APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/wmn_white/WHITE_6

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THE STORY CONTINUED IN SEVERAL NARRATIVES

1. THE NARRATIVE OF HESTER PINHORN, COOK IN THE SERVICE OF COUNT FOSCO
Taken down from her own statement

I AM sorry to say that I have never learnt to read or write. I have been
a hard-working woman all my life, and have kept a good character. I know
that it is a sin and wickedness to say the thing which is not, and I
will truly beware of doing so on this occasion. All that I know I will
tell, and I humbly beg the gentleman who takes this down to put my
language right as he goes on, and to make allowances for my being no
scholar.

In this last summer I happened to be out of place (through no fault of
my own), and I heard of a situation as plain cook, at Number Five,
Forest Road, St John's Wood. I took the place on trial. My master's name
was Fosco. My mistress was an English lady. He was Count and she was
Countess. There was a girl to do housemaid's work when I got there. She
was not over-clean or tidy, but there was no harm in her. I and she were
the only servants in the house.

Our master and mistress came after we got in; and as soon as they did
come we were told, downstairs, that company was expected from the
country.

The company was my mistress's niece, and the back bedroom on the first
floor was got ready for her. My mistress mentioned to me that Lady Glyde
(that was her name) was in poor health, and that I must be particular in
my cooking accordingly. She was to come that day, as well as I can
remember –; but whatever you do, don't trust my memory in the matter. I
am sorry to say it's no use asking me about days of the month, and
such-like. Except Sundays, half my time I take no heed of them, being a
hardworking woman and no scholar. All I know is Lady Glyde came, and
when she did come, a fine fright she gave us all surely. I don't know
how master brought her to the house, being hard at work at the time. But
he did bring her in the afternoon, I think, and the housemaid opened the
door to them, and showed them into the parlour. Before she had been long
down in the kitchen again with me, we heard a hurry-skurry upstairs, and
the parlour bell ringing like mad, and my mistress's voice calling out
for help.

We both ran up, and there we saw the lady laid on the sofa, with her
face ghastly white, and her hands fast clenched, and her head drawn down
to one side. She had been taken with a sudden fright, my mistress said,
and master he told us she was in a fit of convulsions. I ran out,
knowing the neighbourhood a little better than the rest of them, to
fetch the nearest doctor's help. The nearest help was at Goodricke's and
Garth's, who worked together as partners, and had a good name and
connection, as I have heard, all round St John's Wood. Mr Goodricke was
in, and he came back with me directly.

It was some time before he could make himself of much use. The poor
unfortunate lady fell out of one fit into another, and went on so till
she was quite wearied out, and as helpless as a new-born babe. We then
got her to bed. Mr Goodricke went away to his house for medicine, and
came hack again in a quarter of an hour or less. Besides the medicine he
brought a bit of hollow mahogany wood with him, shaped like a kind of
trumpet, and after waiting a little while, he put one end over the
lady's heart and the other to his ear, and listened carefully.

When he had done he says to my mistress, who was in the room, `This is a
very serious case,' he says, `I recommend you to write to Lady Glyde's
friends directly.' My mistress says to him, `Is it heart-disease?' And
he says, `Yes, heart-disease of a most dangerous kind.' He told her
exactly what he thought was the matter, which I was not clever enough to
understand. But I know this, he ended by saying that he was afraid
neither his help nor any other doctor's help was likely to be of much
service.

My mistress took this ill news more quietly than my master. He was a
big, fat, odd sort of elderly man, who kept birds and white mice, and
spoke to them as if they were so many Christian children. He seemed
terribly cut up by what had happened. `Ah! poor Lady Glyde! poor dear
Lady Glyde!' he says, and went stalking about, wringing his fat hands
more like a play-actor than a gentleman. For one question my mistress
asked the doctor about the lady's chances of getting round, he asked a
good fifty at least. I declare he quite tormented us all, and when he
was quiet at last, out he went into the bit of back garden, picking
trumpery little nosegays, and asking me to take them upstairs and make
the sick-room look pretty with them. As if that did any good. I think he
must have been, at times, a little soft in his head. But he was not a
bad master –; he had a monstrous civil tongue of his own, and a jolly,
easy, coaxing way with him. I liked him a deal better than my mistress.
She was a hard one, if ever there was a hard one yet.

