And he produced the greasy pocket-book which he had used as a score-book in Bushey Park.
"Will you give me your word to return it instantly?"
The page of writing that was now put into Harry's trembling hands is printed underneath the genuine beginning of his father's letter, and above the forgery.
"Half frantic with remorse, degradation, sorrow, and shame, I sit down to write you the last letter you may ever receive from your unhappy husband.
"When I said good-bye to you this morning I could not tell you that it might be good-bye for ever. I told you I was going up to town on business. How could I tell you that the business was to take my passage for the Continent? Yet it was nothing else, and I write this midway between Newhaven and Dieppe, where I shall post it.
"My wife, I could not bear to give back the ten thousand pounds that was only half enough to save us. I am going where I hope to
double it in a night. A man is going with me who has an infallible system; also another man who swears by the first man, and whom I myself can trust. I know that it is a mad as well as a wicked thing to do. I am going to gamble with other men's money--to play for my home and for my life. Yes; if I lose, my end will be the end of many another dishonest fool at Monte Carlo. You will never see me again.
"I am altogether beside myself. I am not mad, but I am near to madness. I do not think I should have done such a wild thing in my sane senses--and yet these men are so sure! Forgive me whether I win or lose, whether I live or die, and let our boy profit by my example and my end. I can say no more. My brain is on fire. I may or may not post this. But I was obliged to tell you. God bless you! God bless you!
"be forgotten altogether, going with other men's money! I know that it is a mad as well as a wicked thing to do. I do not think I should have done such a wild thing in my sane senses, but I am altogether beside myself. I am not mad, but I am near to madness.
"Good-bye for ever. You will never see me again. Forgive me whether I live or die; and let our boy profit by my example and my end. I can say no more. My brain is on fire. God bless you! God bless you!
The devilish ingenuity of the fraud was not lost upon the reader. Hardly a word, hardly a phrase was used in the forgery for which there was not a definite model in the original, and the imitation was no less miraculous as a whole than when taken word by word. The very incoherence of the letter was one of its most convincing features; the way in which it began by saying it might be "good-bye for ever," and ended by confessing that it was, was just the way a maddened man might choose for breaking the news of his terrible intention.