However you
might disapprove of what I had done, I thought you would not refuse to
help me to find my sister. When I lay down last night in my strange bed,
I said to myself, 'I will ask Miss Garth, for my father's sake and my
mother's sake, to tell me.' You don't know what a comfort I felt in that
thought. How should you? What do good women like you know of miserable
sinners like me? All you know is that you pray for us at church.
"Well, I fell asleep happily that night--for the first time since my
marriage. When the morning came, I paid the penalty of daring to be
happy only for one night. When the morning came, a letter came with
it, which told me that my bitterest enemy on earth (you have meddled
sufficiently with my affairs to know what enemy I mean) had revenged
herself on me in my absence. In following the impulse which led me to my
sister, I had gone to my ruin.
"The mischief was beyond all present remedy, when I received the news of
it. Whatever had happened, whatever might happen, I made up my mind to
persist in my resolution of seeing Norah before I did anything else. I
suspected _you_ of being concerned in the disaster which had overtaken
me--because I felt positively certain at Aldborough that you and Mrs.
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