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I felt a secret dread as I listened to the revelations of the good and simple Thomas, for they but too well proved the determination of the artful and designing Figgins to follow up, if possible, the clue he believed he had discovered to some secret connected with my past life. How unfortunate that chance should have thrown so dangerous a man in my path, and especially, at a period above all others, when I was incapable of exercising over myself the constraint practised when free from fever. Alas! we are ever the slaves of chance when our own errors have plunged us into difficulties! Had I not a terrible secret pent up in my breast, I should have had nothing to dread from the prying disposition of Figgins, or the cupidity that led him to wish to turn it to profitable account. No, every day’s experience taught me that to myself, and myself alone, I might date my misery. Every event that had entailed disquiet, had originated in my own error. Nothing aggravates the sense of misfortune more than the consciousness that it has been brought on by our own faults – If we can blame another it seems some mitigation to our chagrin; but when / we know that we only have been in the wrong, our self-reproach increases our suffering.