but of overwhelming circumstances. ‘You know, Margaret——’ This unexpected personal appeal came upon her like a thunderclap; it was as though in that solitary room and in that solemn hour when night and morning were about to meet, his very voice had addressed her. ‘You know, Margaret, what sort of relations existed at that time between Mr. Erin and myself: how, though he permitted me to pass as his son, he was far from having any paternal feelings towards me; that he had no sympathy with my tastes, no interest in my doings, and that he grudged me the cost of my very maintenance. Was it so very reprehensible that, having attempted in vain to gain his affection by the usual road to a father’s heart, by diligence and duty, that I looked about me for some other way? Knowing his passion for any reliques of Shakespeare, it struck me that I might conciliate him by affecting to discover that of which he was always in search. I do not seek to justify what I did, but there was surely some extenuation for it.