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Wilkie Collins's "The Woman in White": electronic edition

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1779

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25 Jan 1993



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Transcribed from the 1974 reprint of the 1860 first edition
Originally transcibed and deposited by Lynne Bicker, University
of Kent, UK. Tagged in TEI compatible format at the Oxford Text Archive
by Jeffrey Triggs.


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Jan 93



THE WOMAN IN WHlTE
by
Wilkie Collins

PREAMBLE

THIS is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and  what a
Man's resolution can achieve.

If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom  every case
of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry,  with moderate
assistance only from the lubricating influences of  oil of gold, the
events which fill these pages might have claimed  their share of the
public attention in a Court of Justice.

But the Law is still, in certain inevitable cases, the pre-engaged
servant of the long purse; and the story is left to be told, for the
first time, in this place. As the Judge might once have heard it, so
the Reader shall hear it now. No circumstance of importance,  from the
beginning to the end of the disclosure, shall be related  on hearsay
evidence. When the writer of these introductory hnes  (Walter Hartright
by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the
incidents to be recorded, he will be  the narrator. When not, he will
retire from the position of  narrator; and his task will be continued,
from the point at which  he has left it off, by other persons who can
speak to the circumstances under notice from their own knowledge, just
as clearly  and positively as he has spoken before them.

Thus, the story here presented will be told by more than one  pen, as
the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by  more than
one witness –; with the same object in both cases, to  present the truth
always in its most direct and most intelligible  aspect; and to trace
the course of one complete series of events,  by making the persons who
have been most closely connected  with them, at each successive stage,
relate their own experience,  word for word.

Let Walter Hartright, teacher of drawing, aged twenty-eight  years, be
heard first.






THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT (of Clement's inn, Teacher of
Drawing)

It was the last day of July. The long hot summer was drawing to  a
close; and we, the weary pilgrims of the London pavement, were
beginning to think of the cloud-shadows on the corn-fields, and  the
autumn breezes on the sea-shore.

For my own poor part, the fading summer left me out of  health, out of
spirits, and, if the truth must be told, out of money  as well. During
the past year I had not managed my professional  resources as carefully
as usual; and my extravagance now limited  me to the prospect of
spending the autumn economically between  my mother's cottage at
Hampstead and my own chambers in town.

The evening, I remember, was still and cloudy; the London air  was at
its heaviest; the distant hum of the street-traffic was at its
faintest; the small pulse of the life within me, and the great  heart of
the city around me, seemed to be sinking in unison,  languidly and niore
languidly, with the sinking sun. I roused myself from the book which I
was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the
cool night air in the suburbs. lt was one of the two evenings in every
week Which I was  accustomed to spend with my mother and my sister. So I
turned  my steps northward in the direction of Hampstead.

Events which I have yet to relate make it necessary to mention  in this
place that my father had been dead some years at the  period of which I
am now writing; and that my sister Sarah and  I were the sole survivors
of a family of five children. My father  was a drawing-master before me.
His exertions had made him  highly successful in his profession; and his
affectionate anxiety  to provide for the future of those who were
dependent on his  labours had impelled him, from the time of his
marriage, to devote  to the insuring of his life a much larger portion
of his income  than most men consider it necessary to set aside for that
purpose.  Thanks to his admirable prudence and self-denial my mother and
sister were left, after his death, as independent of the world as  they
had been during his lifetime. I succeeded to his connection,  and had
every reason to feel grateful for the prospect that  awaited me at my
starting in life.

The quiet twilight was still trembling on the topmost ridges  of the
heath; and the view of London below me had sunk into a  black gulf in
the shadow of the cloudy night, when I stood before  the gate of my
mother's cottage. I had hardly rung the bell before  the house door was
opened violently; my worthy Italian friend,  Professor Pesca, appeared
in the servant's place; and darted out  joyously to receive me, with a
shrill foreign parody on an English  cheer.

On his own account, and, I must be allowed to add, on mine  also, the
Professor merits the honour of a formal introduction.  Accident has made
him the starting-point of the strange family  story which it is the
purpose of these pages to unfold.

I had first become acquainted with my Italian friend by meeting him at
certain great houses where he taught his own language and I taught
drawing. All I then knew of the history of his  life was, that he had
once held a situation in the University of  Padua; that he had left
Italy for political reasons (the nature of  which he uniformly declined
to mention to any one); and that  he had been for many years respectably
established in London as  a teacher of languages.

Without being actually a dwarf –; for he was perfectly well
proportioned from head to foot –; Pesca was, I think, the smallest
human being I ever saw out of a show-room. Remarkable anywhere, by his
personal appearance, he was still further distinguished among the rank
and file of mankind by the harmless  eccentricity of his character. The
ruling idea of his life appeared  to be, that he was bound to show his
gratitude to the country  which had afforded him an asylum and a means
of subsistence  by doing his utmost to turn himself into an Englishman.
Not  content with paying the nation in general the compliment of
invariably carrying an umbrella, and invariably wearing gaiters  and a
white hat, the Professor further aspired to become an Englishman in his
habits and amusements, as well as in his personal  appearance. Finding
us distinguished, as a nation, by our love of  athletic exercises, the
little man, in the innocence of his heart,  devoted himself impromptu to
all our English sports and pastimes  whenever he had the opportunity of
joining them; firmly persuaded that he could adopt our national
ainusements of the field by  an effort of will precisely as he had
adopted our national gaiters  and our national white hat.

I had seen him risk his limbs blindly at a fox-hunt and in a
cricket-field; and soon afterwards I saw him risk his life, just as
blindly, in the sea at Brighton.

We had met there accidentally, and were bathing together. If  we had
been engaged in any exercise peculiar to my own nation  l should, of
course, have looked after Pesca carefully; but as  foreigners are
generally quite as well able to take care of themselves in the water as
Englishmen, it never occurred to me that  the art of swimming might
merely add one more to the list of  manly exercises which the professor
believed that he could learn  impromptu.  Soon after we had both struck
out from shore, l  stopped, finding my friend did not gain on me, and
turned round  to look for him. To my horror and amazement, I saw nothing
between me and the beach but two little white arms which struggled for
an instant above the surface of the water, and then disappeared from
view. When I dived for him, the poor little man  was lying quietly
coiled up at the bottom, in a hollow of shingle,  looking by many
degrees smaller than I had ever seen him look  before. During the few
minutes that elapsed while I was taking  him in, the air revived him,
and he ascended the steps of the  machine with my assistance. With the
partial recovery of his  animation came the return of his wonderful
delusion on the subject of swimming. As soon as his chattering teeth
would let him  speak, he smiled vacantly, and said he thought it must
have been  the Cramp.

When he had thoroughly recovered himself, and had joined me  on the
beach, his warm Southern nature broke through all artificial English
restraints in a moment. He overwhelmed me with  the wildest expressions
of affection –; exclaimed passionately, in  his exaggerated Italian way,
that he would hold his life henceforth at my disposal –; and declared
that he should never be happy  again until he had found an opportunity
of proving his gratitude  by rendering me some service which I might
remember, on my  side, to the end of my days.

I did my best to stop the torrent of his tears and protestations  by
persisting in treating the whole adventure as a good subject  for a
joke; and succeeded at last, as I imagined, in lessening  Pesca's
overwhelming sense of obligation to me. Little did I think  then –;
little did I think afterwards when our pleasant holiday had  drawn to an
end –; that the opportunity of serving me for which  my grateful
companion so ardently longed was soon to come;  that he was eagerly to
seize it on the instant; and that by so  doing he was to turn the whole
current of my existence into a  new channel, and to alter me to myself
almost past recognition.

Yet so it was. If I had not dived for Professor Pesca when he  lay under
water on his shingle bed, I should in all human probability never have
been connected with the story which these  pages will relate –; I should
never, perhaps, have heard even the  name of the woman who has lived in
all my thoughts, who has  possessed herself of all my energies, who has
become the one  guiding influence that now directs the purpose of my
life.




Pesca's face and manner, on the evening when we confronted  each other
at my mother's gate, were more than sufficient to  inform me that
something extraordinary had happened. It was  quite useless, however, to
ask him for an immediate explanation.  I could only conjecture, while he
was dragging me in by both  hands, that (knowing my habits) he had come
to the cottage to  make sure of meeting me that night, and that he had
some news  to tell of an unusually agreeable kind.

We both bounced into the parlour in a highly abrupt and undignified
manner. My mother sat by the open window laughing  and fanning herself.
Pesca was one of her especial favourites, and  his wildest
eccentricities were always pardonable in her eyes.  Poor dear soul !
from the first moment when she found out that  the little Professor was
deeply and gratefully attached to her son,  she opened her heart to him
unreservedly, and took all his puzzling foreign peculiarities for
granted, without so much as attempting to understand any one of them.

My sister Sarah, with all the advantages of youth, was, strangely
enough, less pliable. She did full justice to Pesca's excellent
qualities of heart; but she could not accept him implicitly, as my
mother accepted him for my sake.  Her insular notions of  propriety rose
in perpetual revolt against Pesca's constitutional  contempt for
appearances; and she was always more or less undisguisedly astonished at
her mother's familiarity with the eccentric little foreigner. I have
observed, not only in my sister's case,  hut in the instances of others,
that we of the young generation  are nothing like so hearty and so
impulsive as some of our elders.  l constantly see old people flushed
and excited by the prospect of  some anticipated pleasure which
altogether fails to ruffle the  tranquillity of their serene
grandchildren. Are we, I wonder,  quite such genuine boys and girls now
as our seniors were in  their time? Has the great advance in education
taken rather too  long a stride; and are we, in these modern days, just
the least  trifle in the world too well brought up?

Without attempting to answer those questions decisively, I  may at least
record that I never saw my mother and my sister  together in Pesca's
society, without finding my mother much the  younger woman of the two.
On this occasion, for example, while  the old lady was laughing heartily
over the boyish manner in  which we tumbled into the parlour, Sarah was
perturbedly picking up the broken pieces of a teacup, which the
Professor had  knocked off the table in his precipitate advance to meet
me at  the door.

`I don't know what would have happened, Walter,' said my  mother, 'if
you had delayed much longer. Pesca has been half  mad with impatience,
and I have been half mad with curiosity.  The Professor has brought some
wonderful news with him, in  which he says you are concerned; and he has
cruelly refused to  give us the smallest hint of it till his friend
Walter appeared.'

'Very provoking : it spoils the Set,' murmured Sarah to herself,
mournfully absorbed over the ruins of the broken cup.

While these words were being spoken, Pesca, happily and fassily
unconscious of the irreparable wrong which the crockery  had suffered at
his hands, was dragging a large armchair to the  opposite end of the
room, so as to command us all three, in the  character of a public
speaker addressing an audience. Having  turned the chair with its back
towards us, he jumped into it on  his knees, and excitedly addressed his
small congregation of three  from an impromptu pulpit.

`Now, my good dears,' began Pesca (who always said `good  dears' when he
meant `worthy friends'), `listen to me. The time  has come –; I recite
my good news –; I speak at last.'

` Hear, hear !' said my mother, humouring the joke.

`The next thing he will break, mamma,' whispered Sarah, `will  be the
back of the best armchair.'

`I go back into my life, and I address myself to the noblest of  created
beings,' continued Pesca, vehemently apostrophising my  unworthy self
over the top rail of the chair. `Who found me dead  at the bottom of the
sea (through Cramp); and who pulled me  up to the top; and what did I
say when I got into my own life  and my own clothes again?'

`Much more than was at all necessary,' I answered as doggedly as
possible; for the least encouragement in connection  with this subject
invariably let loose the Professor's emotions in  a flood of tears.

`l said,' persisted Pesca, `that my life belonged to my dear  friend,
Walter, for the rest of my days –; and so it does. I said that  I should
never be happy again till I had found the opportunity  of doing a good
Something for Walter –; and I have never been  contented with myself
till this most blessed day. Now,' cried the  enthusiastic little man at
the top of his voice, `the overflowing  happiness bursts out of me at
every pore of my skin, like a perspiration; for on my faith, and soul,
and honour, the something  is done at last, and the only word to say now
is –; Right-allright!'

It may be necessary to explain here that Pesca prided himself  on being
a perfect Englishman in his language, as well as in his  dress, manners,
and amusements. Having picked up a few of our  most familiar colloquial
expressions, he scattered them about  over his conversation whenever
they happened to occur to him,  turning them, in his high relish for
their sound and his general  ignorance of their sense, into compound
words and repetitions of  his own, and always running them into each
other, as if they  consisted of one long syllable.

`Among the fine London Houses where I teach the language  of my native
country,' said the Professor, rushing into his longdeferred explanation
without another word of preface, `there is  one, mighty fine, in the big
place called Portland. You all know  where that is?  Yes, yes –;
course-of-course. The fine house, my  good dears, has got inside it a
fine family. A Mamma, fair and fat;  three young Misses, fair and fat;
two young Misters, fair and fat;  and a Papa, the fairest and the
fattest of all, who is a mighty  merchant, up to his eyes in gold –; a
fine man once, but seeing  that he has got a naked head and two chins,
fine no longer at  the present time. Now mind ! I teach the sublime
Dante to the  young Misses, and ah ! –; my-soul-bless-my-soul ! –; it is
not in  human language to say how the sublime Dante puzzled the  pretty
heads of all three! No matter –; all in good time –; and the  more
lessons the better for me. Now mind! Imagine to yourselves that I am
teaching the young Misses today, as usual. We  are all four of us down
together in the Hell of Dante. At the  Seventh Circle –; but no matter
for that: all the Circles are alike  to the three young Misses, fair and
fat, –; at the Seventh Circle,  nevertheless, my pupils are sticking
fast; and I, to set them  going again, recite, explain, and blow myself
up red-hot with  useless enthusiasm, when –; a creak of boots in the
passage outside, and in comes the golden Papa, the mighty merchant with
the naked head and the two chins. –; Ha! my good dears, I am  closer
than you think for to the business, now. Have you been  patient so far?
or have you said to yourselves, ``Deuce-what-thedeuce! Pesca is
long-winded tonight ?'''

We declared that we were deeply interested. The Professor  went on :

`In his hand, the golden Papa has a letter; and after he has  made his
excuse for disturbing us in our Infernal Region with  the common mortal
Business of the house, he addresses himself  to the three young Misses,
and begins, as you English begin  everything in this blessed world that
you have to say, with a  great O. ``O, my dears,'' says the mighty
merchant, ``I have got  here a letter from my friend, Mr –;'' (the name
has slipped out of  my mind; but no matter; we shall come back to that;
yes, yes –;  right-all-right). So the Papa says, ``I have got a letter
from my  friend, the Mister; and he wants a recommend from me, of a
drawing-master, to go down to his house in the country.''
Mysoul-bless-my-soul! when I heard the golden Papa say those  words, if
I had been big enough to reach up to him, I should have  put my arms
round his neck, and pressed him to my bosom in a  long and grateful hug!
As it was, I only bounced upon my  chair. My seat was on thorns, and my
soul was on fire to speak;  but I held my tongue, and let Papa go on.
``Perhaps you know,''  says this good man of money, twiddling his
friend's letter this  way and that, in his golden fingers and thumbs,
``perhaps you  know, my dears, of a drawing-master that I can
recommend?''  The three young Misses all look at each other, and then
say  (with the indispensable great O to begin) ``O, dear no, Papa!  But
here is Mr Pesca –;'' At the mention of myself I can hold no  longer –;
the thought of you, my good dears, mounts like blood to  my head –; I
start from my seat, as if a spike had grown up from  the ground through
the bottom of my chair –; I address myself to  the mighty merchant, and
I say (English phrase), ``Dear sir, I  have the man! The first and
foremost drawing-master of the  world! Recommend him by the post
tonight, and send him off,  bag and baggage (English phrase again –; ha
!), send him off, bag  and baggage, by the train tomorrow !'' ``Stop,
stop,'' says Papa;  ``is he a foreigner, or an Englishman?'' ``English
to the bone of  his hack,'' I answer. ``Respectable ?'' says Papa.
``Sir,'' I say (for  this last question of his outrages me, and I have
done being  familiar with him) –; ``Sir ! the immortal fire of genius
burns in  this Englishman's bosom, and, what is more, his father had it
before him!'' ``Never mind,'' says the golden barbarian of a  Papa,
``never mind about his genius, Mr. Pesca. We don't want  genius in this
country, unless it is accompanied by respectability  –; and then we are
very glad to have it, very glad indeed. Can your  friend produce
testimonials –; letters that speak to his character?''  I wave my hand
negligently. ``Letters?'' I say. ``Ha! my-soulbless-my-soul ! I should
think so, indeed ! Volumes of letters and  portfolios of testimonials,
if you like!'' ``One or two will do,''  says this man of phlegn and
money. ``Let him send them to me,  with his name and address. And –;
stop, stop, Mr Pesca –; before  you go to your friend, you had better
take a note.'' ``Bank-note !''  I say, indignantly. ``No bank-note, if
you please, till my brave  Englishman has earned it first.''
``Bank-note!'' says Papa, in a  great surprise, ``who talked of
bank-note? I mean a note of the  terms –; a memorandum of what he is
expected to do. Go on with  your lesson, Mr Pesca, and I will give you
the necessary extract  from my friend's letter.'' Down sits the man of
merchandise and  money to his pen, ink, and paper; and down I go once
again into  the Hell of Dante, with my three young Misses after me. In
ten  minutes' time the note is written, and the boots of Papa are
creaking themselves away in the passage outside. From that moment, on my
faith, and soul, and honour, I know nothing more!  The glorious thought
that I have caught my opportunity at last,  and that my grateful service
for my dearest friend in the world  is as good as done already, flies up
into my head and makes me  drunk. How I pull my young Misses and myself
out of our Infernal Region again, how my other business is done
afterwards,  how my little bit of dinner slides itself down my throat, I
know  no more than a man in the moon. Enough for me, that here I am,
with the mighty merchant's note in my hand, as large as life, as  hot as
fire, and as happy as a king! Ha! ha! ha! right-rightright-all-right!'
Here the Professor waved the memorandum of  terms over his head, and
ended his long and voluble narrative  with his shrill Italian parody on
an English cheer.

