As I pen these words I can realise your perplexity during your perusal of the record as to the manner in which my son Reginald came be associated with so strange a man as the writer. But this is a world of mystery, and we can never hope to find a key to its spiritual workings. With respect to this particular mystery nothing shall be hidden from you. You will learn how I came to be mixed up in it; you will learn how vitally interwoven it threatened to be in Reginald's life; you will learn how Gabriel Carew's manuscript fell into my hands; and the mystery of his life will be revealed to you.
Now, my dear Max, you can unfasten the packet, and read the record.
I assume that you are now familiar with the story of Gabriel Carew's life up to the point, or within a few months, of his marriage with Lauretta, and that you have formed some opinion of the different persons with whom he came in contact in Nerac. Outside Nerac there was only one person who can be said to have been interested in his fate; this was his mother's nurse, Mrs. Fortress, and you must be deeply impressed by the part she played in the youthful life of Gabriel Carew. Of her I shall have to speak in due course.
I transport you in fancy to Nerac, my dear Max, where I have been not very long ago, and where I conversed with old people who to this day remember Gabriel Carew and his sweet wife Lauretta, whom he brought with him to England some little time after their marriage. It is not likely that the incidents in connection with Gabriel Carew and his wife will be forgotten during this generation or the next in that loveliest of villages.
When you laid aside Carew's manuscript he had received the sanction of Lauretta's mother to his engagement with the sweet maid, and the good woman had given her children her blessing. Thereafter Gabriel Carew wrote: "These are my last written words in the record I have kept. From this day I commence a new life." He kept his word with respect to his resolve not to add another word to the record. He sealed it up and deposited it in his desk; and it is my belief that from that day he never read a line of its contents.
We are, then, my dear Max, in Nerac, you and I in spirit, in the holiday time of the open courtship of Gabriel Carew and Lauretta. Carew is occupying the house of which it was his intention to make Lauretta the mistress, and there are residing in it, besides the ordinary servants, Martin Hartog, the gardener, and his daughter, with whom, from Carew's record, Emilius was supposed to be carrying on an intrigue of a secret and discreditable nature. It is evident, from the manner in which Carew referred to it, that he considered it dishonourable. The name of this girl was Patricia.