Towards night-time the lady roused up a little. She had been so wearied
out, before that, by the convulsions, that she never stirred hand or
foot, or spoke a word to anybody. She moved in the bed now, and stared
about her at the room and us in it. She must have been a nice-looking
lady when well, with light hair, and blue eyes and all that. Her rest
was troubled at night –; at least so I heard from my mistress, who sat
up alone with her. I only went in once before going to bed to see if I
could be of any use, and then she was talking to herself in a confused,
rambling manner. She seemed to want sadly to speak to somebody who was
absent from her somewhere. I couldn't catch the name the first time, and
the second time master knocked at the door, with his regular mouthful of
questions, and another of his trumpery nosegays.

When I went in early the next morning, the lady was clean worn out
again, and lay in a kind of faint sleep. Mr Goodricke brought his
partner, Mr Garth, with him to advise. They said she must not be
disturbed out of her rest on any account. They asked my mistress many
questions, at the other end of the room, about what the lady's health
had been in past times, and who had attended her, and whether she had
ever suffered much and long together under distress of mind. I remember
my mistress said `Yes' to that last question. And Mr Goodricke looked at
Mr Garth, and shook his head; and Mr Garth looked at Mr Goodricke, and
shook his head. They seemed to think that the distress might have
something to do with the mischief at the lady's heart. She was but a
frail thing to look at, poor creature! Very little strength at any time,
I should say –; very little strength.

Later on the same niorning, when she woke, the lady took a sudden turn,
and got seemingly a great deal better. I was not let in again to see
her, no more was the housemaid, for the reason that she was not to be
disturbed by strangers. What I heard of her being better was through my
master. He was in wonderful good spirits about the change, and looked in
at the kitchen window from the garden, with his great big curly-brimmed
white hat on, to go out.

`Good Mrs Cook,' says lie, `Lady Glyde is better. My mind is more easy
than it was, and I am going out to stretch my legs with a sunny little
summer walk. Shall I order for you, shall I market for you, Mrs Cook?
What are you making there? A nice tart for dinner? Much crust, if you
please –; much crisp crust, my dear, that melts and crumbles delicious
in the mouth.' That was his way. He was past sixty, and fond of pastry.
Just think of that !

The doctor came again in the forenoon, and saw for himself that Lady
Glyde had woke up better. He forbid us to talk to her, or to let her
talk to us, in case she was that way disposed, saying she must be kept
quiet before all things, and encouraged to sleep as much as possible.
She did not seem to want to talk whenever I saw her, except overnight.
when I couldn't make out what she was saying –; she seemed too much worn
down. Mr Goodricke was not nearly in such good spirits about her as
master. He said nothing when he came downstairs, except that he would
call again at five o'clock.

About that time (which was before master came home again) the bell rang
hard from the bedroom, and my mistress ran out into the landing, and
called to me to go for Mr Goodricke, and tell him the lady had fainted.
I got on my bonnet and shawl, when, as good luck would have it, the
doctor himself came to the house for his promised visit.

I let him in, and went upstairs along with him. `Lady Glyde was just as
usual,' says my mistress to him at the door; `she was awake, and looking
about her in a strange, forlorn manner, when I heard her give a sort of
half cry, and she fainted in a moment.' The doctor went up to the bed,
and stooped down over the sick lady. He looked very serious, all on a
sudden, at the sight of her, and put his hand on her heart.

My mistress stared hard in Mr Goodricke's face. `Not dead!' says she,
whispering, and turning all of a tremble from head to foot.

`Yes,' says the doctor, very quiet and grave. `Dead. I was afraid it
would happen suddenly when I examined her heart yesterday.' My mistress
stepped back from the bedside while he was speaking, and trembled and
trembled again.  `Dead!' she whisPers to herself; `dead so suddenly !
dead so soon ! What will the Count say?' Mr Goodricke advised her to go
downstairs, and quiet herself a little. `You have been sitting up all
night,' says he, ` and your nerves are shaken. This person,' says he,
meaning me, `this person will stay in the room till I can send for the
necessary assistance.' My mistress did as he told her. `I must prepare
the Count,' she says. `I must carefully prepare the Count.' And so she
left us, shaking from head to foot, and went out.

