APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/wmn_white/WHITE_3

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A week passed, after my return to London, without the receipt  of any
communication from Miss Halcombe.

On the eighth day a letter in her handwriting was placed  among the
other letters on my table.

It announced that Sir Percival Glyde had been definitely accepted, and
that the marriage was to take place, as he had originally desired,
before the end of the year. In all probability the  ceremony would be
performed during the last fortnight in December. Miss Fairlie's
twenty-first birthday was late in March.  She would, therefore, by this
arrangement become Sir Percival's  wife about three months before she
was of age.

I ought not to have been surprised, I ought not to have been  sorry, but
I was surprised and sorry, nevertheless. Some little  disappointment,
caused by the unsatisfactory shortness of Miss  Halcombe's letter,
mingled itself with these feelings, and contributed its share towards
upsetting my serenity for the day. In  six lines my correspondent
announced the proposed marriage –;  in three more, she told me that Sir
Percival had left Cumberland

to return to his house in Hampshire, and in two concluding sen tences
she informed me, first, that Laura was sadly in want of  change and
cheerful society; secondly, that she had resolved to  try the effect of
some such change forthwith, by taking her sister  away with her on a
visit to certain old friends in Yorkshire.  There the letter ended,
without a word to explain what the circumstances were which had decided
Miss Fairlie to accept Sir  Percival Glyde in one short week from the
time when I had last  seen her.

At a later period the cause of this sudden determination was  fully
explained to me. It is not my business to relate it imperfectly, on
hearsay evidence. The circumstances came within the  personal experience
of Miss Halcombe, and when her narrative  succeeds mine, she will
describe them in every particular exactly  as they happened. In the
meantime, the plain duty for me to  perform –; before I, in my turn, lay
down my pen and withdraw  from the story –; is to relate the one
remaining event connected  with Miss Fairlie's proposed marriage in
which I was concerned,  nainely, the drawing of the settlement.

It is impossible to refer intelligibly to this document without  first
entering into certain particulars in relation to the bride's  pecuniary
affairs. I will try to make my explanation briefly and  plainly, and to
keep it free from professional obscurities and  technicalities. The
matter is of the utmost importance. I warn  all readers of these lines
that Miss Fairlie's inheritance is a very  serious part of Miss
Fairlie's story, and that Mr Gilmore's experience, in this particular,
must be their experience also, if they  wish to understand the
narratives which are yet to come.

Miss Fairlie's expectations, then, were of a twofold kind, comprising
her possible inheritance of real property, or land, when  her uncle
died, and her absolute inheritance of personal property,  or money, when
she came of age.

Let us take the land first.

In the time of Miss Fairlie's paternal grandfather (whom we  will call
Mr Fairlie, the elder) the entailed succession to the  Limmeridge estate
stood thus –;

Mr Fairlie, the elder, died and left three sons, Philip, Frederick,  and
Arthur. As eldest son, Philip succeeded to the estate. If he  died
without leaving a son, the property went to the second  brother,
Frederick; and if Frederick died also without leaving a  son, the
property went to the third brother, Arthur.

As events turned out, Mr Philip Fairlie died leaving an only  daughter,
the Laura of this story, and the estate, in consequence, went, in course
of law, to the second brother, frederick,  a single man. The third
brother, Arthur, had died many years  before the decease of Philip,
leaving a son and a daughter. The  son, at the age of eighteen, was
drowned at Oxford. His death  left Laura, the daughter of Mr Philip
Fairlie, presumptive heiress to the estate, with every chance of
succeeding to it, in the  ordinary course of nature, on her uncle
Frederick's death, if the  said Frederick died without leaving male
issue.

Except in the event, then, of Mr Frederick Fairlie's marrying  and
leaving an heir (the two very last things in the world that he  was
likely to do), his niece, Laura, would have the property on  his death,
possessing, it must be remembered, nothing more  than a life-interest in
it. If she died single, or died childless, the  estate would revert to
her cousin, Magdalen, the daughter of  Mr Arthur Fairlie. If she
married, with a proper settlement –;  or, in other words, with the
settlement I meant to make for her  –; the income from the estate (a
good three thousand a year)  would, during her lifetime, be at her own
disposal. If she died  before her husband, he would naturally expect to
be left in the  enjoyment of the income, for his lifetime. If she had a
son, that  son would be the heir, to the exclusion of her cousin
Magdalen.  Thus, Sir Percival's prospects in marrying Miss Fairlie (so
far as  his wife's expectations irom real property were concerned)
promised him these two advantages, on Mr Frederick Fairlie's  death:
First, the use of three thousand a year (by his wife's permission, while
she lived, and in his own right, on her death, if he  survived her);
and, secondly, the inheritance of Limmeridge for  his son, if he had
one.

So much for the landed property, and for the disposal of the  income
from it, on the occasion of Miss Fairlie's marriage. Thus  far, no
difficulty or difference of opinion on the lady's settlement  was at all
likely to arise between Sir Percival's lawyer and myself.

The personal estate, or, in other words, the money to which  Miss
Fairlie would become entitled on reaching the age of  twenty-one years,
is the next point to consider.

This part of her inheritance was, in itself, a comfortable little
fortune. It was derived under her father's will, and it amounted to the
sum of twenty thousand pounds. Besides this, she had  a life-interest in
ten thousand pounds more, which latter  amount was to go, on her
decease, to her aunt Eleanor, her  father's only sister. It will greatly
assist in setting the family  affairs before the reader in the clearest
posible light, if I stop  here for a moment, to explain why the aunt had
been kept waiting for her legacy until the death of the niece.

Mr Philip Fairlie had lived on excellent terms with his sister  Eleanor,
as long as she remained a single woman. But when her  marriage took
place, somewhat late in life, and when that marriage united her to an
Italian gentleman named Fosco, or, rather,  to an Italian nobleman –;
seeing that he rejoiced in the title of  Count –; Mr Fairlie disapproved
of her conduct so strongly that  he ceased to hold any communication
with her, and even went  the length of striking her name out of his
will. The other members of the family all thought this serious
manifestation of resentment at his sister's marriage more or less
unreasonable.  Count Fosco, though not a rich man, was not a penniless
adventurer either. He had a small but sufficient income of his own. He
had lived many years in England, and he held an excellent  position in
society. These recommendatioms, however, availed  nothing with Mr
Fairlie. In many of his opinions he was an  Englishman of the old
school, and he hated a foreigner simply and  solely because he was a
foreigner. The utmost that he could be  prevailed on to do, in after
years –; mainly at Miss Fairlie's intercession –; was to restore his
sister's name to its former place in  his will, but to keep her waiting
for her legacy by giving the income of the money to his daughter for
life, and the money itself,  if her aunt died before her, to her cousin
Magdalen. Considering  the relative ages of the two ladies, the aunt's
chance, in the  ordinary course of nature, of receiving the ten thousand
pounds,  was thus rendered doubtful in the extreme; and Madame Fosco
resented her brother's treatment of her as unjustly as usual in  such
cases, by refusing to see her niece, and declining to believe  that Miss
Fairlie's intercession had ever been exerted to restore  her name to Mr
Fairlie's will.

Such was the history of the ten thousand pounds. Here again  no
difficulty could arise with Sir Percival's legal adviser. The income
would be at the wife's disposal, and the principal would go  to her aunt
or her cousin on her death.

All preliminary explanations being now cleared out of the  way, I come
at last to the real knot of the case –; to the twenty  thousand pounds.

This sum was absolutely Miss Fairlie's own on her completing  her
twenty-first year, and the whole future disposition of it depended, in
the first instance, on the conditions I could obtain for  her in her
marriage-settlement. The other clauses contained in  that document were
of a formal kind, and need not be recited  here. But the clause relating
to the money is too important to be  passed over. A few lines will be
sufficient to give the necessary  abstract of it.

My stipulation in regard to the twenty thousand pounds was  simply this:
The whole amount was to be settled so as to give  the income to the lady
for her life –; afterwards to Sir Percival for  his life –; and the
principal to the children of the marriage. In  default of issue, the
principal was to be disposed of as the lady  might by her will direct,
for which purpose I reserved to her the  right of making a will. The
effect of these conditions may be thus  summed up. If Lady Glyde died
without leaving children, her  half-sister Miss Halcombe, and any other
relatives or friends  whom she might be anxious to benefit, would, on
her husband's  death, divide among them such shares of her money as she
desired  them to have. If, on the other hand, she died leaving children,
then their interest, naturally and necessarily, superseded all other
interests whatsoever. This was the clause –; and no one who  reads it
can fail, I think, to agree with me that it meted out  equal justice to
all parties.

We shall see how my proposals were met on the husband's  side.

At the time when Miss Halcombe's letter reached me I was  even more
busily occupied than usual. But I contrived to make  leisure for the
settlement. I had drawn it, and had sent it for  approval to Sir
Percival's solicitor, in less than a week from the  time when Miss
Halcombe had informed me of the proposed  marriage.

After a lapse of two days the document was returned to me,  with notes
and remarks of the baronet's lawyer. His objections,  in general, proved
to be of the most trifling and technical kind,  until he came to the
clause relating to the twenty thousand  pounds. Against this there were
double lines drawn in red ink,  and the following note was appended to
them –;

`Not admissible. The principal to go to Sir Percival Glyde, in  the
event of his surviving Lady Glyde, and there being no  issue.'

That is to say, not one farthing of the twenty thousand  pounds was to
go to Miss Halcombe, or to any other relative or  friend of Lady
Glyde's. The whole sum, if she left no children,  was to slip into the
pockets of her husband.

The answer I wrote to this audacious proposal was as short  and sharp as
I could make it. `My dear sir. Miss Fairlie's settlement. I maintain the
clause to which you object, exactly as it  stands. Yours truly.' The
rejoinder came back in a quarter of an  hour. `My dear sir. Miss
Fairlie's settlement. I maintain the red  ink to which you object,
exactly as it stands. Yours truly.' In  the detestable slang of the day,
we were now both `at a deadlock, and nothing was left for it but to
refer to our clients on  either side.

As matters stood, my client –; Miss Fairlie not having yet  completed
her twenty-first year –; Mr Frederick Fairlie, was her  guardian. I
wrote by that day's post, and put the case before him  exactly as it
stood, not only urging every argument I could think  of to induce him to
maintain the clause as I had drawm it, but  stating to him plainly the
mercenary motive which was at the  bottom of the opposition to my
settlement of the twenty thousand pounds. The knowledge of Sir
Percival's affairs which I had  necessarily gained when the provisions
of the deed on his side  were submitted in due course to my examination,
had but too  plainly informed me that the debts on his estate were
enormous,  and that his income, though nominally a large one, was
virtually, for a man in his position, next to nothing. The want of
ready money was the practical necessity of Sir Percival's existence, and
his lawyer's note on the clause in the settlement was  nothing but the
frankly selfish expression of it.

Mr Fairlie's answer reached me by return of post, and proved  to be
wandering and irrelevant in the extreme. Turned into  plain English, it
practically expressed itself to this effect: `Would  dear Gilmore be so
very obliging as not to worry his friend and  client about such a trifle
as a remote contingency? Was it likely  that a young woman of twenty-one
would die before a man of  forty-five, and die without children? On the
other hand, in such  a miserable world as this, was it possible to
over-estimate the  value of peace and quietness? If those two heavenly
blessings  were offered in exchange for such an earthly trifle as a
remote  chance of twenty thousand pounds, was it not a fair bargain?
Surely, yes. Then why not make it?'

I threw the letter away in disgust. Just as it had fluttered to  the
ground, there was a knock at my door, and Sir Percival's  solicitor, Mr
Merriman, was shown in. There are many varieties  of sharp practitioners
in this world, but I think the hardest of  all to deal with are the men
who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good-humour. A fat,
well-fed, smiling, friendly man of business is of all parties to a
bargain the most hopeless to deal with. Mr Merriman was one of this
class.

`And how is good Mr Gilmore?' he began, all in a glow with  the warmth
of his own amiability. `Glad to see you, sir, in such  excellent health.
I was passing your door, and I thought I would  look in in case you
might have something to say to me. Do –;  now pray do let us settle this
little difference of ours by word of  mouth, if we can ! Have you heard
from your client yet?'

`Yes. Have you heard from yours?'

`My dear, good sir! I wish I had heard from him to any purpose –; I
wish, with all my heart, the responsibility was off my  shoulders; but
he is obstinate –; or let me rather say, resolute –;  and he won't take
it off. ``Merriman, I leave details to you. Do  what you think right for
my interests, and consider me as having  personally withdrawn from the
business until it is all over.''  Those were Sir Percival's words a
fortnight ago, and all I can  get him to do now is to repeat them. I am
not a hard man, Mr  Gilmore, as you know. Personally and privately, I do
assure you,  I should like to sponge out that note of mine at this very
moment. But if Sir Percival won't go into the matter, if Sir Percival
will blindly Leave all his interests in my sole care, what course  can I
possibly take except the course of asserting them? My  hands are bound
–; don't you see, my dear sir? –; my hands are  bound.'

`You maintain your note on the clause, then, to the letter?'  I said.

`Yes –; deuce take it! I have no other alternative.' He walked  to the
fireplace and warmed hinself, humming the fag end of a  tune in a rich
convivial bass voice. `What does your side say?'  he went on; `now pray
tell me –; what does your side say?'

I was ashamed to tell him. I attempted to gain time –; nay, I  did
worse. My legal instincts got the better of me, and I even  tried to
bargain.

`Twenty thousand pounds is rather a large sum to be given  up by the
lady's friends at two days' notice,' I said.

`Very true,' replied Mr Merriman, looking down thoughtfully  at his
boots. `Properly put, sir –; most properly put !'

`A compromise, recognising the interests of the lady's family  as well
as the interests of the husband, might not perhaps have  frightened my
client quite so much,' I went on. `Come, come!  this contingency
resolves itself into a matter of bargaining after  all. What is the
least you will take ?'

`The least we will take,' said Mr Merriman, `is nineteenthousand –; nine
–; hundred –; and –; ninety –; nine –; pounds –;
nineteenshillings-and-elevenpence-three-farthings.  Ha !  ha I ha !
Excuse  me, Mr Gilmore. I must have my little joke.'

`Little enough,' I remarked. `The joke is just worth the odd  farthing
it was made for.'

Mr Merriman was delighted. He laughed over my retort till  the room rang
again. I was not half so good-humoured on my  side; I came back to
business, and closed the interview.

`This is Friday,' I said. `Give us till Tuesday next for our final
answer.'

`By all means,' replied Mr Merriman. `Longer, my dear sir,  if you
like.' He took up his hat to go, and then addressed me  again. `By the
way,' he said, `your clients in Cumberland have  not heard anything more
of the woman who wrote the anonymous letter, have they ?'

`Nothing more,' I answered. `Have you found no trace of  her?'

`Not yet,' said my legal friend. `But we don't despair. Sir Percival has
his suspicions that Somebody is keeping her in hiding,  and we are
having that Somebody watched.'

`You mean the old woman who was with her in Cumberland,'  I said.

` Quite another party, sir,' answered Mr Merriman. `We don't  happen to
have laid hands on the old woman yet. Our Somebody  is a man. We have
got him close under our eye here in London,  and we strongly suspect he
had something to do with helping  her in the first instance to escape
from the Asylum. Sir Percival  wanted to question him at once, but I
said, ``No. Questioning  him will only put him on his guard –; watch
him, and wait.'' We  shall see what happens. A dangerous woman to be at
large, Mr  Gilmore; nobody knows what she may do next. I wish you  good
morning, sir. On Tuesday next I shall hope for the pleasure  of hearing
from you.' He smiled amiably and went out.

My mind had been rather absent during the latter part of the
conversation with my legal friend. I was so anxious about the  matter of
the settlement that I had little attention to give to any  other
subject, and the moment I was left alone again I began to  think over
what my next proceeding ought to be.

In the case of any other client I should have acted on my instructions,
however personally distasteful to me, and have given  up the point about
the twenty thousand pounds on the spot.  But I could not act with this
business-like indifference towards  Miss Fairlie. I had an honest
feeling of affection and admiration  for her –; I remembered gratefully
that her father had been the  kindest patron and friend to me that ever
man had –; I had felt  towards her while I was drawing the settlement as
I might have  felt, if I had not been an old bachelor, towards a
daughter of my  own, and I was determined to spare no personal sacrifice
in her  service and where her interests were concerned. Writing a second
time to Mr Eairlie was not to be thought of –; it would only be  giving
him a second opportunity of slipping through my fingers.  Seeing him and
personally remonstrating with him might possibly be of more use. The
next day was Saturday. I determined  to take a return ticket and jolt my
old bones down to Cumberland, on the chance of persuading him to adopt
the just, the  independent, and the honourable course. It was a poor
chance  enough, no doubt, but when I had tried it my conscience would
be at ease. I should then have done all that a man in my position  could
do to serve the interests of my old friend's only child.

The weather on Saturday was beautiful, a west wind and a  bright sun.
Havimg felt latterly a return of that fulness and oppression of the
head, against which my doctor warned me so  seriously more than two
years since, I resolved to take the opportunity of getting a little
extra exercise by sending my bag on  before me and walking to the
terminus in Euston Square. As I  came out into Holborn a gentleman
walking by rapidly stopped  and spoke to me. It was Mr Walter Hartright.

If he had not been the first to greet me I should certainly  have passed
him. He was so changed that I hardly knew him  again. His face looked
pale and haggard –; his manner was hurried  and uncertain –; and his
dress, which I remembered as neat and  gentleman-like when I saw him at
Limmeridge, was so slovenly  now that I should really have been ashamed
of the appearance of  it on one of my own clerks.

`Have you been long back from Cumberland?' he asked. `I  heard from Miss
Halcombe lately. I am aware that Sir Percival  Glyde's explanation has
been considered satisfactory. Will the  marriage take place soon? Do you
happen to know, Mr Gilmore ?'

