Explore "Helen Vardon's Confession" by R. Austin Freeman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE arrival of Dr. Thorndyke seemed to me to close the last avenue of escape. The coroner had guessed at my guilty secret, but he only offered his guess as a speculative possibility on which no decisive opinion could be founded. But Dr. Thorndyke was not a guesser. If he had penetrated to that secret he would offer no speculative probabilities, but definite evidence, which would reduce the matter to certainty.
It was a terrible thought. Self-accusation -- the denunciations of a guilty conscience -- had been dreadful enough. But there is a world of difference between self-accusation in secret and a public criminal indictment; between calling oneself a murderess, and standing in the dock to answer the charge.