"Yes; there the letter has been waiting for me in my box, to serve a purpose never thought of by the villain who wrote it. There is the Case, as he called it--only quoted to taunt me; utterly unlike my own case at the time--there it has been, waiting and lurking for me through all the changes in my life, till it has come to be like my case at last.
"It might startle any woman to see this, and even this is not the worst. The whole thing has been in my Diary, for days past, without my knowing it! Every idle fancy that escaped me has been tending secretly that one way! And I never saw, never suspected it, till the reading of the letter put my own thoughts before me in a new light--till I saw the shadow of my own circumstances suddenly reflected in one special circumstance of that other woman's case!
"It is to be done, if I can but look the necessity in the face. It is to be done, if I can count on Allan Armadale's death in a given time.
"All but his death is easy. The whole series of events under which I have been blindly chafing and fretting for more than a week past have been, one and all--though I was too stupid to see it--events in my favor; events paving the way smoothly and more smoothly straight to the end.
"In three bold steps--only three!--that end might be reached. Let Midwinter marry me privately, under his real name--step the first! Let Armadale leave Thorpe Ambrose a single man, and die in some distant place among strangers--step the second!
"Why am I hesitating? Why not go on to step the third, and last?
"I will go on. Step the third, and last, is my appearance, after the announcement of Armadale's death has reached this neighborhood, in the character of Armadale's widow, with my marriage certificate in my hand to prove my claim. It is as clear as the sun at noonday. Thanks to the exact similarity between the two names, and thanks to the careful manner in which the secret of that similarity has been kept, I may be the wife of the dark Allan Armadale, known as such to nobody but my husband and myself; and I may, out of that very position, claim the character of widow of the light Allan Armadale, with proof to support me (in the shape of my marriage certificate) which would be proof in the estimation of the most incredulous person living.
"To think of my having put all this in my Diary! To think of my having actually contemplated this very situation, and having seen nothing more in it, at the time, than a reason (if I married Midwinter) for consenting to appear in the world under my husband's assumed name!