The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester

rather want of expression, stole over her face.
    â€œThen all is indeed lost,” said she.
    â€œNo; not yet,” I replied.
    â€œWoman, you come from him?” she said, in a tone of weeping defiance, if that term can be comprehended.
    â€œNo, indeed,” I replied, “I have come of my own will to warn you against Sir Nathaniel.”
    â€œAnd yet you have come so recently from him.” Then catching, as the drowning man at the shadow of himself on the surface of the water, she said—“Perhaps he does not know all?”
    â€œHe does,” I said, wofully; “all, even to the addresses of the people necessary to prove his case.”
    â€œAnd you furnished him with this power?”
    â€œI did. I grieve to say I was forced to do so.”
    â€œCh, woman, woman! if you did but know what you have done.”
    â€œI have done what it was but justice to do.”
    â€œYou have done a wretched thing,” she said. “Sir Nathaniel will have no mercy upon me , and I must suffer—I alone must suffer.”
    â€œMr. Shedleigh,” said I; “had not he better know—”
    â€œKnow? Know what?”
    â€œWhy, that the—the fraud has been discovered.”
    â€œWoman, he thinks the child his.”
    â€œWhat! he has heard nothing of the truth?”
    â€œNothing; the deception was practised on him in pity, and now you come, after four years’ peace, and may perhaps kill him.”
    â€œBut,” said I, apologetically, “remember you have deprived Sir Nathaniel Shirley of his property.”
    â€œSir Nathaniel—Sir Nathaniel,” she repeated; “it were well for him that he should never be rich, and well for him that what was done was well done.”
    I shook my head. I knew that right was right, and that the property was by law the baronet’s.
    â€œSir Nathaniel,” she cried, beating her right foot upon the ground—by this time all fear for herself was past—“Sir Nathaniel, had he obtained the property, would have been a beggar by this time, whereas he would never have been unprovided for had you not learnt my secret. Now he will take the estates, though, if the wish of the late owner, my sister-in-law, could be consulted, I know she would keep every poor acre from her uncle. Oh, woman, woman, if you could but judge of the injury you have done!”
    â€œI shall have a quiet conscience, Miss Shedleigh, whatever happens,” I said; “but it will be quieter if you will but let me, who have been the means of bringing destruction near you—if you will but let me save you. I am afraid of Sir Nathaniel, he seems so merciless.”
    â€œFirst hear me,” she said. “Before you speak again you shall hear my excuse for my conduct—hear me, nor speak till I have finished. I know not by what terrible chance it has happened that you should learn a secret which I thought lay hidden in my sister’s grave and my heart. How you have pieced your information together I am unable to imagine, but since you know so much I would have you know the rest, and in learning it, believe that I am to be as much pitied as to be blamed.”
    I bowed, feeling rather that I was the poor lady’s prisoner than she in a measure mine.
    â€œYou know my brother’s wife brought a dead child into the world; you know that that child, being dead when born, in event of my sister-in-law’s death her property could not be enjoyed by her husband for life, simply because the child had not breathed. It was she who put it into my head first. My sister’s distress came upon us very suddenly, weeks before we expected, and no preparations had been made. When she learnt that she could not be a mother, news which she inferred rather than learnt, I believe the humiliation felt by her was so great that it led to her death, as certainly as that before she died she prayed Heaven to send her a child to comfort her