“If you have trusted Sir Frank Tarleton I can do the same,” the elder woman said at last. “I have more to tell him than he knows. He thinks that I only found those letters in the cupboard after my husband’s death. I have been reading every one of them for more than a year.”
If the consultant had not quite expected to hear this he had been expecting something more than he thought it wise to indicate just then. He let no sign of his thoughts appear outwardly. The two women, exhausted by the tempest of emotion they had passed through, sat down side by side; but they kept their eyes averted from one another, and only raised them from time to time to watch the effect of Mrs. Weathered’s narrative on him.
“You mustn’t think that I am an inquisitive woman, Sir Frank. I didn’t discover my husband’s secrets by prying. I never knew the existence of the cupboard or the letters till one of the women who had been led into writing to him came to me.”
This was news to the doctor. He pricked up his ears for the name.
“She was a Miss Sebright—Miss Julia Sebright.”
“Ah! She is dead.” Tarleton thought it sound policy to show that he was able to check the statements made to him.
“Yes. She died soon afterwards, of a broken heart, I think. She came to me in despair and appealed to me as Dr. Weathered’s wife to protect her from him.”
Sir Frank got up, walked to the window, opened it and waved his hand. The gendarme outside saluted respectfully and marched away.
CHAPTER XIX
THE MEANS TO DO ILL DEEDS
The pale, weak woman had suddenly been transformed in Tarleton’s eyes into a heroine. He saw in her someone greater than himself. He was the official, salaried guardian of society, called upon to run no risks that a brave man ought to fear. But this forlorn woman, without a friend in whom she could confide, without support from public opinion or from the law, had taken into her trembling hands the task of delivering her sister women from a wretch whom neither opinion nor the law could reach.