Thus it seems--that,
whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one
for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise
powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin,
had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and consummate the
ruin of another.
* * * * *
The state of Agnes, as to health and bodily strength, was now becoming
such that I was forcibly warned--whatsoever I meditated doing, to do
quickly. There was this urgent reason for alarm: once conveyed into
that region of the prison in which sentences like hers were executed,
it became hopeless that I could communicate with her again. All
intercourse whatsoever, and with whomsoever, was then placed under the
most rigorous interdict; and the alarming circumstance was, that this
transfer was governed by no settled rules, but might take place at any
hour, and would certainly be precipitated by the slightest violence on
my part, the slightest indiscretion, or the slightest argument for
suspicion. Hard indeed was the part I had to play, for it was
indispensable that I should appear calm and tranquil, in order to
disarm suspicions around me, whilst continually contemplating the
possibility that I myself might be summoned to extremities which I
could not so much as trust myself to name or distinctly to conceive.
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