It was a very long
conversation--it was fully three o'clock before Miriam departed--but it
held me spell-bound with its interest from beginning to end. Once I was
nearly caught--I sneezed. I vanished behind a big cabinet, and just
saved myself, for they opened the door. Mollie set it down to the wind,
or the rats, closed the door again, and my curiosity overcoming my fear
of detection, I crept back and heard every word."
"Well?" again said the doctor.
"Well, Mollie made a clean breast of it. On her wedding-night she was
enticed from the house by a letter purporting to come from this Miriam.
The letter told her that Miriam was dying, and that she wished to make a
revelation of her parentage to Mollie, before she departed for a worse
land. It seems she knows Miss Dane's antecedents, and Miss Dane doesn't.
Mollie went at once, as the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh did, and, like
him, was blindfolded and bound, borne away to some unknown house, nobody
knows where, waited on by the girl who carried the letter, and held a
fast prisoner by a man in a black mask.
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