“How did you arrive at your discovery?” I asked. “I know of nobody who could have helped you.”
“I helped myself, sir! I reasoned it out. A wonderful thing for a woman to do, isn’t it? I wonder whether you could follow the process?”
My reply to this was made by a bow. I was sure of my command over my face; but perfect control of the voice is a rare power. Here and there, a great actor or a great criminal possesses it.
Mrs. Tenbruggen’s vanity took me into her confidence. “In the first place,” she said, “Helena is plainly the wicked one of the two. I was not prejudiced by what Selina had told me of her: I saw it, and felt it, before I had been five minutes in her company. If lying tongues ever provoke her as lying tongues provoked her mother, she will follow her mother’s example. Very well. Now—in the second place—though it is very slight, there is a certain something in her hair and her complexion which reminds me of the murderess: there is no other resemblance, I admit. In the third place, the girls’ names point to the same conclusion. Mr. Gracedieu is a Protestant and a Dissenter. Would he call a child of his own by the name of a Roman Catholic saint? No! he would prefer a name in the Bible; Eunice is his child. And Helena was once the baby whom I carried into the prison. Do you deny that?”
“I don’t deny it.”
Only four words! But they were deceitfully spoken, and the deceit—practiced in Eunice’s interest, it is needless to say—succeeded. Mrs. Tenbruggen’s object in visiting me was attained; I had confirmed her belief in the delusion that Helena was the adopted child.
She got up to take her leave. I asked if she proposed remaining in London. No; she was returning to her country patients that night.
As I attended her to the house-door, she turned to me with her mischievous smile. “I have taken some trouble in finding the clew to the Minister’s mystery,” she said. “Don’t you wonder why?”
“If I did wonder,” I answered, “would you tell me why?”
She laughed at the bare idea of it. “Another lesson,” she said, “to assist a helpless man in studying the weaker sex. I have already shown you that a woman can reason. Learn next that a woman can keep a secret. Good-by. God bless you!”