I returned eagerly to the letter. Thus it was continued:
"That bit of torn paper I found under the bed, while I was secretly searching Mr. Toller's room. I had previously suspected You. From my own examination of his face, when he refused to humor my deafness by writing what I asked him to tell me, I suspected Mr. Toller next. You will see in the fragment, what I saw—that Toller the brother had a yacht, and was going to the Mediterranean; and that Toller the miller had written, asking him to favour Cristel's escape. The rest, Cristel herself can tell you.
"I know you had me followed. At Marseilles, I got tired of it, and gave your men the slip. At every port in the Mediterranean I inquired for the yacht, and heard nothing of her. They must have changed their minds on board, and gone somewhere else. I refer you to Cristel again.
"Arrived at Genoa, on my way back to England, I met with a skilled Italian surgeon. He declared that he could restore my hearing—but he warned me that I was in a weak state of health, and he refused to answer for the result of the operation. Without hesitating for a moment, I told him to operate. I would have given fifty lives for one exquisite week of perfect hearing. I have had three weeks of perfect hearing. Otherwise, I have had a life of enjoyment before I die.
"It is useless to ask your pardon. My conduct was too infamous for that. Will you remember the family taint, developed by a deaf man's isolation among his fellow-creatures? But I had some days when my mother's sweet nature tried to make itself felt in me, and did not wholly fail. I am going to my mother now: her spirit has been with me ever since my hearing was restored; her spirit said to me last night: "Atone, my son! Give the man whom you have wronged, the woman whom he loves." I had found out the uncle's address in England (which I now enclose) at one of the Yacht Clubs. I had intended to go to the house, and welcome her on her return. You must go instead of me; you will see that lovely face when I am in my grave. Good-bye, Roylake. The cold hand that touches us all, sooner or later, is very near to me. Be merciful to the next scoundrel you meet, for the sake of The Cur."
I say there was good in that suffering man; and I thank God I was not quite wrong about him after all. Arriving at Mr. Stephen Toller's country seat, by the earliest train that would take me there, I found a last trial of endurance in store for me. Cristel was away with her uncle, visiting some friends.
Cristel's aunt received me with kindness which I can never forget. "We have noticed lately that Cristel was in depressed spirits; no uncommon thing," Mrs. Stephen Toller continued, looking at me with a gentle smile, "since a parting which I know you must have felt deeply too. No, Mr. Roylake, she is not engaged to be married—and she will never be married, unless you forgive her. Ah, you forgive her because you love her! She thought of writing to tell you her motives, when she visited her father's grave on our return to England. But I was unable to obtain your address. Perhaps, I may speak for her now?"
I knew how Lady Rachel's interference had appealed to Cristel's sense of duty and sense of self-respect; I had heard from her own lips that she distrusted herself, if she allowed me to press her. But she had successfully concealed from me the terror with which she regarded her rejected lover, and the influence over her which her father had exercised. Always mindful of his own interests, the miller knew that he would be the person blamed if he allowed his daughter to marry me. "They will say I did it, with an eye to my son-in-law's money; and gentlefolks may ruin a man who lives by selling flour." That was how he expressed himself in a letter to his brother.
The whole of the correspondence was shown to me by Mrs. Stephen Toller.
After alluding to his wealthy brother's desire that he should retire from business, the miller continued as follows: