CHAPTER XXXIX. THE ADOPTED CHILD
CHAPTER XL. THE BRUISED HEART.
CHAPTER XLI. THE WHISPERING VOICE.
CHAPTER XLII. THE QUAINT PHILOSOPHER.
CHAPTER XLIII. THE MASTERFUL MASSEUSE.
CHAPTER XLIV. THE RESURRECTION OF THE PAST.
CHAPTER XLV. THE FATAL PORTRAIT.
I knocked at the bedroom door.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE CUMBERSOME LADIES.
CHAPTER XLVII. THE JOURNEY TO THE FARM.
CHAPTER XLVIII. THE DECISION OF EUNICE.
CHAPTER XLIX. THE GOVERNOR ON HIS GUARD.
CHAPTER L. THE NEWS FROM THE FARM.
CHAPTER LI. THE TRIUMPH OF MRS. TENBRUGGEN.
Third period: 1876. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.
CHAPTER LII. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.
CHAPTER LIII. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.
CHAPTER LIV. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.
CHAPTER LV. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.
I did think of it. Philip came to us, and lived in our house.
CHAPTER LVI. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.
CHAPTER LVII. HELENA’S DIARY RESUMED.
CHAPTER LXII. THE SENTENCE PRONOUNCED.
CHAPTER LXIII. THE OBSTACLE REMOVED.
CHAPTER LXIV. THE TRUTH TRIUMPHANT.
First Period: 1858–1859. EVENTS IN THE PRISON, RELATED BY THE GOVERNOR.
CHAPTER I. THE GOVERNOR EXPLAINS.
At the request of a person who has claims on me that I must not disown, I consent to look back through a long interval of years and to describe events which took place within the walls of an English prison during the earlier period of my appointment as Governor.
Viewing my task by the light which later experience casts on it, I think I shall act wisely by exercising some control over the freedom of my pen.
I propose to pass over in silence the name of the town in which is situated the prison once confided to my care. I shall observe a similar discretion in alluding to individuals—some dead, some living, at the present time.
Being obliged to write of a woman who deservedly suffered the extreme penalty of the law, I think she will be sufficiently identified if I call her The Prisoner. Of the four persons present on the evening before her execution three may be distinguished one from the other by allusion to their vocations in life. I here introduce them as The Chaplain, The Minister, and The Doctor. The fourth was a young woman. She has no claim on my consideration; and, when she is mentioned, her name may appear. If these reserves excite suspicion, I declare beforehand that they influence in no way the sense of responsibility which commands an honest man to speak the truth.
CHAPTER II. THE MURDERESS ASKS QUESTIONS.
The first of the events which I must now relate was the conviction of The Prisoner for the murder of her husband.
They had lived together in matrimony for little more than two years. The husband, a gentleman by birth and education, had mortally offended his relations in marrying a woman of an inferior rank of life. He was fast declining into a state of poverty, through his own reckless extravagance, at the time when he met with his death at his wife’s hand.
Without attempting to excuse him, he