He spoke so fast, and crowded his questions together so  strangely and
confusedly, that I could hardly follow him. However accidentally
intimate he might have been with the family  at Limmeridge, I could not
see that he had any right to expect  information on their private
affairs, and I determined to droP  him, as easily as might be, on the
subject of Miss Fairlie's marriage.

`Time will show, Mr Hartright,' I said –; `time will show. I  dare say
if we look out for the marriage in the papers we shall  not be far
wrong. Excuse my noticing it, but I am sorry to see  you not looking so
well as you were when we last met.'

A momentary nervous contraction quivered about his lips and eyes, and
made me half reproach myself for having answered him in such a
significantly guarded mamner.

`I had no right to ask about her marriage,' he said bitterly. `I must
wait to see it in the newspapers like other people. Yes,' –; he went on
before I could make any apologies –; `I have not been well lately. I am
going to another country to try a change of scene and occupation. Miss
Halcombe has kindly assisted me with her influence, and my testimonials
have been found satisfactory. It is a long distance off, but I don't
care where I go, what the climate is, or how long I am away.' He looked
about him while he said this at the throng of strangers passing us by on
either side, in a strange, suspicious manner, as if he thought that some
of them might be watching us.

`I wish you well through it, and safe back again,' I said, and then
added, so as not to keep him altogether at arm's length on the subject
of the Fairlies, `I am going down to Limmeridge today on business-  Miss
Halcombe and Miss Fairlie are away just now on a visit to some friends
in Yorkshire.'

His eyes brightened, and he seemed about to say something in answer, but
the same momentary nervous spasm crossed his face again. He took my
hand, pressed it hard, and disappeared among the crowd without saying
another word. Though he was little more than a stranger to me, I waited
for a moment, looking after him almost with a feeling of regret. I had
gained in my profession sufficient experience of young men to know what
the outward signs and tokens were of their beginning to go wrong, and
when I resumed my walk to the railway I am sorry to say I felt more than
doubtful about Mr Hartright's future.




Leaving by an early train, I got to Limmeridge in time for dinner. The
house was oppressively empty and dull. I had expected that good Mrs
Vesey would have been company for me in the absence of the young ladies,
but she was confined to her room by a cold. The servants were so
surprised at seeing me that they hurried and bustled absurdly, and made
all sorts of annoying mistakes. Even the butler, who was old enough to
have known better, brought me a bottle of port that was chilled. The
reports of Mr Fairlie's health were just as usual, and when I sent up a
message to announce my arrival, I was told that he would be delighted to
see me the next morning, but that the sudden news of my appearance had
prostrated him with palpitations for the rest of the evening. The wind
howled dismally all night, and strange cracking and groaning noises
sounded here, there, and everywhere in the empty house. I slept as
wretchedly as possible, and got up in a mighty bad humour to breakfast
by myself the next morning.

At ten o'clock I was conducted to Mr Fairlie's apartments. He was in his
usual room, his usual chair, and his usual aggravating state of mind and
body. When I went in, his valet was standing before him, holding up for
inspection a heavy volume of etchings, as long and as broad as my office
writing-desk. The miserable foreigner grinned in the most abject manner,
and looked ready to drop with fatigue, while his master composedly
turned over the etchings, and brought their hidden beauties to light
with the help of a magnifying glass.

`You very best of good old friends,' said Mr Fairlie, leaning back
lazily before he could look at me, ` are you quite well? How nice of you
to come here and see me in my solitude. Dear Gilmore !'

I had expected that the valet would be dismissed when I appeared, but
nothing of the sort happened. There he stood, in front of his master's
chair, trembling under the weight of the etchings, and there Mr Fairlie
sat, serenely twirling the magnifying glass between his white fingers
and thumbs.

`I have come to speak to you on a very important matter,' I said, `and
you will therefore excuse me, if I suggest that we had better be alone.'

The unfortunate valet looked at me gratefully. Mr Fairlie faintly
repeated my last three words, `better be alone,' with every appearance
of the utmost possible astonishment.

I was im no humour for trifling, and I resolved to make him understand
what I meant.

`Oblige me by giwing that man permission to withdraw,' I said, pointing
to the valet.

Mr Fairlie arched his eyebrows and pursed up his lips in sarcastic
surprise.

` Man ? ' he repeated. ` You provoking old Gilmore, what can you
possibly mean by calling him a man? He's nothing of the sort. He might
have been a man half an hour ago, before I wanted my etchings, and he
may be a man half an hour hence, when I don't want them any longer. At
present he is simply a portfolio stand. Why object, Gilmore, to a
portofolio stand ?'

`I do object For the third time, Mr Fairlie, I beg that we may be
alone.'

My tone and manner left him no alternative but to comply with my
request. He looked at the servant, and pointed peevishly to a chair at
his side.

`Put down the etchings and go away,' he said. `Don't upset me by losing
my place. Have you, or have you not, lost my place? Are you sure you
have not? And have you put my handbell quite within my reach? Yes? Then
why the devil don't you go?'

The valet went out. Mr Fairlie twisted himself round in his chair,
polished the magnifying glass with his delicate cambric handkerchief,
and indulged himself with a sidelong inspection of the open volume of
etchings. It was not easy to keep my temper under these circumstances,
but I did keep it.

`I have come here at great personal inconvenience,' I said, `to serve
the interests of your niece and your family, and I think I have
established some slight claim to be favoured with your attention in
return.'

`Don't bully me!' exclaimed Mr Fairlie, falling back help lessly in the
chair, and closing his eyes. `Please don't bully me. I'm not strong
enough.'

I was determined not to let him provoke me, for Laura Fairlie's sake.

`My object,' I went on, `is to entreat you to reconsider your letter,
and not to force me to abandon the just rights of your niece, and of all
who belong to her. Let me state the case to you once more, and for the
last time.'

Mr Fairlie shook his head and sighed piteously.

`This is heartless of you, Gilmore –; very heartless,' he said. `Never
mind, go on.'

I put all the points to him carefully –; I set the matter before him in
every conceivable light. He lay back in the chair the whole time I was
speaking with his eyes closed. When I had done he opened them
indolently, took his silver smelling-bottle from the table, and sniffed
at it with an air of gentle relish.

`Good Gilmore I' he said between the sniffs, `how very nice this is of
you I How you reconcile one to human naturel'

`Give me a plain answer to a plain question, Mr Fairlie. I tell you
again, Sir Percival Glyde has no shadow of a claim to expect more than
the income of the money. The inoney itself, if your niece has no
children, ought to be under her control, and to return to her family. lf
you stand firm, Sir Percival must give way –; he must give way, I tell
you, or he exposes himself to the base imputation of marrying Miss
Fairlie entirely from mercenary motives.'

Mr Fairlie shook the silver smelling-bottle at me playfully.

`You dear old Gilmore, how you do hate rank and family, don't you? How
you detest Glyde because he happens to be a baronet. What a Radical you
are –; oh, dear me, what a Radical you are!'

A Radical ! ! ! I could put up with a good deal of provocation, but,
after holding the soundest Conservative principles all my life, I could
not put up with being called a Radical. My blood boiled at it –; I
started out of my chair –; I was speechless with indignation.

`Don't shake the room !' cried Mr Fairlie –; `for Heaven's sake don't
shake the room I Worthiest of all possible Gilmores, I meant no offence.
My own views are so extremely liberal that I think I am a Radical
myself. Yes. We are a pair of Radicals. Please don't be angry. I can't
quarrel –; I haven't stamina enough. Shall we drop the subject? Yes.
Come and look at these sweet etchings. Do let me teach you to understand
the heavenly pearliness of these lines. Do now, there's a good Gilmore
!'

While he was maundering on in this way I was, fortunately for my own
self-respect, returning to my senses. When I spoke again I was composed
enough to treat his impertinence with the silent contempt that it
deserved.

`You are entirely wrong, sir,' I said, `in supposing that I speak from
any prejudice against Sir Percival Glyde. I may regret that he has so
unreservedly resigned himself in this matter to his lawyer's direction
as to make any appeal to himself impossible, but I am not prejudiced
against him. What I have said would equally apply to any other man in
his situation, high or low. The principle I maintain is a recognised
principle. If you were to apply to the nearest town here, to the first
respectable solicitor you could find, he would tell you as a stranger
what I tell you as a friend. He would inform you that it is against all
rule to abandon the lady's money entirely to the man she marries. He
would decline, on grounds of common legal caution, to give the husband,
under any circumstances whatever, an interest of twenty thousand pounds
in his wife's death.'

`Would he really, Gilmore?' said Mr Fairlie. `If he said anything half
so horrid, I do assure you I should tinkle my bell for Louis, and have
him sent out of the house immediately.'

`You shall not irritate me, Mr Fairlie –; for your niece's sake and for
her father's sake, you shall not irritate me. You shall take the whole
responsibility of this discreditable settlement on your own shoulders
before I leave the room.'

`Don't! –; now please don't!' said Mr Fairlie. `Think how precious your
time is, Gilmore, and don't throw it away. I would dispute with you if I
could, but I can't –; I haven't stamina enough. You want to upset me, to
upset yourself, to upset Glyde, and to upset Laura; and –; oh, dear me!
–; all for the sake of the very last thing in the world that is likely
to happen. No, dear friend, in the interests of peace and quietness,
positively No !'

`I am to understand, then, that you hold by the determination expressed
in your letter?'

`Yes, please. So glad we understand each other at last. Sit down again
–; do !'

I walked at once to the door, and Mr Fairlie resignedly `tinkled' his
hand-bell. Before I left the room I turned round and addressed him for
the last time.

`Whatever happens in the future, sir,' I said, `remember that my plain
duty of warning you has been performed. As the faithful friend and
servant of your family, I tell you, at parting, that no daughter of mine
should be married to any man alive under such a settlement as you are
forcing me to make for Miss Fairlie.'

The door opened behind me, and the valet stood waiting on the threshold.

`Louis,' said Mr Fairlie, `show Mr Gilmore out, and then come back and
hold up my etchings for me again. Make them give you a good lunch
downstairs. Do, Gilmore, make my idle beasts of servants give you a good
lunch!'

I was too much disgusted to reply –; I turned on my heel, and left him
in silence. There was an up train at two o'clock in the afternoon, and
by that train I returned to London.

On the Tuesday I sent in the altered settlement, which practically
disinherited the very persons whom Miss Fairlie's own lips had informed
me she was most anxious to benefit. I had no choice. Another lawyer
would have drawn up the deed if I had refused to undertake it.

My task is done. My personal share in the events of the family story
extends no farther than the point which I have just reached. Other pens
than mine will describe the strange circumstances which are now shortly
to follow. Seriously and sorrowfully I close this brief record.
Seriously and sorrowfully I repeat here the parting words that I spoke
at Limmeridge House: –; No daughter of mine should have been married to
any man alive under such a settlement as I was compelled to make for
Laura Fairlie.



The End of Mr Gilmore's Narrative.

THE STORY CONTINUED BY MARIAN HALCOMBE (in Extracts from her Diary)

LIMMERIDGE HOUSE, NOV. 8. THIS morning Mr Gilmore left us.

His interview with Laura had evidently grieved and surprised him more
than he liked to confess. I felt afraid, from his look and manner when
we parted, that she might have inadvertently betrayed to him the real
secret of her depression and my anxiety. This doubt grew on me so, after
he had gone, that I declined riding out with Sir Percival, and went up
to Laura's room instead.

I have been sadly distrustful of myself, in this difficult and

* The passages omitted, here and eisewhere, in Miss Halcombe's Diary are
only those which bear no reference to Miss Fairlie or to any of the
persons with whom she is associated in these pages. lamentable matter,
ever since I found out my own ignorance of the strength of Laura's
unhappy attachment. I ought to have known that the delicacy and
forbearance and sense of honour which drew me to poor Hartright, and
made me so sincerely admire and respect him, were just the qualities to
appeal most irresistibly to Laura's natural sensitiveness and natural
generosity of nature. And yet, until she opened her heart to me of her
own accord, I had no suspicion that this new feeling had taken root so
deeply. I once thought time and care might remove it. I now fear that it
will remain with her and alter her for life. The discovery that I have
committed such an error in judgment as this makes me hesitate about
everything else. I hesitate about Sir Percival, in the face of the
plainest proofs. I hesitate even in speaking to Laura. On this very
morning I doubted, with my hand on the door, whether I should ask her
the questions I had come to put, or not.

When I went into her room I found her walking up and down in great
impatience. She looked flushed and excited, and she came forward at
once, and spoke to me before I could open my lips.

`I wanted you,' she said. `Come and sit down on the sofa with me. Marian
! I can bear this no longer –; I must and will end it.'

There was too much colour in her cheeks, too much energy in her manner,
too much firmness in her voice. The little book of Hartright's drawings
–; the fatal book that she will dream over whenever she is alone –; was
in one of her hands. I began by gently and firmly taking it from her,
and putting it out of sight on a side-table.

`Tell me quietly, my darling, what you wish to do,' I said. `Has Mr
Gilmore been advising you?'

She shook her head. `No, not in what I am thinking of now. He was very
kind and good to me, Marian, and I am ashamed to say I distressed him by
crying. I am miserably helpless –; I can't control myself. For my owm
sake, and for all our sakes, I must have courage enough to end it.'

`Do you mean courage enough to claim your release ?' I asked.

`No,' she said simply. `Courage, dear, to tell the truth.'

She put her arms round my neck, and rested her head quietly on my bosom
On the opposite wall hung the miniature portrait of her father. I bent
over her, and saw that she was looking at it while her head lay on my
breast.

`I can never claim my release from my engagement,' she went on.
`Whatever way it ends it must end wretchedly for me. All l can do,
Marian, is not to add the remembrance that I have broken my promise and
forgotten my father's dying words, to make that wretchedness worse.'

` What is it you propose, then ?' I asked.

`To tell Sir Percival Glyde the truth with my own lips,' she answered. `
and to let him release me, if he will, not because I ask hini, but
because he knows all.'

`What do you mean, Laura, by ``all''? Sir Percival will know enough (he
has told me so himself) ii he knows that the engagement is opposed to
your own wishes.'

`Can I tell him that, when the engagement was made for me by my father,
with my own consent? I should have kept my promise, not happily. I am
afraid, but still contentedly –;' she stopped, turned her face to me,
and laid her cheek close against mine –; `I should have kept my
engagement, Marian, if another love had not grown up in my heart, which
was not there when I first promised to be Sir Percival's wife.'

`Laura ! you will never lower yourself by making a confession to him?'

`I shall lower myself, indeed, if I gain my release by hiding from him
what he has a right to know.'

`He has not the shadow of a right to know it!'

`Wrong, Marian, wrong! I ought to deceive no one –; least of all the man
to whom my father gave me, and to whom I gave myself.' She put her lips
to mine, and kissed me. `My own love,' she said softly, `you are so much
too fond of me, and so much too proud of me, that you forget, in my
case, what you would remember in your own. Better that Sir Percival
should doubt my motives, and misjudge my conduct if he will, than that I
should be first false to him in thought, and then mean enough to serve
my own interests by hiding the falsehood.'

I held her away from me in astonishment. For the first time in our lifes
we had changed places –; the resolution was all on her side, the
hesitation all on mine. I looked into the pale, quiet, resigned young
face –; I saw the pure, innocent heart, in the loving eyes that looked
back at me –; and the poor worldly cautions and objections that rose to
my lips dwindled and died away in their own emptiness. I hung my head in
silence. In her place the despicably small pride which makes so many
women deceitful would have been my pride, and would have made me
deceitful too.

`Don't be angry with me, Marian,' she said, mistaking my silence.

I only answered by drawing her close to me again. I was afraid of crying
if I spoke. My tears do not flow so easily as they ought –; they come
almost like men's tears, with sobs that seem to tear me in pieces, and
that frighten every one about me.

`I have thought of this, love, for many days,' she went on, twining and
twisting my hair with that childish restlessness in her fingers, which
Poor Mrs Vesey still tries so patiently and so vairdy to cure her of –;
`I have thought of it very seriously, and I can be sure of my courage
when my own conscience tells me I am right. Let me speak to him tomorrow
–; in your presence, Marian. I will say nothing that is wrong, nothing
that you or I need be ashamed of –; but, oh, it will ease my heart so to
end this miserable concealment ! Only let me know and feel that I have
no deception to answer for on my side, and then, when he has heard what
I have to say, let him act towards me as he will.'

She sighed, and put her head back in its old position on my bosom. Sad
misgivings about what the end would be weighed upon my mind, but still
distrusting myself, I told her that I would do as she wished. She
thanked me, and we passed gradually into talking of other things.

At dinner she joined us again, and was more easy and more herself with
Sir Percival than I have seen her yet. In the evening she went to the
piano, choosing new music of the dexterous, tuneless, florid kind. The
lovely old melodies of Mozart, which poor Hartright was so fond of, she
has never played since he left. The book is no longer in the
music-stand. She took the volume away herself, so that nobody might find
it out and ask her to play from it.

I had no opportunity of discovering whether her purpose of the morning
had changed or not, until she wished Sir Percival good-night –; and then
her own words informed me that it was unaltered. She said, very quietly,
that she wished to speak to him after breakfast, and that he would find
her in her sitting-room with me. He changed colour at those words, and I
felt his hand trembling a little when it came to my turn to take it. The
event of the next morning would decide his future life, and he evidently
knew it.

I went in, as usual, through the door between our two bedrooms, to bid
Laura good-night before she went to sleep. In stoop ing over her to kiss
her I saw the little book of Hartright's drawings half hidden under her
pillow, just in the place where she used to hide her favourite toys when
she was a child. I could not find it in iny heart to say anything, but I
pointed to the book and shook my head. She reached both hands up to my
cheeks, and drew my face down to hers till our lips met.

`Leave it there tonight,' she whispered: `tomorrow may be cruel, and may
make me say good-bye to it for ever.'

