Thus I escaped the horrors of the witness-box, or the far worse torture of a dreadful secret.

Doctor Bryerly, shortly after Lady Knollys had described to him the manner in which Dudley entered my room, visited the house of Bartram-Haugh, and minutely examined the windows of the room in which Mr. Charke had slept on the night of his murder.  One of these he found provided with powerful steel hinges, very craftily sunk and concealed in the timber of the window-frame, which was secured by an iron pin outside, and swung open on its removal.  This was the room in which they had placed me, and this the contrivance by means of which the room had been entered.  The problem of Mr. Charke’s murder was solved.

* * * * *

I have penned it.  I sit for a moment breathless.  My hands are cold and damp.  I rise with a great sigh, and look out on the sweet green landscape and pastoral hills, and see the flowers and birds and the waving boughs of glorious trees—­all images of liberty and safety; and as the tremendous nightmare of my youth melts into air, I lift my eyes in boundless gratitude to the God of all comfort, whose mighty hand and outstretched arm delivered me.  When I lower my eyes and unclasp my hands, my cheeks are wet with tears.  A tiny voice is calling me ‘Mamma!’ and a beloved smiling face, with his dear father’s silken brown tresses, peeps in.

‘Yes, darling, our walk.  Come away!’

I am Lady Ilbury, happy in the affection of a beloved and noblehearted husband.  The shy useless girl you have known is now a mother—­trying to be a good one; and this, the last pledge, has lived.

I am not going to tell of sorrows—­how brief has been my pride of early maternity, or how beloved were those whom the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.  But sometimes as, smiling on my little boy, the tears gather in my eyes, and he wonders, I can see, why they come, I am thinking—­and trembling while I smile—­to think, how strong is love, how frail is life; and rejoicing while I tremble that, in the deathless love of those who mourn, the Lord of Life, who never gave a pang in vain, conveys the sweet and ennobling promise of a compensation by eternal reunion.  So, through my sorrows, I have heard a voice from heaven say, ’Write, from hencefore blessed are the dead that die in the Lord!’

This world is a parable—­the habitation of symbols—­the phantoms of spiritual things immortal shown in material shape.  May the blessed second-sight be mine—­to recognise under these beautiful forms of earth the ANGELS who wear them; for I am sure we may walk with them if we will, and hear them speak!