The String of Pearls (1850), p. 72

and by the time she had concluded, tears of the most genuine sympathy stood in her eyes. She took the hands of Johanna in both her own, and said to her—
"Why, my poor Johanna, I never expected to hear from your lips so sad a tale. This is most mournful, indeed mournful; and, although I was half inclined before to quarrel with you for this tardy confidence—for you must recollect that it is the first I have heard of this whole affair—but now the misfortunes that oppress
you are quite sufficient, Heaven knows, without me adding to them by the shadow of a reproach."
"They are indeed, Arrabella, and believe me, if the course of my love ran smoothly, instead of being, as it has been, full of misadventures, you should have had nothing to complain of on the score of want of confidence; but I will own I did hesitate to inflict on you my miseries, for miseries they have been, and, alas! miseries they seem destined to remain."
"Johanna, you could not have used an argument more delusive than that. It is not one which should have come from your lips to me."
"But surely it was a good motive to spare you pain?"
"And did you think so lightly of my friendship that it was to be entrusted with nothing but what wore a pleasant aspect ? True friendship surely is best shown in the encounter of difficulty and distress. I grieve, Johanna, indeed, that you have so much mistaken me."
"Nay, now you do me an injustice : it was not that I doubted your friendship for one moment, but that I did indeed shrink from casting the shadow of my sorrows over what should be, and what I hope is, the sunshine of your heart. That was the respect which deterred me from making you a confidant of, what I suppose I must call, this ill-fated passion."
"No, not ill-fated, Johanna. Let us still believe that the time will come when it will be far otherwise than ill-fated."
"But what do you think of all that I have told you? Can you gather from it any hope?"
"Abundance of hope, Johanna, You have no certainty of the death of Ingestrie."
"I certainly have not, as far as regards the loss of him in the Indian seas; but, Arabella, there is one supposition which, from the first moment that it found a home in my breast, has been growing stronger and stronger, and that supposition is, that this Mr. Thornhill was no other than Mark Ingestrie himself."
"Indeed! Think you so? That would be a strange supposition. Have you any special reasons for such a thought ?"
"None—further than a something which seemed ever to tell my heart from the first moment that such was the case, and a consideration of the improbability of
the story related by Thornhill. Why should Mark Ingestrie have given him the string of pearls and the message to me, trusting to the preservation of this Thornhill, and assuming, for some strange reason, that he himself must fall?"
"There is good argument in that, Johanna."
"And, moreover, Mark Ingestrie told me he intended altering his name upon the expedition."
"It is strange; but now you mention such a supposition, it appears, do you know, Johanna, each moment more probable to me. Oh, that fatal string of pearls!"
"Fatal, indeed! for if Mark Ingestrie and Thornhill be one and the same person, the possession of those pearls has been the temptation to destroy him."
"There cannot be a doubt upon that point, Johanna, and so you will find in all tales of love and of romance, that jealousy and wealth have been the sources of all the abundant evils which fond and attached hearts have from time to time suffered."
"It is so; I believe, it is so, Arrabella; but advise me what to do, for truly I am myself incapable of action. Tell me what you think it is possible to do,