9th. –; The first event of the morning was not of a kind to raise my
spirits –; a letter arrived for me from poor Walter Hartright. It is the
answer to mine describing the manner in which Sir Percival cleared
himself of the suspicions raised by Anne Catherine's letter. He writes
shortly and bitterly about Sir Percival's explanations, only carying
that he has no right to offer an opinion on the conduct of those who are
above him. This is sad, but his occasional references to himself grieve
me still more. He says that the effort to return to his old habits and
pursuits grows harder instead of easier to him every day, and he
implores me, if I have any interest, to exert it to get him employment
that will necessitate his absence from England, and take him among new
scenes and new people. I have been made all the readier to comply with
this request by a passage at the end of his letter, which has almost
alarmed me.

After mentioning that he has neither seen nor heard anything of Anne
Catherick, he suddenly breaks off, and hints in the most abrupt,
mysterious manner, that he has been perpetually watched and followed by
strange men ever since he returned to London. He acknowledges that he
cannot prove this extraordinary suspicion by fixing on any particular
persons, but he declares that the suspicion itself is present to him
night and day. This has frightened me, because it looks as if his one
fixed idea about Laura was becoming too much for his mind. I will write
immediately to some of my mother's influential old friends in London,
and press his claims on their notice. Change of scene and change of
occupation may really be the salvation of him at this crisis in his
life.

Greatly to my relief, Sir Percival sent an apology for not joining us at
breakfast. He had taken an early cup of coffee in his own room, and he
was still engaged there in writing letters. At eleven o'clock, if that
hour was convenient, he would do himself the honour of waiting on Miss
Fairlie and Miss Halcombe.

My eyes were on Laura's face while the message was being delivered. I
had found her unaccountably quiet and composed on going into her room in
the morning, and so she remained all through breakfast. Even when we
were sitting together on the sofa in her room, waiting for Sir Percival,
she still preserved her self-control.

`Don't be afraid of me, Marian,' was all she said; `I may forget myself
with an old friend like Mr Gilmore, or with a dear sister like you, but
I will not forget myself with Sir Percival Glyde.'

I looked at her, and listened to her in silent surprise. Through all the
years of our close intimacy this passive force in her character had been
hidden from me –; hidden even from herself, till love found it, and
suffering called it forth.

As the clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven Sir Percival knocked at
the door and came in. There was suppressed anxiety and agitation in
every line of his face. The dry, sharp cough, which teases him at most
times, seemed to be troubling him more incessantly than ever. He sat
down opposite to us at the table, and Laura remained by me. I looked
attentively at them both, and he was the palest of the two.

He said a few unimportant words, with a visible effort to preserve his
customary ease of manner. But his voice was not to be steadied, and the
restless uneasiness in his eyes was not to be concealed. He must have
felt this himself, for he stopped in the middle of a sentence, and gave
up even the attempt to hide his embarrassment any longer.

There was just one moment of dead silence before Laura addressed him.

`I wish to speak to you, Sir Percival,' she said, `on a subject that is
very important to us both. My sister is here, because her presence helps
me and gives me confidence. She has not suggested one word of what I am
going to say –; I speak from my own thoughts, not from hers. I am sure
you will be kind enough to understand that before I go any farther?'

Sir Percival bowed. She had proceeded thus far, with perfect outward
tranquillity and perfect propriety of manner.  She looked at him, and he
looked at her. They seemed, at the outset, at least, resolved to
understand one another plainly.

`I have heard from Marian,' she went on, `that I have only to claim my
release from our engagement to obtain that release from you. It was
forbearing and generous on your part, Sir Percival, to send me such a
message- It is only doing you justice to say that I am grateful for the
offer, and I hope and believe that it is only doing myself justice to
tell you that I decline to accept it.'

His attentive face relaxed a little. But I saw one of his feet, softly,
quietly, incessantly beating on the carpet under the table, and I felt
that he was secretly as anxious as ever.

`l have not forgotten,' she said, `that you asked my father's permission
before you honoured me with a proposal of marriage. Perhaps you have not
forgotten either what I said when I consented to our engagement?  I
ventured to tell you that my father's influence and advice had mainly
decided me to give you my promise. I was guided by my father, because I
had always found him the truest of all advisers, the best and fondest of
all protectors and friends. I have lost him now –; I have only his
memory to love, but my faith in that dear dead friend has never been
shaken. I believe at this moment, as truly as I ever beheved, that he
knew what was best, and that his hopes and wishes ought to be my hopes
and wishes too.'

Her voice trembled for the first time. Her restless fingers stole their
way into my lap, and held fast by one of my hands. There was another
moment of silence, and then Sir Percival spoke.

`May I ask,' he said, `if I have ever proved myself unworthy of the
trust which it has been hitherto my greatest honour and greatest
happiness to possess ?'

`I have found nothing in your conduct to blame,' she answered. `You have
always treated me with the same delicacy and the same forbearance. You
have deserved my trust, and, what is of far more importance in my
estimation, you have deserved my father's trust, out of which mine grew.
You have given me no excuse, even if I had wanted to find one, for
asking to be released from my pledge. What I have said so far has been
spoken with the wish to acknowledge my whole obligation to you. My
regard for that obligation, my regard for my father's memory, and my
regard for my own Fromise, all forbid me to set the example, on my side,
of withdrawing from our present position. The breaking of our engagement
must be entirely your wish and your act, Sir Percival –; not mine.'

The uneasy beating of his foot suddenly stopped, and he leaned forward
eagerly across the table.

`My act?' he said. `What reason can there be on my side for withdrawing
? '

I heard her breath quickening –; I felt her hand growing cold. In spite
of what she had said to me when we were alone, I began to be afraid of
her. I was wrong.

`A reason that it is very hard to tell you,' she answered. `There is a
change in me, Sir Percival –; a change which is serious enough to
justify you, to yourself and to me, in breaking off our engagement.'

His face turned so pale again that even his lips lost their colour. He
raised the arm which lay on the table, turned a little away in his
chair, and supported his head on his hand, so that his profile only was
presented to us.

`What change?' he asked. The tone in which he put the question jarred on
me –; there was something painfully suppressed in it.

She sighed heavily, and leaned towards me a little, so as to rest her
shoulder against mine. I felt her trembling, and tried to spare her by
speaking myself. She stopped me by a warning pressure of her hand, and
then addressed Sir Percival once more, but this time without looking at
hin.

`I have heard,' she said, ` and I believe it, that the fondest and
truest of all affections is the affection which a woman ought to bear to
her husband. When our engagement began that affection was mine to give,
if I could, and yours to win, if you could. Will you pardon me, and
spare me, Sir Percival, if I acknowledge that it is not so any longer?'

A few tears gathered in her eyes, and dropped over her cheeks slowly as
she paused and waited for his answer. He did not utter a word. At the
beginning of his reply he had moved the hand on which his head rested,
so that it hid his face. I saw nothing but the upper part of his figure
at the table. Not a muscle of him moved. The fingers of the hand which
supported his head were dented deep in his hair. They might have
expressed hidden anger or hidden grief –; it was hard to say which –;
there was no significant trembling in them. There was nothing,
absolutely nothing, to tell the secret of his thoughts at that moment –;
the moment which was the crisis of his life and the crisis of hers.

I was determined to make him declare himself, for Laura's sake.

`Sir Percival!' I interposed sharply, `have you nothing to say when my
sister has said so much? More, in my opinion,' I added, my unlucky
temper getting the better of me, `than any man alive, in your position,
has a right to hear from her.'

That last rash sentence opened a way for him by which to escape me if he
chose, and he instantly took advantage of it.

`Pardon me, Miss Halcombe,' he said, still keeping his hand over his
face, `pardon me if I remind you that I have claimed no such right.'

The few plain words which would have brought him back to the point from
which he had wandered were just on my lips, when Laura checked me by
speaking again.

`l hope I have not made my painful acknowledgment in vain,' she
continued. `I hope it has secured me your entire confidence in what I
have still to say?'

`Pray be assured of it.' He made that brief reply warmly, dropping his
hand on the table while he spoke, and tuming towards us again. Whatever
outward change had passed over him was gone now. His face was eager and
expectant –; it expressed nothing but the most intense anxiety to hear
her next words.

`I wish you to understand that I have not spoken from any selfish
motive,' she said. `If you leave me, Sir Percival, after what you have
just heard, you do not leave me to marry another man, you only allow me
to remain a single woman for the rest of my life. My fault towards you
has begun and ended in my own thoughts. It can never go any farther. No
word has passed She hesitated. in doubt about the expression she should
use next, hesitated in a momentary confusion which it was very sad and
very painful to see. `No word has passed,' she patiently and resolutely
resumed, `between myself and the person to whom l am now referring for
the first and last time in your presence of my feelings towards him, or
of his feelings towards me –; no word ever can pass –; neither he nor I
arc likely, in this world, to meet again. I earnestly beg you to spare
me from saying any more, and to believe me, on my word, in what I have
just told you. It is the truth, Sir Percival, the truth which I think my
promised husband has a claim to hear, at any sacrifice of my own
feelines. I trust to his generosity to pardon me, and to his honour to
keep my secret.'

`Both those trusts are sacred to me,' he said, `and both shall be
sacredly kept.'

After answering in those terms he paused, and looked at her as if he was
waiting to hear more.

`I have said all I wish to say,' she added quietly –; `I have said more
than enough to justify you in withdrawing from your engagement.'

`You have said more than enough,' he answered, `to make it the dearest
object of my life to keep the engagement.' With those words he rose from
his chair, and advanced a few steps towards the place where she was
sitting.

She started violently, and a faint cry of surprise escaped her. Every
word she had spoken had innocently betrayed her purity and truth to a
man who thoroughly understood the priceless value of a pure and true
woman. Her own noble conduct had been the hidden enemy, throughout, of
all the hopes she had trusted to it. I had dreaded this from the first.
I would have prevented it. if she had allowed me the smallest chance of
doing so. I even waited and watched now, when the harm was done. for a
word from Sir Percival that would give me the opportunity of putting him
in the wrong.

`You have left it to me, Miss Fairlie. to resign you,' he continued. `I
am not heartless enough to resign a woman who has just shown herself to
be the noblest of her sex.'

He spoke with such warmth and feeling, with such passionate enthusiasm,
and yet with such perfect delicacy, that she raised her head, flushed uP
a little, and looked at him with sudden animation and spirit.

`No !' she said firmly. `The most wretched of her sex, if she must give
herself in marriage when she cannot give her love.'

`May she not give it in the future,' he asked, `if the one object of her
husband's life is to deserve it?'

`Never !' she answered. `If you still persist in maintaining our
engagement, I may be your true and faithful wife, Sir Percival –; your
loving wife, if I know my own heart, never !'

She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words that
no man alive could have steeled his heart against her. I tried hard to
feel that Sir Percival was to blame, and to say so, but my womanhood
would pity him, in spite of myself.

`I gratefully accept your faith and truth,' he said. `The least that you
can offer is more to me than the utmost that I could hope for from any
other woman in the world.'

Her left hand still held mine, but her right hand hung listlessly at her
side. He raised it gently to his lips –; touched it with them, rather
than kissed it –; bowed to me –; and then, with perfect delicacy and
discretion, silently quitted the room.

She neither moved nor said a word when he was gone –; she sat by me,
cold and still, with her eyes fixed on the ground. I saw it was hopeless
and useless to speak, and I only put my arm round her, and held her to
me in silence. We remained together so for what seemed a long and weary
time –; so long and so weary, that I grew uneasy and spoke to her
softly, in the hope of producing a change.

The sound of my voice seemed to startle her into consciousness. She
suddenly drew herself away from me and rose to her feet.

`I must submit, Marian, as well as I can,' she said. `My new life has
its hard duties, and one of them begins today.'

As she spoke she went to a side-table near the window, on which her
sketching materials were placed, gathered them together carefully, and
put them in a drawer of her cabinet. She locked the drawer and brought
the key to me.

`I must part from everything that reminds me of hin,' she said. `Keep
the key wherever you please –; I shall never want it again.'

Before I could say a word she had turned away to her bookcase, and had
taken from it the album that contained Walter Hartright's drawings. She
hesitated for a moment, holding the little volume fondly in her hands –;
then lifted it to her lips and kissed it.

`Oh, Laura ! Laura !' I said, not angrily, not reprovingly –; with
nothing but sorrow in my voice, and nothing but sorrow in my heart.

`It is the last time, Marian,' she pleaded. `I am bidding it good-bye
for ever.'

She laid the book on the table and drew out the comb that fastened her
hair. It fell, in its matchless beauty, over her back and shoulders, and
dropped round her, far below her waist. She separated one long, thin
lock from the rest, cut it off, and pinned it carefully, in the form of
a circle, on the first blank page of the album. The moment it was
fastened she closed the volume hurriedly, and placed it in my hands.

`You write to him and he writes to you,' she said. `While I am ahve, if
he asks after me always tell him I am well, and never say I am unhappy.
Don't distress him, Marian, for my sake, don't distress him. If I die
first, promise you will give him this little book of his drawings, with
my hair in it. There can be no harm, when I am gone, in telling him that
I put it there with my own hands. And say –; oh, Marian, say for me,
then, what I can never say for myself –; say I loved him!'

She flung her arms round my neck, and whispered the last words in my ear
with a passionate delight in uttering them which it almost broke my
heart to hear. All the long restraint she had imposed on herself gave
way in that first last outburst of tenderness. She broke from me with
hysterical vehemence, and threw herself on the sofa in a paroxysm of
sobs and tears that shook her from head to foot.

I tried vainly to soothe her and reason with her –; she was past being
soothed, and past being reasoned with. It was the sad, sudden end for us
two of this memorable day. When the fit had worn itself Out she was too
exhausted to speak. She slumbered towards the afternoon, and I Put away
the book of drawings so that she might not see it when she woke. My face
was calm, whatever my heart might be, when she opened her eyes again and
looked at me. We said no more to each other about the distressing
interview of the morning. Sir Percival's name was not mentioned. Walter
Hartright was not alluded to again by either of us for the remainder of
the day.

10th. –; Finding that she was composed and like herself this morning, I
returned to the painful subject of yesterday, for the sole purpose of
imploring her to let me speak to Sir Percival and Mr Fairlie, more
plainly and strongly than she could speak to either of them herself,
about this lamentable marriage. She interposed, gently but firmly, in
the middle of my remonstrances.

`I left yesterday to decide,' she said; `and yesterday has decided. It
is too late to go back.'

Sir Percival spoke to me this afternoon about what had passed in Laura's
room. He assured me that the unparalleled trust she had placed im him
had awakened such an answering conviction of her innocence and integrity
in his mind, that he was guiltless of having felt even a moment's
unworthy jealousy, either at the time when he was in her presence, or
afterwards when he had withdrawn from it. Deeply as he lamented the
unfortunate attachment which had hindered the progress he might
otherwise have made in her esteem and regard, he firmly believed that it
had remained unacknowledged in the past, and that it would remain, under
all changes of circumstance which it was possible to contemplate,
unacknowledged in the future. This was his absolute conviction; and the
strongest proof he could give of it was the assurance, which he now
offered, that he felt no curiosity to know whether the attachment was of
recent date or not, or who had been the object of it. His implit
confidence in Miss Fairlie made him satisfied with what she had thought
fit to say to him, and he was honestly innocent of the slightest feeling
of anxiety to hear more.

He waited after saying those words and looked at me. I was so conscious
of my unreasonable prejudice against him –; so conscious of an unworthy
suspicion that he might be speculating on my impulsively answering the
very questions which he had just described himself as resolved not to
ask –; that I evaded all reference to this part of the subject with
something like a feeling of confusion on my own part. At the same time I
was resolved not to lose even the smallest opportunity of trying to
plead Laura's cause, and I told him boldly that I regretted his
generosity had not carried him one step farther, and induced him to
withdraw from the engagement altogether.

Here, again, he disarmed me by not attempting to defend himself. He
would merely beg me to remember the difference there was between his
allowing Miss Fairlie to give him up, which was a matter of submission
only, and his forcing himself to give up Miss Fairlie, which was, in
other words, asking him to be the suicide of his own hopes. Her conduct
of the day before had so strengthened the unchangeable love and
admiration of two long years, that all active contention against those
feelings, on his part, was henceforth entirely out of his power. I must
think him weak, selfish, unfeeling towards the very woman whom he
idolised, and he must bow to my opinion as resignedly as he could –;
only putting it to me, at the same time, whether her future as a single
woman, pining under an unhappily placed attachment which she could never
acknowledge, could be said to promise her a much brighter prospect than
her future as the wife of a man who worshipped the very ground she
walked on? In the last case there was hope from time, however slight it
might be –; in the first case, on her owm showing, there was no hope at
all.

I answered him –; more because my tongue is a woman's, and must answer,
than because I had anything convincing to say. It was only too plain
that the course Laura had adopted the day before had offered him the
advantage if he chose to take it –; and that he had chosen to take it. I
felt this at the time, and I feel it just as strongly now, while I write
these lines, in my own room. The one hope left is that his motives
really spring, as he says they do, from the irresistible strength of his
attachment to Laura.

Before I close my diary for tonight I must record that I wrote today, in
poor Hartright's interest, to two of my mother's old friends in London
–; both men of influence and position. If they can do anything for him,
I am quite sure they will. Except Laura, I never was more anxious about
anyone than I am now about Walter. All that has happened since he left
us has only increased my strong regard and sympathy for him. I hope I am
doing right in trying to help him to employment abroad –; I hope, most
earnestly and anxiously, that it will end well.

11th. –; Sir Percival had an interview with Mr Fairlie, and I was sent
for to join them.

I found Mr Fairlie greatly relieved at the prospect of the `family
worry' (as he was pleased to describe his niece's marriage) being
settled at last. So far, I did not feel called oii to say anything to
him about my owm opinion, hut when he proceeded, in his most
aggravatingly languid manner, to suggest that the time for the marriage
had better be settled next, in accordance with Sir Percival's wishes, I
enjoyed the satisfaction of assailing Mr Fairlie's nerves with as strong
a protest against hurrying Laura's decision as I could put into words.
Sir Percival immediately assured me that he felt the force of my
objection, and begged me to believe that the proposal had not been made
in consequence of any interference on his part. Mr Fairlie leaned back
in his chair, closed his eyes, said we both of us did honour to human
nature, and then repeated his suggestion as coolly as if neither Sir
Percival nor I had said a word in opposition to it. It ended in my
flatly declining to mention the subject to Laura, unless she first
approached it of her own accord. I left the room at once after making
that declaration. Sir Percival looked seriously embarrassed and
distressed, Mr Fairlie stretched out his lazy legs on his velvet
footstool, and said, `Dear Marian! how I envy you your robust nervous
system ! Don't bang the door !'