`Your master is a foreigner,' says Mr Goodricke, when my mistress had
left us. `Does he understand about registering the death ?' `I can't
rightly tell, sir,' says I, `but I should think not.' The doctor
considered a minute, and then says he, `I don't usually do such things,'
says he, `but it may save the family trouble in this case if I register
the death myself. I shall pass the district office in half an hour's
time, and I can easily look in. Mention, if you please, that I will do
so,' `Yes, sir,' says I, `with thanks, I'm sure, for your kindness in
thinking of it.' `You don't mind staying here till I can send you the
proper person?' says he. `No, sir,' says I; `I'll stay with the poor
lady till then. I suppose nothing more could be done, sir, than was
done?' says I. `No,' says he, `nothing; she must have suffered sadly
before ever I saw her –; the case was hopeless when I was called in.'
`Ah, dear me ! we all come to it, sooner or later, don't we, sir?' says
I. He gave no answer to that –; he didn't seem to care about talking. He
said, `Good-day,' and went out.

I stopped by the bedside from that time till the time when Mr Goodricke
sent the person in, as he had promised. She was, by name, Jane Gould. I
considered her to be a respectable-looking woman. She made no remark,
except to say that she understood what was wanted of her, and that she
had winded a many of them in her time.

How master bore the news, when he first heard it, is more than I can
tell, not having been present. When I did see him he looked awfully
overcome by it, to be sure. He sat quiet in a corner, with his fat hands
hanging over his thick knees, and his head down, and his eyes looking at
nothing. He seemed not so much sorry, as scared and dazed like, by what
had happened. My mistress managed all that was to be done about the
funeral. It must have cost a sight of money –; the coffin, in
particular, being most beautiful. The dead lady's husband was away, as
we heard, in foreign parts. But my mistress (being her aunt) settled it
with her friends in the country (Cumberland, I think) that she should be
buried there, in the same grave along with her mother. Everything was
done handsomely, in respect of the funeral, I say again, and master went
down to attend the burying in the country himself. He looked grand in
his deep mourning, with his big solemn face, and his slow walk, and his
broad hatband –; that he did!

In conclusion, I have to say, in answer to questions put to me –;

(i) That neither I nor my fellow-servant ever saw my master give Lady
Glyde any medicine himself.

(2) That he was never, to my knowledge and belief, left alone in the
room with Lady Glyde.

(3) That I am not able to say what caused the sudden fright, which my
mistress informed me had seized the lady on her first coming into the
house. The cause was never explained, either to me or to my
fellow-servant.

The above statement has been read over in my presence. I have nothing to
add to it, or to take away from it. I say, on my oath as a Christian
woman, this is the truth. (Signed) HE STER PINHORN, Her+Mark.



2. THE NARRATIVE OF THE DOCTOR To the Registrar of the Sub-District in
which the undermentioned death took place. –; I hereby certify that I
attended Lady Glyde, aged Twenty-One last Birthday; that I last saw her
on Thursday the 25th July 1850; that she died on the same day at No. 5
Forest Road, St John's Wood, and that the cause of her death was
Aneurism. Duration of disease not known. (Signed) ALFRED GOODRICKE.
Profl. Title.  M.R.C.S. Eng., L.S.A. Address :  12 Croydon Gardens, St
John's Wood.




3. THE NARRATIVE OF JANE GOULD I WAS the person sent in by Mr Goodricke
to do what was right and needful by the remains of a lady who had died
at the house named in the certificate which precedes this. I found the
body in charge of the servant, Hester Pinhorn. I remained with it, and
prepared it at the proper time for the grave. It was laid in the coffin
in my presence, and I afterwards saw the coffin screwed down previous to
its removal. When that had been done, and not before, I received what
was due to me and left the house. I refer persons who may wish to
investigate my character to Mr Goodricke. He will bear witness that I
can be trusted to tell the truth. (Signed) JANE GOULD.




