I had decided, somewhere in the small hours, that I would not become, in my triumph, anything like what she had been in her scheming.

I would not expose her to the family.

I would not drag her through a courtroom if it could be avoided.

Lawrence had kept her secret for forty years to spare her public shame, and I found that I wanted to honor that choice — not for her sake, she had forfeited any claim on my mercy, but for his, and for my own, because I did not want to carry vengeance around in me for whatever years I had left.

So I offered her the same silence Lawrence had, on the single condition that she take herself out of my life and stay out of it.”