The dying baronet had impressed upon
his wife the necessity of following my guidance in all things.
Undoubtedly he died hoping that Lady Coverly might live out her days
in ignorance of the grim secret of the Bell House. This dying wish of
his was gratified. The loss of her son, so closely followed by that of
her husband, prostrated Lady Coverly in a mental illness from which
she never recovered, although I exercised all my skill in an endeavor
to restore her reason. She spent the remainder of her days in a
semi-comatose state which so closely resembled death that to this
present moment I do not know the exact hour at which dissolution took
place.
In the man Hawkins, once a game-keeper of Sir Burnham's, I found an
instrument ready to my hand. I closed the Park to the public and took
all those precautions for preserving my secret which prudence
dictated: this at the cost of a reputation in Upper Crossleys which
few men would have survived, but which troubled me not at all, since
it left me undisturbed to those studies which to me were everything.
The death of Sir Burnham, however, had raised a new danger; for in the
person of Sir Marcus Coverly, the heir, I perceived a formidable
enemy, who because of his wealth might redeem Friar's Park, and,
because of the fact that he belonged to a cadet line, might care
nothing for the skeleton in Sir Burnham's cupboard.
I have said that science is callous, and I admit that it needed little
prompting from Nahemah to urge me to take the next step.
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