“Oh yes, oh yes!” I murmured, edging involuntarily toward the door. Did I not
know? Had I not been there, too; I, little I, whom he stood gazing down upon
from such a height, little realizing the fatality which united us and, what was
even a more overwhelming thought to me at the moment, the fact that of all
persons in the world the shrinking little being, into whose eyes he was then
looking, was, perhaps, his greatest enemy and the one person, great or small,
from whom he had the most to fear.
But I was no enemy to his gentle daughter and the relief I felt at finding
myself thus cut off by my own promise from even the remotest communication with
her on this forbidden subject was genuine and sincere.
But the father! What was I to think of the father? Alas! I could have but one
thought, admirable as he appeared in all lights save the one in which his too
evident connection with this crime had placed him. I spent the hours of the
afternoon in alternately watching the sleeping face of my patient, too sweetly
calm in its repose, or so it seemed, for the mind beneath to harbor such doubts
as were shown in the warning I had ascribed to her, and vain efforts to explain
by any other hypothesis than that of guilt, the extraordinary evidence which
linked this man of great affairs and the loftiest repute to a crime involving
both theft and murder.
Nor did the struggle end that night. It was renewed with still greater
positiveness the next day, as I witnessed the glances which from time to time
passed between this father and daughter,—glances full of doubt and
question on both sides, but not exactly such doubt or such question as my
suspicions called for. Or so I thought, and spent another day or two hesitating
very much over my duty, when, coming unexpectedly upon Mr. Grey one evening, I
felt all my doubts revive in view of the extraordinary expression of
dread—I might with still greater truth say fear—which informed his
features and made them, to my unaccustomed eyes, almost unrecognizable.
He was sitting at his desk in reverie over some papers which he seemed not to
have touched for hours, and when, at some movement I made, he started up and
met my eye, I could swear that his cheek was pale, the firm carriage of his
body shaken, and the whole man a victim to some strong and secret apprehension
he vainly sought to hide, when I ventured to tell him what I wanted, he made an
effort and pulled himself together, but I had seen him with his mask off, and
his usually calm visage and self-possessed mien could not again deceive me.
My duties kept me mainly at Miss Grey’s bedside, but I had been provided with a
little room across the hall, and to this room I retired very soon after this,
for rest and a necessary understanding with myself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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