4. THE NARRATIVE OF THE TOMBSTONE SACRED to the Memory of Laura, Lady
Glyde, wife of Sir Percival Glyde, Bart., of Blackwater Park, Hampshire,
and daughter of the late Philip Fairlie, Esq., of Limmeridge House, in
this parish. Born March 27th, 1829; married December 22nd, 1849; died
July 25th, 1850.




5. THE NARRATIVE OF WALTER HARTRIGHT EARLY in the summer of 1850 I and
my surviving companions left the wilds and forests of Central America
for home. Arrived at the coast, we took ship there for England. The
vessel was wrecked in the Gulf of Mexico –; I was among the few saved
from the sea. It was my third escape from peril of death. Death by
disease, death by the Indians, death by drowning –; all three had
approached me; all three had passed me by.

The survivors of the wreck were rescued by an American vessel bound for
Liverpool. The ship reached her port on the thirteenth day of October
1850. We landed late in the afternoon, and I arrived in London the same
night.

These pages are not the record of my wanderings and my dangers away from
home. The motives which led me from my country and my friends to a new
world of adventure and peril are known. From that self-imposed exile I
came back, as I had hoped, prayed, believed I should come back –; a
changed man. In the waters of a new life I had tempered mv nature
afresh. In the stern school of extremity and danger my will had learnt
to be strong, my heart to be resolute, my mind to rely on itself. I had
gone out to fly from my own future. I came back to face it, as a man
should.

To face it with that inevitable suppression of myself which I knew it
would demand from me. I had parted with the worst bitterness of the
past, but not with my heart's remembrance of the sorrow and the
tenderness of that memorable time. I had not ceased to feel the one
irreparable disappointment of my life –; I had only learnt to bear it.
Laura Fairlie was in all my thoughts when the ship bore me away, and I
looked my last at England. Laura Fairlie was in all my thoughts when the
ship brought me back, and the morning light showed the friendly shore in
view.

My pen traces the old letters as my heart goes back to the old love. I
write of her as Laura Fairlie still. It is hard to think of her, it is
hard to speak of her, by her husband's name.

There are no more words of explanation to add on my appearing for the
second time in these pages. This narrative, if I have the strength and
the courage to write it, may now go on.

My first anxieties and first hopes when the morning came centred in my
mother and my sister. I felt the necessity of preparing them for the joy
and surprise of my return, after an absence during which it had been
impossible for them to receive any tidings of me for months past. Early
in the morning I sent a letter to the Hampstead Cottage, and followed it
myself in an hour's time.

When the first meeting was over, when our quiet and composure of other
days began gradually to return to us, I saw something in my mother's
face which told me that a secret oppression lay heavy on her heart.
There was more than love –; there was sorrow in the anxious eyes that
looked on me so tenderly –; there was pity in the kind hand that slowly
and fondly strengthened its hold on mine. We had no concealments from
each other. She knew how the hope of my life had been wrecked –; she
knew why I had left her. It was on my hps to ask as composedly as I
could if any letter had come for me from Miss Halcombe, if there was any
news of her sister that I might hear. But when I looked in my mother's
face I lost courage to put the question even in that guarded form. I
could only say, doubtingly and restrainedly –;

`You have something to tell me.'

My sister, who had been sitting opposite to us, rose suddenly without a
word of explanation –; rose and left the room.

My mother moved closer to me on the sofa and put her arms round my neck.
Those fond arms trembled –; the tears flowed fast over the faithful
loving face.

`Walter !' she whispered, `my own darling ! my heart is heavy for you,
Oh, my son I my son I try to remember that I am still left ! '

My head sank on her bosom. She had said all in saying those words.

It was the morning of the third day since my return –; the morning of
the sixteenth of October.

I had remained with them at the cottage –; I had tried hard not to
embitter the happiness of my return to them as it was embittered to me.
I had done all man could to rise after the shock, and accept my life
resignedly –; to let my great sorrow come in tenderness to my heart, and
not in despair. It was useless and hopeless. No tears soothed my aching
eyes, no relief came to me from my sister's sympathy or my mother's
love.

