Let all that great cloud of witnesses compass me about, lads and maidens, children and infants, whose bones cumber the churchyards yonder in Dunchester.

I defy them, for it is done and cannot be undone.

Yet, in their company are two whose eyes I dread to meet: Jane, my daughter, whose life was sacrificed through me, and Ernest Merchison, her lover, who went to seek her in the tomb.
They would not reproach me now, I know, for she was too sweet and loved me too well with all my faults, and, if he proved pitiless in the first torment of his loss, Merchison was a good and honest man, who, understanding my remorse and misery, forgave me before he died.

Still, I dread to meet them, who, if that old fable be true and they live, read me for what I am.

Yet why should I fear, for all this they knew before they died, and, knowing, could forgive?
Surely it is with another vengeance that I must reckon.
Well, after her mother's death my daughter was the only being whom I ever truly loved, and no future mental hell that the imagination can invent would have power to make me suffer more because of her than I have always suffered since the grave closed over her--the virgin martyr sacrificed on the altar of a false prophet and a coward.
I come of a family of doctors.