My mother rose the moment he had done, with flushed cheeks  and
brightened eyes. She caught the little man warmly by both  hands.

`My dear, good Pesca,' she said, `I never doubted your true  affection
for Walter –; but I am more than ever persuaded of it  now !'

`I am sure we are very much obliged to Professor Pesca, for  Walter's
sake,' added Sarah. She half rose, while she spoke, as if  to approach
the armchair, in her turn; but, observing that Pesca  was rapturously
kissing my mother's hands, looked serious, and  resumed her seat. `lf
the familiar little man treats my mother in  that way, how will he treat
me?' Faces sometimes tell truth; and  that was unquestionably the
thought in Sarah's mind, as she sat  down again.

Although I myself was gratefully sensible of the kindness of  Pesca's
motives, my spirits were hardly so much elevated as they  ought to have
been by the prospect of future employment now  placed before me. When
the Professor had quite done with my  mother's hand, and when I had
warmly thanked him for his interference on my behalf, I asked to be
allowed to look at the note  of terms which his respectable patron had
drawm up for my inspection.

Pesca handed me the paper, with a triumphant flourish of the  hand.

`Read!' said the little man majestically. `I promise you, my  friend,
the writing of the golden Papa speaks with a tongue of  trumpets for
itself.'

The note of terms was plain, straightforward, and comprehensive, at any
rate. It informed me,

First, That Frederick Fairlie, Esquire, of Limmeridge House,
Cumberland, wanted to engage the services of a thoroughly  competent
drawing-master, for a period of four months certain.

Secondly, That the duties which the master was expected to  perform
would be of a twofold kind. He was to superintend the  instruction of
two young ladies in the art of painting in watercolours; and he was to
devote his leisure time, afterwards, to the  business of repairing and
mounting a valuable collection of  drawings, which had been suffered to
fall into a condition of  total neglect.

Thirdly, That the terms offered to the person who should undertake and
properly perfonn these duties were four guineas a  week; that he was to
reside at Limmeridge House; and that he  was to be treated there on the
footing of a gentleman.

Fourthly, and lastly, That no person need think of applying  for this
situation unless he could furnish the most unexceptionable references to
character and abilities. The references were to  be sent to Mr Fairlie's
friend in London, who was empowered to  conclude all necessary
arrangements. These instructions were followed by the name and address
of Pesca's employer im Portland  Place –; and there the note, or
memorandum, ended.

The prospect which this offer of an engagement held out was  certainly
an attractive one. The employment was likely to be  both easy and
agreeable; it was proposed to me at the autumn  time of the year when I
was least occupied; and the terms, judging by my personal experience in
my profession, were surprisingly liberal. I knew this; I knew that I
ought to consider myself  very fortunate if I succeeded in securing the
offered employment  –; and yet, no sooner had I read the memorandum than
I felt an  inexplicable unwillingness within me to stir in the matter. I
had  never in the whole of my previous experience found my duty  and my
inclination so painfully and so unaccountably at variance as I found
them now.

`Oh, Walter, your father never had such a chance as this!'  said my
mother, when she had read the note of terms and had  handed it back to
me.

`Such distinguished people to know,' remarked Sarah, straightening
herself in the chair; `and on such gratifying terms of  equality too !'

`Yes, yes; the terms, in every sense, are tempting enough,' I  replied
impatiently.  `But before I send in my testimonials, I  should like a
little time to consider –;'

`Consider!' exclaimed my mother. `Why, Walter, what is the  matter with
you?'

` Consider !'  echoed my sister.  `What a very extraordinary  thing to
say, under the circumstances !'

`Consider !' chimed in the Professor. `What is there to consider  about?
Answer me this !  Have you not been complaining of  your health, and
have you not been longing for what you call a  smack of the country
breeze? Well! there in your hand is the  paper that offers you perpetual
choking mouthfuls of country  breeze for four months' time. Is it not
so?  Ha! Again –; you  want money. Well! Is four golden guineas a week
nothing? Mysoul-bless-my-soul ! only give it to me –; and my boots shall
creak  like the golden Papa's, with a sense of the overpowering richness
of the man who walks in them ! Four guineas a week, and, more  than
that, the charming society of two young misses ! and, more  than that,
your bed, your breakfast, your dinner, your gorging  English teas and
lunches and drinks of foaming beer, all for  nothing –; why, Walter, my
dear good friend –; deuce-what-thedeuce! –; for the first time in my
life I have not eyes enough in  my head to look, and wonder at you !'

Neither my mother's evident astonishment at my behaviour,  nor Pesca's
fervid enumeration of the advantages offered to me by  the new
employment, had any effect in shaking my unreasonable disinclination to
go to Limmeridge House. After starting all  the petty objections that I
could think of to going to Cumberland, and after hearing them answered,
one after another, to my  own complete discomfiture, I tried to set up a
last obstacle by  asking what was to become of my pupils in London while
I was  teaching Mr Fairlie's young ladies to sketch from nature. The
obvious answer to this was, that the greater part of them would  be away
on their autumn travels, and that the few who remained  at home might be
confided to the care of one of my brother  drawing-masters, whose pupils
I had once taken off his hands  under similar circumstances. My sister
reminded me that this  gentleman had expressly placed his services at my
disposal, during the present season, in case I wished to leave tom; my
mother  seriously appealed to me not to let an idle caprice stand in the
way of my own interests and my own health; and Pesca piteously
entreated that I would not wound him to the heart by rejecting  the
first grateful offer of service that he had been able to make to  the
friend who had saved his life.

The evident sincerity and affection which inspired these remonstrances
would have influenced any man with an atom of  good feeling in his
composition. Though I could not conquer my  own unaccountable
perversity, I had at least virtue enough to be  heartily ashamed of it,
and to end the discussion pleasantly by  giving way, and promising to do
all that was wanted of me.

The rest of the evening passed merrily enough in humorous  anticipations
of my coming life with the two young ladies in  Cumberland. Pesca,
inspired by our national grog, which appeared to get into his head, in
the most marvellous manner, five  minutes after it had gone dowm his
throat, asserted his claims to  be considered a complete Englishman by
making a series of  speeches in rapid succession, proposing my mother's
health, my  sister's health, my health, and the healths, in mass, of Mr
Fairlie  and the two young Misses, pathetically returning thanks
hinself, immediately afterwards, for the whole party. `A secret,
Walter,' said my little friend confidentially, as we walked home
together. `I am flushed by the recollection of my own eloquence.  My
soul bursts itself with ambition. One of these days I go into  your
noble Parliament. It is the dream of my whole life to be  Honourable
Pesca, M.P. !'

The next morning I sent my testimonials to the professor's  employer in
Portland Place. Three days passed, and I concluded,  with secret
satisfaction, that my papers had not been found  sufficiently explicit.
On the fourth day, however, an answer  came. It announced that Mr
Fairlie accepted my services, and  requested me to start for Cumberland
immediately. All the necessary instructions for my journey were
carefully and clearly added  in a postscript.

I made my arrangements, unwillingly enough, for leaving London early the
next day. Towards evening Pesca looked in, on his  way to a
dinner-party, to bid me good-bye.

`I shall dry my tears in your absence,' said the Professor gaily,  `with
this glorious thought. It is my auspicious hand that has  given the
first push to your fortune in the world. Go, my friend !  When your sun
shines in Cumberland (English proverb), in the  name of heaven make your
hay. Marry one of the two young  Misses; become Honourable Hartright,
M.P.; and when you are  on the top of the ladder remember that Pesca, at
the bottom, has  done it all!'

I tried to laugh with my little friend over his parting jest, but  my
spirits were not to be commanded. Something jarred in me  almost
painfully while he was speaking his light farewell words.

When I was left alone again nothing remained to be done but  to walk to
the Hampstead cottage and bid my mother and Sarah  good-bye.




The heat had been painfully oppressive all day, and it was now  a close
and sultry night.

My mother and sister had spoken so many last words, and had  begged me
to wait another five minutes so many times, that it  was nearly midnight
when the servant locked the garden-gate  behind me. I walked forward a
few paces on the shortest way  back to London, then stopped and
hesitated.

The moon was full and broad in the dark blue starless sky, and  the
broken ground of the heath looked wild enough in the mysterious light to
be hundreds of miles away from the great city  that lay beneath it.The
idea of descending any sooner than I  could help into the heat and gloom
of London repelled me. The  prospect of going to bed in my airless
chambers, and the prospect  of gradual suffocation, seemed, in my
present restless frame of  mind and body, to be one and the same thing.
I determined to  stroll home in the purer air by the most roundabout way
I could  take; to follow the white winding paths across the lonely
heath;  and to approach London through its most open suburb by striking
into the Finchley Road, and so gettimg back, in the cool of  the new
morning, by the western side of the Regent's Park.

I wound my way dowm slowly over the heath, enjoying the  divine
stillness of the scene, and admiring the soft alternations of  light and
shade as they followed each other over the broken  ground on every side
of me. So long as I was proceeding through  this fist and prettiest part
of my night walk my mind remained  passively open to the impressions
produced by the view; and I  thought but little on any subject –;
indeed, so far as my own  sensations were concerned, I can hardly say
that I thought at all.

But when I had left the heath and had turned into the by-road,  where
there was less to see, the ideas naturally engendered by  the
approaching change in my habits and occupations gradually drew more and
more of my attention exclusively to themselves. By the time I had
arrived at the end of the road I had  become completely absorbed in my
own fanciful wisions of Limmeridge House, of Mr Fairlie, and of the two
ladies whose  practice in the art of water-colour painting I was so soon
to  superintend.

I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where  four roads
met –; the road to Hampstead, along which I had returned, the road to
Finchley, the road to West End, and the road  back to London. I had
mechanically turned in this latter direction, and was strolling along
the lonely high-road –; idly wondering, I remember, what the Cumberland
young ladies would look  like –; when, in one moment, every drop of
blood in my body was  brought to a stop by the touch of a hand laid
lightly and suddenly on my shoulder from behind me.

I turned on the instant, with my fingers tightening round the  handle of
my stick.

There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road –; there, as  If it
had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from  the heaven –;
stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from  head to foot in
white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on  mine, her hand
pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced  her.

I was far too seriously startled by the suddenness with which  this
extraordinary apparition stood before me, in the dead of  night and in
that lonely place, to ask what she wanted. The  strange woman spoke
first.

`Is that the road to London?' she said.

I looked attentively at her, as she put that singular question  to me.
It was then nearly one o'clock. All I could discern distinctly by the
moonlight was a colourless, youthful face, meagre  and sharp to look at
about the cheeks and chin; large, grave,  wistfully attentive eyes;
nervous, uncertain lips; and light hair  of a pale, brownish-yellow hue.
There was nothing wild, nothing  inimodest in her manner: it was quiet
and self-controlled, a little  melancholy and a little touched by
suspicion; not exactly the  manner of a lady, and, at the same time, not
the manner of a  woman in the humblest rank of life. The voice, little
as I had yet  heard of it, had something curiously still and mechanical
in its  tones, and the utterance was remarkably rapid. She held a small
bag in her hand: and her dress –; bonnet, shawl, and gown all of  white
–; was, so far as I could guess, certainly not composed of  very
delicate or very expensive materials. Her figure was slight,  and rather
above the average height –; her gait and actions free  from the
slightest approach to extravagance. This was all that I  could observe
of her in the dim light and under the perplexingly  strange
circumstances of our meeting. What sort of a woman she  was, and how she
came to be out alone in the high-road, an hour  after midnight, I
altogether failed to guess. The one thing of  which I felt certain was,
that the grossest of mankind could not  have misconstrued her motive in
speaking, even at that suspiciously late hour and in that suspiciously
lonely place.

`Did you hear me?' she said, still quietly and rapidly, and  without the
least fretfulness or impatience. `I asked if that was  the way to
London.'

` Yes,' I replied, ` that is the way : it leads to St John's Wood and
the Regent's Park. You must excuse my not answering you before. I was
rather startled by your sudden appearance in the  road; and I am, even
now, quite unable to account for it.'

`You don't suspect me of doing anything wrong, do you? I  have done
nothing wrong. I have met with an accident –; I am  very unfortunate in
being here alone so late. Why do you suspect  me of doing wrong?'

She spoke with unnecessary earnestness and agitation, and  shrank back
from me several places. I did my best to reassure  her.

`Pray don't suppose that I have any idea of suspecting you,'  I said,
`or any other wish than to be of assistance to you, if I can.  I only
wondered at your appearance in the road, because it  seemed to me to be
empty the instant before I saw you.'

She turned, and pointed back to a place at the junction of the  road to
London and the road to Hampstead, where there was a  gap in the hedge.

`I heard you coming,' she said, `and hid there to see what sort  of man
you were, before I risked speaking. I doubted and feared  about it till
you passed; and then I was obliged to steal after you,  and touch you.'

Steal after me and touch me? Why not call to me? Strange,  to say the
least of it

`May I trust you?' she asked. `You don't think the worse of  me because
I have met with an accident?' She stopped in confusion; shifted her bag
from one hand to the other; and sighed  bitterly.

The loneliness and helplessness of the woman touched me.  The natural
impulse to assist her and to spare her got the better  of the judgment,
the caution, the worldly tact, which an older,  wiser, and colder man
might have summoned to help him in this  strange emergency.

`You may trust me for any harmless purposes,' I said. `If it  troubles
you to explain your strange situation to me, don't think  of returning
to the subject again. I have no right to ask you for  any explanations.
Tell me how I can help you; and if I can, I  will.'

`You are very kind, and I am very, very thankfull to have met  you.' The
first touch of womanly tenderness that I had heard  from her trembled in
her voice as she said the words: but no  tears glistened in those large,
wistfully attentive eyes of hers,  which were still fixed on me, `I have
only been in London once  before,' she went on, more and more rapidly, `
and I know nothing  about that side of it, yonder. Can I Set a fly, or a
carriage of  any kind? Is it too late? I don't know. If you could show
me  where to get a fly –; and if you will only promise not to interfere
with me, and to let me leave you, when and how I please –; I have  a
friend in London who will be glad to receive me –; I want  nothing else
–; will you promise?'

