fainted, but she recovered enough to gasp:
"Is there no such thing as a gentleman?"
I explained that Sir Charles did try to burn the letter as she had
requested, but this passage had remained legible. At last she admitted
that she had written the note, that she had no reason to be ashamed,
that she had that day only just learned of his imminent visit to London
and believed that if she could meet him she could gain his help. But
a woman could not go alone to a bachelor's house at that late hour,
and so she had had to rendezvous in the garden. When I asked what
happened when she went to Baskerville Hall, she replied:
"I never went. I swear it on all I hold sacred. A private matter
intervened to prevent me going."
She would not tell me what it was at first, until I repeated that she
