I see it all
     now. You can never forgive me. It is I who have brought all this
     misery upon you. I am a wretched woman. Do not reproach me--I
     reproach myself more bitterly than anything you could say would
     ever reproach me. But don't forgive me and pity me either. If you
     forgive me I shall have to kill myself. It's all over now. I will
     do the only thing that remains for me--keep out of your way and his
     for ever. Poor Wetherby is going to take me for the summer to
     Norway, as I telegraphed to you. We are just starting. When we
     return we shall winter in Italy. I will leave London in future
     altogether. Nobody but our three selves need ever know or suspect
     the reason. Harry will recover, and you two will be happy yet. But
     I--I shall be as miserable for ever, as I truly deserve to be. "Your wretched friend,
  "D. F."

Harry crumpled up the letter bitterly in his hand. "Poor soul," he said. "Louie, I forgive her. Can I myself ever hope for forgiveness?" Louie flung herself fiercely upon him. "My darling," she cried, "we will
always trust one another in future. You couldn't help it, Harry. It was
impossible for you to have judged otherwise. But oh, my darling, what I
have suffered! Let us forgive her. Harry, and let us love one another
better now." _THE SEARCH PARTY'S FIND._


I can stand it no longer. I must put down my confession on paper, since
there is no living creature left to whom I can confess it. The snow is drifting fiercer than ever to-day against the cabin; the
last biscuit is almost finished; my fingers are so pinched with cold I
can hardly grasp the pen to write with. But I _will_ write, I must
write, and I am writing. I cannot die with the dreadful story
unconfessed upon my conscience. It was only an accident, most of you who read this confession perhaps
will say; but in my own heart I know better than that--I know it was a
murder, a wicked murder. Still, though my hands are very numb, and my head swimming wildly with
delirium, I will try to be coherent, and to tell my story clearly and
collectedly. *       *       *       *       *

I was appointed surgeon of the _Cotopaxi_ in June, 1880. I had reasons
of my own--sad reasons--for wishing to join an Arctic expedition. I
didn't join it, as most of the other men did, from pure love of danger
and adventure. I am not a man to care for that sort of thing on its own
account. I joined it because of a terrible disappointment. For two years I had been engaged to Dora--I needn't call her anything
but Dora; my brother, to whom I wish this paper sent, but whom I
daren't address as "Dear Arthur"--how could I, a murderer?--will know
well enough who I mean; and as to other people, it isn't needful they
should know anything about it. But whoever you are, whoever finds this
paper, I beg of you, I implore you, I adjure you, do not tell a word of
it to Dora. I cannot die unconfessed, but I cannot let the confession
reach _her_; if it does, I know the double shock will kill her. Keep it
from her. Tell her only he is dead--dead at his post, like a brave man,
on the _Cotopaxi_ exploring expedition. For mercy's sake don't tell her
that he was murdered, and that I murdered him. I had been engaged, I said, two years to Dora. She lived in Arthur's
parish, and I loved her--yes, in those days I loved her purely,
devotedly, innocently. I was innocent then myself, and I really believe
good and well-meaning. I should have been genuinely horrified and
indignant if anybody had ventured to say that I should end by committing
a murder. It was a great grief to me when I had to leave Arthur's parish, and my
father's parish before him, to go up to London and take a post as
surgeon to a small hospital. I couldn't bear being so far away from
Dora. And at first Dora wrote to me almost every day with the greatest
affection. (Heaven forgive me, if I still venture to call her Dora! her,
so good and pure and beautiful, and I, a murderer.) But, after a while,
I noticed slowly that Dora's tone seemed to grow colder and colder, and
her letters less and less frequent. Why she should have begun to cease
loving me, I cannot imagine; perhaps she had a premonition of what
possibility of wickedness was really in me. At any rate, her coldness
grew at last so marked that I wrote and asked Arthur whether he could
explain it. Arthur answered me, a little regretfully, and with brotherly
affection (he is a good fellow, Arthur), that he thought he could. He
feared--it was painful to say so--but he feared Dora was beginning to
love a newer lover. A young man had lately come to the village of whom
she had seen a great deal, and who was very handsome and brave and
fascinating. Arthur was afraid he could not conceal from me his
impression that Dora and the stranger were very much taken with one
another. At last, one morning, a letter came to me from Dora. I can put it in
here, because I carried it away with me when I went to Hammerfest to
join the _Cotopaxi_, and ever since I have kept it sadly in my private
pocket-book. "Dear Ernest" (she had always called me Ernest since we had been
     children together, and she couldn't leave it off even now when she
     was writing to let me know she no longer loved me), "Can you
     forgive me for what I am going to tell you? I thought I loved you
     till lately; but then I had never discovered what love really
     meant. I have discovered it now, and I find that, after all, I only
     liked you very sincerely. You will have guessed before this that I
     love somebody else, who loves me in return with all the strength of
     his whole nature. I have made a grievous mistake, which I know will
     render you terribly unhappy. But it is better so than to marry a
     man whom I do not really love with all my heart and soul and
     affection; better in the end, I am sure, for both of us. I am too
     much ashamed of myself to write more to you. Can you forgive me? "Yours,
  "DORA." I could not forgive her then, though I loved her too much to be angry; I
was only broken-hearted--thoroughly stunned and broken-hearted. I can
forgive her now, but she can never forgive me, Heaven help me! I only wanted to get away, anywhere, anywhere, and forget all about it
in a life of danger. So I asked for the post of surgeon to Sir Paxton
Bateman's _Cotopaxi_ expedition a few weeks afterwards. They wanted a
man who knew something about natural history and deep-sea dredging, and
they took me on at once, on the recommendation of a well-known man of
science! The very day I joined the ship at Hammerfest, in August, I noticed
immediately there was one man on board whose mere face and bearing and
manner were at first sight excessively objectionable to me. He was a
handsome young fellow enough--one Harry Lemarchant, who had been a
planter in Queensland, and who, after being burned up with three years
of tropical sunshine was anxious to cool himself apparently by a long
winter of Arctic gloom.