She looked anxiously up and down the road; shifted her bag  again from
one hand to the other; repeated the words, `Will you  promise?' and
looked hard in my face, with a pleading fear and  confusion that it
troubled me to see.

What could I do? Here was a stranger utterly and helplessly  at my mercy
–; and that stranger a forlorn woman. No house was  near; no one was
passing whom I could consult; and no earthly  right existed on my part
to give me a power of control over her,  even if I had known how to
exercise it. I trace these lines, selfdistrustfully, with the shadows of
after events darkening the  very paper I write on; and still I say, what
could I do?

What I did do, was to try and gain time by questioning her.

`Are you sure that your friend in London will receive you at  such a
late hour as this?' I said.

`Quite sure. Only say you will let me leave you when and how  I please
–; only say you won't interfere with me. Will you promise?'

As she repeated the words for the third time, she carne close  to me and
laid her hand, with a sudden gentle stealthiness, on my  bosom –; a thin
hand; a cold hand (when I removed it with mine)  even on that sultry
night. Remember that I was young; remember that the hand which touched
me was a woman's.

`Will you promise ?'

` Yes.'

One word! The little familiar word that is on everybody's  lips, every
hour in the day. Oh me ! and I tremble, now, when I  write it.

We set our faces towards London, and walked on together in  the first
still hour of the new day –; I, and this woman, whose  name, whose
character, whose story, whose objects in life, whose  very presence by
my side, at that moment, were fathomless mysteries to me. It was like a
dream. Was I Walter Hartright? Was  this the well-known, uneventful
road, where holiday people  strolled on Sundays? Had I really left,
little more than an hour  since, the quiet, decent, conventionally
domestic atmosphere of  my mother's cottage? I was too bewildered –; too
conscious also  of a vague sense of something like self-reproach –; to
speak to my  strange companion for some minutes.  It was her voice again
that first broke the silence between us.

`I want to ask you something,' she said suddenly. `Do you  know many
people in London?'

` Yes, a great many.'

`Many men of rank and title?' There was an unmistakable  tone of
suspicion in the strange question. I hesitated about answerig it.

`Some,' I said, after a moment's silence.

`Many' –; she came to a full stop, and looked me searchingly  in the
face –; `many men of the rank of Baronet?'

Too much astonished to reply, I questioned her in my turn.

`Why do you ask?'

`Because I hope, for my own sake, there is one Baronet that  you don't
know.'

`Will you tell me his name?'

`I can't –; I daren't –; I forget myself when I mention it.' She  spoke
loudly and almost fiercely, raised her clenched hand in the  air, and
shook it passionately; then, on a sudden, controlled herself again, and
added, in tones lowered to a whisper, `Tell me  which of them you know.'

I could hardly refuse to humour her in such a trifle, and I  mentioned
three names. Two, the names of fathers of families  whose daughters I
taught; one, the name of a bachelor who had  once taken me a cruise in
his yacht, to make sketches for him.

`Ah ! you don't know him,' she said, with a sigh of relief. `Are  you a
man of rank and title yourself?'

`Far from it. I am only a drawing-master.'

As the reply passed my lips –; a little bitterly, perhaps –; she  took
my arm with the abruptness which characterised all her  actions.

`Not a man of rank and title,' she repeated to herself. `Thank  God ! I
may trust him.'

I had hitherto contrived to master my curiosity out of consideration for
my companion; but it got the better of me now.

`I am afraid you have serious reason to complain of some man  of rank
and title?' I said. `I am afraid the baronet, whose name  you are
unwilling to mention to me, has done you some grievous wrong? Is he the
cause of your being out here at this strange  time of night?'

`Don't ask me: don't make me talk of it,' she answered. `I'm  not fit
now. I have been cruelly used and cruelly wronged. You  will be kinder
than ever, if you will walk on fast, and not speak  to me. I sadly want
to quiet myself, if I can.'

We moved forward again at a quick pace; and for half an hour,  at least,
not a word passed on either side. From time to time,  being forbidden to
make any more inquiries, I stole a look at her  face. It was always the
same; the lips close shut, the brow frowning, the eyes looking straight
forward, eagerly and yet absently.  We had reached the first houses, and
were close on the new  Wesleyan college, before her set features
relaxed, and she spoke  once more.

`Do you live in London?' she said.

`Yes.' As I answered, it struck me that she might have formed  some
intention of appealing to me for assistance or advice, and  that I ought
to spare her a possible disappointment by warming  her of my approaching
absence from home. So I added, `But tomorrow I shall be away from London
for some time. I am going  into the country.'

`Where?' she asked. `North or south ?'

`North –; to Cumberland.'

`Cumberland !' she repeated the word tenderly. `Ah ! I wish I  was going
there too. I was once happy in Cumberland.'

I tried again to lift the veil that hung between this woman  and me.

`Perhaps you were born,' I said, `in the beautiful Lake country.'

`No,' she answered. `I was born in Hampshire; but I once  went to school
for a little while in Cumberland. Lakes? I don't  remember any lakes.
It's Limmeridge village, and Limmeridge  House, I should like to see
again.'

It was my turn now to stop suddenly. In the excited state of  my
curiosity, at that moment, the chance reference to Mr Fairlie's place of
residence, on the lips of my strange companion,  staggered me with
astonishment.

`Did you hear anybody calling after us?' she asked, looking  up and down
the road affrightedly, the instant I stopped.

`No, no. I was only struck by the name of Limmeridge House.  I heard it
mentioned by some Cumberland people a few days  since.'

`Ah! not my people. Mrs Fairlie is dead; and her husband is  dead; and
their little girl may be married and gone away by this  time. I can't
say who lives at Limmeridge now. If any more are  left there of that
name, I only know I love them for Mrs Fairlie's  sake.'

She seemed about to say more; but while she was speaking, we  came
within view of the turnpike, at the top of the Avenue Road.  Her hand
tightened round my arm, and she looked anxiously  at the gate before us.

`Is the turnpike man looking out?' she asked.

He was not looking out; no one else was near the place when  we passed
through the gate. The sight of the gas-lamps and  houses seemed to
agitate her, and to make her impatient.

`This is London,' she said. `Do you see any carriage I can get?  I am
tired and frightened. I want to shut myself in and be  driven away.'

I explained to her that we must walk a little further to get to  a
cab-stand, unless we were fortunate enough to meet with an  empty
vehicle; and then tried to resume the subject of Cumberland. It was
useless. That idea of shutting herself in, and being  driven away, had
now got full possession of her mind. She could  think and talk of
nothing else.

We had hardly proceeded a third of the way down the Avenue  Road when I
saw a cab draw up at a house a few doors below us,  on the opposite side
of the way. A gentleman got out and let  himself in at the garden door.
I hailed the cab, as the driver mounted the box again. When we crossed
the road, my companion's  impatience increased to such an extent that
she almost forced me  to run.

`It's so late,' she said. `I am only in a hurry because it's so  late.'

`I can't take you, sir, if you're not going towards Tottenham  Court
Road,' said the driver civilly, when I opened the cab door.  `My horse
is dead beat, and I can't get him no further than the  stable.'

`Yes, yes. That will do for me. I'm going that way –; I'm going  that
way.' She spoke with breathless eagerness, and pressed by  me into the
cab.

I had assured myself that the man was sober as well as civil  before I
let her enter the vehicle. And now, when she was seated  inside, I
entreated her to let me see her set down safely at her  destination.

`No, no, no,' she said vehemently. `I'm quite safe, and quite  happy
now. lf you are a gentleman, remember your promise. Let  him drive on
till I stop him. Thank you –; oh! thank you, thank  you !'

My hand was on the cab door. She caught it in hers, kissed it,  and
pushed it away. The cab drove off at the same moment –; I  started into
the road, with some vague idea of stopping it again,  I hardly knew why
–; hesitated from dread of frightening and  distressing her –; called,
at last, but not loudly enough to attract  the driver's attention. The
sound of the wheels grew fainter in  the distance –; the cab melted into
the black shadows on the  road –; the woman in white was gone.

Ten minutes or more had passed. I was still on the same side  of the
way; now mechanically walking forward a few paces; now  stopping again
absently. At one moment I found myself doubting the reality of my own
adventure; at another I was perplexed  and distressed by an uneasy sense
of having done wrong, which  yet left me confusedly ignorant of how I
could have done right.  I hardly knew where I was going, or what I meant
to do next;  I was conscious of nothing but the confusion of my own
thoughts, when I was abruptly recalled to myself –; awakened,  I might
almost say –; by the sound of rapidly approaching wheels  close behind
me.

I was on the dark side of the road, in the thick shadow of some  garden
trees, when I stopped to look round. On the opposite and  lighter side
of the way, a short distance below me, a policeman  was strolling along
in the direction of the Regent's Park.

The carriage passed me –; an open chaise driven by two men.

`Stop !' cried one. `There's a policeman. Let's ask him-'

The horse was instantly pulled up, a few yards beyond the  dark place
where I stood.

`Policeman !' cried the first speaker. `Have you seen a woman  pass this
way?'

` What sort of woman, sir ?'

`A woman in a lavender-coloured gown –;'

`No, no,' interposed the second man. `The clothes we gave her  were
found on her bed. She must have gone away in the clothes  she wore when
she came to us. In white, policeman. A woman  in white.'

`I haven't seen her, sir.'

`If you or any of your men meet with the woman, stop her,  and send her
in careful keeping to that address. I'll pay all expenses, and a fair
reward imto the bargain.'

The policeman looked at the card that was handed down to him.

`Why are we to stop her, sir? What has she done?'

`Done!  She has escaped from my Asylum. Don't forget; a  woman in white.
Drive on.'




`She has escaped from my Asylum !'

I cannot say with truth that the terrible inference which thcse  words
suggested flashed upon me like a new revelation. Some of  the strange
questions put to me by the woman in white, after my  ill-considered
promise to leave her free to act as she pleased, had  suggested the
conclusion either that she was naturally flighty  and unsettled, or that
some recent shock of terror had disturbed  the balance of her faculties.
But the idea of absolute insanity  which we all associate with the very
name of an Asylum, had, I  can honestly declare, never occurred to me,
in connection with  her. I had seen nothing, in her language or her
actions, to  justify it at the time; and even with the new light thrown
on her  by the words which the stranger had addressed to the policeman,
I could see nothing to justify it now.

What had I done? Assisted the victim of the most horrible  of all false
imprisonments to escape; or cast loose on the wide  world of London an
unfortunate creature, whose actions it was  my duty, and every man's
duty, mercifully to control? I turned  sick at heart when the question
occurred to me, and when I felt  self-reproachfully that it was asked
too late.

In the disturbed state of my mind, it was useless to think of  going to
bed, when I at last got back to my chambers in Clement's Inn. Before
many hours elapsed it would be necessary to  start on my journey to
Cumberland. I sat down and tried, first  to sketch, then to read –; but
the woman in white got between me  and my pencil, between me and my
book. Had the forlorn creature come to any harm? That was my first
thought, though I  shrank selfishly from confronting it. Other thoughts
followed,  on which it was less harrowing to dwell. Where had she
stopped  the cab? What had become of her now? Had she been traced  and
captured by the men in the chaise? Or was she still capable  of
controlling her own actions; and were we two following our  widely
parted roads towards one point in the mysterious future,  at which we
were to meet once more?

It was a relief when the hour came to lock my door, to hid  farewell to
London pursuits, London pupils, and London friends,  and to be in
movement again towards new interests and a new  life. Even the hustle
and confusion at the railway terminus, so  wearisome and bewildering at
other times, roused me and did me  good.

My travelling instructions directed me to go to Carlisle, and  then to
diverge by a branch railway which ran in the direction  of the coast. As
a misfortune to begin with, our engine broke  down between Lancaster and
Carlisle. The delay occasioned by  this accident caused me to be too
late for the branch train, by  which I was to have gone on immediately.
I had to wait some  hours; and when a later train finally deposited me
at the nearest  station to Limmeridge House, it was past ten, and the
night was  so dark that I could hardly see my way to the pony-chaise
which  Mr Fairlie had ordered to be in waiting for me.

The driver was evidently discomposed by the lateness of my  arrival. He
was in that state of highly respectful sulkiness which  is peculiar to
English servants. We drove away slowly through  the darkness in perfect
silence- The roads were had, and the dense  obscurity of the night
increased the difficulty of getting over the  ground quickly. It was, by
my watch, nearly an hour and a half  from the time of our leaving the
station before I heard the sound  of the sea in the distance, and the
crunch of our wheels on a  smooth gravel drive. We had passed one gate
before rntering the  drive, and we passed another before we drew up at
the house. I  was received by a solemn man-servant out of livery, was
infornied  that the family had retired for the night, and was then led
into  a large and lofty room where my supper was awaiting me, in a
forlorn manner, at one extreniity of a lonesome mahogany  wilderness of
dining-table.

I was too tired and out of spirits to eat or drink much, especially with
the solemn servant waiting on me as elaborately  as if a small dinner
party had arrived at the house instead of a  solitary man. In a quarter
of an hour I was ready to be taken up  to my bedchamber. The solemn
servant conducted me into a  prettily furnished room –; said, `Breakfast
at nine o'clock, sir' –;  looked all round him to see that everything
was in its proper  place, and noiselessly withdrew.

`What shall I see in my dreams tonight?' I thought to myself,  as I put
out the candle; `the woman in white? or the unknown  inhabitants of this
Cumberland mansion?' It was a strange sensation to be sleeping in the
house, like a friend of the family, and  yet not to know one of the
innates, even by sight !




When I rose the next morning and drew up my blind, the sea  opened
before me joyously under the broad August sunlight, and  the distant
coast of Scotland fringed the horizon with its lines  of melting blue.

The view was sucli a surprise, and such a change to me, after  my weary
London experience of brick and mortar landscape, that  I seemed to burst
into a new life and a new set of thoughts the  moment I looked at it. A
confused sensation of having suddenly lost my familiarity with the past,
without acquiring any  additional clearness of idea in reference to the
present or the  future, took possession of my mind. Circumstances that
were but  a few days old faded back in my memory, as if they had
happened months and months since. Pesca's quaint announcement  of the
means by which he had procured me my present employment; the farewell
evening I had passed with my mother and  sister; even my mysterious
adventure on the way home from  Hampstead –; had all become like events
which might have occurred at some former epoch of my existence. Although
the  woman in white was still in my mind, the image of her seemed  to
have grown dull and faint already.

A little before nine o'clock, I descended to the ground-floor of  the
house. The solemn man-servant of the night before met me  wandering
among the passages, and compassionately showed me  the way to the
breakfast-room.

My first glance round me, as the man opened the door, disclosed a
well-furnished breakfast-table, standing in the middle of  a long room,
with many windows in it. I looked from the table to  the window farthest
from me, and saw a lady standing at it, with  her back turned towards
me. The instant my eyes rested on her,  I was struck by the rare beauty
of her form, and by the unaffected  grace of her attitude. Her figure
was tall, yet not too tall; comely  and well-developed, yet not fat; her
head set on her shoulders  with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist,
perfection in the eyes of  a man, for it occupied its natural place, it
filled out its natural  circle, it was visibly and delightfully
undeformed by stays. She  had not heard my entrance into the room; and I
allowed myself  the luxury of admiring her for a few moments, before I
moved  one of the chairs near me, as the least embarrassing means of
attracting her attention. She turned towards me immediately.  The easy
elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as  soon as she began
to advance from the far end of the room, set  me in a flutter of
expectation to see her face clearly. She left the  window –; and I said
to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps –; and I said
to myself, The lady is young. She  approached nearer –; and I said to
myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The
lady is ugly !

Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot  err, more
flatly contradicted –; never was the fair promise of a  lovely figure
more strangely and startlingly belied by the face  and head that crowned
it. The lady's complexion was almost  swarthy, and the dark down on her
upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth
and jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black
hair,  growing unusually low down on her forehead. Her expression  –;
bright frank, and intelligent –; appeared, while she was silent,  to be
altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and
pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest  woman alive is
beauty incomplete. To see such a face as this set  on shoulders that a
sculptor would have longed to model –; to be  chaemed by the modest
graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs betrayed their
beauty when they moved, and then  to be almost repelled by the masculine
form and masculine look  of the features in which the perfectly shaped
figure ended –; was  to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless
discomfort familiar  to us all in sleep, when we recognise yet cannot
reconcile the  anomalies and contradictions of a dream.