On going to Laura's room I found that she had asked for me, and that Mrs
Vesey had informed her that I was with Mr Fairlie. She inquired at once
what I had been wanted for, and I told her all that had passed, without
attempting to conceal the vexation and annoyance that I really felt. Her
answer surprised and distressed me inexpressibly –; it was the very last
reply that I should have expected her to make.

`My uncle is right,' she said. `I have caused trouble and anxiety enough
to you, and to all about me. Let me cause no more, Marian –; let Sir
Percival decide.'

I remonstrated warmly, but nothing that I could say moved her.

`I am held to my engagement,' she replied; `I have broken with my old
life. The evil day will not come the less surely because I put it off.
No, Marian! once again my uncle is right. l have caused trouble enough
and anxiety enough, and I will cause no more.'

She used to be pliability itself, but she was now inflexibly passive in
her resignation –; I might almost say in her despair. Dearly as I love
her, I should have been less pained if she had been violently agitated
–; it was so shockingly unlike her natural character to see her cold and
insensible as I saw her now.

12th. –; Sir Percival put some questions to me at breakfast about Laura,
which left me no choice but to tell him what she had said.

While we were talking she herself came down and joined us. She was just
as unnaturally comPosed in Sir Percival's presence as she had been in
mine. When breakfast was over he had an opportunity of saying a few
words to her privately, in a recess of one of the windows. They were not
more than two or three minutes together, and on their separating she
left the room with Mrs Vesey, while Sir Percival came to me. He said he
had entreated her to favour him by maintaining her privilege of fixing
the time for the marriage at her own will and pleasure. In reply she had
merely expressed her acknowledgments, and had desired him to mention
what his wishes were to Miss Halcombe.

I have no patience to write more. In this instance, as in every other,
Sir Percival has carried his point with the utmost possible credit to
himself, in spite of everything that I can say or do. His wishes are
now, what they were, of course, when he first came here; and Laura
having resigned herself to the one inevitable sacrifice of the marriage,
remains as coldly hopeless and enduring as ever. In parting with the
little occupations and rehcs that reminded her of Hartright, she seems
to have parted with all her tenderness and all her impressibility. It is
only three o'clock in the afternoon while I write these lines, and Sir
Percival has left us already, in the happy hurry of a bridegroom, to
prepare for the bride's reception at his house in Hampshire. Unless some
extraordinary event happens to prevent it they will be married exactly
at the time when he wished to be married –; before the end of the year.
My very fingers burn as I write it!

13th. –; A sleepless night, through uneasiness about Laura. Towards the
morning I came to a resolution to try what change of scene would do to
rouse her. She cannot surely remain in her present torpor of
insensibility, if I take her away from Limmeridge and surround her with
the pleasant faces of old friends? After some consideration I decided on
writing to the Arnolds, in Yorkshire. They are simple, kind-hearted,
hospitable people, and she has known them from her childhood. When I had
put the letter in the post-bag I told her what I had done. It would have
been a relief to me if she had shown the spirit to resist and object.
But no –; she only said, `I will go anywhere with you, Marian. I dare
say you are right –; I dare say the change will do me good.'

14th. –; I wrote to Mr Gilmore, informing him that there was really a
prospect of this miserable marriage taking place, and also mentioning my
idea of trying what change of scene would do for Laura. I had no heart
to go into particulars. Time enough for them when we getnearer to the
end of the year.

15th. –; Three letters for me. The first, from the Arnolds, full of
delight at the prospect of seeing Laura and me. The second, from one of
the gentlemen to whom I wrote on Walter Hartright's behalf, informing me
that he has been fortunate enough to find an opportunity of complying
with my request. The third, from Walter himself, thanking me, poor
fellow, in the warmest terms, for giving him an opportunity of leaving
his home, his country, and his friends. A private exPedition to make
excavations among the ruined cities of Central America is, it seems,
about to sail from Liverpool. The draughtsman who had been already
appointed to accompany it has lost heart, and withdrawn at the eleventh
hour, and Walter is to fill his place. He is to be engaged for six
months certain, from the time of the landing in Honduras, and for a year
afterwards, if the excavations are successful, and if the funds hold
out. His letter ends with a promise to write me a farewell line when
they are all on board ship, and when the pilot leaves them. I can only
hope and pray earnestly that he and I are both acting in this matter for
the best. It seems of it startles me. And yet, in his unhappy position,
how can I expect him or wish him to remain at home?

16th. –; The carriage is at the door. Laura and I set out on our visit
to the Arnolds today. POLESDEAN LODGE, YORKSHIRE.

23rd. –; A week in these new scenes and among these kindhearted people
has done her some good, though not so much as I had hoped. I have
resolved to prolong our stay for another week at least. It is useless to
go back to Limmeridge till there is an absolute necessity for our
return.

24th. –; Sad news by this morning's post. The expedition to Central
America sailed on the twenty-first. We have parted with a true man –; we
have lost a faithful friend. Walter Hartright has left England.

25th. –; Sad news yesterday –; ominous news today. Sir Percival Glyde
has written to Mr Fairhe, and Mr Fairlie has written to Laura and me, to
recall us to Limmeridge immediately.

What can this mean? Has the day for the marriage been fixed in our
absence?




LIMMERIDGE HOUSE. November 27th. –; My forebodings are realised. The
marriage is fixed for the twenty-second of December.

The day after we left for Polesdean Lodge Sir Percival wrote, it seems,
to Mr Fairlie, to say that the necessary repairs and alterations in his
house in Hampshire would occupy a much longer time in completion than he
had originally anticipated. The proper estimates were to be submitted to
him as soon as possible, and it would greatly facilitate his entering
into definite arrangements with the workpeople, if he could be informed
of the exact period at which the wedding ceremony might be expected to
take place. He could then make all his calculations in reference to
time, besides writing the necessary apologies to friends who had been
engaged to visit him that winter, and who could not, of course, be
received when the house was in the hands of the workmen.

To this letter Mr Fairlie had replied by requesting Sir Percival himself
to suggest a day for the marriage, subject to Miss Fairlie's approval,
which her guardian willingly undertook to do his best to obtain. Sir
Percival wrote back by the next post, and proposed (in accordance with
his own views and wishes from the first) the latter part of December –;
perhaps the twenty-second, or twenty-fourth, or any other day that the
lady and her guardian might prefer. The lady not being at hand to speak
for herself, her guardian had decided, in her absence, on the earliest
day mentioned –; the twenty-second of December, and had written to
recall us to Limmeridge in consequence.

After explaining these particulars to me at a private interview
yesterday, Mr Fairlie suggested, in his most amiable manner, that I
should open the necessary negotiations today. Feeling that resistance
was useless, unless I could first obtain Laura's authority to make it, I
consented to speak to her, but declared, at the same time, that I would
on no consideration undertake to gain her consent to Sir Percival's
wishes. Mr Fairlie complimented me on my `excellent conscience,' much as
he would have complimented me, if he had been out walking, on my
`excellent constitution,' and seemed perfectly satisfied, so far, with
having simply shifted one more family responsibility from his own
shoulders to mine.

This morning I spoke to Laura as I had promised. The composure –; I may
almost say, the insensibility –; which she has so strangely and so
resolutely maintained ever since Sir Percival left us, was not proof
against the shock of the news I had to tell her. She turned pale and
trembled violently.

`Not so soon !' she pleaded. `Oh, Marian, not so soon!'

The slightest hint she could give was enough for me. I rose to leave the
room, and fight her battle for her at once with Mr Fairlie.

rust as my hand was on the door, she caught fast hold of my dress and
stopped me.

`Let me go!' I said. `My tongue burns to tell your uncle that he and Sir
Percival are not to have it all their own way.'

She sighed bitterly, and still held my dress.

`No !' she said faintly. `Too late, Marian, too late !'

`Not a minute too late,' I retorted. `The question of time is our
question –; and trust me, Laura, to take a woman's full advantage of
it.'

I unclasped her hand from my gown while I spoke; but she slipped both
her arns round my waist at the same moment, and held me more effectually
than ever.

`It will only involve us in more trouble and more confusion,' she said.
`It will set you and my uncle at variance, and bring Sir Percival here
again with fresh causes of complaint –;'

`So much the better !' I cried out passionately. `Who cares for his
causes of complaint? Are you to break your heart to set his mind at
ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men !
They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace –; they drag us away
from our parents' love and our sisters' friendship –; they take us body
and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they
chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in
return? Let me go, Laura –; I'm mad when I think of it !'

The tears –; miserable, weak, women's tears of vexation and rage –;
started to my eyes. She smiled sadly, and put her handkerchief over my
face to hide for me the betrayal of my own weakness –; the weakness of
all others which she knew that I most despised.

`Oh, Marian !' she said. `You crying ! Think what you would say to me,
if the places were changed, and if those tears were mine. All your love
and courage and devotion will not alter what must happen, sooner or
later. Let my uncle have his way. Let us have no more troubles and
heart-burnings that any sacrifice of mine can prevent. Say you will live
with me, Marian, when I am married –; and say no more.'

But I did say more. I forced back the contemptible tears that were no
relief to me, and that only distressed her, and reasoned and pleaded as
calmly as I could. It was of no avail. She made me twice repeat the
promise to live with her when she was married, and then suddenly asked a
question which turned my sorrow and my sympathy for her into a new
direction.

`While we were at Polesdean,' she said, `you had a letter, Man-an –;'

Her altered tone –; the abrupt manner in which she looked away from me
and hid her face on my shoulder –; the hesitation which silenced her
before she had completed her question, all told me, but too plainly, to
whom the half-expressed inquiry pointed.

`I thought, Laura, that you and I were never to refer to him again,' I
said gently.

`You had a letter from him?' she persisted.

`Yes,' I replied, `if you must know it.'

`Do you mean to write to him again?'

I hesitated. I had been afraid to tell her of his absence from England,
or of the manner in which my exertions to serve his new hopes and
projects had connected me with his departure. What answer could I make?
He was gone where no letters could reach him for months, perhaps for
years, to come.

`Suppose I do mean to write to him again,' I said at last. `What then,
Laura ?'

Her cheek grew burning hot against my neck, and her arms trembled and
tightened round me.

`Don't tell him about the twenty-second,' she whispered. `Promise,
Marian –; pray promise you will not even mention my name to him when you
write next.'

I gave the promise. No words can say how sorrowfully I gave it. She
instantly took her am from my waist, walked away to the window. and
stood looking out with her back to me. After a moment she spoke once
more, but without turning round, without allowing me to catch the
smallest glimpse of her face.

`Are you going to my uncle's room?' she asked. `Will you say that I
consent to whatever arrangement he may think best? Never mind leaving
me, Marian. I shall be better alone for a little while.'

I went out. If, as soon as I got into the passage, I could have
transported Mr Fairlie and Sir Percival Glyde to the uttermost ends of
the earth by lifting one of my fingers, that finger would have been
raised without an instant's hesitation. For once my unhappy temper now
stood my friend. I should have broken down altogether and burst into a
violent fit of crying, if my tears had not been all burnt up in the heat
of my anger. As it was, I dashed into Mr Fairlie's room –; called to him
as harshly as possible, `Laura consents to the twenty-second' –; and
dashed out again without waiting for a word of answer. I banged the door
after me, and I hope I shattered Mr Fairlie's nervous system for the
rest of the day.

28th. –; This morning I read poor Hartright's farewell letter over
again, a doubt having crossed my mind since yesterday, whether I am
acting wisely in concealing the fact of his departure from Laura.

On reflection, I still think I am right. The allusions in his letter to
the preparations made for the expedition to Central America, all show
that the leaders of it know it to be dangerous. If the discovery of this
makes me uneasy, what would it make her? It is bad enough to feel that
his departure has deprived us of the friend of all others to whose
devotion we could trust in the hour of need, if ever that hour comes and
finds us helpless; but it is far worse to know that he has gone from us
to face the perils of a bad climate, a wild country, and a disturbed
population. Surely it would be a cruel candour to tell Laura this,
without a pressing and a positive necessity for it?

I almost doubt whether I ought not to go a step farther, and burn the
letter at once, for fear of its one day falling into wrong hands. It not
only refers to Laura in terms which ought to remain a secret for ever
between the writer and me, but it reiterates his suspicion –; so
obstinate, so unaccountable, and so alarming –; that he has been
secretly watched since he left Limmeridge. He declares that he saw the
faces of the two strange men who followed him about the streets of
London, watching him among the crowd which gathered at Liverpool to see
the expedition embark, and he positively asserts that he heard the name
of Anne Catherick pronounced behind him as he got into the boat. His own
words are, `These events have a meaning, these events must lead to a
result. The mystery of Anne Catherick is not cleared up yet. She may
never cross my path again, but if ever she crosses yours, make better
use of the opportunity, Miss Halcombe, than I made of it. I speak on
strong conviction –; I entreat you to remember what I say.' These are
his own expressions. There is no danger of my forgetting them –; my
memory is only too ready to dwell on any words of Hartright's that refer
to Anne Catherick. But there is danger in my keeping the letter. The
merest accident might place it at the mercy of strangers. I may fall ill
–; I may die. Better to burn i at once, and have one anxiety the less.

It is burnt. The ashes of his farewell letter –; the last he may ever
write to me –; he in a few black fragments on the hearth. Is this the
sad end to all that sad story? Oh, not the end –; surely, surely not the
end already!

29th. –; The preparations for the marriage have begun. The dressmaker
has come to receive her orders. Laura is perfectly impassive, perfectly
careless about the question of all others in which a woman's personal
interests are most closely bound up. She has left it all to the
dressmaker and to me. lf poor Hartright had been the baronet, and the
husband of her father's choice, how differently she would have behaved !
How anxious and capricious she would have been, and what a hard task the
best of dressmakers would have found it to please her !

30th. –; We hear every day from Sir Percival. The last news is that the
alterations in his house will occupy from four to six months before they
can be properly completed. If painters, paperhangers, and upholsterers
could make happiness as well as splendour, I should be interested about
their proceedings in Laura's future home. As it is, the only part of Sir
Percival's last letter which does not leave me as it found me, perfectly
indifferent to all his plans and projects, is the part which refers to
the wedding tour. He proposes, as Laura is delicate, and as the winter
threatens to be unusually severe, to take her to Rome, and to remain in
Italy until the early part of next summer. If this plan should not be
approved, he is equally ready, although he has no establishment of his
own in town, to spend the season in London, in the most suitable
furnished house that can be obtained for the purpose.

Putting myself and my own feelings entirely out of the question (which
it is my duty to do, and which I have done), I, for one, have no doubt
of the propriety of adopting the first of these proposals- In either
case a separation between Laura and me is inevitable. It will be a
longer separation, in the event of their going abroad, than it would be
in the event of their remaining in London –; but we must set against
this disadvantage the benefit to Laura, on the other side, of passing
the winter in a mild climate, and more than that, the immense assistance
in raising her spirits, and reconciling her to her new existence, which
the mere wonder and excitement of travelling for the first time in her
life in the most interesting country in the world, must surely afford.
She is not of a disposition to find resources in the conventional
gaieties and excitements of London. They would only make the first
oppression of this lamentable marriage fall the heavier on her. I dread
the beginning of her new life more than words can tell, but I see some
hope for her if she travels –; none if she remains at home.

It is strange to look back at this latest entry in my journal, and to
find that I am writing of the marriage and the parting with Laura, as
people write of a settled thing. It seems so cold and so unfeeling to be
looking at the future already in this cruelly composed way. But what
other way is possible, now that the time is drawing so near? Before
another month is over our heads she will be his Laura instead of mine!
His Laura! I am as little able to realise the idea which those two words
convey –; my mind feels almost as dulled and stunned by it –; as if
writing of her marriage were like writing of her death.

December 1st. –; A sad, sad day –; a day that I have no heart to
describe at length. After weakly putting it off last night, I was
obliged to speak to her this morning of Sir Percival's proposal about
the wedding tour.

In the full conviction that I should be with her wherever she went, the
poor child –; for a child she is still in many things –; was almost
happy at the prospect of seeing the wonders of Florence and Rome and
Naples. It nearly broke my heart to dispel her delusion, and to bring
her face to face with the hard truth. I was obliged to tell her that no
man tolerates a rival –; not even a woman rival –; in his wife's
affections, when he first marries, whatever he may do afterwards. I was
obliged to warn her that my chance of living with her permanently under
her own roof, depended entirely on my not arousing Sir Percival's
jealousy and distrust by standing between them at the beginning of their
marriage, in the position of the chosen depositary of his wife's closest
secrets. Drop by drop I poured the profaning bitterness of this world's
wisdom into that pure heart and that innocent mind, while every higher
and better feeling within me recoiled from my miserable task. It is over
now. She has learnt her hard, her inevitable lesson. The simple
illusions of her girlhood are gone, and my hand has stripped them off.
Better mine than his –; that is all my consolation –; better mine than
his.

So the first proposal is the proposal accepted. They are to go to Italy,
and I am to arrange, with Sir Percival's permission, for meeting them
and staying with them when they return to England. In other words, I am
to ask a personal favour, for the first time in my life, and to ask it
of the man of all others to whom l least desire to owe a serious
obligation of any kind. Well! I think I could do even more than that,
for Laura's sake.

2nd. –; On looking back, I find myself always referring to Sir Percival
in disparaging terms. In the turn affairs have now taken, l must and
will root out my prejudice against him. I cannot think how it first got
into my mind. It certainly never existed in former times.

