The Dead Secret: A Novel

CHAPTER I.

THE TWENTY-THIRD OF AUGUST, 1829.

"Will she last out the night, I wonder?"

"Look at the clock, Mathew."

"Ten minutes past twelve! She HAS lasted the night out. She has lived, Robert, to see ten minutes of the new day."

These words were spoken in the kitchen of a large country-house situated on the west coast of Cornwal...