On that third morning I opened my heart to them. At last the words
passed my lips which I had longed to speak on the day when my mother
told me of her death.

`Let me go away alone for a little while,' I said. `I shall bear it
better when I have looked once more at the place where I first saw her
–; when I have knelt and prayed by the grave where they have laid her to
rest.'

I deParted on my journey –; my journey to the grave of Laura Fairlie.

It was a quiet autumn afternoon when I stopped at the solitary station,
and set forth alone on foot by the well-remembered road. The waning sun
was shining faintly through thin white clouds –; the air was warm and
still –; the peacefulness of the lonely country was overshadowed and
saddened by the influence of the falling year.

I reached the moor –; I stood again on the brow of the hill –; I looked
on along the path –; and there were the familiar garden trees in the
distance, the clear sweeping semicircle of the drive, the high white
walls of Limmeridge House. The chances and changes, the wanderings and
dangers of months and months past, all shrank and shrivelled to nothing
in my mind. It was like yesterday since my feet had last trodden the
fragrant heathy ground. I thought I should see her coming to meet me,
with her little straw hat shading her face, her simple dress fluttering
in the air, and her well-filled sketch-book ready in her hand.

Oh, death, thou hast thy sting! oh, grave, thou hast thy victory !

I turned aside, and there below me in the glen was the lonesome grey
church, the Porch where I had waited for the coming of the woman in
white, the hills encircling the quiet burialground, the brook bubbling
cold over its stony bed. There was the marble cross, fair and white, at
the head of the tomb –; the tomh that now rose over mother and daughter
alike.

I approached the grave. I crossed once more the low stone stile, and
bared my head as I touched the sacred ground. Sacred to gentleness and
goodness, sacred to reverence and grief.

I stopped before the pedestal from which the cross rose. On one side of
it, on the side nearest to me, the newly-cut inscription met my eyes –;
the hard, clear, cruel black letters which told the story of her life
and death. I tried to read them. I did read as far as the name. `Sacred
to the Memory of Laura –;' The kind blue eyes dim with tears –; the fair
head drooping wearily –; the innocent parting words which implored me to
leave her –; oh, for a happier last memory of her than this; the memory
I took away with me, the memory I bring back with me to her grave !

A second time I tried to read the inscription. I saw at the end the date
of her death, and above it –;

Above it there were lines on the marble –; there was a name among them
which disturbed my thoughts of her. I went round to the other side of
the grave, where there was nothing to read, nothing of earthly vileness
to force its way between her spirit and mine.

I knelt down by the tomb. I laid my hands, I laid my head on the broad
white stone, and closed my weary eyes on the earth around, on the light
above. I let her coine back to me. Oh, my love ! my love! my heart may
speak to you now ! It is yesterday again since we parted –; yesterday,
since your dear hand lay in mine –; yesterday, since my eyes looked
their last on you. My love ! my love !

Time had flowed on, and silence had fallen like thick night over its
course.

The first sound that came after the heavenly peace rustled faintly like
a passing breath of air over the grass of the burialground. I heard it
ne.aring me slowly, until it came changed to my car –; came like
footsteps mowing onward –; then stopped.

I looked up.

The sunset was near at hand. The clouds had parted –; the slanting light
fell mellow over the hills. The last of the day was cold and clear and
still in the quiet valley of the dead.

Beyond me, in the burial-ground, standing together in the cold clearness
of the lower light, I saw two women. They were looking towards the tomb,
looking towards me.

Two.

They came a little on, and stopped again. Their veils were down, and hid
their faces from me. When they stopped one of them raised her veil. In
the still evening light I saw the face of Marian Halcombe.

Changed, changed as if years had passed over it! The eyes large and
wild, and looking at me with a strange terror in them. The face worn and
wasted piteously. Pain and fear and grief written on her as with a
brand.

I took one step towards her from the grave. She never moved –; she never
spoke. The veiled woman with her cried out faintly. I stopped. The
springs of my life fell low, and the shuddering of an unutterable dread
crept over me from head to foot.

The woman with the veiled face moved away from her companion, and came
towards me slowly. Left by herself, standing by herself, Marian Halcombe
spoke. It was the voice that I remembered –; the voice not changed, like
the frightened eyes and the wasted face.

