The more fearful he
appeared to her excited memory and imagination, the more alarming
her responsibility appeared; seeing that a slight mistake on her
part, either in action or delay, might let his malevolence loose on
Helena's brother.
Rosa's mind throughout the last six months had been stormily
confused. A half-formed, wholly unexpressed suspicion tossed in
it, now heaving itself up, and now sinking into the deep; now
gaining palpability, and now losing it. Jasper's self-absorption
in his nephew when he was alive, and his unceasing pursuit of the
inquiry how he came by his death, if he were dead, were themes so
rife in the place, that no one appeared able to suspect the
possibility of foul play at his hands. She had asked herself the
question, 'Am I so wicked in my thoughts as to conceive a
wickedness that others cannot imagine?' Then she had considered,
Did the suspicion come of her previous recoiling from him before
the fact? And if so, was not that a proof of its baselessness?
Then she had reflected, 'What motive could he have, according to my
accusation?' She was ashamed to answer in her mind, 'The motive of
gaining ME!' And covered her face, as if the lightest shadow of
the idea of founding murder on such an idle vanity were a crime
almost as great.
She ran over in her mind again, all that he had said by the sun-
dial in the garden. He had persisted in treating the disappearance
as murder, consistently with his whole public course since the
finding of the watch and shirt-pin.
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