Is it Laura's reluctance to become his wife that has set me against him?
Have Hartright's perfectly intelhgible prejudices infected me without my
suspecting their influence? Does that letter of Anne Catherick's still
leave a lurking distrust in my mind, in spite of Sir Percival's
explanation, and of the proof in my possession of the truth of it? I
cannot account for the state of my own feelings; the one thing I am
certain of is, that it is my duty –; doublv my duty now –; not to wrong
Sir Percival by unjustly distrusting him. lf it has got to be a habit
with me always to write of him in the same unfavourable manner, I must
and will break myself of this unworthy tendency, even though the effort
should force me to close the pages of my journal till the marriage is
over! I am seriously dissatisfied with myself –; I will write no more
today.

December 16th. –; A whole fortnight has passed, and I have not once
opened these pages. I have been long enough away from my journal to come
back to it with a healthier and better mind, I hope, so far as Sir
Percival is concerned.

There is not much to record of the past two weeks. The dresses are
almost all finished, and the new travelling trunks have been sent here
from London. Poor dear Laura hardly leaves me for a moment all day, and
last night, when neither of us could sleep, she came and crept into my
bed to talk to me there. `I shall lose you so soon, Marian,' she said;
`I must make the most of you while I can.'

They are to be married at Limmeridge Church, and thank Heaven, not one
of the neighbours is to be invited to the ceremony. The only visitor
will be our old friend, Mr Arnold, who is to come from Polesdean to give
Laura away, her uncle being far too delicate to trust himself outside
the door in such inclement weather as we now have. If I were not
determined, from this day forth, to see nothing but the bright side of
our prospects, the melancholy absence of any male relative of Laura's,
at the most important moment of her life, would make me very gloomy and
very distrustful of the future. But I have done with gloom and distrust
–; that is to say, I have done with writing about either the one or the
other in this journal.

Sir Percival is to arrive tomorrow. He offered, in case we wished to
treat him on terms of rigid etiquette, to write and ask our clergyman to
grant him the hospitality of the rectory, during the short period of his
sojourn at Limmeridge, before the marriage. Under the circumstances,
neither Mr Fairlie nor I thought it at all necessary for us to trouble
ourselves about attending to trifling forms and ceremonies. In our wild
moorland country, and in this great lonely house, we may well claim to
be beyond the reach of the trivial conventionalities which hamper people
in other places. I wrote to Sir Percival to thank him for his polite
offer, and to beg that he would occupy his old rooms, just as usual, at
Limmeridge House.

17th. –; He arrived today, looking, as I thought, a little worn and
anxious, but still talking and laughing like a man in the best possible
spirits. He brought with him some really beautiful presents in
jewellery, which Laura received with her best grace, and, outwardly at
least, with perfect self-possession. The only sign I can detect of the
struggle it must cost her to preserve appearances at this trying time,
expresses itself in a sudden unwillingness, on her part, ever to be left
alone. Instead of retreating to her own room, as usual, she seems to
dread going there. When I went upstairs today, after lunch, to put on my
bonnet for a walk, she volunteered to join me, and again, before dinner,
she threw the door open between our two rooms, so that we might talk to
each other while we were dressing. `Keep me always doing something,' she
said; `keep me always in company with somebody. Don't let me think –;
that is all I ask now, Marian –; don't let me think.'

This sad change in her only increases her attractions for Sir Percival.
He interprets it, I can see, to his own advantage. There is a feverish
flush in her cheeks, a feverish brightness in her eyes, which he
welcomes as the return of her beauty and the recovery of her spirits.
She talked today at dinner with a gaiety and carelessness so false, so
shockingly out of her character, that I secretly longed to silence her
and take her away. Sir Percival's delight and surprise appeared to be
beyond all expression. The anxiety which I had noticed on his face when
he arrived totally disappeared from it, and he looked, even to my eyes,
a good ten years younger than he really is.

There can be no doubt –; though some strange perversity prevents me from
seeing it myself –; there can be no doubt that Laura's future husband is
a very handsome man. Regular features form a personal advantage to begin
with –; and he has them. Bright brown eyes, either in man or woman, are
a great attraction –; and he has them. Even baldness, when it is only
baldness over the forehead (as in his case), is rather becoming than not
in a man, for it heightens the head and adds to the intelligence of the
face. Grace and ease of movement, untiring animation of manner, ready,
pliant, conversational powers –; all these are unquestionable merits,
and all these he certainly possesses. Surely, Mr Gilmore, ignorant as he
is of Laura's secret, was not to blame for feeling surprised that she
should repent of her marriage engage ment? Any one else in his place
would have shared our good old friend's opinion. If I were asked, at
this moment, to say plainly what defects I have discovered in Sir
Percival, I could only point out two. One, his incessant restlessness
and excitability –; which may be caused naturally enough, by unusual
energy of character. The other, his short, sharp, ill-tempered manner of
speaking to the servants –; which may be only a bad habit after all. No,
I cannot dispute it, and I will not dispute it –; Sir Percival is a very
handsome and a very agreeable man. There! I have written it down at
last, and I'm glad it's over.

18th. –; Feeling weary and depressed this morning, I left Laura with Mrs
Vesey, and went out alone for one of my brisk midday walks, which I have
discontinued too much of late. I took the dry airy road over the moor
that leads to Todd's Corner. After having been out half an hour, I was
excessively surprised to see Sir Percival approaching me from the
direction of the farm. He was walking rapidly, swinging his stick, his
head erect as usual, and his shooting jacket flying open in the wind.
When we met he did not wait for me to ask any questions –; he told me at
once that he had been to the farm to inquire if Mr or Mrs Todd had
received any tidings, since his last visit to Limmeridge, of Anne
Catherick.

`You found, of course, that they had heard nothing ?' I said.

`Nothing whatever,' he replied. `I begin to be seriously afraid that we
have lost her. Do you happen to know,' he continued, looking me in the
face very attentively, `if the artist –; Mr Hartright –; is in a
position to give us any further information?'

`He has neither heard of her, nor seen her, since he left Cumberland,' I
answered.

`Very sad,' said Sir Percival, speaking like a man who was disappointed,
and vet, oddly enough, looking at the same time like a man who was
relieved. `It is impossible to say what misfortunes may not have
happened to the miserable creature. I am inexpressibly annoyed at the
failure of all my efforts to restore her to the care and protection
which she so urgently needs.'

This time he really looked annoyed. I said a few sympathising words, and
we then talked of other subjects on our way back to the house. Surely my
chance meeting with him on the moor has disclosed another favourable
trait in his character? Surely it was singularly considerate and
unselfish of him to think of Anne Catherick on the eve of his marriage,
and to go all the way to Todd's Corner to make inquiries about her, when
he might have passed the time so much more agreeably in Laura's society?
Considering that he can only have acted from motives of pure charity,
his conduct, under the circumstances, shows unusual good feeling and
deserves extraordinary praise. Well ! I give him extraordinary praise –;
and there's an end of it.

19th. –; More discoveries in the inexhaustible mine of Sir Percival's
virtues.

Today I approached the subject of my proposed sojourn under his wife's
roof when he brings her back to England. I had hardly dropped my first
hint in this direction before he caught me warmly by the hand, and said
I had made the very offer to him which he had been, on his side, most
anxious to make to me. I was the companion of all others whom he most
sincerely longed to secure for his wife, and he begged me to believe
that I had conferred a lasting favour on him by making the proposal to
live with Laura after her marriage, exactly as I had always lived with
her before it.

When I had thanked him in her name and mine for his considerate kindness
to both of us, we passed next to the subject of his wedding tour, and
began to talk of the English society in Rome to which Laura was to be
introduced. He ran over the names of several friends whom he expected to
meet abroad this winter. They were all English, as well as I can
remember, with one exception. The one exception was Count Fosco.

The mention of the Count's name, and the discovery that he and his wife
are likely to meet the bride and bridegroom on the continent, puts
Laura's marriage, for the first time, in a distinctly favourable light.
It is likely to be the means of healing a family feud. Hitherto Madame
Fosco has chosen to forget her obligations as Laura's aunt out of sheer
spite against the late Mr Fairlie for his conduct in the affair of the
legacy. Now however, she can persist in this course of conduct no
longer. Sir Percival and Count Fosco are old and fast friends, and their
wives will have no choice but to meet on civil terms. Madame Fosco in
her maiden days was one of the miost impertirient women I ever met with
–; capricious, exacting, and vain to the last degree of absurdity. If
her husband has succeeded in bringing her to her senses, he deserves the
gratitude of every member of the family, and he may have mine to begin
with.

I am becoming anxious to know the Count. He is the most intimate friend
of Laura's husband, and in that capacity he excites my strongest
interest. Neither Laura nor I have ever seen him. All I know of him is
that his accidental presence, years ago, on the steps of the
Trinità del Monte at Rome, assisted Sir Percival's escape from
robbery and assassination at the critical moment when he was wounded in
the hand, and might the next instant have been wounded in the heart. I
remember also that, at the time of the late Mr Fairlie's absurd
objections to his sister's marriage, the Count wrote him a very
temperate and sensible letter on the subject, which, I am ashamed to
say, remained unanswered. This is all I know of Sir Percival's friend. I
wonder if he will ever come to England? I wonder if I shall like him?

My pen is running away into mere speculation. Let me return to sober
matter of fact. It is certain that Sir percival's reception of my
venturesome proposal to live with his wife was more than kind, it was
almost affectionate. I am sure Laura's husband will have no reason to
complain of me if I can only go on as I have begun. I have already
declared him to be handsome, agreeable, full of good feeling towards the
unfortunate, and full of affectionate kindness towards me. Really, I
hardly know myself again in my new character of Sir percival's warmest
friend.

20th. –; I hate Sir Percival! I flatly deny his good looks. I consider
him to be eminently ill-tempered and disagreeable, and totally wanting
in kindness and good feeling. Last night the cards for the married
couple were sent home. Laura opened the packet and saw her future name
in print for the first time. Sir Percival looked over her shoulder
familiarly at the new card which had already transformed Miss Fairlie
into Lady Glyde –; smiled with the most odious self-complacency, and
whispered something in her ear. I don't know what it was –; Laura has
refused to tell me –; but I saw her face turn to such a deadly whiteness
that I thought she would have fainted. He took no notice of the change
–; he seemed to he barbarously unconscious that he had said anything to
pain her. All my old feelings of hostility towards him revived on the
instant, and all the hours that have passed since have done nothing to
dissipate them. I am more unreasonable and more unjust than ever. In
three words –; how glibly my pen writes them ! –; in three words, I hate
him.

21st. –; Have the anxieties of this anxious time shaken me a little, at
last? I have been writing, for the last few days, in a tone of levity
which, Heaven knows, is far enough from my heart, and which it has
rather shocked me to discover on looking back at the entries in my
journal.

Perhaps I may have caught the feverish excitement of Laura's spirits for
the last week. If so, the fit has already passed away from me, and has
left me in a very strange state of mind. A persistent idea has been
forcing itself on my attention, ever since last night. that something
will yet happen to prevent the marriage. What has produced this singular
fancy? Is it the indirect result of my apprehensions for Laura's future?
Or has it been unconsciously suggested to me by the increasing
restlessness and irritability which I have certainly observed in Sir
Percival's manner as the wedding-day draws nearer and nearer? Impossible
to say. I know that I have the idea –; surely the wildest idea, under
the circumstances, that ever entered a woman's head? –; but try as I
may, I cannot trace it back to its source.

This last day has been all confusion and wretchedness. How can I write
about it? –; and yet, I must write. Anything is better than brooding
over my own gloomy thoughts.

Kind Mrs Vesey, whom we have all too much overlooked and forgotten of
late, innocently caused us a sad morning to begin with. She has been,
for months past, secretly making a warm Shetland shawl for her dear
pupil –; a most beautiful and surprising piece of work to be done by a
woman at her age and with her habits. The gift was presented this
morning, and poor warmhearted Laura completely broke down when the shawl
was put proudly on her shoulders by the loving old friend and guardian
of her motherless childhood. I was hardly allowed time to quiet them
both, or even to dry my own eyes, when I was sent for by Mr Fairlie, to
be favoured with a long recital of his arrangements for the preservation
of his own tranquillity on the wedding-day.

`Dear Laura' was to receive his present –; a shabby ring, with her
affectionate uncle's hair for an ornament, instead of a precious stone,
and with a heartless French inscription inside, about congenial
sentiments and eternal friendship –; `dear Laura' was to receive this
tender tribute from my hands immediately, so that she might have plenty
of time to recover from the agitation produced by the gift before she
appeared in Mr Fairlie's presence. `Dear Laura' was to pay him a little
visit that evening, and to be kind enough not to make a scene. `Dear
Laura' was to pay him another little visit in her wedding-dress the next
morning, and to be kind enough, again, not to make a scene. `Dear Laura'
was to look in once more, for the third time, before going away, but
without harrowing his feelings by saying when she was going away, and
without tears –; `in the name of pity, in the name of everything, dear
Marian, that is most affectionate and most domestic, and most
delightfully and charmingly selfcomposed, without tears !' I was so
exasperated by this miserable selfish trifling, at such a time, that I
should certainly have shocked Mr Fairlie by some of the hardest and
rudest truths he has ever heard in his life, if the arrival of Mr Arnold
from Polesdean had not called me away to new duties downstairs.

The rest of the day is indescribable. I believe no one in the house
really knew how it passed. The confusion of small events, all huddled
together one on the other, bewildered everybody. There were dresses sent
home that had been forgotten –; there were trunks to be packed and
unpacked and packed again –; there were presents from friends far and
near, friends high and low. We were all needlessly hurried, all
nervously expectant of the morrow. Sir percival, especially, was too
restless now to remain five minutes together in the same place. That
short, sharp cough of his troubled him more than ever. He was in and out
of doors all day long, and he seemed to grow so inquisitive on a sudden,
that he questioned the very strangers who came on small errands to the
house. Add to all this, the one perpetual thought in Laura's mind and
mine, that we were to part the next day, and the haunting dread,
unexpressed by either of us, and yet ever present to both, that this
deplorable marriage might prove to be the one fatal error of her life
and the one hopeless sorrow of mine. For the first time in all the years
of our close and happy intercourse we almost avoided looking each other
in the face, and we refrained, by common consent, from speaking together
iii private through the whole evening. I can dwell on it no longer.
Whatever future sorrows may be in store for me, I shall always look back
on this twenty-first of December as the most comfortless and most
miserable day of my life.

I am writing these lines in the solitude of my own room, long after
midnight, having just come back from a stolen look at Laura in lier
pretty little white bed –; the bed she has occupied since the days of
her girlhood.

There she lay, unconscious that I was looking at her –; quiet, more
quiet than I had dared to hope, but not sleeping. The glimmer of the
niglit-light showed me that her eyes were only partially closed –; the
traces of tears glistened between her eyelids. My little keepsake –;
only a brooch –; lay on the table at her bedside, with her prayer-book,
and the miniature portrait of her father which she takes with her
wherever she goes. I waited a moment, looking at her from behind her
pillow, as she lay beneath me, with one arm and hand resting on the
white coverlid, so still, so quietly breathing, that the frill on her
night-dress never nioved –; I waited, looking at her, as I have seen her
thousands of times, as I shall never see her again –; and then stole
back to my room. My own love ! with all your wealth, and all your
beauty, how friendless you are! The one man who would give his heart's
life to serve you is far away, tossing, this stormy night, on the awful
sea. Who else is left to you? No father, no brother –; no living
creature hut the helpless, useless woman who writes these sad lines, and
watches by you for the morning, in sorrow that she cannot compose, in
doubt that she cannot conquer. Oh, what a trust is to be placed in that
man's hands tomorrow ! lf ever he forgets it –; if ever he injures a
hair of her head! –; THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER. Seven o'clock. A
wild, unsettled morning. She has just risen –; better and calmer, now
that the time has coine, than she was yesterday.

Ten o'clock. She is dressed. We have kissed each other –; we have
promised each other not to lose courage. I am away for a moment in my
own room. In the whirl and confusion of my thoughts, I can detect that
strange fancy of some hindrance happening to stop the maniage still
hanging about my mind. Is it hanging about his mind too? I see him from
the window, moving hither and thither uneasily among the carriages at
the door. –; How can I write such folly I The marriage is a certainty.
ln less than half an hour we start for the church.

Eleven o'clock. It is all over. They are manied.

Three o'clock. They are gone ! I am blind with crying –; I can write no
more –;



&osb;The First Epoch of the Story closes here.&csb;


THE SECOND EPOCH

THE STORY CONTINUED BY MARIAN HALCOMBE

BLACKWATER PARK, HAMPSHIRE. June 11th, 1850. –; Six months to look back
on –; six long, lonely months since Laura and I last saw each other!

How many days have I still to wait? Only one! Tomorrow, the twelfth, the
travellers return to England. I can hardly realise my own happiness –; I
can hardly believe that the next four-andtwenty hours will complete the
last day of separation between Laura and me.

She and her husband have been in Italy all the winter, and afterwards in
the Tyrol. They come hack, accompanied by Count Fosco and his wife, who
propose to settle somewhere in the neighbourhood of London, and who have
engaged to stay at Blackwater Park for the summer months before deciding
on a place of residence. So long as Laura returns, no matter who returns
with her. Sir Percival may fill the house from floor to ceiling, if he
likes, on condition that his wife and I inhabit it together.

Meanwhile, here I am, established at Blackwater Park, `the ancient and
interesting seat' (as the county history obligingly informs me) `of Sir
Perciva&csb; Glyde, Bart.,' and the future abidingplace (as I may now
venture to add on my account) of plain Marian Halconibe, spinster, now
settled in a snug little sittingroom, with a cup of tea by her side, and
all her earthly possessions ranged round her in three boxes and a bag.

I left Limmeridge yesterday, having received Laura's delightful letter
from Paris the day before. I had been previously uncertain whether I was
to meet them in London or in Hampshire, but this last letter informed
nie that Sir Percival proposed to land at Southampton, and to navel
straight on to his country-house. He has spent so much money abroad that
he has none left to defray the expenses of living in London for the
remainder of the season, and he is economically resolved to pass the
summer and autumn quietly at Blackwater. Laura has had more than enough
of excitement and change of scene, and is pleased at the prospect of
country tranquillity and retirement which her husband's prudence
provides for her. As for me, I am ready to be happy anywhere in her
society. We are all, therefore, well contented in our various ways, to
begin with.

