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Updated: May 9, 2025
A more innocently intended letter than this never was written. And yet there are people who have declared that it was inspired by suspicion of Mrs. Mozeen! This only I know: when the discovery of the terrible position toward Rothsay in which I now stood suddenly overwhelmed me, an interval of some days had passed. I cannot account for it. I can only say so it was. Susan was in the room.
"She must have received it on the day when she left my house." The doctor rose with a grave face. "These are rather extraordinary coincidences," he remarked. I merely replied, "Mrs. Mozeen is as incapable of poisoning as I am." The doctor wished me good-morning. I repeat here my conviction of my housekeeper's innocence. I protest against the cruelty which accuses her.
"Give me a minute to sign it," I said and rang to summon the witnesses. Mrs. Mozeen answered the bell. Rothsay looked at her, as if he wished to have my housekeeper put away as well as my will. From the first moment when he had seen her, he conceived a great dislike to that good creature. There was nothing, I am sure, personally repellent about her.
Mozeen, at her mature age, was in love with the young man who is your footman! It is even asserted that she tried to recommend herself to him, by speaking of the money which she expected to bring to the man who would make her his wife. The footman's reply, informing her that he was already engaged to be married, is alleged to be the cause which has driven her from your house."
It was impossible to make a serious reply to this ridiculous exhibition of Rothsay's prejudice against poor Mrs. Mozeen. "When am I to be murdered?" I asked. "And how is it to be done? Poison?" "I'm not joking," Rothsay answered. "You are infatuated about your housekeeper. When you spoke of her legacy, did you notice her eyes." "Yes." "Did nothing strike you?"
The proceedings of my footman, while I had been away from home, left me no alternative but to dismiss him on my return. With this exertion of authority my interference as chief of the household came to an end. I left it to my excellent housekeeper, Mrs. Mozeen, to find a sober successor to the drunken vagabond who had been sent away.
"Who engaged that new servant of yours?" he asked. "I mean the fat fellow, with the curly flaxen hair." "Hiring servants," I replied, "is not much in my way. I left the engagement of the new man to Mrs. Mozeen." Rothsay walked gravely up to my bedside. "Lepel," he said, "your respectable housekeeper is in love with the fat young footman." It is not easy to amuse a man suffering from bronchitis.
Mozeen expressed her gratitude silently, by a look and left the room. "Why couldn't you tell that woman to send the servants, without mentioning her legacy?" Rothsay asked. "My friend Lepel, you have done a very foolish thing." "In what way?" "You have given Mrs. Mozeen an interest in your death."
Mozeen was just the woman to take a motherly interest in a well-disposed lad like Joseph; and it was equally characteristic of my valet especially when Rothsay was thoughtless enough to encourage him to pervert an innocent action for the sake of indulging in a stupid jest. I took advantage of my privilege as an invalid, and changed the subject. A week passed. I had expected to hear from Rothsay.
A vile sensation of nausea tried my endurance, and an incomprehensible prostration of strength depressed my spirits. I felt such a strange reluctance to exert myself that I actually left it to Mrs. Mozeen to write to my uncle in my name, and say that I was not yet well enough to visit him.
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