the fact that my fears are so vague, and my suspicions depend so
entirely upon small points, which might seem trivial to another, that
even he to whom of all others I have a right to look for help and
advice looks upon all that I tell him about it as the fancies of a
nervous woman. He does not say so, but I can read it from his soothing
answers and averted eyes. But I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can
see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart. You may
advise me how to walk amid the dangers which encompass me.
I am all attention, madam.
My name is Helen Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who is
the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in England, the
Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of Surrey.
Holmes nodded his head. The name is familiar to me, said he.
The family was at one time among the richest in England, and the
estates extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, and
Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however, four successive
heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin
was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency.
Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, and the
two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy
mortgage. The last squire dragged out his existence there, living the
horrible life of an aristocratic pauper; but his only son, my
stepfather, seeing that he must adapt himself to the new conditions,
obtained an advance from a relative, which enabled him to take a
medical degree and went out to Calcutta, where, by his professional
skill and his force of character, he established a large practice. In a
fit of anger, however, caused by some robberies which had been
perpetrated in the house, he beat his native butler to death and
narrowly escaped a capital sentence. As it was, he suffered a long term
of imprisonment and afterwards returned to England a morose and
disappointed man.
When Dr. Roylott was in India he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner, the
young widow of Major-General Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery. My sister
Julia and I were twins, and we were only two years old at the time of
my mother s re-marriage. She had a considerable sum of money not less
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