`Mr Hartright?' said the lady interrogatively, her dark face  lighting
up with a smile, and softening and growing womanly  the moment she began
to speak. `We resigned all hope of you  last night, and went to bed as
usual. Accept my apologies for our  apparent want of attention; and
allow me to introduce myself  as one of your pupils. Shall we shake
hands? I suppose we must  come to it sooner or later –; and why not
sooner?'

These odd words of welcome were spoken in a clear, ringing,  pleasant
voice. The offered hand –; rather large, but beautifully  formed –; was
given to me with the easy, unaffected self-reliance  of a highly-bred
woman. We sat down together at the breakfasttable in as cordial and
customary a manner as if we had known  each other for years, and had met
at Limmeridge House to talk  over old times by previous appointment.

`I hope you come here good-humouredly determined to make  the hist of
your position,' continued the lady. `You will have to  begin this
morning by putting up with no other company at  breakfast than mine. My
sister is in her own room, nursing that  essentially feminine malady, a
slight headache; and her old governess, Mrs Vesey, is charitably
attending on her with restorative  tea. My uncle, Mr Fairlie, never
joins us at any of our meals:  he is an invalid, and keeps bachelor
state in his own apartments.  There is nobody else in the house but me.
Two young ladies have  been staying here, but they went away yesterday,
in despair;  and no wonder. All through their visit (in consequence of
Mr  fairlie's invalid condition) we produced no such convenience in  the
house as a flirtable, danceable, small-talkable creature of the  male
sex; and the comsequence was, we did nothing but quarrel,  especially at
dinner-time. How can you expect four women to  dine together alone every
day, and not quarrel? We are such  fools, we can't entertain each other
at table. You see I don't  think much of my own sex, Mr Hartright –;
which will you  have, tea or coffee? –; no woman does think much of her
own  sex, although few of them confess it as freely as I do. Dear me,
you look puzzled. Why ? Are you wondering what you will have  for
breakfast? or are you surprised at my careless way of talking? ln the
first case, I advise you, as a friend, to have nothing  to do with that
cold ham at your elbow, and to wait till the omelette comes in. In the
second case, I will give you some tea to  compose your spirits, and do
all a woman can (which is very  little, by-the-bye) to hold my tongue.'

She handed me my cup of tea, laughing gaily. Her light flow  of talk,
and her lively familiarity of manner with a total stranger,  were
accompanied by an unaffected naturalness and an easy inborn confidence
in herself and her position, which would have  secured her the respect
of the most audacious man breathing.  While it was impossible to be
formal and reserved in her company, it was more than impossible to take
the faintest vestige of  a liberty with her, even in thought. I felt
this instinctively,  even while I caught the infection of her own bright
gaiety of  spirits –; even while I did my best to answer her in her own
frank,  lively way.

`Yes, yes,' she said, when I had suggested the only explanation  I could
offer, to account for my perplexed looks, `I understand.  You are such a
perfect stranger in the house, that you are puzzled by my familiar
references to the worthy inhabitants. Natural  enough : I ought to have
thought of it before. At any rate, I can  set it right now. Suppose I
begin with myself, so as to get done  with that part of the subject as
soon as possible? My name is  Marian Halcombe; and I am as inaccurate as
women usually are,  in calling Mr fairlie my uncle, and Miss Fairlie my
sister. My  mother was twice married: the first time to Mr Halcombe, my
father; the second time to Mr Fairlie, my half-sister's father. Except
that we are both orphans, we are in every respect as unlike  each other
as possible. My father was a poor man, and Miss Fairlie's father was a
rich man. I have got nothing, and she has a  fortune. I am dark and
ugly, and she is fair and pretty. Everybody thinks me crabbed and odd
(with perfect justice); and  everybody thinks her sweet-tempered and
charming (with more  justice still). In short, she is an angel; and I am
–; Try some of  that marmalade, Mr Hartright, and finish the sentence,
in the  name of female propriety, for yourself. What am I to tell you
about Mr Fairiie? Upon my honour, I hardly know. He is sure  to send for
you after breakfast, and you can study him for yourself. In the
meantime, I may inform you, first, that he is the late  Mr Fairlir's
younger brother; secondly, that he is a single man;  and thirdly, that
he is Miss Fairlie's guardian. I won't live without her, and she can't
live without me; and that is how I come  to be at Limmeridge House. My
sister and I are honestly fond of  each other; which, you will say, is
perfectly unaccountable,  under the circumstances, and I quite agree
with you –; but so it  is. You must please both of us, Mr Hartright, or
please neither  of us : and, what is still more trying, you will be
thrown entirely  upon our society. Mrs Vesey is an excellent person, who
possesses  all the cardinal virtues, and counts for nothing; and Mr
Fairlie is  too great an invalid to be a companion for anybody. I don't
know  what is the matter with him, and the doctors don't know what  is
the matter with him, and he doesn't know himself what is the  matter
with him. We all say it's on the nerves, and we none of  us know what we
mean when we say it. However, I advise you  to humour his little
peculiarities, when you see him today. Admire his collection of coins,
prints, and water-colour drawings,  and you will win his heart. Upon my
word, if you can be contented with a quiet country life, I don't see why
you should not  get on very well here. from breakfast to lunch, Mr
fairlie's drawings will occupy you. After lunch, Miss Fairlie and I
shoulder  our sketch-books, and go out to misrepresent Nature, under
your directions. Drawing is her favourite whim, mind, not mine.  Women
can't draw –; their minds are too flighty, and their eyes  are too
inattentive. No matter –; my sister likes it; so I waste  paint and
spoil Taper, for her sake, as composedly as any woman  in England. As
for the evenings, I think we can help you through  them. Miss Fairlie
plays delightfully. For my own poor part, I  don't know one note of
music from the other; but I can match  you at chess, backgammon,
écarté, and (with the inevitable female drawbacks) even at
billiards as well. What do you think of  the programme? Can you
reconcile yourself to our quiet, regular  life? or do you mean to be
restless, and secretly thirst for  change and adventure, in the humdrum
atmosphere of Limmeridge House?'

She had run on thus far, in her gracefully bantering way, with  no other
interruptions on my part than the unimportant replies  which politeness
required of me. The turn of the expression,  however, in her last
question, or rather the one chance word,  `adventure,' lightly as it
fell from her lips, recalled my thoughts  to my meeting with the woman
in white, and urged me to discover the connection which the stranger's
own reference to Mrs  Fairlie informed me must once have existed between
the nameless fugitive from the Asylum, and the former mistress of
Lunmeridge House.

`Even if I were the most restless of mankind,' I said, `I should  be in
no danger of thirsting after adventures for some time to  come. The very
night before I arrived at this house, I met with  an adventure; and the
wonder and excitement of it, I can assure  you, Miss Halcombe, will last
me for the whole term of my stay  in Cumberland, if not for a much
longer period.'

`You don't say so, Mr Hartright! May I hear it?'

`You have a claim to hear it. The chief person in the adventure  was a
total stranger to me, and may perhaps be a total stranger  to you; but
she certainly mentioned the name of the late Mrs  Fairlie im terms of
the sincerest gratitude and regard.'

`Mentioned my mother's name! You interest me indescribably. Pray go on.'

I at once related the circumstances under which I had met the  woman in
white, exactly as they had occurred; and I repeated  what she had said
to me about Mrs Fairlie and Limeridge House,  word for word.

Miss Halcombe's bright resolute eyes looked eagerly into mine,  from the
beginning of the narrative to the end. Her face expressed vivid interest
and astonishment, but nothing more. She  was evidently as far from
knowing of any clue to the mystery  as I was myself.

`Are you quite sure of those words referring to my mother?'  she asked.

`Quite sure,' I replied. `Whoever she may be, the woman was  once at
school in the village of Limmeridge, was treated with  especial kindness
by Mrs Fairlie, and, in giateful remembrance  of that kindness, feels an
affectionate interest in all surviving  members of the family. She knew
that Mrs Fairlie and her husband were both dead; and she spoke of Miss
Fairlie as if they  had known each other when they were children.'

`You said, I think, that she denied belonging to this place?'

`Yes, she told me she came from Hampshire.'

`And you entirely failed to find out her name?'

`Entirely '

`Very strange. I think you were quite justified, Mr Hartright,  in
giving the poor creature her liberty, for she seems to have  done
nothing in your presence to show herself unfit to enjoy itBut I wish you
had been a little more resolute about finding out  her name. We must
really clear up this mystery, in some way.  You had better not speak of
it yet to Mr Fairlie, or to my sister.  They are both of them, I am
certain, quite as ignorant of who  the woman is, and of what her past
history in connection with  us can be, as I am myself. But they are
also, in widely different  ways, rather nervous and sensitive; and you
would only fidget  one and alarm the other to no purpose. As for myself,
I am all  aflame with curiosity, and I devote my whole energies to the
business of discovery from this moment. When my mother came  here, after
her second marriage, she certainly established the village school just
as it exists at the present time. But the old teachers are all dead, or
gone elsewhere: and no enlightenment is to be  hoped for from that
quarter. The only other alternative I can  think of –;'

At this point we were interrupted by the entrance of the servant, with a
message from Mr Fairlie, intimating that he would  be glad to see me, as
soon as I had done breakfast.

`Wait in the hall,' said Miss Halcombe, answering the servant  for me,
in her quick, ready way. `Mr Hartright will come out  directly. I was
about to say,' she went on, addressing me again,  `that my sister and I
have a large collection of my mother's letters, addressed to my father
and to hers. In the absence of any  other means of getting information,
I will pass the morning in  looking over my mother's correspondence with
Mr Fairlie. He  was fond of London, and was constantly away from his
country  home; and she was accustomed, at such times, to write and
report  to him how things went on at Limmeridge. Her letters are full
of references to the school in which she took so strong an interest; and
I think it more than likely that I may have discovered  something when
we meet again. The luncheon hour is two, Mr  Hartright. I shall have the
pleasure of introducing you to my  sister by that time, and we will
occupy the afternoon in driving  round the neighbourhood and showing you
all our pet points of  view. Till two o'clock, then, farewell.'

She nodded to me with the lively grace, the delightful refinement of
familiarity, which characterised all that She did and all  that she
said; and disappeared by a door at the lower end of the  room. As soon
as she had left me, I turned my steps towards the  hall, and followed
the servant, on my way, for the first time, to  the presence of Mr
Fairlie.




My conductor led me upstairs into a passage which took us back  to the
bedchamber in which I had slept during the past night;  and opening the
door next to it, begged me to look in.

`I have my master's orders to show you your own sittingroom, sir,' said
the man, `and to inquire if you approve of the  situation and the
light.'

I must have been hard to please, indeed, if I had not approved  of the
room, and of everything about it. The bow-window looked  out on the same
lovely view which I had admired, in the morning, from my bedroom. The
furniture was the perfection of  luxury and beauty; the table in the
centre was bright with gaily  bound books, elegant conveniences for
writing, and beautiful  flowers; the second table, near the window, was
covered with all  the necessary materials for mounting water-colour
drawings, and  had a little easel attached to it, which I could expand
or fold up  at will; the walls were hung with gaily tinted chintz; and
the  floor was spread with Indian matting in maize-colour and red. It
was the prettiest and most luxurious little sitting-room I had  ever
seen; and I admired it with the warnest enthusiasm.

The solemn servant was far too highly trained to betray the  slightest
satisfaction. He bowed with icy deference when my  terms of eulogy were
all exhausted, and silently opened the door  for me to go out into the
passage again.

We turned a corner, and entered a long second passage, ascended a short
flight of stairs at the end, crossed a small circular  upper hall, and
stopped in front of a door covered with dark  baize. The servant opened
this door, and led me on a few yards  to a second; opened that also, and
disclosed two curtains of pale  sea-green silk hanging before us; raised
one of them noiselessly;  softly uttered the words, `Mr Hartright,' and
left me.

I found myself in a large, lofty room, with a magnificent carved
ceiling, and with a carpet over the floor, so thick and soft that it
felt like piles of velvet under my feet. One side of the room was
occupied by a long bookcase of some rare inlaid wood that was  quite new
to me. It was not more than six feet high, and the top  was adorned with
statuettes in marble, ranged at regular distances one from the other. On
the opposite side stood two antique  cabinets; and between them, and
above them, hung a picture of  the Virgin and Child, protected by glass,
and bearing Raphael's  name on the gilt tablet at the bottom of the
frame. On my right  hand and on my left, as I stood inside the door,
were chiffoniers  and little stands in buhl and marquetterie, loaded
with figures in  Dresden china, with rare vases, ivory ornaments, and
toys and  curiosities that sparkled at all points with gold, silver, and
precious stones. At the lower end of the room, opposite to me, the
windows were concealed and the sunlight was teinpered by large  blinds
of the same pale sea-green colour as the curtains over the  door. The
light thus produced was deliciously soft, mysterious,  and subdued; it
fell equally upon all the objects in the room;  it helped to intensify
the deep silence, and the air of profound  seclusion that possessed the
place; and it siirrounded, with an  appropriate halo of repose, the
solitary figure of the master of  the house, leaning back, listlessly
composed, in a large easychair, with a reading-easel fastened on one of
its arms, and a little  table on the other.

If a man's personal appearance, when he is out of his dressingroom, and
when he has passed forty, can be accepted as a safe  guide to his time
of life –; which is more than doubtful –; Mr  Fairlie's age, when I saw
him, might have been reasonably computed at over fifty and under sixty
years. His beardless face was  thin, worn, and transparently pale, but
not wrinkled; his nose  was high and hooked; his eyes were of a dim
greyish blue, large,  prominent, and rather red round the rims of the
eyelids; his hair  was scanty, soft to look at, and of that light sandy
colour which  is the last to disclose its own changes towards grey. He
was dressed in a dark frock-coat, of some substance much thinner than
cloth, and in waistcoat and trousers of spotless white. His feet  were
effeminately small, and were clad in buff-coloured silk stockings, and
little womanish bronze-leather slippers. Two rings  adorned his white
delicate hands, the value of which even my  inexperienced observation
detected to be all but priceless. Upon  the whole, he had a frail,
languidly-fretful, over-refined look –;  something singularly and
unpleasantly delicate in its association  with a nian, and, at the same
time, something which could by no  possibility have looked natural and
appropriate if it had been  transferred to the personal appearance of a
woman. My morning's experience of Miss Halcombe had predisposed me to be
pleased with everybody in the house; but my sympathies shut  themselves
up resolutely at the first sight of Mr Fairlie.

On approaching nearer to him, I discovered that he was not so  entirely
without occupation as I had at first supposed. Placed  amid the other
rare and beautiful objects on a large round table  near him, was a dwarf
cabinet in ebony and silver, containing  coins of all shapes and sizes,
set out in little drawers lined with  dark purple velvet. One of these
drawers lay on the small table  attached to his chair; and near it were
some tiny jeweller's brushes,  a wash-leather `stump,' and a little
bottle of liquid, all waiting to be used in various ways for the removal
of any accidental  impurities which might be discovered on the coins.
His frail  white fingers were listlessly toying with something which
looked,  to my uninstructed eyes, like a dirty pewter medal with ragged
edges, when I advanced within a respectful distance of his chair,  and
stopped to make my bow.

`So glad to possess you at Limmeridge, Mr Hartright,' he said  in a
querulous, croaking voice, which combined, in anything but  an agreeable
manner, a discordantly high tone with a drowsily  languid utterance.
`Pray sit down. And don't trouble yourself  to move the chair, please.
In the wretched state of my nerves,  movement of any kind is exquisitely
painful to me. Have you  seen your studio? Will it do?'

`I have just come from seeing the room, Mr Fairlie; and I assure you –;'

He stopped me in the middle of the sentence, by closing his  eyes, and
holding up one of his white hands imploringly. I paused  in
astonishment; and the croaking voice honoured me with this  explanation
–;

`Pray excuse me. But could you contrive to speak in a lower  key? In the
wretched state of my nerves, loud sound of any kind  is indescribable
torture to me. You will pardon an invalid? I  only say to you what the
lamentable state of my health obliges  me to say to evervbody. Yes. And
you really like the room?'