Last night I slept in London, and was delayed there so long today by
various calls and commissions, that I did not reach Blackwater this
evening till after dusk.

Judging by my vague impressions of the place thus far, it is the exact
opposite of Limmeridge.

The house is situated on a dead flat, and seems to be shut in –; almost
suffocated, to my north-country notions, by trees. I have seen nobody
but the man-servant who opened the door to me, and the housekeeper, a
very civil person, who showed me the way to my own room, and got me my
tea. I have a nice little boudoir and bedroom, at the end of a long
passage on the first floor. The servants and some of the spare rooms are
on the second floor, and all the living rooms are on the ground floor. I
have not seen one of them yet, and I know nothing about the house,
except that one wing of it is said to be five hundred years old, that it
had a moat round it once, and that it gets its name of Blackwater from a
lake in the park.

Eleven o'clock has just struck, in a ghostly and solemn manner, from a
turret over the centre of the house, which I saw when I came in. A large
dog has been woke, apparently by the sound of the bell, and is howling
and yawning drearily, somewhere round a corner. I hear echoing footsteps
in the passages below, and the iron thumping of bolts and bars at the
house door. The servants are evidently going to bed. Shall I follow
their example ?

No, I am not half sleepy enough. Sleepy, did I say? I feel as if I
should never close my eyes again. The bare anticipation of seeing that
dear face, and hearing that well-known voice to morrow, keeps me in a
perpetual fever of excitement. If I only had the privileges of a man, I
would order out Sir Percival's best horse instantly, and tear away on a
night-gallop, eastward, to meet the rising sun –; a long, hard, heavy,
ceaseless gallop of hours and hours, like the famous highwayman's ride
to York. Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience,
propriety, and petticoats for life, I must respect the housekeeper's
opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way.

Reading is out of the question –; I can't fix my attention on books. Let
me try if I can write myself into sleepiness and fatigue. My journal has
been very much neglected of late. What can I recall –; standing, as I
now do, on the threshold of a new life –; of persons and events, of
chances and changes, during the past six months –; the long, weary,
empty interval since Laura's wedding-day?

Walter Hartright is uppermost in my memory, and he passes first in the
shadowy procession of my absent friends. I received a few lines from
him, after the landing of the expedition in Honduras, written more
cheerfully and hopefully than he has written yet. A month or six weeks
later I saw an extract from an American newspaper, describing the
departure of the adventurers on their inland journey. They were last
seen entering a wild primeval forest, each man with his rifle on his
shoulder and his baggage at his back. Since that time, civilisation has
lost all trace of them. Not a line more have I received from Walter, not
a fragment of news from the expedition has appeared in any of the public
journals.

The same dense, disheartening obscurity hangs over the fate and fortunes
of Anne Catherick, and her companion, Mrs Clements. Nothing whatever has
been heard of either of them. Whether they are in the country or out of
it, whether they are living or dead, no one knows. Even Sir Percival's
solicitor has lost all hope, and has ordered the useless search after
the fugitives to be finally given up.

Our good friend Mr Gilmore has met with a sad check in his active
professional career. Early in the spring we were alarmed by hearing that
he had been found insensible at his desk, and that the seizure was
pronounced to be an apoplectic fit. He had been long complaining of
fulness and oppression in the head, and his doctor had warned him of the
consequences that would follow his persistency in continuing to work,
early and late, as if he were still a young man. The result now is that
he has been positively ordered to keep out of his office for a year to
come, at least, and to seek repose of body and relief of mind by
altogether changing his usual mode of life. The business is left,
accordingly, to be carried on by his partner, and he is himself, at this
moment, away in Germany, visiting some relations who are settled there
in mercantile pursuits. Thus another true friend and trustworthy adviser
is lost to us –; lost, I earnestly hope and trust, for a time only.

Poor Mrs Vesey travelled with me as far as London. It was impossible to
abandon her to solitude at Limmeridge after Laura and I had both left
the house, and we have arranged that she is to live with an unmarried
younger sister of hers, who keeps a school at Clapham. She is to come
here this autumn to visit her pupil –; I might almost say her adopted
child. I saw the good old lady safe to her destination, and left her in
the care of her relative, quietly happy at the prospect of seeing Laura
again im a few months' time.

As for Mr Fairlie, I believe I am guilty of no injustice if I describe
him as being unutterably relieved by having the house clear of us women.
The idea of his missing his niece is simply preposterous –; he used to
let months pass in the old times without attemptimg to see her –; and in
my case and Mrs Vesey's, I take leave to consider his telling us both
that he was half heartbroken at our departure, to be equivalent to a
confession that he was secretly rejoiced to get rid of us. His last
caprice has led him to keep two photographers incessantly employed in
pro ducing sun-pictures of all the treasures and curiosities in his
possession. One complete copy of the collection of the photo graphs is
to be presented to the Mechanics' Institution of Carlisle, mounted on
the finest cardboard, with ostentatious redletter inscriptions
underneath, `Madonna and Child by Raphael. In the possession of
Frederick Fairlie, Esquire.' `Copper coin of the period of Tiglath
Pileser. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire.' `Unique
Rembrandt etching. Known all over Europe as The Smudge, from a printer's
blot in the corner which exists in no other copy. Valued at three
hundred guineas. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esq.' Dozens of
photographs of this sort, and all inscribed in this manner, were
completed before I left Cumberland, and hundreds more remain to be done.
With this new interest to occupy him, Mr Fairlie will be a happy man for
months and months to come, and the two unfortunate photographers will
share the social martyrdom which lie has hitherto inflicted on his valet
alone.

So much for the persons and events which hold the foremost place in my
memory. What next of the one person who holds the foremost place in my
heart? Laura has been present to my thoughts all the while I have been
writing these lines. What can I recall of her during the past six
months, before I close my journal for the night?

I have only her letters to guide me, and on the most important of all
the questions which our correspondence can discuss, every one of those
letters leaves me in the dark.

Does he treat her kindly? Is she happier now than she was when I parted
with her on the wedding-dav?  All mv letters have contained these two
inquiries, put more or less directly, now in one form, and now in
another, and all, on that point only, have remained without rePly, or
have been answered as if my questions nierely related to the state of
her health. She informs me, over and over again, that she is perfectly
well –; that travelling agrees with her –; that she is getting through
the winter, for the first time in her life, without catching cold –; but
not a word can I find anywhere which tells me plainly that she is
reconciled to her marriage, and that she can now look back to the
twenty-second of December without any bitter feelings of repentance and
regret. The name of her husband is only mentioned in her letters, as she
might mention the name of a friend who was travelling with them, and who
had undertaken to make all the arrangements for the journey. `Sir
Percival' has settled that we leave on such a day –; `Sir Percival' has
decided that we travel by such a road. Sometimes she writes `Percival'
only, but very seldom –; in nine cases out of ten she gives him his
title.

I cannot find that his habits and opinions have changed and coloured
hers in any single particular. The usual moral transformation which is
insensibly wrought in a young, fresh, sensitive woman by her marriage,
seems never to have taken place in Laura. She writes of her own thoughts
and impressions, amid all the wonders she has seen, exactly as she might
have written to someone else, if I had been travelling with her instead
of her husband. I see no betrayal anywhere of sympathy of any kind
existing between them. Even when she wanders from the subject of her
travels, and occupies herself with the prospects that await her in
England, her speculations are busied with her future as my sister, and
persistently neglect to notice her future as Sir Percival's wife. In all
this there is no undertone of complaint to warn me that she is
absolutely unhappy in her married life. The impression I have derived
from our correspondence does not, thank God, lead me to any such
distressing conclusion as that. I only see a sad torpor, an unchangeable
indifference, when I turm my mind from her in the old character of a
sister, and look at her, through the medium of her letters, in the new
character of a wife. In other words, it is always Laura Fairhe who has
been writing to me for the last six months, and never Lady Glyde.

The strange silence which she maintains on the subject of her husband's
character and conduct, she preserves with almost equal resolution in the
few references which her later letters contain to the name-of her
husband's bosom friend, Count Fosco.

For some unexplained reason the Count and his wife appear to have
changed their plans abruptly, at the end of last autumn, and to have
gone to Vienna instead of going to Rome, at which latter Place Sir
Percival had expected to find them when he left England. They only
quitted Vienna in the spring, and travelled as far as the Tyrol to meet
the bride and bridegroom on their homeward journey. Laura writes readily
enough about the meeting with Madame Fosco, and assures me that she has
found her aunt so much changed for the better –; so much quieter, and so
much more sensible as a wife than she was as a single woman –; that I
shall hardly know her again when I see her here. But on the subject of
Count Fosco (who interests me infinitely more than his wife), Laura is
provokingly circumspect and silent. She only says that he puzzles her,
and that she will not tell me what her impression of hin is until I have
seen him, and formed my own opinion first.

This, to my mind, looks ill for the Count. Laura has preserved, far more
perfectly than most people do in later life, the child's subtle faculty
of knowing a friend by instinct, and if I am right in assuming that her
first impression of Count Fosco has not been favourable, I for one am in
some danger of doubting and distrusting that illustrious foreigner
before I have so much as set eyes on him. But, patience, patience –;
this uncertainty, and many uncertainties more, cannot last much longer.
Tomorrow will see all my doubts in a fair way of being cleared up,
sooner or later.

Twelve o'clock has struck, and I have just come back to close these
pages, after locking out at my open window.

It is a still, sultry, moonless night. The stars are dull and few. The
trees that shut out the view on all sides look dimly black and solid in
the distance, like a great wall of rock. I hear the croaking of frogs,
faint and far off, and the echoes of the great clock hum in the airless
calm long after the strokes have ceased. I wonder how Blackwater Park
will look in the daytime? I don't altogether like it by night.

12th. –; A day of invesigations and discoveries –; a more interesting
day, for many reasons, than I had ventured to anticipate.

I began my sight-seeing, of course, with the house.

The main body of the building is of the time of that highlyoverrated
woman, Queen Elizabeth. On the ground floor there are two hugely long
galleries, with low ceilings lying parallel with each other, and
rendered additionally dark and dismal by hideous family portraits –;
every one of which I should like to burn. The rooms on the floor above
the two galleries are kept in tolerable repair, but are very seldom
used. The civil housekeeper, who acted as my guide, offered to show me
over them, but considerately added that she feared I should find them
rather out of order. My respect for the integrity of my own petticoats
and stockings infinitely exceeds my respect for all the Elizabethan
bedrooms in the kingdom, so I positively declined exploring the upper
regions of dust and dirt at the risk of soiling my nice clean clothes.
The housekeeper said. `I am quite of your opinion, miss,' and appeared
to think me the most sensible woman she had met with for a long time
past.

So much, then, for the main building. Two wings are added at either end
of it. The half-ruined wing on the left (as you approach the house) was
once a Place of residence standing by itself, and was built in the
fourteenth century. One of Sir Percival's maternal ancestors –; I don't
remember, and don't care which –; tacked on the main building, at right
angles to it, in the aforesaid Queen Elizabeth's time. The housekeeper
told me that the architecture of `the old wing.' both outside and
inside. was considered remarkably fine by good judges. On further
investigation I discovered that good judges could only exercise their
abilities on Sir Percival's piece of antiquity by previously dismissing
from their minds all fear of damp, darkness, and rats. Under these
circumstances, I unhesitatingly acknowledged myself to be no judge at
all, and suggested that we should treat `the old wing' precisely as we
had previously treated the Elizabethan bedrooms. Once more the
housekeeper said, `I am quite of your opinion, miss,' and once more she
looked at me with undisguised admiration of my extraordinary
common-sense.

We went next to the wing on the right, which was built, by way of
completing the wonderful architectural jumble at Blackwater Park, in the
time of George the Second.

This is the habitable part of the house, which has been repaired and
redecorated inside on Laura's account. My two rooms, and all the good
bedrooms besides, are on the first floor, and the basenient contains a
drawing-room, a dining-room, a inorningroom, a library, and a pretty
little boudoir for Laura, all very nicely ornamented im the bright
modern way, and all very elegantly furnished with the delightful modern
luxuries. None of the rooms are anything like so large and airy as our
rooms at Limmeridge, but they all look pleasant to live in. I was
terribly afraid, from what I had heard of Blackwater Park, of fatiguing
aiitique chairs, and disinal stained glass, and musty, frouzy hangings,
and all the barbarous lumber which people born without a sense of
comfort accumulate about them, in defiance of the consideration due to
the convenience of their friends. It is an inexpressible relief to find
that the nineteenth century has invaded this strange future home of
mine, and has swept the dirty `good old times' out of the way of our
daily life.

I dawdled away the morning –; part of the time in the rooms downstairs,
and part out of doors in the great square which is formed by the three
sides of the house, and by the lofty iron railings and gates which
protect it in front. A large circular fishpond with stone sides, and an
allegorical leaden monster in the middle, occupies the centre of the
square. The pond itself is full of gold and silver fish, and is
encircled by a broad belt of the softest turf I ever walked on. I
loitered here on the shady side pleasantly enough till luncheon-time,
and after that took my broad straw hat and wandered out alone in the
warm lovely sunlight to explore the grounds.

Daylight confirmed the impression which I had felt the night before, of
there being too many trees at Blackwater. The house is stifled by them.
They are, for the most part, young, and planted far too thickly. I
suspect there must have been a ruinous cutting down of timber all over
the estate before Sir Percival's time, and an angry anxiety on the part
of the next possessor to fill up all the gaps as thickly and rapidly as
possible. After looking about me in front of the house, I observed a
flowergarden on my left hand, and walked towards it to see what I could
discover in that direction.

On a nearer view the garden proved to be small and poor and ill kept. I
left it behind me, opened a little gate in a ring fence, and found
myself in a plantation of fir-trees.

A pretty winding path, artificially made, led me on among the trees, and
my north-country experience soon informed me that I was approaching
sandy, heathy ground- After a walk of more than half a mile, I should
think, among the firs, the path took a sharp turn –; the trees abruptly
ceased to appear on either side of me, and I found myself standing
suddenly on the margin of a vast open space, and looking down at the
Blackwater lake from which the house takes its name.

The ground, shelving away below me, was all sand, with a few little
heathy hillocks to break the monotony of it in certain places. The lake
itself had evidently once flowed to the spot on which I stood, and had
been gradually wasted and dried up to less than a third of its former
size. I saw its still, stagnant waters, a quarter of a mile away from me
in the hollow, separated into pools and ponds by twining reeds and
rushes, and little knolls of earth. On the farther bank from me the
trees rose thickly again, and shut out the view, and cast their black
shadows on the sluggish, shallow water. As I walked down to the lake, I
saw that the ground on its farther side was damp and marshy, overgrown
with rank grass and dismal willows. The water, which was clear enough on
the open sandy side, where the sun shone, looked black and poisonous
opposite to me, where it lay deeper under the shade of the spongy banks,
and the rank overhanging thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were
croaking, and the rats were slipping in and out of the shadowy water,
like live shadows themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the
lake. I saw here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten
wreck of an old overturned boat. with a sickly spot of sunlight
glimmering through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake
basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously
still. Far and near the view suggested the same dreary impressions of
solitude and decay, and the glorious brightness of the summer sky
overhead seemed only to deepen and harden the gloom and barrenness of
the wilderness on which it shone. I turned and retraced my steps to the
high heathy ground, directing them a little aside from my former path
towards a shabby old wooden shed, which stood on the outer skirt of the
fir plantation, and which had hitherto been too unimportant to share my
nofice with the wide, wild prospect of the lake.

On approaching the shed I found that it had once been a boathouse, and
that an attempt had apparently been made to convert it afterwards into a
sort of rude arbour, by placing inside it a firwood seat, a few stools,
and a table. I entered the place, and sat down for a little while to
rest and get my breath again.

I had not been in the boat-house more than a minute when it struck me
that the sound of my own quick breathing was very strangely echoed by
something beneath me. I listened intently for a moment, and heard a low,
thick, sobbing breath that seemed to come from the ground under the seat
which I was occupying. My nerves are not easily shaken by trifles, but
on this occasion I started to my feet in a fright –; called out –;
received no answer –; summoned my recreant courage, and looked under the
seat.

There, crouched up in the farthest corner, lay the forlorn cause of my
terror, in the shape of a poor little dog –; a black and white spaniel.
The creature moaned feebly when I looked at it and called to it, but
never stirred. I moved away the seat and looked closer. The poor little
dog's eyes were glazing fast, and there were spots of blood on its
glossy white side. The misery of a weak, helpless, dumb creature is
surely one of the saddest of all the mournful sights which this world
can show. I lifted the poor dog in my arms as gently as I could, and
contrived a sort of make-shift hammock for him to lie in, by gathering
up the front of my dress all round him. In this way I took the creature,
as Painlessly as possible, and as fast as possible, back to the house.

Finding no one in the hall I went up at once to my own sitting-room,
made a bed for the dog with one of my old shawls, and rang the bell. The
largest and fattest of all possible housemaids answered it, in a state
of cheerful stupidity which would have provoked the patience of a saint.
The girl's fat, shapeless face actually stretched into a broad grin at
the sight of the wounded creature on the floor.

`What do you see there to laugh at?' I asked, as angrily as if she had
been a servant of my own. `Do you know whose dog it is?'

`No, miss, that I certainly don't.' She stooped, and looked down at the
spaniel's injured side –; brightened suddenly with the irradiation of a
new idea –; and pointing to the wound with a chuckle of satisfaction,
said, `That's Baxter's doings, that is.'

I was so exasperated that I could have boxed her ears. `Baxter?' I said.
`Who is the brute you call Baxter?'

