My hands shook as I opened it, for I saw that it was in Charlotte’s handwriting.

“How did you get this?” I demanded.

“It was in the library, mistress,” was the answer, “propped up against the books on one of the shelves.”

I opened it and read:

Dear Arabella,

I owe you an explanation. When I had set fire to the arbour I came into the house and watched from one of the windows. When I saw Young Jethro carry you out I knew that was the end for me. Do you remember when you came with Edwin and Harriet you hid in that secret cavity in the library? Few people knew about it. It has been kept like that for family emergencies. … I went and hid myself there. I took paper and pen there and I am writing this to you now. I hate anything to be unfinished. So I don’t just want to disappear. If I did it would create one of those mysteries about which people speculate and make up all sorts of legends.

You know how it has always been with me. I am the outsider … the disappointment. Even my parents couldn’t hide their exasperation with me sometimes. I never shone at parties. I remember hearing my mother say once, “How are we ever going to find a husband for Charlotte?” I was fifteen at the time. I was so desperately unhappy I decided to take my life. Cut my veins as the Romans die. So you see when you found me at the parapet there it was not the first time I had contemplated taking my life. It was a sort of balm to my anger. They’ll be sorry then, I would say, and would be comforted contemplating their sorrow. People who constantly threaten a suicide for the discomfiture of others rarely do it. But there can come a time when there is no turning back.

I’m giving myself the luxury of writing to you now and I must resist the temptation to go on and on. I have to be brief.

I thought I was going to marry Charles Condey but Harriet spoilt that. If I had married him I might have settled down and become an ordinary wife—not very exciting, of course, but then Charles was not exciting. He was the one for me. How I hated her. I could have killed her. When I found out Edwin was her lover I was comforted in a way. I had not been the only one who had suffered. It shows you my nature, which is not at all admirable, I fear.

Then we came home and when I saw Carleton I admired him so much. He seemed to be in command of his life as I never could be. He is the sort of person I should have liked to be. My parents were always saying what a pity it was he was married to Barbary, and when she died I heard them say, “Now if Carleton married Charlotte, what a marvellous solution that would be.” I don’t think I should have thought of it as a possibility but for that. Then I started to think about it. Why not? It would be convenient. Married to Carleton. I thought that would be wonderful. I almost loved Harriet for preventing my marriage to Charles Condey.

Then you married Carleton so suddenly and unexpectedly because you’d always seemed to dislike each other. I hadn’t thought of you as a rival. It wasn’t that I hated you. I could never do that. I just hated life and fate or whatever you call it which had been against me from the start. I watched Harriet. I saw how she used people and I said to myself, why shouldn’t I use people too? Of course I know she is very handsome and amusing and people are attracted by her, but if you have none of these gifts you can be subtle and clever and work in the dark. So that was what I did. I thought that if you died Carleton would be so distressed he would turn to me. I believe my mother would have done everything she could to bring about a marriage between us. I knew how Carleton felt about you. I’d seen him watching you. I know him well. I know all people well. When you don’t have much life of your own, you watch other people … you live other people’s lives. The sound of his voice when he spoke of you … the look in his eyes. I knew that if you died he would not care very much, and if it was convenient, which it would have been, and if there was a little gentle persuasion from the family … someone to look after the children … it could well be. That was what I worked for. As for Harriet, he disliked her. I don’t know what it is about people like those two. They are both experienced with the other sex … both very attractive to people … and yet with each other there is an instant dislike. He hated Harriet being in this house. He hated her influence with you. I knew that he would never marry her—nor she, him, unless it was to get control of Eversleigh. And that was Edwin’s. She was proud to have her Benjie next in line, but she was leaving that to fate. She would never hurt Edwin. All she wanted was a place of comfort. That was what she had worked for all her life.

So it was you I wanted out of the way. I wanted Carleton. He saw how I liked the children. He once said to me: “You should have had children, Cousin Charlotte.” That seemed to me a signpost. I started to plan. I knew how things were between you. I understood you both well. He was angry because he thought you cared for Edwin as you never could for him, and you couldn’t forget how Edwin had deceived you and you thought Carleton was doing the same. You were both of you pouring poison into the marriage cup. You deserved to lose each other.

I used to dream of the years ahead, Carleton and I married, children of our own. That was what I wanted. Then I would be able to forget everything that led up to it. I’m telling you this because I hate loose ends. I want you to understand why I did what I did. I don’t want you to say: “Oh, Charlotte was mad.” Charlotte was not mad. Charlotte was clever. She knew what she wanted and she was only trying to get it. But things went wrong. I shot at you from the bushes, but you moved at the wrong moment and you were only wounded in the arm and that put you on guard which was not helpful to me.

Then I decided that I must act quickly because you were going to be very watchful after the shooting. I put the wax dolls in the arbour. I was going to make Sally suspicious of Harriet. I was going to make it believed that she was a witch. After all, people were only too ready to accept that. They would say it was witchcraft which made you lose the child … though I had no hand in that. Of course it wasn’t witchcraft that wounded you. But it could be said that the Devil guided Leigh’s hand. That was what people were saying. Then I thought of the arbour. That would have worked but for Young Jethro. Who could have believed that a mad man could have spoilt all my plans?

It’s over for me now. I am caught. What can I do? I have to put into practice what I had often thought of doing and failed to do before. This time there is no turning back.

As soon as it is dark I am going to creep out of this house. I shall walk to the sea. Look in the cave … you remember the cave? You hid there while you waited for horses to bring you to the house. There you will find my cloak … high on a rock where the tide cannot reach it. I shall have disappeared from you life forever. I am going to walk into the sea … and walk, and walk …

Good-bye, Arabella. You can be happy now. Learn to understand Carleton, as he will learn to understand you. Charlotte.

We found her cloak where she had said it would be. We went to the hidden cavity behind the library books. There she had left paper and pen, so we knew it was all as she had said.

Poor Charlotte, I think of her often. Where the arbour was we have made a flower garden. The roses flourish there, and we have cleared away the charred bracken and it has become part of the garden. No one says it’s haunted now. Few remember that once an arbour stood there.

Harriet left us only a few weeks after Charlotte’s death.

The elder brother of Gregory Stevens was killed when his horse threw him and Gregory inherited lands and title. Harriet married him. They had long been lovers. They went, taking Benjie with them. Harriet told me that he was Gregory’s son.

I see them about twice a year. Harriet has lost her slim and willowy figure. She is in truth a little plump but I don’t think that detracts from her charm. She still retains that, and now that she is contented with life, having achieved her goal, seems to live very happily.

And I too. Carleton and I have our son, Carl. It is a good life. Not without its conflicts, of course. We rage against each other now and then, but our love deepens as time passes and we know that we belong to each other and nothing can alter that.

This morning I was at the arbour cutting roses to fill my basket, and I realized suddenly that I saw only the beautiful flowers now.

I had learned to bury the past, and when I did remember it, to see it as an experience which would show me the way to preserve the contentment which life was offering me.

I said something of this to Carleton. He was inclined to be flippant—but then he often is, I have discovered, when he is most serious.

I am content. Life is good. It is for us to keep it so.