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Updated: May 15, 2025
Judging by his tones and his looks, he seems to have no very friendly motive for wishing to see you." Knowing perfectly well what had happened, and being one of those impatient people who can never endure suspense I offered to go at once to Mr. Gracedieu's room. The doctor asked leave to say one word more. "Pray be careful that you neither say nor do anything to thwart him," Mr. Wellwood resumed.
Careful as I have been to keep my record of events within strict limits, I have written at a length which I was far indeed from contemplating when I accepted Mr. Gracedieu's invitation.
I was writing to his dictation, when we were interrupted. Maria announced a visit from Mr. Dunboyne. Hitherto Philip had been content to send one of the servants of the hotel to make inquiry after Mr. Gracedieu's health. Why had he now called personally? Noticing that father seemed to be annoyed, I tried to make an opportunity of receiving Philip myself.
When his mad suspicion that I had been his wife's lover betrayed itself in this way, I made a last attempt, in the face of my own conviction that it was hopeless, to place my conduct and his wife's conduct before him in the true light. "Mrs. Gracedieu's object was to consult me " Before I could say the next words, I saw him put his hand into the pocket of his dressing-gown.
"Perhaps I saw it when I called on you," Mrs. Tenbruggen suggested. "Where did the picture hang?" "My dear! I received you in the dining-room, and the portrait hung in Mr. Gracedieu's study." What they said to each other next escaped my attention.
And now, long after time had doomed those events to oblivion, they were revived and revived by me. Thanks to my folly, Mr. Gracedieu's daughter knew what I had concealed from Mr. Gracedieu himself. What course did respect for my friend, and respect for myself, counsel me to take? I could only see before me a choice of two evils.
"Don't think," she said, "that I am forgetting my promise to be content with what you have told me about myself. I am not so ungrateful as that. But I do want, before I consent to be Philip's wife, to feel sure that I am not quite unworthy of him. Is it because I am of mean birth that you told me I was Mr. Gracedieu's adopted child and told me no more?" I could honestly satisfy her, so far.
A third message had evidently been prepared, even for this emergency: "Miss Helena will regret, sir, having the pleasure deferred, but she will leave you to make your own appointment for to-morrow." Persistency so inveterate as this led to a result which Mr. Gracedieu's cautious daughter had not perhaps contemplated: it put me on my guard.
Tenbruggen, being now set forth on the best authority, an exact presentation of the state of affairs will be completed if I add a word more, relating to the positions actually occupied toward Mrs. Tenbruggen's enterprise, by my correspondent and myself. On her side, Miss Jillgall was entirely ignorant that one of the two girls was not Mr. Gracedieu's daughter, but his adopted child.
Gracedieu's adopted child but what the nature of that interest might be, it was impossible to guess. The future, when I thought of it now, filled me with dismay. A more utterly helpless position than mine it was not easy to conceive. To warn the Minister, in his present critical state of health, was simply impossible. My relations with Helena forbade me even to approach her.
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