The girl grinned again niore cheerfully than ever. `Bless you, miss !
Baxter's the keeper, and when he finds strange dogs hunting about, he
takes and shoots 'em. It's keeper's dooty, miss. I think that dog will
die. Here's where he's been shot, ain't it? That's Baxter's doings, that
is. Baxter's doings, miss, and Baxter's dooty.'

I was almost wicked enough to wish that Baxter had shot the housemaid
instead of the dog. Seeing that it was quite useless to expect this
densely impenetrable personage to give me any help in relieving the
suffering creature at our feet, I told her to request the housekeeper's
attendance with my compliments. She went out exactly as she had come in,
grinning from ear to ear. As the door closed on her she said to herself
softly, `It's Baxter's doings and Baxter's dooty –; that's what it is.'

The housekeeper, a person of some education and intelligence,
thoughtfully brought upstairs with her some milk and some warm water.
The instant she saw the dog on the floor she started and changed colour.

`Why, Lord bless me,' cried the housekeeper, `that must be Mis
Catherick's dog !'

`Whose ?' I asked, in the utmost astonishment.

`Mis Catherick's. You seem to know Mrs Catherick, Miss Halcombe?'

`Not personally, but I have heard of her. Does she live here? Has she
had any news of her daughter?'

`No, Miss Halcombe, she came here to ask for news.'

`When?'

`Only yesterday. She said someone had reported that a stranger answering
to the description of her daughter had been seen in our neighbourhood.
No such report has reached us here, and no such report was known in the
village, when I sent to make inquiries there on Mrs Catherick's account.
She certainly brought this poor little dog with her when she came, and I
saw it trot out after her when she went away. I suppose the creature
strayed into the plantations, and got shot. Where did you find it, Miss
Halcombe?'

`In the old shed that looks out on the lake.'

`Ah, yes, that is the plantation side, and the poor thing dragged
itself, I suppose, to the nearest shelter, as dogs will, to die. If you
can moisten its lips with the milk, Miss Halcombe, I will wash the
clotted hair from the wound. I am very much afraid it is too late to do
any good. However, we can but try.'

Mrs Catherick! The name still rang in my ears, as if the housekeeper had
only that moment surprised me by uttering it. While we were attending to
the dog, the words of Walter Hartright's caution to ine returned to my
memory: `If ever Anne Catherick crosses your path, make better use of
the opportunity, Miss Halcombe, than I made of it.' The finding of the
wounded spaniel had led me already to the discovery of Mrs Catherick's
visit to Blackwater Park, and that event might lead, in its turn, to
something more. I determined to make the most of

the chance which was now offered to me, and to gain as much

information as I could.

`Did you say that Mrs Catherick lived anywhere in this neighbourhood ?'
I asked.

`Oh dear, no,' said the housekeeper. `She lives at Welmingham, quite at
the other end of the county –; five-and-twenty miles off, at least.'

`I suppose you have known Mrs Catherick for some years?'

`On the contrary, Miss Halcombe, I never saw her before she came here
yesterday. I had heard of her, of course, because I had heard of Sir
Percival's kindness in putting her daughter under medical care. Mrs
Catherick is rather a strange person in her manners, but extremely
respectable-looking. She seemed sorely put out when she found that there
was no foundation –; none, at least, that any of us could discover –;
for the report of her daughter having been seen in this neighbourhood.'

`I am rather interested about Mrs Catherick,' I went on, continuing the
conversation as long as possible. `I wish I had arrived here soon enough
to see her yesterday. Did she stay for any length of time?'

` Yes,' said the housekeeper, `she stayed for some time; and I think she
would have remained longer, if I had not been called away to speak to a
strange gentleman –; a gentlemanwho came to ask when Sir Percival was
expected back. Mrs Catherick got up and left at once, when she heard the
maid tell me what the visitor's errand was. She said to me, at parting,
that there was no need to tell Sir Percival of her coming here. I
thought that rather an odd remark to make, especially to a person in my
responsible situation.'

I thought it an odd remark too. Sir Percival had certainly led me to
believe, at Limmeridge, that the most perfect confidence existed between
himself and Mrs Catherick. If that was the case, why should she be
anxious to have her visit at Blackwater Park kept a secret from him?

`Probably,' I said, seeing that the housekeeper expected me to give my
opinion on Mrs Catherick's parting words, `probably she thought the
announcement of her visit might vex Sir Percival to no purpose, by
reminding him that her lost daughter was not found yet. Did she talk
much on that subject?'

`Very little,' rephed the housekeeper.' She talked principally of Sir
Percival, and asked a great many questions about where he had been
travelling, and what sort of lady his new wife was. She seemed to be
more soured and put out than distressed, by failing to find any traces
of her daughter in these parts. ``I give her up,'' were the last words
she said that I can remember; ``I give her up, ma'am, for lost.'' And
from that she passed at once to her questions about Lady Glyde, wanting
to know if she was a handsome, amiable lady, comely and healthy and
young –; Ah, dear! I thought how it would end. Look, Miss Halcombe, the
poor thing is out of its misery atlast!'

The dog was dead. It had given a faint, sobbing cry, it had suffered an
instant's convulsion of the limbs, just as those last words, ` comely
and healthy and young,' dropped from the housekeeper's lips. the change
had happened with startling suddenness –; in one moment the creature lay
lifeless under our hands.

Eight o'clock. I have just returned from dining downstairs, in solitary
state. The sunset is burning redly on the wilderness of trees that I see
from my window, and I am poring over my journal again, to calin my
impatience for the return of the travellers. They ought to have arrived,
by my calculations, before this. How still and lonely the house is in
the drowsy evening quiet! Oh me!  how many minutes inore before I hear
the carriage wheels and run downstairs to find myself in Laura's arms?

The poor little dog! I wish my first day at Blackwater Park had not been
associated with death, though it is ordy the death of a stray animal.

Welmingham –; I see, on looking back through these private pages of
mine, that Welmingham is the name of the place where Mrs Catherick
lives. Her note is still in my possession, the note in answer to that
letter about her unhappy daughter which Sir Percival obliged me to
write. One of these days, when I can find a safe opportunity, I will
take the note with me by way of introduction, and try what I can make of
Mrs Catherick at a personal interview. I don't understand her wishing to
conceal her visit to this place from Sir Percival's knowledge, and I
don't feel half so sure, as the housekeeper seems to do, that her
daughter Anne is not in the neighbourhood after all. What would Walter
Hartright have said in this emergency? Poor, dear Hartright! I am
beginining to feel the want of his honest advice and his willing help
already.

Surely I heard something. Was it a bustle of footsteps below stairs? Yes
! I hear the horses' feet –; I hear the rolling wheels –;




June 15th. –; The confusion of their arrival has had time to subside.
Two days have elapsed since the return of the travellers, and that
interval has sufficed to put the new machinery of our lives at
Blackwater Park in fair working order. I may now return to my journal,
with some little chance of being able to continue the entries in it as
collectedly as usual.

I think I must begin by putting down an odd remark which has suggested
itself to me since Laura caine back.

When two members of a family or two intimate friends are separated, and
one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or
friend who has been travelling always seems to place the relative or
friend who has been staying at home at a Painful disadvantage when the
two first meet. the sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits
eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits
passively preserved in the other, seems at first to part the sympathies
of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a
sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both,
between them on either side. After the first happiness of my meeting
with Laura was over, after we had sat down together hand in hand to
recover breath enough and cahnness enough to talk, I felt this
strangeness instantly, and I could see that she felt it too. It has
partially worn away, now that we have fallen back into most of our old
habits, and it will probably disappear before long. But it has certainly
had an influence over the first impressions that I have formed of her,
now that we are living together again –; for which reason only I have
thought fit to mention it here.

She has found me unaltered, but I have found her changed.

Changed in person, and in one respect changed in character. I cannot
absolutely say that she is less beautiful than she used to be –; I can
only say that she is less beautiful to me.

Others, who do not look at her with my eyes and my recollections, would
probably think her improved. There is more colour there used to be, and
her figure seems more firmly set and more sure and easy in all its
movements than it was in her maiden days. But I miss something when I
look at her –; something that once belonged to the happy, innocent life
of Laura Fairlie, and that I cannot find in Lady Glyde. There was in the
old timies a freshness, a softness, an ever-varying and yet
ever-remaining tenderness of beauty in her face, the charm of which it
is not possible to express in words, or, as poor Hartright used often to
say, in painting either. This is Gone. I thought I saw the faint
reflection of it for a moment when she turned pale under the agitation
of our sudden meeting on the evening of her return, but it has never
reappeared since. None of her letters had prepared me for a personal
change in her. On the contrary. they had led me to expect that her
marriage had left lier, in appearance at least, quite unaltered. Perhaps
I read her letters wrongly in the past, and am now reading her face
wrongly in the present? No matter! Whether her beauty has gained or
whether it has lost in the last six months, the separation either way
has made her own dear self more precious to me than ever, and that is
one good result of her marriage, at any rate !

The second change, the change that I have observed in her character, has
not surprised me, because I was prepared for it in this case by the tone
of her letters. Now that she is at home again, I find her just as
unwilling to enter into any details on the subject of her married life
as I had previously found her all through the time of our separation,
when we could only communicate with each other by writing. At the first
approach I made to the forbidden topic she put her hand on my lips with
a look and gesture which touchingly, almost painfully, recalled to my
memory the days of her girlhood and the happy bygone time when there
were no secrets between us.

`Whenever you and I are together, Marian,' she said, `we shall both be
happier and easier with one another, if we accept my married life for
what it is, and say and think as little about it as possible. I would
tell you everything, darling, about myself,' she went on, nervously
buckling and unbuckling the ribbon round my waist, `if my confidences
could only end there. But they could not –; they would lead me into
confidences about my husband too; and now I am married, I think I had
better avoid them, for his sake, and for your sake, and for mine. I
don't say that they would distress you, or distress me –; I wouldn't
have you think that for the world. But –; I want to be so happy, now I
have got you back again, and I want you to be so happy too –;' She broke
off abruptly, and looked round the room, my own sittingroom, in which we
were talking. `Ah!' she cried, clapping her hands with a bright smile of
recognition, `another old friend found already ! Your bookcase, Marian
–; your dear-little-shabbyold-satin-wood bookcase –; how glad I am you
brought it with you from Limmeridge! And the horrid heavy man's
umbrella, that you always would walk out with when it rained ! And first
and foremost of all, your own dear, dark. clever, gipsy-face, looking at
me just as usual! It is so like home again to be here. How can we make
it more like home still? I will put my father's portrait in your room
instead of mine –; and I will keep all my little treasures from
Limmeridge here –; and we will pass hours and hours every day with these
four friendly walls round us. Oh, Marian!' she said, suddenly seating
herself on a footstool at my knees, and looking up earnestly in my face,
`promise you will never marry, and leave me. It is selfish to say so,
but you are so much better off as a single woman –; unless –; unless you
arc very fond of your husband –; but you won't be very fond of anybody
but me, will you?' She stopped again, crossed my hands on my lap, and
laid her face on them. `Have you been writing many letters, and
receiving many letters lately?' she asked, in low, suddenly-altered
tones.  I understood what the question meant, but I thought it my duty
not to encourage her by meeting her half way. `Have you heard from
hini?' she went on, coaxing me to forgive the more direct appeal on
which she now ventured, by kissing my hands, upon which her face still
rested. `Is he well and happy, and getting on in his profession? Has he
recovered himself –; and forgotten me?'

She should not have asked those questions. She should have remembered
her own resolution, on the morning when Sir Percival held her to her
marriage engagement, and when she resigned the book of Hartright's
drawings into my hands for ever. But, ah me ! where is the faultless
human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes
failing and falling back? Where is the woman who has ever really torn
from her heart the image that has been once fixed in it by a true love?
Books tell us that such unearthly creatures have existed –; but what
does our own experience say in answer to books?

I made no attempt to reunonstrate with her: perhaps, because I sincerely
appreciated the fearless candour which let me see, what other women in
her position might have had reasons for concealing even from their
dearest friends –; perhaps, because I felt, in my own heart and
conscience, that in her place I should have asked the same questions and
had the same thoughts. All l could honestly do was to reply that I had
not written to him or heard from him lately, and then to turn the
conversation to less dangerous topics.

There has been much to sadden me in our interview –; my first
confidential interview with her since her return. The change which her
marriage has produced in our relations towards each other, by placing a
forbidden subject between us, for the first time in our lives; the
melancholy conviction of the dearth of all warmth of feeling, of all
close sympathy, between her husband and herself, which her own unwilling
words now force on my mind; the distressing discovery that the influence
of that illfated attachment still remains (rio matter how innocently,
how harmlessly) rooted as deeply as ever in her heart –; all these are
disclosures to sadden any woman who loves her as dearly, and feels for
her as acutely, as I do There is only one consolation to set against
them –; a consolation that ought to comfort me, and that does comfort
nie. All the graces and gentleness of her character –; all the frank
affection of her nature –; all the sweet, simple, womanly charms which
used to make her the darling and delight of every one who approached
her, have come back to me with herself. Of my other impressions I am
sometimes a little inchned to doubt. Of this last, best, happiest of all
impressions, I grow more and more certain every hour in the day.

Let me turn, now, from her to her travelling companions. Her husband
must engage my attention first. What have I observed in Sir Percival,
since his return, to improve my opinion of him?

I can hardly say. Small vexatious and aiinoyances seem to have beset him
since he came back, and no man, under those circumstances, is ever
presented at his best. He looks, as I think, thinner than he was when he
left England. His wearisome cough and his comfortless restlessness have
certainly increased. His manner –; at least his manner towards me –; is
much more abrupt than it used to be. He greeted nie, on the evening of
his return, with little or nothing of the ceremony and civility of
former times –; no polite speeches of welcome –; no appearance of
extraordinary gratification at seeing me –; nothing but a short shake of
the hand, and a sharp `How-d'ye-do, Miss Halcombe –; glad to see you
again.' He seemed to accept me as one of the necessary fixtures of
Blackwater Park, to be satisfed at finding me established in my proper
place, and then to pass me over altogether.

Most men show something of their disposition in their own houses, which
they have concealed elsewhere, and Sir Percival has already displayed a
mania for order and regularity, which is quite a new revelation of him,
so far as my previous knowledge of his character is concerned. If I take
a book from the library and leave it on the table, he follows me and
puts it back again. If I rise from a chair, and let it remain where I
have been sitting, he carefully restores it to its proper place against
the wall. He picks up stray flower-blossoms from the carpet, and mutters
to himself as discontentedly as if they were hot cinders burning holes
in it, and he storms at the servants if there is a crease in the
tablecloth, or a knife missing from its place at the dinnertable, as
fiercely as if they had personally insulted him.

I have already referred to the small annoyances which appear to have
troubled him since his return. Much of the alteration for the worse
which I have noticed in him may be due to these. I try to persuade
myself that it is so, because I am anxious not to be disheartened
already about the future. It is certainly trying to any man's temper to
be met by a vexation the moment he sets foot in his own house again,
after a long absence, and this annoying circumstance did really happen
to Sir Percival in my presence.

On the evening of their arrival the housekeeper followed me into the
hall to receive her master and mistress and their guests. The instant he
saw her, Sir Percival asked if anyone had called lately. The housekeeper
mentioned to him, in reply, what she had previously mentioned to me, the
visit of the strange gentleman to make inquiries about the time of her
master's return. He asked immediately for the gentleman's name. No name
had been left. The gentleman's business? No business had been mentioned.
What was the gentleman like? The housekeeper tried to describe him, but
failed to distinguish the nameless visitor by any personal peculiarity
which her master could recognise. Sir Percival frowned, stamped angrily
on the floor, and walked on into the house, taking no notice of anybody.
Why he should have been so discomposed by a trifle I cannot say –; but
he was seriously discomposed, beyond all doubt.

Upon the whole, it will be best, perhaps, if I abstain from forming a
decisive opinion of his manners, language, and conduct in his own house,
until time has enabled him to shake off the anxieties. whatever they may
be, which now evidently troubled his mind in secret. I will turn over to
a new page, and my pen shall let Laura's husband alone for the present.

The two guests –; the Count and Countess Fosco –; come next in my
catalogue. I will dispose of the Countess first, so as to have done with
the woman as soon as possible.

Laura was certainly not chargeable with any exaggeration, in writing me
word that I should hardly recognise her aunt again when we met. Never
before have I beheld such a change produced in a woman by her marriage
as has been produced in Madame Fosco.

As Eleanor Fairlie (aged seven-and-thirty).  she was always talking
pretentious nonsense, and always worrying the unfortunate men with every
small exaction which a vain and foolish woman can impose on
long-suffering male humanity.  As Madame Fosco (aged three-and-forty),
she sits for hours together without saying a word, frozen up in the
strangest manner in herself. The hideously ridiculous love-locks which
used to hang on either side of hei face are now replaced by stiff little
rows of very short curls, of the sort one sees in old-fashioned wigs. A
plain, matronly cap covers her head, and makes her look, for the first
time in her life since I remember her, like a decent woman. Nobody
(putting her husband out of the question, of course) now sees in her,
what everybody once saw –; I mean the structure of the female skeleton,
in the upper regions of the collar-bones and the shoulder-blades. Clad
in quiet black or grey gowns, made high round the throat –; dresses that
she would have laughed at, or screamed at, as the whiin of the moment
inclined her, in her maiden days –; she sits speechless in corners; her
dry white hands (so dry that the pores of her skin look chalky)
incessantly engaged, either in monotonous embroidery work or in rolling
up endless cigarettes for the Count's own particular smoking. On the few
occasions when her cold blue eyes are off her work, they are generally
turned on her husband, with the look of mute submissive inquiry which we
are all familiar with in the eyes of a faithful dog. The only approach
to an inward thaw which I have yet detected under her outer covering of
icy constraint, has betrayed itself, once or twice, in the form of a
suppressed tigerish jealousy of any woman in the house (the maids
included) to whom the Count speaks, or on whom he looks with anything
approaching to special interest or attention. Except in this one
particular, she is always, morning, noon, and night, indoors and out,
fair weather or foul, as cold as a statue, and as impenetrable as the
stone out of which it is cut. For the common purposes of society the
extraordinary change thus produced in her is, beyond all doubt, a change
for the better, seeing that it has transformed her into a civil, silent,
unobtrusive woman, who is never in the way. How far she is really
reformed or deteriorated in her secret self, is another question. I have
once or twice seen sudden changes of expression on her pinched lips, and
heard sudden inflexions of tone in her calm voice, which have led me to
suspect that her present state of suppression may have sealed up
something dangerous in her nature, which used to evaporate harmlessly in
the freedom of her former life. It is quite possible that I may be
altogether wrong in this idea. My own impression, however, is, that I am
right. Time will show.