`I could wish for nothing prettier and nothing more comfortable,' I
answered, dropping my voice, and beginning to discover  already that Mr
Fairlie's selfish affectation and Mr Fairlie's  wretched nerves meant
one and the same thing.

`So glad. You will find your position here, Mr Hartright, properly
recognised. There is none of the horrid English barbarity  of feeling
about the social position of an artist in this house. So  much of my
early life has been passed abroad, that I have quite  cast my insular
skin in that respect. I wish I could say the same  of the gentry –;
detestable word, but I suppose I must use it –; of  the gentry in the
neighbourhood. They are sad Goths in Art, Mr  Hartright. People, I do
assure you, who would have opened their  eyes in astonishment, if they
had seen Charles the fifth pick up  Titian's brush for him. Do you mind
putting this tray of coins  back in the cabinet, and giving me the next
one to it? In the  wretched state of my nerves, exertion of any kind is
unspeakably  disagreeable to me. Yes. Thank you.'

As a practical commentary on the liberal social theory which  he had
just favoured me by illustrating, Mr Fairlie's cool request  rather
amused me. I put back one drawer and gave him the other,  with all
possible politeness. He began trifling with the new set  of coins and
the little brushes immediately; languidly looking at  them and admiring
them all the time he was speaking to me.

`A thousand thanks and a thousand excuses. Do you like  coins? Yes. So
glad we have another taste in comnon besides our  taste for Art. Now,
about the pecuniary arrangements between  us –; do tell me –; are they
satisfactory?'

` Most satisfactory, Mr Fairlie.'

`So glad. And –; what next ? Ah ! I remember. Yes. In reference  to the
consideration which you are good enough to accept for  giving me the
benefit of your accomplishments in art, my steward will wait on you at
the end of the fist week, to ascertain  your wishes. And –; what next?
Curious, is it not? I had a great  deal more to say: and I appear to
have quite forgotten it. Do you  mind touching the bell? In that corner.
Yes. Thank you.'

I rang; and a new servant noiselessly made his appearance –; a
foreigner, with a set smile and perfectly brushed hair –; a valet  every
inch of him.

`Louis,' said Mr Eairlie, dreamily dusting the tips of his fingers  with
one of the tiny brushes for the coins, `I made some entries  in my
tablettes this morning. Find my tablettes. A thousand  pardons, Mr
Hartright, I'm afraid I bore you.'

As he wearily closed his eyes again, before I could answer, and  as he
did most assuredly bore me, I sat silent, and looked up at  the Madonna
and Child by Raphael. In the meantime, the valet  left the room, and
returned shortly with a little ivory book. Mr  Fairlie, after first
relieving himself by a gentle sigh, let the book  drop open with one
hand, and held up the tiny brush with the  other, as a sign to the
servant to wait for further orders.

`Yes. rust so !' said Mr Fairlie, consulting the tablettes. `Louis,
take down that portfolio.' He pointed, as he spoke, to several
portfolios placed near the window, on mahogany stands. `No.  Not the one
with the green back –; that contains my Rembrandt  etchings, Mr
Hartright. Do you like etchings? Yes? So glad we  have another taste in
common. The portfolio with the red back,  Louis. Don't drop it! You have
no idea of the tortures I should  suffer, Mr Hartright, if Louis dropped
that portfolio, Is it safe on  the chair? Do you think it safe, Mr
Hartright? Yes? So glad.  Will you oblige me by looking at the drawings,
if you really  think they are quite safe. Louis, go away. What an ass
you are.  Don't you see me holding the tablettes? Do you suppose I want
to hold them? Then why not relieve me of the tablettes without  being
told? A thousand pardons, Mr Hartright; servants are such  asses, are
they not? Do tell me –; what do you think of the drawings ? They have
come from a sale in a shocking state –; I thought  they smelt of horrid
dealers' and brokers' fingers when I looked  at them last. Can you
undertake them ?'

Although my nerves were not delicate enough to detect the  odour of
plebeian fingers which had offended Mr Fairiie's nostrils,  my taste was
sufficiently educated to enable me to appreciate the  value of the
drawings, while I turned them over. They were, for  the most part,
really fine specimens of English water-colour art;  and they had
deserved much better treatment at the hands of  their foriner possessor
than they appeared to have received.

`The drawings,' I answered, ` require careful straining and  mounting;
and, in my opinion, they are well worth –;'

`I beg your pardon,' interposed Mr Fairlie. `Do you mind my  closing my
eyes while you speak? Even this light is too inuch  for them. Yes?'

`l was about to say that the drawings are well worth all the  time and
trouble –;'

Mr Fairlie suddenly opened his eyes again, and rolled them  with an
expression of helpless alarm in the direction of the window.

`I entreat you to excuse me, Mr Hartright,' he said in a feeble
flutter. `But surely I hear some horrid children in the garden –;  my
private garden –; below?'

`I can't say, Mr Fairlie. I heard nothing myself.'

`Oblige me –; you have been so very good in humouring my  poor nerves –;
oblige me by lifting up a corner of the blind. Don't  let the sun in on
me, Mr Hartright! Have you got the blind  up? Yes? Then will you be so
very kind as to look into the garden and make quite sure?'

I complied with this new request. The garden was carefully  walled in,
all round. Not a human creature, large or small,  appeared in any part
of the sacred seclusion. I reported that  gratifying fact to Mr Fairlie.

`A thousand thanks. My fancy, I suppose. There are no children, thank
Heaven, in the house; but the servants (persons  born without nerves)
will encourage the children from the village. Such brats –; oh, dear me,
such brats ! Shall I confess it, Mr  Hartright? –; I sadly want a reform
in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make
them machines for  the production of incessant noise. Surely our
delightful Raffaello's  conception is infinitely preferable ?'

He pointed to the picture of the Madonna, the upper part of  which
represented the conventional cherubs of Italian Art, celestially
Provided with sitting accommodation for their chins, on  balloons of
buff-coloured cloud.

`Quite a model family!' said Mr Fairlie, leering at the cherubs.  `Such
nice round faces, and such nice soft wings, and –; nothing  else. No
dirty little legs to run about on, and no noisy little lungs  to scream
with. How immeasurably superior to the existing constructionl I will
close my eyes again, if you will allow me. And  you really can manage
the drawings? So glad. Is there anything  else to settle? if there is, I
think I have forgotten it. Shall we ring  for Louis again?'

Being, by this time, quite as anxious, on my side, as Mr Fairlie
evidently was on his, to bring the interview to a speedy conclusion, I
thought I would try to render the summoning of the servant unnecessary,
by offering the requisite suggestion on my  own responsibility.

`The only point, Mr Fairlie, that remains to be discussed,' I  said,
`refers, I think, to the instruction in sketching which I am  engaged to
communicate to the two young ladies.'

`Ah ! just so,' said Mr Fairlie. `I wish I felt strong enough to  go
into that part of the arrangement –; but I don't. The ladies  who profit
by your kind services, Mr Hartright, must settle, and  decide, and so
on, for themselves. My niece is fond of your charming art. She knows
just enough about it to be conscious of her  own sad defects. Please
take pains with her. Yes. Is there anything else? No. We quite
understand each other –; don't we? I  have no right to detain you any
longer from your delightful  pursuit –; have I? So pleasant to have
settled everything –; such a  sensible relief to have done business. Do
you mind ringing for  Louis to carry the portfolio to your own room?'

`I will carry it there myself, Mr Fairlie, if you will allow me.'

`Will you really? Are you strong enough? How nice to be so  strong I Are
you sure you won't drop it? So glad to possess you  at Limmeridge, Mr
Hartright. I am such a sufferer that I hardly  dare hope to enjoy much
of your society. Would you mind taking  great pains not to let the doors
bang, and not to drop the portfolio? Thank you. Gently with the
curtains, please –; the slightest noise from theni goes through me like
a knife. Yes. Good  morning ! '

When the sea-green curtains were closed, and when the two  baize doors
were shut behind me, I stopped for a moment in the  httle circular hall
beyond, and drew a long, luxurious breath of  relief. It was like coming
to the surface of the water after deep  diving, to find myself once more
on the outside of Mr Fairlie's  room.

As soon as I was comfortably established for the morning in  my pretty
little studio, the first resolution at which I arrived was  to turn my
steps no more in the direction of the apartments  occupied by the master
of the house, except in the very improbable event of his honouring me
with a special invitation to pay  him another visit. Having settled this
satisfactory plan of future conduct in reference to Mr Fairlie, I soon
recovered the  serenity of temper of which my employer's haughty
familiarity  and impudent politeness had, for the moment, deprived me.
The  remaining hours of the morning passed away pleasantly enough,  in
looking over the drawings, arranging them in sets, trimming  their
ragged edges, and accomplishing the other necessary preparations in
anticipation of the business of mounting them. I  ought, perhaps, to
have made more progress than this; but, as  the luncheon-time drew near,
I grew restless and unsettled, and  felt unable to fix my attention on
work, even though that work  was only of the humble manual kind.

At two o'clock I descended again to the breakfast-room, a little
anxiously. Expectations of some interest were connected with  my
approaching reappearance in that part of the house. My introduction to
Miss Fairlie was now close at hand; and, if Miss  Halcombe's search
through her mother's letters had produced the  result which she
anticipated, the time had come for clearing up  the mystery of the woman
in white.




When I entered the room, I found Miss Halcombe and an elderly  lady
seated at the luncheon-table.

The elderly lady, when I was presented to her, proved to be  Miss
Fairlie's former governess, Mrs Vesey, who had been  briefly described
to me by my lively companion at the breakfasttable, as possessed of `all
the cardinal virtues, and counting for  nothing.' I can do little more
than offer my humble testimony  to the truthfulness of Miss Halcombe's
sketch of the old lady's  character. Mrs Vesey looked the
personification of human composure and female amiability. A calm
enjoyment of a calm existence beamed in drowsy smiles on her plump,
placid face. Some  of us rush through life, and some of us saunter
through life. Mrs  Vesey sat through life. Sat in the house, early and
late; sat in the  garden; sat in unexpected window-seats in passages;
sat (on a  camp-stool) when her friends tried to take her out walking;
sat  before she looked at anything, before she talked of anything,
before she answered Yes, or No, to the commonest question –; always with
the same serene smile on her lips, the same vacantlyattentive turn of
the head, the same snugly-comfortable position  of her hands and arms,
under every possible change of domestic  circumstances. A mild, a
compliant, an unutterably tranquil and  harmless old lady, who never by
any chance suggested the idea  that she had been actually alive since
the hour of her birth.  Nature has so much to do in this world, and is
engaged in  generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions,
that  she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to
distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying  on at
the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will  always remain
my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed  in making cabbages when
Mrs Vesey was borm, and that the  good lady suffered the consequences of
a vegetable preoccupation  in the mind of the Mother of us all.

`Now, Mrs Vesey,' said Miss Halcombe, looking brighter,  sharper, and
readier than ever, by contrast with the undemonstrative old lady at her
side, `what will you have? A cutlet?'

Mrs Vesey crossed her dimpled hands on the edge of the table,  smiled
placidly, and said, `Yes. dear.'

`What is that opposite Mr Hartright? Boiled chicken, is it  not? I
thought you liked boiled chicken better than cutlet, Mrs  Vesey ? '

Mrs Vesey took her dimpled hands off the edge of the table  and crossed
them on her lap instead; nodded contemplatively at  the boiled chicken,
and said, `Yes, dear.'

`Well, but which will you have, today? Shall Mr Hartright  give you some
chicken? or shall I give you some cutlet?'

Mrs Vesey put one of her dimpled hands back again on the  edge of the
table; hesitated drowsily, and said, `Which you please,  dear.'

`Mercy on me! it's a question for your taste, my good lady,  not for
mine. Suppose you have a little of both? and suppose  you begin with the
chicken, because Mr Hartright looks devoured by anxiety to carve for
you.'

Mrs Vesey put the other dimpled hand back on the edge of  the table;
brightened dimly one moment; went out again the  next; bowed obediently,
and said, `lf you please, sir.'

Surely a mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old
lady ! But enough, perhaps, for the present, of Mrs Vesey.

All this time, there were no signs of Miss Fairlie. We finished  our
luncheon; and still she never appeared.  Miss Halcombe,  whose quick eye
nothing escaped, noticed the looks that I cast,  from time to time, in
the direction of the door.

`I understand you, Mr Hartright,' she said; `you are wondering what has
become of your other pupil. She has been downstairs, and has got over
her headache; but has not sufficiently  recovered her appetite to join
us at lunch. If you will put yourself under my charge, I think I can
undertake to find her somewhere in the garden.'

She took up a parasol lying on a chair near her, and led the  way out,
by a long window at the bottom of the room, which  opened on to the
lawn. It is almost unnecessary to say that we  left Mrs Vesey still
seated at the table, with her dimpled hands  still crossed on the edge
of it; apparently settled in that position  for the rest of the
afternoon.

As we crossed the lawn, Miss Halcombe looked at me significantly, and
shook her head.

`That mysterious adventure of yours,' she said, `still remains  involved
in its own appropriate midnight darkness. I have been  all the morning
looking over my mother's letters, and I have  made no discoveries yet.
However, don't despair, Mr Hartright.  This is a matter of curiosity;
and you have got a woman for your  ally. Under such conditions success
is certain, sooner or later.  The letters are not exhausted. I have
three packets still left, and  you may confidently rely on my spending
the whole evening  over them.'

Here, then, was one of my anticipations of the morning still
unfulfilled. I began to wonder, next, whether my introduction  to Miss
Fairlie would disappoint the expectations that I had  been forming of
her since breakfast-time.

`And how did you get on with Mr Fairlie?' inquired Miss Halcombe, as we
left the lawn and turned into a shrubbery. `Was  he particularly nervous
this morning? Never mind considering  about your answer, Mr Hartright.
The mere fact of your being  obliged to consider is enough for me. I see
in your face that he  was particularly nervous; and, as I am amiably
unwilling to  throw you into the same condition, I ask no more.'

We turned off into a winding path while she was speaking,  and
approached a pretty summer-house, built of wood, in the  form of a
miniature Swiss chalet. The one room of the summerhouse, as we ascended
the steps of the door, was occupied by a  young lady. She was standing
near a rustic table, looking out at  the inland view of moor and hill
presented by a gap in the trees,  and absently turning over the leaves
of a little sketch-book that  lay at her side. This was Miss Fairlie.

How can I describe her? How can I separate her from my own  sensations,
and from all that has happened in the later time?  How can I see her
again as she looked when my eyes first rested  on her –; as she should
look, now, to the eyes that are about to  see her in these pages?

The water-colour drawing that I made of Laura Fairlie, at an  after
period, in the place and attitude in which I first saw her, lies  on my
desk while I write. I look at it, and there dawns upon me  brightly,
from the dark greenish-brown background of the  summer-house, a light,
youthful figure, clothed in a simple muslin dress, the pattern of it
formed by broad alternate stripes of  delicate blue and white. A scarf
of the same material sits crisply  and closely round her shoulders, and
a little straw hat of the  natural colour, plainly and sparingly trimmed
with ribbon to  match the gown, covers her head, and throws its soft
pearly  shadow over the upper part of her face. Her hair is of so faint
and pale a brown –; not flaxen, and yet almost as light; not golden,
and yet almost as glossy –; that it nearly melts, here and there,  into
the shadow of the hat. It is plainly parted and drawn back  over her
ears, and the line of it ripples naturally as it crosses  her forehead.
The eyebrows are rather darker than the hair; and  the eyes are of that
soft, limpid, turquoise blue, so often sung by  the poets, so seldom
seen in real life. Lovely eyes in colour, lovely  eyes in form –; large
and tender and quietly thoughtful –; but  beautiful above all things in
the clear truthfulness of look that  dwells in their inmost depths, and
shines through all their  changes of expression with the light of a
purer and a better world.  The charm –; most gently and yet most
distinctly expressed –;  which they shed over the whole face, so covers
and transforns  its little natural human blemishes elsewhere, that it is
difficult  to estimate the relative merits and defects of the other
features.  It is hard to see that the lower part of the face is too
delicately  refined away towards the chin to be in full and fair
proportion  with the upper part; that the nose, in escaping the aquiline
bend  (always hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractedly
perfect it may be), has erred a little in the other extreme, and  has
missed the ideal straightness of line; and that the sweet,  sensitive
lips are subject to a slight nervous contraction, when  she smiles,
which draws them upward a little at one corner,  towards the cheek. It
might be possible to note these blemishes  in another woman's face, but
it is not easy to dwell on them in  hers, so subtly are they connected
with all that is individual and  characteristic in her expression, and
so closely does the expression depend for its full play and life, in
every other feature, on  the moving impulse of the eyes.

