Then he became as communicative as we could
desire and indeed gave us his best reason for being so.
We had it from him again before the fire in the hall,
as we had had our mild wonders of the previous night.
It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read us really
required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue.
Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it,
that this narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made
much later, is what I shall presently give. Poor Douglas,
before his death--when it was in sight--committed to me
the manuscript that reached him on the third of these days
and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began
to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth.
The departing ladies who had said they would stay didn't,
of course, thank heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence
of arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as they professed,
produced by the touches with which he had already worked us up.
But that only made his little final auditory more compact and select,
kept it, round the hearth, subject to a common thrill.
The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement
took up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun.
The fact to be in possession of was therefore that his old friend,
the youngest of several daughters of a poor country parson,
had, at the age of twenty, on taking service for the first time
in the schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation, to answer
in person an advertisement that had already placed her in brief
correspondence with the advertiser.
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