'I made no reply, but walked silently by his side across the field to the little wicket. The confidence I had reposed in Mr. D'Arcy had been like the confidence a child reposes in its father.
'"Miss Wynne," he said, in a voice full of emotion, "I feel that an unlucky incident has come between us, and yet if I ever did anything for your good, it was when I decided to postpone revealing the fact that Sinfi Lovell was under this roof until her cure was so complete and decisive that you could never by any chance receive the shock that you have now received."
'I felt that my resentment was melting in the music of his words.
'"What caused the fits?" I said. "She talked about being under a curse. What can it mean?"
'"That," he said, "is too long a story for me to tell you now."
'"I know," said I, "that some time ago the tomb of Mr. Aylwin's father was violated by some undiscovered miscreant, and I know that the words Sinfi uttered just now are the words of a curse written by the dead man on a piece of parchment, and stolen with a jewel from his tomb. I have seen the parchment itself, and I know the words well. Her father, Panuel Lovell, is as innocent of the crime of sacrilege as my poor father was. What could have made her suppose that she had inherited the curse from her father?"
'"I have no explanation to offer," he said. "As you know so much of the matter and I know so little, I am inclined to ask you for some explanation of the puzzle."
'I thought over the matter for a minute, and then I said to him, "Sinfi Lovell knows Raxton as well as Snowdon, and must have been very familiar with the crime. I can only suppose that she has brooded so long over the enormity of the offence and the appalling words of the curse that she has actually come at last to believe that poor, simple-minded Panuel Lovell is the offender, and that she, as his child, has inherited the curse."
'"A most admirable solution of the mystery," he said, his face beaming with delight.'