`My dream! my dream !' I heard her say those words softly in the awful
silence. She sank on her knees, and raised her clasped hands to heaven.
`Father ! strengthen him. Father ! help him im his hour of need.'

The woman came on, slowly and silently came on. I looked at her –; at
her, and at none other, from that moment.

The voice that was praying for me faltered and sank low –; then rose on
a sudden, and called affrightedly, called despairingly to me to come
away.

But the veiled woman had possession of me, body and soul. She stopped on
one side of the grave. We stood face to face with the tombstone between
us. She was close to the inscription on the side of the pedestal. Her
gown touched the black letters.

The voice came nearer, and rose and rose more passionately still. `Hide
your face I don't look at her! Oh, for God's sake, spare him –;'

The woman lifted her veil.

`Sacred to the Memory of Laura, Lady Glyde –;'

Laura, Lady Glyde, was standing by the inscription, and was looking at
me over the grave.



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


THE THIRD EPOCH

THE STORY CONTINUED BY WALTER HARTRIGHT

I OPEN a new page. I advance my narrative by one week.

The history of the interval which I thus pass over must remaim
umrecorded. My heart turns faint, my inind sinks in darkness and
confusion when I think of it. This must not be, if I who write am to
guide, as I ought, you who read. This must not be, if the clue that
leads through the windings of the story is to remain from end to end
untangled in my hands.

A life suddenly changed –; its whole purpose created afresh, its hopes
and fears, its struggles, its interests, and its sacrifices all turned
at once and for ever into a new direction –; this is the prospect which
now opens before me, like the burst of view from a mountain's top. I
left my narrative in the quiet shadow of Limmeridge church –; I resume
it, one week later, in the stir and turmoil of a London street.

The street is in a populous and a poor neighbourhood. The ground floor
of one of the houses in it is occupied by a small newsvendor's shop, and
the first floor and the second are let as furnished lodgings of the
humblest kind.

I have taken those two floors in an assumed name. On the upper floor I
live, with a room to work in, a room to sleep in. On the lower floor,
under the same assumed name, two women live, who are described as my
sisters. I get my bread by drawing and engraving on wood for the cheap
periodicals. My sisters are sup posed to help me by taking in a little
needlework. Our poor place of abode, our humble calling, our assumed
relationship, and our assumed name, are all used alike as a means of
hiding us in the house-forest of London. We are numbered no longer with
the people whose lives are open and known. I am an obscure, unnoticed
man, without patron or friend to help me. Marian Halcombe is nothing now
hut iny eldest sister, who provides for our household wants by the toil
of her own hands. We two, in the estimation of others, are at once the
dupes and the agents of a daring imposture. We are supposed to be the
accomplices of mad Ame Catherick, who claims the name, the Place, and
the living personality of dead Lady Glyde.

That is our situation. That is the changed aspect in which we three must
appear, henceforth, in this narrative, for many and many a page to come.

In the eye of reason and of law, in the estimation of relatives and
friends, according to every received formality of civilised society,
`Laura, Lady Gyde,' lay buried with her mother in Limmeridge churchyard.
Torn in her own lifetime from the list of the living, the daughter of
Philip Fairlie and the wife of Percival Glyde might still exist for her
sister, might still exist for me, but to all the world besides she was
dead. Dead to her uncle, who had renounced her; dead to the servants of
the house, who had failed to recognise her; dead to the persons in
authority, who had transmitted her fortune to her husband and her aunt;
dead to my mother and my sister, who believed me to be the dupe of an
adventuress and the victim of a fraud; socially, morally, legally –;
dead.

And yet alive ! Alive in poverty and in hiding. Alive, with the poor
drawing-master to fight her battle, and to win the way back for her to
her place in the world of living beings.

Did no suspicion, excited by my own knowledge of Anne Catherick's
resemblance to her, cross my mind, when her face was first revealed to
me? Not the shadow of a suspicion, from the moment when she lifted her
veil by the side of the inscription which recorded her death.

