"I don't know; they haunt me."

"They haunted me; that was why, early one morning, suddenly, I
couldn't keep my hands off them. I had told you I wouldn't touch
them. I had deferred to your whim, your superstition (what is it?)
but at last they got the better of me. I had lain awake all night
threshing about, itching with curiosity. It made me ill; my own
nerves (as I may say) were irritated, my capacity to work was gone.
It had come over me in the small hours in the shape of an obsession,
a fixed idea, that there was nothing in the ridiculous relics and
that my exaggerated scruples were making a fool of me. It was ten to
one they were rubbish, they were vain, they were empty; that they had
been even a practical joke on the part of some weak-minded gentleman
of leisure, the former possessor of the confounded davenport. The
longer I hovered about them with such precautions the longer I was
taken in, and the sooner I exposed their insignificance the sooner I
should get back to my usual occupations. This conviction made my
hand so uncontrollable that that morning before breakfast I broke one
of the seals. It took me but a few minutes to perceive that the
contents were not rubbish; the little bundle contained old letters--
very curious old letters."

"I know--I know; 'private and confidential.' So you broke the other
seals?" Mrs. Ryves looked at him with the strange apprehension he
had seen in her eyes when she appeared at his door the moment after
his discovery.

"You know, of course, because I told you an hour later, though you
would let me tell you very little."