Armadale by Wilkie Collins Page B

outlawed son, whose name and whose inheritance I had taken. And Fergus Ingleby was even with me for depriving him of his birthright.
    Some account of the manner in which the deception had been carried out, is necessary to explain – I don’t say to justify – the share I took in the events that followed my arrival at Madeira.
    By Ingleby’s own confession, he had come to Barbadoes – knowing of his father’s death and of my succession to the estates – with the settled purpose of plundering and injuring me. My rash confidence put such an opportunity into his hands, as he could never have hoped for. He had waited to possess himself of the letter which my mother wrote to Mr Blanchard at the outset of my illness – had then caused his own dismissal from his situation – and had sailed for Madeira in the very ship that was to have sailed with me. Arrived at the island, he had waited again, till the vessel was away once more on her voyage, and had then presented himself at Mr Blanchard’s – not in the assumed name by which I shall continue to speak of him here – but in the name which was as certainly his as mine, ‘Allan Armadale’. The fraud at the outset presented few difficulties. He had only an ailing old man (who had not seen my mother for half a lifetime), and an innocent unsuspicious girl (who had never seen her at all) to deal with; and he had learnt enough in my service to answer the few questions that were put to him, as readily as I might have answered them myself. His looks and manners, his winning ways with women, his quickness and cunning, did the rest. While I was still on my sickbed, he had won Miss Blanchard’s affections. While I was dreaming over the likeness in the first days of my convalescence, he had secured Mr Blanchard’s consent to the celebration of the marriage before he and his daughter left the island.
    Thus far, Mr Blanchard’s infirmity of sight had helped the deception. He had been content to send messages to my mother, and to receive the messages which were duly invented in return. But when the suitor was accepted, and the wedding-day wasappointed, he felt it due to his old friend to write to her, asking her formal consent, and inviting her to the marriage. He could only complete part of the letter himself; the rest was finished, under his dictation, by Miss Blanchard. There was no chance of being beforehand with the post-office this time; and Ingleby, sure of his place in the heart of his victim, waylaid her as she came out of her father’s room with the letter, and privately told her the truth. She was still under age, and the position was a serious one. If the letter was posted, no resource would be left but to wait and be parted for ever, or to elope under circumstances which made detection almost a certainty. The destination of any ship which took them away would be known beforehand; and the fast-sailing yacht in which Mr Blanchard had come to Madeira was waiting in the harbour to take him back to England. The only other alternative was to continue the deception by suppressing the letter, and to confess the truth when they were securely married. What arts of persuasion Ingleby used – what base advantage he might previously have taken of her love and her trust in him to degrade Miss Blanchard to his own level – I cannot say. He did degrade her. The letter never went to its destination; and, with the daughter’s privity and consent, the father’s confidence was abused to the very last.
    The one precaution now left to take, was to fabricate the answer from my mother which Mr Blanchard expected, and which would arrive in due course of post before the day appointed for the marriage. Ingleby had my mother’s stolen letter with him; but he was without the imitative dexterity which would have enabled him to make use of it for a forgery of her handwriting. Miss Blanchard, who had consented passively to the