Does my poor portrait of her, my fond, patient labour of long  and happy
days, show me these things? Ah, how few of them  are in the dim
mechanical drawing, and how many in the mind  with which I regard it! A
fair, delicate girl, in a pretty light  dress, trifling with the leaves
of a sketch-book, while she looks  up from it with truthful, innocent
blue eyes –; that is all the  drawing can say; all, perhaps, that even
the deeper reach of  thought and pen can say in their language, either.
The woman  who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy
conceptions  of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has
remained  unknown to us till she appeared. Sympathies that lie too deep
for words, too deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such  times, by
other charnis than those which the senses feel and  which the resources
of expression can realise. The mystery  which underlies the beauty of
women is never raised above the  reach of all expression until it has
claimed kindred with the  deeper mystery in our own souls. Then, and
then only, has it  passed beyond the narrow region on which light falls,
in this  world, from the pencil and the pen.

Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened  the pulses
within you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir.  Let the kind,
candid blue eyes meet yours, as they met mine,  with the one matchless
look which we both remember so well.  Let her voice speak the music that
you once loved best, attuned  as sweetly to your ear as to mine. Let her
footstep, as she comes  and goes, in these pages, be like that other
footstep to whose airy  fall your own heart once beat time. Take her as
the visionary  nursling of your own fancy; and she will grow upon you,
all the  more clearly, as the living woman who dwells in mine.

Among the sensations that crowded on me, when my eyes first  looked upon
her –; familiar sensations which we all know, which  spring to life in
most of our hearts, die again in so many, and  renew their bright
existence in so few –; there was one that  troubled and perplexed me:
one that seemed strangely inconsistent and unaccountably out of place in
Miss Fairlie's presence.

Mingling with the vivid impression produced by the charm of  her fair
face and head, her sweet expression, and her winning  simplicity of
manner, was another impression, which, in a  shadowy way, suggested to
me the idea of something wanting.  At one time it seemed like something
wanting in her : at another,  like something wanting in myself, which
hindered me from  understanding her as I ought. The impression was
always strongest in the most contradictory manner, when she looked at
me;  or, in other words, when I was most conscious of the harmony  and
charm of her face, and yet, at the same time, most troubled  by the
sense of an incompleteness which it was impossible to  discover.
Something wanting, something wanting –; and where it  was, and what it
was, I could not say.

The effect of this curious caprice of fancy (as I thought it  then) was
not of a nature to set me at my ease, during a first  interview with
Miss Fairlie. The few kind words of welconie  which she spoke found me
hardly self-possessed enough to thank  her in the customary phrases of
reply. Observing my hesitation,  and no doubt attributing it, naturally
enough, to some momentary shyness on my part, Miss Halcombe took the
business of  talking, as easily and readily as usual, into her own
hands.

`Look there, Mr Hartright,' she said, pointing to the sketchbook on the
table, and to the little delicate wandering hand that  was still
trifling with it. `Surely you will acknowledge that your  model pupil is
found at last? The moment she hears that you  are in the house, she
seizes her inestimable sketch-book, looks  universal Nature straight in
the face, and longs to begin!'

Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good-humour, which broke  out as
brightly as if it had been part of the sunshine above us,  over her
lovely face.

`I must not take credit to myself where no credit is due,' she  said,
her clear, truthful blue eyes looking alternately at Miss  Halcombe and
at me. `Fond as I am of drawing, I am so conscious  of my own ignorance
that I am more afraid than anxious to  begin. Now I know you are here,
Mr Hartright, I find myself  looking over my sketches, as I used to look
over my lessons  when I was a little girl, and when I was sadly afraid
that I  should turn out not fit to be heard.'

She made the confession very prettily and simply, and, with  quaint,
childish earnestness, drew the sketch-hook away close to  her own side
of the table. Miss Halcombe cut the knot of the  little embarrassment
forthwith, in her resolute, downright way.

`Good, bad, or indifferent,' she said, `the pupil's sketches must  pass
through the fiery ordeal of the master's judgment –; and  there's an end
to it. Suppose we take them with us in the carriage, Laura, and let Mr
Hartright see them, for the first time,  under circumstances of
perpetual jolting and interruption? If  we can only confuse him all
through the drive, between Nature  as it is, when he looks up at the
view, and Nature as it is not,  when he looks down again at our
sketch-books, we shall drive  him into the last desperate refuge of
paying us compliments,  and shall slip through his professional fingers
with our pet feathers of vanity all unruffled.'

`I hope Mr Hartright will pay me no compliments,' said Miss  Fairlie, as
we all left the summer-house.

`May I venture to inquire why you express that hope?' I  asked.

`Because I shall believe all that you say to me,' she answered  simply.

In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her  whole
character: to that generous trust in others which, in her  nature, grew
innocently out of the sense of her own truth. I  only knew it
intuitively then. I know it by experience now.

We merely waited to rouse good Mrs Vesey from the place  which she still
occupied at the deserted luncheon-table, before  we entered the open
carriage for our promised drive. The old  lady and Miss Halcombe
occupied the back seat, and Miss Fairlie  and I sat together in front,
with the sketch-book open between  us, fairly exhibited at last to my
professional eyes. All serious  criticism on the drawings, even if I had
been disposed to volunteer it, was rendered impossible by Miss
Halcombe's lively resolution to see nothing but the ridiculous side of
the Fine Arts, as  practised by herself, her sister, and ladies in
general. I can remember the conversation that passed far more easily
than the  sketches that I mechanically looked over. That part of the
talk,  especially, in which Miss Fairlie took any share, is still as
vividly  impressed on my memory as if I had heard it only a few hours
ago.

Yes! let me acknowledge that on the first day I let the charm  of her
presence lure me from the recollection of myself and my  position. The
most trifling of the questions that she put to me,  on the subject of
using her pencil and mixing her colours; the  slightest alterations of
expression in the lovely eyes that looked  into mine with such an
earnest desire to learn all that I could  teach, and to discover all
that I could show, attracted more of  my attention than the finest view
we passed through, or the  grandest changes of light and shade, as they
flowed into each  other over the waving moorland and the level beach. At
any  time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not
strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world
amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to  Nature
for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in  books. Admiration
of those beauties of the inanimate world,  which modern poetry so
largely and so eloquently describes,  is not, even in the best of us,
one of the original instincts of our  nature. As children, we none of us
possess it. No uninstructed  man or woman possesses it. Those whose
lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever-changing wonders of sea
and land are  also those who are most universally insensible to every
aspect  of Nature not directly associated with the human interest of
their calling. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the  earth
we live on is, in truth, one of the civilised accomplishments which we
all learn as an Art; and, more, that very capacity is rarely practised
by any of us except when our minds are  most indolent and most
unoccupied. How much share have the  attractions of Nature ever had in
the pleasurable or painful  interests and emotions of ourselves or our
friends? What space  do they ever occupy in the thousand little
narratives of personal  experience which pass every day by word of mouth
from one of  us to the other? All that our minds can compass, all that
our  hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal certainty, equal
profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in the poorest as in the
richest prospect that the face of the earth can show. There is  surely a
reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the  creature and the
creation around it, a reason which may perhaps  be found in the
widely-differing destinies of man and his earthly  sphere. The grandest
mountain prospect that the eye can range  over is appointed to
annihilation. The smallest human interest  that the pure heart can feel
is appointed to immortality.

We had been out nearly three hours, when the carriage again  passed
through the gates of Limmeridge House.

On our way back I had let the ladies settle for themselves the  first
point of view which they were to sketch, under my instructions, on the
afternoon of the next day. When they withdrew to  dress for dinner, and
when I was alone again in my little sittingroom, my spirits seemed to
leave me on a sudden. I felt ill at ease  and dissatisfied with myself,
I hardly knew why. Perhaps I was  now conscious for the first time of
having enjoyed our drive too  much in the character of a guest, and too
little in the character  of a drawing-master. Perhaps that strange sense
of something  wanting, either in Miss Fairlie or in myself, which had
perplexed  me when I was first introduced to her, haunted me still.
Anyhow, it was a relief to my spirits when the dinner-hour called me
out of my solitude, and took me back to the society of the ladies  of
the house.

I was struck, on entering the drawing-room, by the curious  contrast,
rather in material than in colour, of the dresses which  they now wore.
While Mrs Vesey and Miss Halcombe were richly  clad (each in the manner
most becoming to her age), the first  in silver-grey, and the second in
that delicate primrose-yellow  colour which matches so well with a dark
complexion and black  hair, Miss Fairlie was unpretendingly and almost
poorly dressed  in plain white muslin. It was spotlessly pure: it was
beautifully  put on; but still it was the sort of dress which the wife
or daughter of a poor man night have worn, and it made her, so far as
externals went, look less affluent in circumstances than her own
governess. At a later period, when I learnt to know more of Miss
Fairlie's character, I discovered that this curious contrast, on  the
wrong side, was due to her natural delicacy of feeling and  natural
intensity of aversion to the slightest personal display of  her own
wealth. Neither Mrs Vesey nor Miss Halcombe could  ever induce her to
let the advantage in dress desert the two ladies  who were poor, to lean
to the side of the one lady who was rich.

When the dinner was over we returned together to the  drawing-room.
Although Mr Fairlie (emulating the magnificent  condescension of the
monarch who had picked up Titian's brush  for him) had instructed his
butler to consult my wishes in relation to the wine that I might prefer
after dinner, I was resolute  enough to resist the temptation of sitting
in solitary grandeur  among bottles of my own choosing, and sensible
enough to ask  the ladies' permission to leave the table with them
habitually, on  the civilised foreign plan, during the period of my
residence at  Limmeridge House.

The drawing-room, to which we had now withdrawn for the  rest of the
evening, was on the ground-floor, and was of the same  shape and size as
the breakfast-room. Large glass doors at the  lower end opened on to a
terrace, beautifully ornamented along  its whole length with a profusion
of flowers. The soft, hazy twilight was just shading leaf and blossom
alike into harmony with  its own sober hues as we entered the room, and
the sweet evening  scent of the flowers met us with its fragrant welcome
through  the open glass doors. Good Mrs Vesey (always the first of the
party to sit down) took possession of an armchair in a corner,  and
dozed off comfortably to sleep. At my request Miss Fairlie  placed
herself at the piano. As I followed her to a seat near the  instrument,
I saw Miss Halcombe retire into a recess of one of  the side windows, to
proceed with the search through her mother's  letters by the last quiet
rays of the evening light.

How vividly that peaceful home-picture of the drawing-room  comes back
to me while I write! from the place where I sat I  could see Miss
Halcombe's graceful figure, half of it in soft light,  half in
mysterious shadow, bending intently over the letters in  her lap; while,
nearer to me, the fair profile of the player at the  piano was just
delicately defined against the faintly deepening  background of the
inner wall of the room. Outside, on the terrace,  the clustering flowers
and long grasses and creepers waved so  gently in the light evening air,
that the sound of their rustling  never reached us. The sky was without
a cloud, and the dawning mystery of moonlight began to tremble already
in the region  of the eastern heaven. The sense of peace and seclusion
soothed  all thought and feeling into a rapt, unearthly repose; and the
balmy quiet, that deepened ever with the deepening light, seemed  to
hover over us with a gentler influence still, when there stole  upon it
from the piano the heavenly tenderness of the music of  Mozart. It was
an evening of sights and sounds never to forget.

We all sat silent in the places we had chosen –; Mrs Vesey still
sleeping, Miss Fairlie still playing, Miss Halcombe still reading –;
till the light failed us. By this time the moon had stolen round to  the
terrace, and soft, mysterious rays of light were slanting already across
the lower end of the room. The change from the  twilight obscurity was
so beautiful that we banished the lamps,  by common consent, when the
servant brought them in, and  kept the large room unlighted, except by
the glimmer of the two  candles at the piano.

For half an hour more the music still went on. After that the  beauty of
the moonlight view on the terrace tempted Miss Fairlie  out to look at
it, and I followed her. When the candles at the  piano had been lighted
Miss Halcombe had changed her place,  so as to continue her examination
of the letters by their assistance. We left her, on a low chair, at one
side of the instrument,  so absorbed over her reading that she did not
seem to notice  when we moved.

We had been out on the terrace together, just in front of the  glass
doors, hardly so long as five minutes, I should think; and  Miss Fairlie
was, by my advice, just tying her white handkerchief over her head as a
precaution against the night air –; when  I heard Miss Halcombe's voice
–; low, eager, and altered from its  natural lively tone –; pronounce my
name.

`Mr Hartright,' she said, `will you come here for a minute? I  want to
speak to you.'

I entered the room again immediately. The piano stood about  halfway
down along the inner wall. On the side of the instrument farthest from
the terrace Miss Halcombe was sitting with  the letters scattered on her
lap, and with one in her hand selected  from them, and held close to the
candle. On the side nearest to  the terrace there stood a low ottoman,
on which I took my place.  In this position I was not far from the glass
doors, and I could see  Miss Fairlie plainly, as she passed and repassed
the opening on  to the terrace, walking slowly from end to end of it in
the full  radiance of the moon.

`I want you to listen while I read the concluding passages in  this
letter,' said Miss Halcombe. `Tell me if you think they throw  any light
upon your strange adventure on the road to London.  The letter is
addressed by my mother to her second husband, Mr  Fairlie, and the date
refers to a period of between eleven and  twelve years since. At that
time Mr and Mrs Fairlie, and my  half-sister Laura, had been living for
years in this house; and I  was away from them completing my education
at a school in  Paris.'

She looked and spoke earnestly, and, as I thought, a little uneasily as
well. At the moment when she raised the letter to the  candle before
beginning to read it, Miss Fairlie passed us on the  terrace, looked in
for a moment, and seeing that we were engaged, slowly walked on.

Miss Halcombe began to read as follows : –;

```You will be tired, my dear Philip, of hearing perpetually  about my
school and my scholars. Lay the blame, pray, on the  dull uniformity of
life at Limmeridge, and not on me. Besides,  this time I have something
really interesting to tell you about a  new scholar.

