Then he began with a regular history of my early life, which came back to me as fast as he spoke, scene by scene and year by year, in long and familiar succession.  I remembered everything, sometimes only when he suggested it; but sometimes also, before he said the words, my memory outran his tongue, and I put in a recollection or two with my own tongue as they recurred to me under the stimulus of this new birth of my dead nature.  I recalled my early days in the far bush in Australia; my journey home to England on the big steamer with mamma; the way we travelled about for years from place to place on the Continent.  I remembered how I had been strictly enjoined, too, never to speak of baby; and how my father used to watch my mother just as closely as he watched me, always afraid, as it appeared to me, she should make some verbal slip or let out some great secret in an unguarded moment.  He seemed relieved, I recollected now, when my poor mother died:  he grew less strict with me then, but as far as I could judge, though he was careful of my health, he never really loved me.

Then Jack reminded me further of other scenes that came much later in my forgotten life.  He reminded me of my trip to Torquay, where I first met him:  and all at once the whole history of my old visits to the Moores came back like a flood to me.  The memory seemed to inundate and overwhelm my brain.  They were the happiest time of all life, those delightful visits, when I met Jack and fell in love with him, and half confided my love to my Cousin Minnie.  Strange to say, though at Torquay itself I’d forgotten it all, in that little Canadian house, with Jack by my side to recall it, it rushed back like a wave upon me.  I’d fallen in love with Jack without my father’s knowledge or consent; and I knew very well my father would never allow me to marry him.  He had ideas of his own, my father, about the sort of person I ought to marry:  and I half suspected in my heart of hearts he meant if possible always to keep me at home single to take care of him and look after him.  I didn’t know, as yet, he had sufficient reasons of his own for desiring me to remain for ever unmarried.

I remembered, too, that I never really loved my father.  His nature was hard, cold, reserved, unsympathetic.  I only feared and obeyed him.  At times, my own strong character came out, I remembered, and I defied him to his face, defied him openly.  Then there were scenes in the house, dreadful scenes, too hateful to dwell upon:  and the servants came up to my room at the end and comforted me.

So, step by step, Jack reminded me of everything in my own past life, up to the very night of the murder, from which my Second State dated.  I’d come back from Torquay a week or two before, very full indeed of Jack, and determined at all costs, sooner or later, to marry him.  But though I had kept all quiet, papa had suspected my liking on the day of the Berry Pomeroy athletics, and had forbidden me to see Jack, or to write to him, or to have anything further to say to him.  He was determined, he told me, whoever I married, I shouldn’t at least marry a beggarly doctor.  All that I remembered; and also how, in spite of the prohibition, I wrote letters to Jack, but could receive none in return—­lest my father should see them.