And the magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation –; the
foreign husband who has tamed this once wayward English woinan till her
own relations hardly know her again –; the Count himself ? What of the
Count?

This in two words: He looks like a man who could tame anything. If he
had married a tigress, instead of a woman, he would have tamed the
tigress. If he had married me, I should have made his cigarettes, as his
wife does –; I should have held my tongue when he looked at me, as she
holds bers.

I am almost afraid to confess it. even to these secret pages. The man
has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like him In two
short days he has made his way straight into my favourable estimation,
and how he has worked the miracle is more than I can tell.

It absolutely startles me, now he is in my mind, to find how plainly I
see him! –; how much more plainly than I see Sir Percival, or Mr
Fairlie, or Walter Hartright, or any other absent person of whom I
think, with the one exception of Laura herself! I can hear his voice, as
if lie was speaking at this moment. I know what his conversation was
yesterday, as well as if I was hearing it now. How am I to describe him?
There are peculiarities in his personal appearance, his habits. and his
amusements, which I should blame in the boldest terms, or ridicule in
the most merciless manner, if I had seen them in another man. What is it
that makes me unable to blame them, or to ridicule them in him?

For example, he is immensely fat. Before this time I have always
especially disliked corpulent humanity. I have always maintained that
the popular notion of connecting excessive grossness of size and
excessive good-humour as inseparable allies was equivalent to declaring,
either that no people but amiable people ever get fat, or that the
accidental addition of so many pounds of flesh has a directly favourable
influence over the disposition of the person on whose body they
accumulate. I have invariably combated both these absurd assertions by
quoting examples of fat people who were as mean, vicious, and cruel as
the leanest and the worst of their neighbours. I have asked whether
Henry the Eighth was an amiably character? Whether Pope Alexander the
Sixth was a good man? Whether Mr Muiderer and Mrs Murderess Manning were
not both unusually stout people?  Whether hired nurses, proverbially as
cruel a set of women as are to he found in all England, were not, for
the most part, also as fat a set of women as are to be found in all
England? –; and so on, through dozens of other examples, modern and
ancient, native and foreign, high and low. Holding these strong opinions
on the subject with might and main as I do at this moment, here,
nevertheless, is Count Fosco, as fat as Henry the Eighth himself,
established in my favour, at one day's notice, without let or hindrance
from his own odious corpulence. Marvellous indeed !

Is it his face that has recominended him?

It may be his face. He is a most remarkable likeness, on a large scale,
of the great Napoleon. His features have Napoleon's magnificent
regularity –; his expression recalls the grandly calm, immovable power
of the Great Soldier's face. This striking resemblance certainly
impressed me, to begin with; but there is something in him besides the
resemblance, which has impressed me more. I think the influence I am now
trying to find is in his eyes. They are the most unfathomable grey eyes
I ever saw, and they have at times a cold, clear, beautiful,
irresistible glitter in them which forces me to look at him, and yet
causes me sensations, when I do look, which I would rather not feel.
Other parts of his face and head have their strange peculiarities. His
complexion, for instance, has a singular sallow-fairness, so much at
variance with the dark-brown colour of his hair, that I suspect the hair
of being a wig, and his face, closely shavcn all over, is smoother and
freer from all marks and wrinkles than mine, though (according to Sir
Percival's account of him) he is close on sixty years of age. But these
are not the prominent personal characteristics which distinguish him, to
my mind, from all the other men I have evei seen. The marked peculiarity
which singles him out from the rank and file of humanity lies entirely,
so far as I can tell at present, in the extraordinary expression and
extiaordinary power of his eyes.

His manner and his command of our language may also have assisted him,
in some degree, to establish himself in my good opinion. He has that
quiet deference, that look of pleased, attentive interest in listening
to a woman, and that secret gentleness in his voice in speaking to a
woman, which, say what we may, we can none of us resist. Here, too, his
unusual command of the English language necessarily helps him. I had
often heard of the extraordinary aptitude which many Italians show in
mastering our strong, hard, Northern speech; but, until I saw Count
Fosco, I had never supposed it possible that any foreigner could have
spoken English as he sneaks it. There are times when it is almost
impossible to detect, by his accent, that he is not a countryman of our
own, and as for fluency, there are very few born Englishmen who can talk
with as few stoppages and repetitions as the Count. He may construct his
sentences more or less in the foreign way, but I have never yet heard
him use a wrong expression, or hesitate for a moment in his choice of a
word.

All the smallest characteristics of this strange man have something
strikingly original and perplexingly contradictory in them. Fat as he is
and old as he is, his movements are astonishingly light and easy. He is
as noiseless in a room as any of us women, and more than that, with all
his look of unmistakable mental firmness and power, he is as nervously
sensitive as the weakest of us. He starts at chance noises as
inveterately as Laura herself. He winced and shuddered yesterday, when
Sir Percival beat one of the spaniels, so that I felt ashamed of my own
want of tenderness and sensibility by comparison with the Count.

The relation of this last incident reminds me of one of his most curious
peculiarities, which I have not yet mentioned –; his extraordinary
fondness for pet animals.

Some of these he has left on the Continent, but he has brought with him
to this house a cockatoo, two canary-birds, and a whole family of white
niice. He attends to all the necessities of these strange favourites
himself, and he has taught the creatures to be surprisingly fond of him
and familiar with him. The cockatoo, a most vitious and treacherous bird
towards everyone else, absolutely seems to love him. When he lets it out
of its cage, it hops on to his knee, and claws its way up his great big
body, and rubs its top-knot against his sallow double chin in the most
caressing manner imaginable. He has only to set the doors of the
canaries' cages open, and to call them, and the pretty little cleverly
trained creatures perch fearlessly on his hand, mount his fat
outstretched fingers one by one, when he tells them to `go upstairs,'
and sing together as if they would burst their throats with delight when
they get to the top finger. His white mice live in a little pagoda of
gaily-painted wirework, designed and made by himself. They are almost as
tame as the canaries, and they are perpetually let out like the
canaries. They crawl all over him, popping in and out of his waistcoat,
and sitting in couples, white as snow, on his capacious shoulders. He
seems to be even fonder of his mice than of his other pets, smiles at
them, and kisses them, and calls them by all sorts of endearing names.
If it be possible to suppose an Englishman with any taste for such
childish interests and amusements as these, that Englishman would
certainly feel rather ashamed of them, and would be anxious to apologise
for them, in the company of grown-up people. But the Count, apparently,
sees nothing ridiculous in the amazing contrast between his colossal
self and his frail little Pets. He would blandly kiss his white mice and
twitter to his canary-birds amid an assembly of English fox-hunters, and
would only pity them as barbarians when they were all laughing their
loudest at him.

It seems hardly credible while I am writing it down, but it is certainly
true, that this same man, who has all the fondness of an old maid for
his cockatoo, and all the small dexterities of an organ-boy in managing
his white mice, can talk, when anything happens to rouse him, with a
daring independence of thought, a knowledge of books in every language,
and an experience of society in half the capitals of Europe, which would
make him the prominent personage of any assembly in the tivilised world.
This trainer of canary-birds, this architect of a pagoda for white mice,
is (as Sir Percival himself has told me) one of the first experimental
chemists living, and has discovered, among other wonderful inventions, a
means of petrifying the body after death, so as to preserve it, as hard
as marble, to the end of time. This fat, indolent, elderly man, whose
nerves are so finely strung that he starts at chance noises, and winces
when he sees a house-spaniel get a whipping, went into the stable-yard
on the morning after his arrival, and put his hand on the head of a
chained bloodhound –; a beast so savage that the very groom who feeds
him keeps out of his reach. His wife and I were present, and I shall not
forget the scene that followed, short as it was.

`Mind that dog, sir,' said the groom; `he flies at everybody !' `He does
that, my friend,' replied the Count quietly, `because everybody is
afraid of him. Let us see if he flies at me.' And he laid his plump,
yellow-white fingers, on which the canary-birds had been perching ten
minutes before, upon the formidable brute's head, and looked him
straight in the eyes. `You big dogs are all cowards,' he said,
addressing the animal contemptuously, with his face and the dog's within
an inch of each other. `You would kill a poor cat, you infernal coward.
You would fly at a starving beggar, you infernal coward. Anything that
you can surprise unawares –; anything that is afraid of your big body,
and your wicked white teeth, and your slobbering, bloodthirsty mouth, is
the thing you like to fly at. You could throttle me at this moment, you
mean, miserable bully, and you daren't so much as look me in the face,
because I'm not afraid of you. Will you think better of it, and try your
teeth in my fat neck? Bah ! not you !' He turned away, laughing at the
astonishment of the men in the yard, and the dog crept back meekly to
his kennel. `Ah! my nice waistcoat!' he said pathetically. `I am sorry l
came here. Some of that brute's slobber has got on my pretty clean
waistcoat.' Those words express another of his incomprehensible
oddities. He is as fond of fine clothes as the veriest fool in
existence, and has appeared in four magnificent waistcoats already –;
all of light garish colours, and all immensely large even for him –; in
the two days of his residence at Blackwater Park.

His tact and cleverness in small things are quite as noticeable as the
singular inconsistencies in his character, and the childish triviality
of his ordinary tastes and pursuits.

I can see already that he means to live on excellent terms with all of
us during the period of his sojourn in this place. He has evidently
discovered that Laura secretly dislikes him (she confessed as much to me
when I pressed her on the subject) –; but lie has also found out that
she is extravagantly fond of flowers. Whenever she wants a nosegay he
has got one to give her, gathered and arranged by himself, and greatly
to my amusement, he is always cunningly provided with a duplicate,
composed of exactly the same flowers, grouped in exactly the same way,
to appease his icily jealous wife before she can so much as think
herself aggrieved. His management of the Countess (in public) is a sight
to see. He bows to her, he habitually addresses her as `my angel,' he
carries his canaries to pay her little visits on his fingers and to sing
to her, he kisses her hand when she gives him his cigarettes; he
presents her with sugar-plums in return, which he puts into her mouth
playfully, from a box in his pocket. The rod of iron with which he rules
her never appears in compaiiy –; it is a private rod, and is always kept
upstairs.

His method of recommending himself to me is entirely differIf it be
possible to suppose an Englishman with any taste for such childish
interests and amusements as these, that Englishman would certainly feel
rather ashamed of them, and would be anxious to apologise for them, in
the company of grown-up people. But the Count, apparently, sees nothing
ridiculous in the amazing contrast between his colossal self and his
frail little pets. He would blandly kiss his white mice and twitter to
his canary-birds amid an assembly of English fox-hunters, and would only
pity them as barbarians when they were all laughing their loudest at
him.

It seems hardly credible while I am writing it down, but it is certainly
true, that this same man, who has all the fondness of an old maid for
his cockatoo, and all the small dexterities of an organ-boy in managing
his white mice, can talk, when anything happens to rouse him, with a
daring independence of thought, a knowledge of books in every language,
and an experience of society in half the capitals of Europe, which would
make him the prominent personage of any assembly in the civilised world.
This trainer of canary-birds, this architect of a pagoda for white mice,
is (as Sir Percival himself has told me) one of the first experiinental
chemists living, and has discovered, among other wonderful inventions, a
means of petrifying the body after death, so as to preserve it, as hard
as marble, to the end of time. This fat, indolent, elderly man, whose
nerves are so finely strung that he starts at chance noises, and winces
when he sees a house-spaniel get a whipping, went into the stable-yard
on the morning after his arrival, and put his hand on the head of a
chained bloodhound –; a beast so savage that the very groom who feeds
him keeps out of his reach. His wife and I were present, and I shall not
forget the scene that followed, short as it was.

`Mind that dog, sir,' said the groom; `he flies at everybody !' `He does
that, my friend,' replied the Count quietly, `because everybody is
afraid of him. Let us see if he flies at me.' And he laid his plump,
yellow-white fingers, on which the canary-birds had been perching ten
minutes before, upon the formidable brute's head, and looked him
straight in the eyes. `You big dogs are all cowards,' he said,
addressing the animal contemptuously, with his face and the dog's within
an inch of each other. `You ent. He flatters my vanity by talking to me
as seriously and sensibly as if I was a man. Yes! I can find him out
when I am away from him –; I know he flatters my vanity, when I think of
him up here in my own room –; and yet, when I go downstairs, and get
into his company again, he will blind me again, and I shall be flattered
again, just as if I had never found him out at all ! He can manage me as
he manages his wife and Laura, as he managed the bloodhound in the
stable-yard, as he manages Sir Percival himself, every hour in the day.
`My good Percival ! how I like your rough English humour !' –; `My good
Percival ! how I enjoy your solid English sense !' He puts the rudest
remarks Sir Percival can make on his effeminate tastes and amusements
quietly away from him in that inanner –; always calling the baronet by
his Christian name, smiling at him with the calmest superiority, patting
him on the shoulder, and bearing with him benignantly, as a
good-humoured father bears with a wayward son.

The interest which I really cannot help feeling in this strangely
original man has led me to question Sir Percival about his past life.

Sir Percival either knows little, or will tell me little, about it. He
and the Count first met many years ago, at Rome, under the dangerous
circumstances to which I have alluded elsewhere. Since that time they
have been perpetually together in London, in Paris, and in Vienna –; but
never in Italy again; the Count having, oddly enough, not crossed the
frontiers of his native country for years past. Perhaps he has been made
the victim of some political persecution? At all events, he seems to be
patriotically anxious not to lose sight of any of his own countrymen who
may happen to be in England. On the evening of his arrival he asked how
far we were from the nearest town, and whether we knew of any Italian
gentlemen who might happen to be settled there. He is certainly in
correspondence with people on the Continent, for his letters have all
sorts of odd stamps on them, and I saw one for him this morning, waiting
in his place at the breakfast-table, with a huge, official-looking seal
on it. Perhaps lie is in correspondence with his government? And yet,
that is hardly to be reconciled either with my other idea that he may be
a political exile.

How much I seem to have written about Count Fosco! And what does it all
amount to? –; as poor, dear Mr Gilmore would ask, in his impenetrable
business-like way. I can only repeat that I do assuredly feel, even on
this short acquaintance, a strange, half-willing, half-unwilling liking
for the Count. He seems to have established over me the same sort of
ascendency which he has evidently gained over Sir Percival. Free, and
even rude, as he may occasionally be in his manner towards his fat
friend, Sir Percival is nevertheless afraid, as I can plainly see, of
giving any serious offence to the Count. I wonder whether I am afraid
too? I certainly never saw a nian, in all iny experience, whom l should
be so sorry to have for an enemy. Is this because I like him, or because
I am afraid of him? Chi sa? –; as Count Fosco might say in his own
language. Who knows?

June 16th. –; Something to chronicle today besides my own ideas and
impressions. A visitor has arrived –; quite unknown to Laura and to me,
and apparently quite unexpected by Sir Percival.

We were all at lunch, in the room with the new French windows that open
into the verandah, and the Count (who devours pastry as I have never yet
seen it devoured by any human beings but girls at boarding-schools) had
just amused us by asking gravely for his fourth tart –; when the servant
entered to announce the visitor.

`Mr Merriman has just come, Sir Percival, and wishes to see you
immediately.'

Sir Percival started, and looked at the man with an expression of angry
alarm.

`Mi Merriman!' he repeated, as if he thought his own ears must have
deceived him.

`Yes, Sir Percival –; Mr Merriman, from London.'

`Where is he?'

`In the library, Sir Percival.'

He left the table the instant the last answer was given, and hurried out
of the room without saying a word to any of us.

`Who is Mr Merriman?' asked Laura, appealing to me.

`I have not the least idea,' was all I could say in reply.

The Count had finished his fourth tart, and had gone to a side-table to
look after his vicious cockatoo. He turned round to us with the bird
perched on his shoulder.

`Mr Merriman is Sir Percival's solicitor,' he said quietly.

Sir Percival's solicitor. It was a perfectly straightforward answer to
Laura's question, and vet, under the circumstances, it was not
satisfactory. lf Mr Merriinan had been specially sent fur by his client,
there would have been nothing very wonderful in his leaving town to obey
the summons. But when a lawyer travels from London to Hampshire without
being sent for, and when his arrival at a gentleman's house seriously
startles the gentleman himself, it may be safely taken for granted that
the legal visitor is the bearer of some very important and very
unexpected news –; news which may lie either very good or very bad, hut
which cannot, in either case, be of the common everyday kind.

Laura and I sat silent at the table for a quarter of an hour or more,
wondering uneasily what had happened, and waiting for the chance of Sir
Percival's speedy return. There were no signs of his return, and we rose
to leave the room.

The Count, attentive as usual, advanced from the corner in which he had
been feeding his cockatoo, with the bird still perched on his shoulder,
and opened the door for us. Laura and Madame Fosco went out first. Just
as I was on the point of following them he made a sign with his hand,
and spoke to me, before I passed him, in the oddest manner.

`Yes,' he said, quietly answering the unexpressed idea at that moment in
my mind, as if I had plainly confided it to him in so many words –;
`yes, Miss Halcombe, something has happened.'

I was on the point of answering, `I never said so,' but the vicious
cockatoo ruffled his clipped wings and gave a screech that set all my
nerves on edge in an instant, and made me only too glad to get out of
the room.

I joined Laura at the foot of the stairs. The thought in her mind was
the same as the thought in mine, which Count Fosco had surprised, and
when she spoke her words were almost the echo of his. She, too, said to
me secretly that she was afraid something had happened.