Before the sun of that day had set, before the last glimpse of the home
which was closed against her had passed from our view, the farewell
words I spoke, when we parted at Limmeridge House, had been recalled by
both of us –; repeated by me, recognised by her. `If ever the time
comes, when the devotion of my whole heart and soul and strength will
give you a moment's happiness, or spare you a moment's sorrow, will you
try to remember the poor drawing-master who has taught you?' She, who
now remembered so little of the trouble and terror of a later time,
remembered those words, and laid her poor head innocently and trustingly
on the bosom of the man who had spoken them. In that moment, when she
called me by my name, when she said, `They have tried to make me forget
everything, Walter, but I reinember Marian, and I remember you' –; in
that moment, I, who had long since given her my love, gave her my life,
and thanked God that it was mine to bestow on her. Yes ! the time had
come, from thousands on thousands of miles away –; through forest and
wilderness, where companions stronger than I had fallen by my side,
through peril of death thrice renewed, and thrice escaped, the Hand that
leads men on the dark road to the future had led me to meet that time.
Forlorn and disowned, sorely tried and sadly changed –; her Beauty
faded, her mind clouded –; robbed of her station in the world, of her
place among living creatures –; the devotion I had promised, the
devotion of my whole heart and soul and strength, might be laid
blamelessly now at those dear feet. In the right of her calamity, in the
right of her friendlessness, she was mine at last! Mine to support, to
protect, to cherish, to restore. Mine to love and honour as father and
brother both. Mine to vindicate through all risks and all sacrifices –;
through the hopeless struggle against Rank and Power, through the long
fight with armed deceit and fortified Success, through the waste of my
reputation, through the loss of my friends, through the hazard of my
life.




My position is defined –; my motives are acknowledged. The story of
Marian and the story of Laura must come next.

I shall relate both narratives, not in the words (often interrupted,
often inevitably confused) of the speakers themselves, but in the words
of the brief, plain, studiously simple abstract which I committed to
writing for my own guidance, and for the guidance of my legal adviser.
So the tangled web will be most speedily and most intelligibly unrolled.

The story of Marian begins where the narrative of the housekeeper at
Blackwater Park left off.

On Lady Glyde's departure from her husband's house, the fact of that
departure, and the necessary statement of the circumstances under which
it had taken place, were communicated to Miss Halcombe by the
housekeeper. It was not till some days

afterwards (how many days exactly, Mrs Michelson, in the absence of any
written memorandum on the subject. could not

undertake to say) that a letter arrived from Madame Fosco an nouncing
Lady Glyde's sudden death in Count Fosco's house. The letter avoided
mentioning dates, and left it to Mrs Michelson's discretion to break the
news at once to Miss Halcombe, or to defer doing so until that lady's
health should be more firmly established.

Having consulted Mr Dawson (who had been himself delaved,

by ill health, in resuming his attendance at Blackwater Park), Mrs
Michelson, by the doctor's advice, and in the doctor's presence,
communicated the news, either on the day when the letter was received,
or on the day after. It is not necessary to dwell here upon the effect
which the intelligence of Lady Glyde's sudden death produced on her
sister. It is only useful to the present purpose to say that she was not
able to travel for more than three weeks afterwards. At the end of that
time she proceeded to London accompanied by the housekeeper. They parted
there –; Mrs Michelson previously informing Miss Halcombe of her
address, in case they might wish to communicate at a future period.

on parting with the housekeeper Miss Halcombe went at once to the office
of Messrs Gilmore & Kyrle to consult with the latter gentleman in Mr
Gilmore's absence. She mentioned to Mr Kyrle what she had thought it
desirable to conceal from every one else (Mrs Michelson included) –; her
suspicion of the circumstances under which Lady Glyde was said to have
met her death. Mr Kyrle, who had previously given friendly proof of his
anxiety to serve Miss Halcombe, at once undertook to make such inquiries
as the delicate and dangerous nature of the investigation proposed to
him would permit.