```You know old Mrs Kempe at the village shop. Well, after  years of
ailing, the doctor lias at last given her up, and she is  dying slowly
day by day. Her only living relation, a sister, arrived last week to
take care of her. This sister comes all the way  from Hampshire –; her
name is Mrs Catherick. Four days ago Mrs  Catherick came here to see me,
and brought her only child with  her, a sweet httle girl about a year
older than our darling  Laura –;'''

As the last sentence fell from the reader's lips, Miss Fairlie  passed
us on the terrace once more. She was softly singing to  herself one of
the melodies which she had been playing earlier  in the evening. Miss
Halcombe waited till she had passed out of  sight again, and then went
on with the letter –;

```Mrs Catherick is a decent, well-behaved, respectable woman;
middle-aged, and with the remains of having been moderately,  only
moderately, nice-looking. There is something in her manner  and in her
appearance, however, which I can't make out. She is  reserved about
herself to the point of downright secrecy, and  there is a look in her
face –; I can't describe it –; which suggests to  me that she has
something on her mind. She is altogether what  you would call a walking
mystery. Her errand at Limmeridge  House, however, was simple enough.
When she left Hampshire  to nurse her sister, Mrs Kempe, through her
last illness, she had  been obliged to bring her daughter with her,
through having no  one at home to take care of the little girl. Mrs
Kempe may die in  a week's time, or may linger on for months; and Mrs
Catherick's  object was to ask me to let her daughter, Anne, have the
benefit  of attending my school, subject to the condition of her being
removed from it to go home again with her mother, after Mrs  Kempe's
death. I consented at once, and when Laura and I went  out for our walk,
we took the little girl (who is just eleven years  old) to the school
that very day.'''

Once more Miss Fairlie's figure, bright and soft in its snowy  muslin
dress –; her face prettily framed by the white folds of the
handkerchief which she had tied under her chin –; passed by us in  the
moonlight. Once more Miss Halcombe waited till she was out  of sight,
and then went on –;

```I have taken a violent fancy. Philip, to my new scholar, for  a
reason which I mean to keep till the last for the sake of surprising
you. Her mother having told me as little about the child as  she told me
of herself, I was left to discover (which I did on the  first dav when
we tried her at lessons) that the poor little thing's  intellect is not
developed as it ought to be at her age. Seeing  this I had her up to the
house the next dav, and privately arranged with the doctor to come and
watch her and question her,  and tell me what he thought. His opinion is
that she will grow  out of it. Rut he says her careful bringing-up at
school is a matter  of great importance just now, because her unusual
slowness in  acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in keeping
them,  when they are once received into her mind. Now, my love, you
must not imagine, in your off-hand way, that I have been attaching
myself to an idiot. This poor little Anne Catherick is a sweet,
affectionate, grateful girl, and says the quaintest, prettiest  things
(as you shall judge by an instance), in the most oddly  sudden,
surprised, half-frightened way. Although she is dressed  very neatly,
her clothes show a sad want of taste in colour and  pattern. So I
arranged, yesterday, that some of our darling Laura's  old white frocks
and white hats should be altered for Anne  Catherick, explaining to her
that little girls of her complexion  looked neater and better all in
white than in anything else. She  hesitated and seemed puzzled for a
minute, then flushed up, and  appeared to understand. Her little hand
clasped mine suddenly.  She kissed it, Philip, and said (oh, so
earnestly !), `I will always  wear white as long as I live. It will help
me to remember you,  ma'am, and to think that I am pleasing you still,
when I go away  and see you no more.' This is only one specimen of the
quaint  things she says so prettily. Poor little soul ! She shall have a
stock  of white frocks, made with good deep tucks, to let out for her as
she grows –;'''

Miss Halcombe paused, and looked at me across the piano.

`Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the high-road seem  young?' she
asked. `Young enough to be two- or three-andtwenty ?'

`Yes, Miss Halcombe, as young as that.'

`And she was strangely dressed, from head to foot, all in  white ?'

`All in white.'

While the answer was passing my lips Miss Fairlie glided into  view on
the terrace for the third time. Instead of proceeding on  her walk, she
stopped, with her hack turned towards us, and,  leaning on the
balustrade of the terrace, looked down into the  garden beyond. My eyes
fixed upon the white gleam of her muslin gown and head-dress in the
moonlight, and a sensation, for  which I can find no name –; a sensation
that quickened my pulse,  and raised a fluttering at my heart –; began
to steal over me.

`All in white?' Miss Halcombe repeated. `The most important  sentences
in the letter, Mr Hartright, are those at the end, which  I will read to
you immediately. But I can't help dwelling a little  upon the
coincidence of the white costume of the woman you  met, and the white
frocks which produced that strange answer  from my mother's little
scholar. The doctor may have been wrong  when he discovered the child's
defects of intellect, and predicted  that she would `grow out of them.'
She may never have grown  out of them, and the old grateful fancy about
dressing in white,  which was a serious feeling to the girl, may be a
serious feeling  to the woman still.'

I said a few words in answer –; I hardly know what. All my  attention
was concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie's  muslin dress.

`Listen to the last sentences of the letter,' said Miss Halcombe.  `I
think they will surprise you.'

As she raised the letter to the light of the candle, Miss Fairlie
turned from the balustrade, looked doubtfully up and down the  terrace,
advanced a step towards the glass doors, and then stopped,  facing us.

Meanwhile Miss Halcombe read me the last sentences to which  she had
referred –;

```And now, my love, seeing that I am at the end of my paper,  now for
the real reason, the surprising reason, for my fondness  for little Anne
Catherick. My dear Philip, although she is not  half so pretty, she is,
nevertheless, by one of those extraordinary  caprices of accidental
resemblance which one sometimes sees, the  living likeness, in her hair,
her complexion, the colour of her  eyes, and the shape of her face –;'''

I started up from the ottoman before Miss Halcombe could  pronounce the
next words. A thrill of the same feeling which  ran through me when the
touch was laid upon my shoulder on  the lonely high-road chilled me
again.

There stood Miss Fairlie, a white figure, alone in the moonlight;  in
her attitude, in the turn of her head, in her complexion, in the  shape
of her face, the living image, at that distance and under  those
circumstances, of the woman in white ! The doubt which  had troubled my
mind for hours and hours past flashed into conviction in an instant.
That `something wanting' was my own  recognition of the ominous likeness
between the fugitive from  the asylum and my pupil at Limmeridge House.

`You see it!' said Miss Halcombe. She dropped the useless  letter, and
her eyes flashed as they met mine. `You see it now,  as my mother saw it
eleven years since !'

`I see it –; more unwillingly than I can say. To associate that
forlorn, friendless, lost woman, even by an accidental likeness  only,
with Miss Fairlie, seems like casting a shadow on the future  of the
bright creature who stands looking at us now. Let me lose  the
impression again as soon as possible. Call her in, out of the  dreary
moonlight –; pray call her in!'

`Mr Hartright, you surprise me. Whatever women may be, I  thought that
men, in the nineteenth century, were above superstition.'

`Pray call her in!'

`Hush, hush ! She is coming of her own accord. Say nothing in  her
presence. Let this discovery of the likeness be kept a secret  between
you and me. Come in, Laura, come in, and wake Mrs  Vesey with the piano.
Mr Hartright is petitioning for some more  music, and he wants it, this
time, of the lightest and liveliest  kind.'




So ended my eventful first day at Limmeridge House.

Miss Halcombe and I kept our secret. After the discovery of  the
likeness no fresh light seemed destined to break over the mystery of the
woman in white. At the first safe opportunity Miss  Halcombe cautiously
led her half-sister to speak of their mother,  of old times, and of Anne
Catherick. Miss Fairlie's recollections  of the little scholar at
Limmeridge were, however, only of the  most vague and general kind. She
remembered the likeness between herself and her mother's favourite
pupil, as something  which had been supposed to exist in past times; but
she did not  refer to the gift of the white dresses, or to the singular
form of  words in which the child had artlessly expressed her gratitude
for them. She remembered that Anne had remained at Limmeridge for a few
months only, and had then left it to go back to her  home in Hampshire;
but she could not say whether the mother  and daughter had ever
returned, or had ever been heard of afterwards. No further search, on
Miss Halcombe's part, through the  few letters of Mrs Fairlie's writing
which she had left unread,  assisted in clearing up the uncertainties
still left to perplex us.  We had identified the unhappy woman whom I
had met in the  night-time with Anne Catherick –; we had made some
advance,  at least, towards connecting the probably defective condition
of  the poor creature's intellect with the peculiarity of her being
dressed all in white, and with the continuance, in her maturer  years,
of her childish gratitude towards Mrs Fairhe –; and there,  so far as we
knew at that time, our discoveries had ended.

The days passed on, the weeks passed on, and the track of the  golden
autumn wound its bright way visibly through the green  summer of the
trees. Peaceful, fast-flowing, happy time ! my story  glides by you now
as swiftly as you once glided by me. Of all  the treasures of enjoyment
that you poured so freely into my  heart, how much is left me that has
purpose and value enough  to be written on this page? Nothing but the
saddest of all confessions that a man can make –; the confession of his
own folly.

The secret which that confession discloses should be told with  little
effort, for it has indirectly escaped me already. The poor  weak words,
which have failed to describe Miss Fairlie, have succeeded in betraying
the sensations she awakened in me. It is so  with us all. Our words are
giants when they do us an injury,  and dwarfs when they do us a service.

I loved her.

Ah ! how well I know all the sadness and all the mockery that  is
contained in those three words. I can sigh over my mournful  confession
with the tenderest woman who reads it and pities me.  I can laugh at it
as bitterly as the hardest man who tosses it  from him in contempt. I
loved her ! Feel for me, or despise me, I  confess it with the same
immovable resolution to own the truth.

Was there no excuse for me? There was some excuse to be  found, surely,
in the conditions under which my term of hired  service was passed at
Limmeridge House.

My morning hours succeeded each other calmly in the quiet  and seclusion
of my own room. I had just work enough to do, in  mounting my employer's
drawings, to keep my hands and eyes  pleasurably employed, while my mind
was left free to enjoy the  dangerous luxury of its own unbridled
thoughts. A perilous  solitude, for it lasted long enough to enervate,
not long enough  to fortify me. A perilous solitude, for it was followed
by afternoons and evenings spent, day after day and week after week,
alone in the society of two women, one of whom possessed all  the
accomplishments of grace, wit, and high-breeding, the other  all the
charms of beauty, gentleness, and simple truth, that can  purify and
subdue the heart of man. Not a day passed, in that  dangerous intimacy
of teacher and pupil, in which my hand was  not close to Miss Fairlie's;
my cheek, as we bent together over  her sketch-book, almost touching
hers. The more attentively  she watched every movement of my brush, the
more closely I was  breathing the perfume of her hair, and the warm
fragrance of  her breath. It was part of my service to live in the very
light of  her eyes –; at one time to be bending over her, so close to
her  bosom as to tremble at the thought of touching it; at another,  to
feel her bending over me, bending so close to see what I was  about,
that her voice sank low when she spoke to me, and her  ribbons brushed
my cheek in the wind before she could draw  them back.

The evenings which followed the sketching excursions of the  afternoon
varied, rather than checked, these innocent, these inevitable
familiarities. My natural fondness for the music which  she played with
such tender feeling, such delicate woinanly taste,  and her natural
enjoyment of giving me back, by the practice of  her art, the pleasure
which I had offered to her by the practice of  mine, only wove another
tie which drew us closer and closer to  one another. The accidents of
conversation; the simple habits  which regulated even such a little
thing as the position of our  places at table; the play of Miss
Halcombe's ever-ready raillery,  always directed against my anxiety as
teacher, while it sparkled  over her enthusiasm as pupil; the harmless
expression of poor  Mrs Vesey's drowsy approval, which connected Miss
Fairlie and  me as two model young people who never disturbed her –;
every  one of these trifles, and many more, combined to fold us together
in the same domestic atmosphere, and to lead us both insensibly  to the
same hopeless end.

I should have remembered my position, and have put myself  secretly on
my guard. I did so, but not till it was too late. All the  discretion,
all the experience, which had availed me with other  women, and secured
me against other temptations, failed me  with her. It had been my
profession, for years past, to be in this  close contact with young
girls of all ages, and of all orders of  beauty. I had accepted the
position as part of my calling in life;  I had trained myself to leave
all the sympathies natural to my  age in my employer's outer hall, as
coolly as I left my umbrella  there before I went upstairs. I had long
since learnt to understand, composedly and as a matter of course, that
my situation  in life was considered a guarantee against any of my
female  pupils feeling more than the most ordinary interest in me, and
that I was admitted among beautiful and captivating women  much as a
harmless domestic animal is admitted among them.  This guardian
experieiice I had gained early; this guardian experience had sternly and
strictly guided me straight along my  own poor narrow path, without once
letting me stray aside, to  the right hand or to the left. And now I and
my trusty talisman  were parted for the first time. Yes, my
hardly-earned self-control  was as completely lost to me as if I had
never possessed it; lost  to me, as it is lost every day to other men,
in other critical situations, where women are concerned. I know, now,
that I should  have questioned myself from the first. I should have
asked why  any room in the house was better than home to me when she
entered it, and barren as a desert when she went out again –; why  I
always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress  that I
had noticed and remembered in no other woman's before –;  why I saw her,
heard her, and touched her (when we shook  hands at night and morning)
as I had never seen, heard, and  touched any other woman in my life? I
should have looked into  my own heart, and found this new growth
springing up there,  and plucked it out while it was young. Why was this
easiest,  simplest work of self-culture always too much for me? The
explanation has been written already in the three words that were  many
enough, and plain enough, for my confession. I loved her.

The days passed, the weeks passed; it was approaching the  third month
of my stay in Cumberland. The delicious monotony of life in our calm
seclusion flowed on with me, like a  smooth stream with a swimmer who
glides down the current.  All memory of the past, all thought of the
future, all sense of  the falseness and hopelessness of my own position,
lay hushed  within me into deceitful rest. Lulled by the Syren-song that
my  own heart sung to me, with eyes shut to all sight, and ears closed
to all sound of danger, I drifted nearer and nearer to the fatal  rocks.
The warning that aroused me at last, and startled me into  sudden,
self-accusing consciousness of my own weakness, was  the plainest, the
truest, the kindest of all warnings, for it came  silently from her.

We had parted one night as usual. No word had fallen from  my lips, at
that time or at any time before it, that could betray  me, or startle
her into sudden knowledge of the truth. But when  we met again in the
morning, a change had come over her –; a  change that told me all.

I shrank then –; I shrink still –; from invading the innermost
sanctuary of her heart, and laying it open to others, as I have laid
open my own. Let it be enough to say that the time when she  first
surprised my secret was, I firmly believe, the time when she  first
surprised her own, and the time, also, when she changed  towards me in
the interval of one night. Her nature, too truthful to deceive others,
was too noble to deceive itself. When the  doubt that I had hushed
asleep first laid its weary weight on her  heart, the true face owned
all, and said, in its own frank, simple  language –; I am sorry for
hiin; I am sorry for myself.

It said this, and more, which I could not then interpret. I understood
but too well the change in her manner, to greater kindness and quicker
readiness in interpreting all my wishes, before  others –; to constraint
and sadness, and nervous anxiety to absorb herself in the first
occupation she could seize on, whenever  we happened to be left together
alone. I understood why the  sweet sensitive lips smiled so rarely and
so restrainedly now, and  why the clear blue eyes looked at me,
sometimes with the pity  of an angel, sometimes with the innocent
perplexity of a child.  But the change meant more than this. There was a
coldness in  her hand, there was an unnatural immobility in her face,
there  was in all her movements the mute expression of constant fear
and clinging self-reproach. The sensations that I could trace to
herself and to ine, the unacknowledged sensations that we were  feeling
in common, were not these. There were certain elements  of the change in
her that were still secretly drawing us together,  and others that were,
as secretly, beginning to drive us apart.

In my doubt and perplexity, in my vague suspicion of something hidden
which I was left to find by my own unaided efforts,  I examined Miss
Halcombe's looks and manner for enlightenment. Living in such intimacy
as ours, no serious alteration  could take place in any one of us which
did not sympathetically  affect the others. The change in Miss Fairlie
was reflected in her  half-sister. Although not a word escaped Miss
Halcombe which  hinted at an altered state of feeling towards myself,
her penetrating eyes had contracted a new habit of always watching me.
Sometimes the look was like suppressed anger, sometimes like  suppressed
dread, sometimes like neither –; like nothing, in short,  which I could
understand. A week elapsed, leaving us all three  still in this position
of secret constraint towards one another.  My situation, aggravated by
the sense of my own miserable  weakness and forgetfulness of myself, now
too late awakened in  me, was becoming intolerable. I felt that I must
cast off the oppression under which I was living, at once and for ever
–; yet how  to act for the- best, or what to say first, was more than I
could tell.

from this position of helplessness and humiliation I was rescued by Miss
Halcombe. Her lips told me the bitter, the necessary, the unexpected
truth; her hearty kindness sustained me  under the shock of hearing it;
her sense and courage turned to  its right use an event which threatened
the worst that could  happen, to me and to others, in Limmeridge House.




It was on a Thursday in the week, and nearly at the end of the  third
month of my sojourn in Cumberland.

In the morning, when I went down into the breakfast-room  at the usual
hour, Miss Halcombe, for the first time since I had  known her, was
absent from her customary place at the table.

Miss Fairlie was out on the lawn. She bowed to me, but did  not come in.
Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers,  that could unsettle
either of us –; and yet the same unacknowledged sense of embarrassment
made us shrink alike from meeting one another alone. She waited on the
lawn, and I waited in  the breakfast-room, till Mrs Vesey or Miss
Halcombe came in.  How quickly I should have joined her: how readily we
should  have shaken hands, and glided into our customary talk, only a
fortnight ago.

In a few minutes Miss Halcombe entered. She had a preoccupied look, and
she made her apologies for being late rather  absently.

`I have been detained,' she said. `by a consultation with Mr  Fairlie on
a domestic matter which he wished to speak to me  about.'

Miss Fairlie came in from the garden, and the usual morning  greeting
passed between us. Her hand struck colder to mine than  ever. She did
not look at me, and she was very pale. Even Mrs  Vesey noticed when she
entered the room a moment after.

`I suppose it is the change in the wind,' said the old lady. `The
winter is coming –; ah, my love, the winter is coming soon !'

In her heart and in mine it had come already !

Our morning meal –; once so full of pleasant good-humoured  discussion
of the plans for the day –; was short and silent. Miss  Fairlie seemed
to feel the oppression of the long pauses in the  conversation, and
looked appealingly to her sister to fill them up.  Miss Halconibe, after
once or twice hesitating and checking herself, in a most
uncharacteristic manner, spoke at last.

`I have seen your uncle this morning, Laura,' she said. `He  thinks the
purple room is the one that ought to be got ready, and  he confirms what
I told you. Monday is the day –; not Tuesday.'

While these words were being spoken Miss Fairlie looked down  at the
table beneath her. Her fingers moved nervously among the  crumbs that
were scattered on the cloth. The paleness on her  cheeks spread to her
lips, and the lips themselves trembled visibly.  I was not the only
person present who noticed this. Miss Halcombe saw it, too, and at once
set us the example of rising from  table.

Mrs Vesey and Miss Fairlie left the room together. The kind  sorrowful
blue eyes looked at me, for a moment, with the prescient sadness of a
coming and a long farewell. I felt the answering  pang in my own heart
–; the pang that told me I must lose her  soon, and love her the more
unchangeably for the loss.

I turned towards the garden when the door had closed on her.  Miss
Halcombe was standing with her hat in her hand, and her  shawl over her
arm, by the large window that led out to the  lawn, and was looking at
me attentively.

`Have you any leisure time to spare,' she asked, `before you  begin to
work in your own room?'

`Certainly, Miss Halcombe. I have always time at your service.'

`I want to say a word to you in private, Mr Hartright. Get  your hat and
come out into the garden. We are not likely to be  disturbed there at
this hour in the morning.'

As we stepped out on to the lawn, one of the under-gardeners  –; a mere
lad –; passed us on his way to the house, with a letter in  his hand.
Miss Halcombe stopped him.

`Is that letter for me?' she asked.

`Nay, miss; it's just said to be for Miss Fairlie,' answered the  lad,
holding out the letter as he spoke.

Miss Halcombe took it from him and looked at the address.

`A strange handwriting,' she said to herself. `Who can Laura's
correspondent be? Where did you get this?' she continued, addressing the
gardener,

`Well, miss,' said the lad, `l just got it from a woman.'

`What woman?'

`A woman well stricken in age.'

`Oh, an old woman. Any one you knew?'

`I canna tak' it on mysel' to say that she was other than a  stranger to
me.'

`Which way did she go?'

`That gate,' said the under-gardener, turning with great deliberation
towards the south, and embracing the whole of that  part of England with
one comprehensive sweep of his arm.

`Curious,' said Miss Halcombe; `I suppose it must be a beggingletter.
There,' she added, handing the letter back to the lad, `take  it to the
house, and give it to one of the servants. And now, Mr  Hartright, if
you have no objection, let us walk this way.'

She led me across the lawn, along the same path by which I  had followed
her on the day after my arrival at Limmeridge. At  the little
summer-house, in which Laura Fairlie and I had first  seen each other,
she stopped, and broke the silence which she had  steadily maintained
while we were walking together.

`What I have to say to you I can say here.'

With those words she entered the summer-house, took one of  the chairs
at the little round table inside, and signed to me to take  the other. I
suspected what was coming when she spoke to me  in the breakfast-room; I
felt certain of it now.

`Mr Hartright,' she said, `I am going to begin by making a  frank avowal
to you. I am going to say –; without phrase-making,  which I detest, or
paying compliments, which I heartily despise –;  that I have come, in
the course of your residence with us, to feel  a strong friendly regard
for you. I was predisposed in your  favour when you first told me of
your conduct towards that unhappy woman whom you met under such
remarkable circumstances. Your management of the affair might not have
been  prudent, but it showed the self-control, the delicacy, and the
compassion of a man who was naturally a gentleman. It made me  expect
good things from you, and you have not disappointed my  expectations.'

She paused –; but held up her hand at the same time, as a sign  that she
awaited no answer from me before she proceeded. When  I entered the
summer-house, no thought was in me of the woman  in white. But now, Miss
Halcombe's own words had put the  memory of my adventure back in my
mind. It remained there  throughout the interview –; remained, and not
without a result.

`As your friend,' she proceeded, `I am going to tell you, at  once, in
my own plain, blunt, downright language, that I have  discovered your
secret –; without help or hint, mind, from any  one else. Mr Hartright,
you have thoughtlessly allowed yourself  to form an attachment –; a
serious and devoted attachment, I am  afraid –; to my sister Laura. I
don't put you to the pain of confessing it in so many words, because I
see and know that you are too  honest to deny it. I don't even blame you
–; I pity you for opening your heart to a hopeless affection. You have
not attempted  to take any underhand advantage –; you have not spoken to
my  sister in secret. You are guilty of weakness and want of attention
to your own best interests, but of nothing worse. If you had  acted, in
any single respect, less delicately and less modestly, I  should have
told you to leave the house, without an instant's  notice, or an
instant's consultation of anybody. As it is, I blame  the misfortune of
your years and your position –; I don't blame  you. Shake hands –; I
have given you pain; I am going to give you  more, but there is no help
for it –; shake hands with your friend,  Marian Halcombe, first.'

The sudden kindness –; the warm, high-minded, fearless sympathy which
met me on such mercy equal terms, which appealed with such delicate and
generous abruptness straight to my  heart, my honour, and my courage,
overcame me in an instant.  I tried to look at her when she took my
hand, but my eyes were  dim. I tried to thank her, but my voice failed
me.

`Listen to me,' she said, considerately avoiding all notice of  my loss
of self-control. `Listen to me, and let us get it over at  once. It is a
real true relief to me that I am not obliged, in what I  have now to
say, to enter into the question –; the hard and cruel  question as I
think it –; of social inequalities. Circumstances  which will try you to
the quick, spare me the ungracious necessity of paining a man who has
lived in friendly intimacy under the  same roof with myself by any
humiliating reference to matters  of rank and station. You must leave
Limmeridge House, Mr  Hartright, before more harm is done. It is my duty
to say that to

you; and it would be equally my duty to say it, under precisely  the
same serious necessity, if you were the representative of the  oldest
and wealthiest family in England. You must leave us, not  because you
are a teacher of drawing –;'

She waited a moment, turned her face full on me, and reaching  across
the table, laid her hand firmly on my arm.

`Not because you are a teacher of drawing,' she repeated, `but  because
Laura Fairlie is engaged to be married.'

The last word went like a bullet to my heart. My arm lost all  sensation
of the hand that grasped it. I never moved and never  spoke. The sharp
autumn breeze that scattered the dead leaves  at our feet came as cold
to me, on a sudden, as if my own mad  hopes were dead leaves too,
whirled away by the wind like the  rest. Hopes! Betrothed, or not
betrothed, she was equally far  from me. Would other men have remembered
that in my place?  Not if they had loved her as I did.

The pang passed, and nothing but the dull numbing pain of it  remained.
I felt Miss Halcombe's hand again, tightening its hold  on my arm –; I
raised my head and looked at her. Her large black  eyes were rooted on
me, watching the white change on my face,  which I felt, and which she
saw.

` Crush it !' she said. `Here, where you first saw her, crush it !
Don't shrink under it like a woman. Tear it out; trample it under  foot
like a man !'

The suppressed vehemence with which she spoke, the strength  which her
will –; concentrated in the look she fixed on me, and  in the hold on my
arn that she had not yet relinquished –; communicated to mine, steadied
me. We both waited for a minute  in silence. At the end of that time I
had justified her generous  faith in my manhood –; I had, outwardly at
least, recovered my  self-control.

`Are you yourself again?'

`Enough myself, Miss Halcombe, to ask your pardon and hers.  Enough to
be guided by your advice, and to prove my gratitude  in that way, if I
can prove it in no other.'

`You have proved it already,' she answered, `by those words.  Mr
Hartright, conceahment is at an end between us. I cannot  affect to hide
from you what my sister has unconsciously shown  to me. You must leave
us for her sake, as well as for your own.  Your presence here, your
necessary intimacy with us, harmless  as it has been, God knows, in all
other respects, has unsteadied  her and made her wretched. I, who love
her better than my own  life –; I, who have learnt to believe in that
pure, noble, innocent  nature as I believe in my religion –; know but
too well the secret  misery of self-reproach that she has been suffering
since the first  shadow of a feeling disloyal to her marriage engagement
entered  her heart in spite of her. I don't say –; it would be useless
to  attempt to say it after what has happened –; that her engagement
has ever had a strong hold on her affections. It is an engagement  of
honour, not of love; her father sanctioned it on his deathbed,  two
years since; she herself neither welcomed it nor shrank from  it –; she
was content to make it. Till you came here she was in the  position of
hundreds of other women, who marry men without  being greatly attracted
to them or greatly repelled by them, and  who learn to love them (when
they don't learn to hate!) after  marriage, instead of before. I hope
more earnestly than words  can say –; and you should have the
self-sacrificing courage to hope  too –; that the new thoughts and
feelings which have disturbed  the old calmness and the old content have
not taken root too  deeply to be ever removed. Your absence (if I had
less belief in  your honour, and your courage, and your sense, I should
not  trust to them as I am trusting now) –; your absence will help my
efforts, and time will help us all three. It is something to know  that
my first confidence in you was not all misplaced. It is something to
know that you will not be less honest, less manly,  less considerate
towards the pupil whose relation to yourself  you have had the
misfortune to forget, than towards the  stranger and the outcast whose
appeal to you was not made in  vain.'

Again the chance reference to the woman in white! Was there  no
possibility of speaking of Miss Fairlie and of me without raising the
memory of Anne Catherick, and setting her between us  like a fatality
that it was hopeless to avoid?

`Tell me what apology I can make to Mr Fairlie for breaking  my
engagement,' I said. `Tell me when to go after that apology  is
accepted. I promise implicit obedience to you and to your advice.

`Time is every way of importance,' she answered. `You heard  me refer
this morning to Monday next, and to the necessity of  setting the purple
room in order. The visitor whom we expect  on Monday –;'

I could not wait for her to be more explicit. Knowing what I  knew now,
the memory of Miss Fairlie's look and manner at the  breakfast-table
told me that the expected visitor at Limmeridge  House was her future
husband. I tried to force it back; but  something rose within me at that
moment stronger than my  own will, and I interrupted Miss Halcombe.

`Let me go today,' I said bitterly. `The sooner the better.'

`No, not today,' she replied. `The only reason you can assign  to Mr
Fairlie for your departure, before the end of your engagement, must be
that an unforeseen necessity compels you to ask  his permission to
return at once to London. You must wait till  tomorrow to tell him that,
at the time when the post comes in,  because he will then understand the
sudden change in your  plans, by associating it with the arrival of a
letter from London.  It is miserable and sickening to descend to deceit,
even of the  most harmless kind –; but I know Mr Fairlie, and if you
once  excite his suspicions that you are trifling with him, he will
refuse  to release you. Speak to him on Friday morning: occupy yourself
afterwards (for the sake of your own interests with your employer) in
leaving your unfinished work in as little confusion as  possible, and
quit this place on Saturday. It will be time enough  then, Mr Hartright,
for you, and for all of us.'

Before I could assure her that she might depend on my acting  in the
strictest accordance with her wishes, we were both startled  by
advancing footsteps in the shrubbery. Someone was coming  from the house
to seek for us! I felt the blood rush into my  cheeks and then leave
them again. Could the third person who  was fast approaching us, at such
a time and under such circumstances, be Miss Fairlie?

It was a relief –; so sadly, so hopelessly was my position towards  her
changed already –; it was absolutely a relief to me, when the  person
who had disturbed us appeared at the entrance of the  summer-house, and
proved to be only Miss Fairlie's maid.

`Could I speak to you for a moment, miss?' said the girl, in  rather a
flurried, unsettled manner.

Miss Halcombe descended the steps into the shrubbery, and  walked aside
a few paces with the maid.

Left by myself, my mind reverted, with a sense of forlorn  wretchedness
which it is not in any words that I can find to  describe, to my
approaching return to the solitude and the despair  of my lonely London
home. Thoughts of my kind old mother,  and of my sister, who had
rejoiced with her so innocently over  my prospects in Cumberland –;
thoughts whose long banishment  from my heart it was now my shame and my
reproach to realize  for the first time –; came back to me with the
loving mournfulness of old, neglected friends. My mother and my sister,
what  would they feel when I returned to them from my broken engagement,
with the confession of my miserable secret –; they  who had parted from
me so hopefully on that last happy night  in the Hampstead cottage!

Anne Catherick again ! Even the memory of the farewell evenIng with my
mother and my sister could not return to me now  unconnected with that
other memory of the moonlight walk  back to London. What did it mean?
Were that woman and I to  meet once more? It was possible, at the least.
Did she know that  I lived in London? Yes; I had told her so, either
before or after  that strange question of hers, when she had asked me so
distrustfully if I knew many men of the rank of Baronet. Either before
or  after –; my mind was not calm enough, then, to remember which.

A few minutes elapsed before Miss Halcombe dismissed the  maid and came
back to me. She, too, looked flurried and unsettled now.

`We have arranged all that is necessary, Mr Hartright,' she  said. `We
have understood each other, as friends should, and we  may go back at
once to the house. To tell you the truth, I am  uneasy about Laura. She
has sent to say she wants to see me  directly, and the maid reports that
her mistress is apparently  very much agitated by a letter that she has
received this morning –; the same letter, no doubt, which I sent on to
the house  before we came here.'

We retraced our steps together hastily along the shrubbery  path.
Although Miss Halcombe had ended all that she thought  it necessary to
say on her side, I had not ended all that I wanted  to say on mine. From
the moment when I had discovered that  the expected visitor at
Limmeridge was Miss Fairlie's future husband, I had felt a bitter
curiosity, a burning envious eagerness,  to know who he was. It was
possible that a future opportunity  of putting the question might not
easily offer, so I risked asking  it on our way back to the house.

`Now that you are kind enough to tell me we have understood  each other,
Miss Halcombe,' I said, `now that you are sure of  my gratitude for your
forbearance and my obedience to your  wishes, may I venture to ask who'
–; (I hesitated –; I had forced  myself to think of him, but it was
harder still to speak of him, as  her promised husband) –; `who the
gentleman engaged to Miss  Fairlie is?'

Her mind was evidently occupied with the message she had  received from
her sister. She answered in a hasty, absent way –;

`A gentleman of large property in Hampshire.'

Hampshire! Anne Catherick's native place. Again, and yet  again, the
woman in white. There was a fatality in it.

`And his name ?' I said, as quietly and indifferently as I could.

`Sir Percival Glyde.'

Sir –; Sir Percival! Anne Catherick's question –; that suspicious
question about the men of the rank of Baronet whom I might  happen to
know –; had hardly been dismissed from my mind by  Miss Halcombe's
return to me in the summer-house, before it  was recalled again by her
own answer. I stopped suddenly, and  looked at her.

`Sir Percival Glyde,' she repeated, imagining that I had not  heard her
former reply.

`Knight, or Baronet?' I asked, with an agitation that I could  hide no
longer.

She paused for a moment, and then answered, rather coldly –;

`Baronet, of course.'