To exhaust this part of the subject before going farther, it may be
mentioned that Count Fosco offered every facility to Mr Kyrle, on that
gentleman's stating that he was sent by Miss Halcombe to collect such
particulars as had not yet reached her of Lady Glyde's decease. Mr Kyrle
was placed in communication with the medical man, Mr Goodricke, and with
the two serwants. ln the absence of any means of ascertaining the exact
date of Lady Glyde's departure from Blackwater Park, the result of the
doctor's and the servants' evidence, and of the volunteered statements
of Count Fosco and his wife, was conclusive to the mind of Mr Kyrle. He
could only assume that the intensity of Miss Halcombe's suffering, under
the loss of her sister, had misied her judgment in a most deplorable
manner, and he wrote her word that the shocking suspicion to which she
had alluded in his presence was, in his opinion, destitute of the
smallest fragment of foundation in truth. Thus the investigation by Mr
Gilmore's partner began and ended.

Meanwhile, Miss Halcombe had returned to Limmeridge House, and had there
collected all the additional information which she was able to obtain.

Mr Fairlie had received his first intimation of his niece's death from
his sister, Madame Fosco, this letter also not containing any exact
reference to dates. He had sanctioned his sister's proposal that the
deceased lady should be laid in her mother's grave in Limmeridge
churchyard. Count Fosco had accompanied the remains to Cumberland, and
had attended the funeral at Limmeridge, which took place on the 30th of
July. It was followed, as a mark of respect, by all the inhabitants of
the village and the neighbourhood. On the next day the inscription
(originally drawn out, it was said, by the aunt of the deceased lady,
and submitted for approval to her brother, Mr Fairlie) was engraved on
one side of the monument over the tomb.

On the day of the funeral, and for one day after it, Count Fosco had
been received as a guest at Limmeridge House, but no interview had taken
place between Mr Fairlie and himself, by the former gentleman's desire.
They had communicated by writing, and through this medium Count Fosco
had made Mr Fairlie acquainted with the details of his niece's last
illness and death. The letter presenting this information added no new
facts to the facts already known, but one very remarkable paragraph was
contained in the postscript. It referred to Anne Catherick.

The substance of the paragraph in question was as follows –;

It first informed Mr Fairlie that Anne Catherick (of whom he might hear
full particulars from Miss Halcombe when she reached Limmeridge) had
been traced and recovered in the neighbourhood of Blackwater Park, and
had been for the second time placed under the charge of the medical man
from whose custody she had once escaped.

This was the first part of the postscript. The second part warned Mr
Fairlie that Anne Catherick's mental malady had been aggravated by her
long freedom from control, and that the insane hatred and distrust of
Sir Percival Glyde, which had been one of her most marked delusions in
former times, still existed under a newly-acquired form. The unfortunate
woman's last idea in connection with Sir Percival was the idea of
annoying and distressing him, and of elevating herself, as she supposed,
in the estimation of the patients and nurses, by assuming the character
of his deceased wife, the scheme of this personation having evidently
occurred to her after a stolen interview which she had succeeded in
obtaining with Lady Glyde, and at which she had observed the
extraordinary accidental likeness between the deceased lady and herself.
It was to the last degree improbable that she would succeed a second
time in escaping from the Asylum, but it was just possible she might
find some means of annoying the late Lady Glyde's relatives with
letters, and in that case Mr Fairlie was warned beforehand how to
receive them.

The postscript, expressed in these terms, was shown to Miss Halcombe
when she arrived at Limmeridge. There were also placed in her possession
the clothes Lady Glyde had worn, and the other effects she had brought
with her to her aunt's house. They had been carefully collected and sent
to Cumberland by Madame Fosco.

Such was the posture of affairs when Miss Halcombe reached Limmeridge in
the early part of September.

Shortly afterwards she was confined to her room by a relapse,

her weakened physical energies giving way under the severe mental
affliction from which she was now suffering. On getting stronger again,
in a month's time, her suspicion of the circumstances described as
attending her sister's death still remaimed unshaken. She had heard
nothing in the interin of Sir percival

Glyde, but letters had reached her from Madame Fosco, making

the most affectionate inquiries on the part of her husband and

herself. Instead of answering these letters, Miss Halcombe caused the
house in St John's Wood, and the proceedings of its inmates, to be
privately watched.

Nothing doubtful was discovered. The same result attended the next
investigations, which were secretly instituted on the subject of Mrs
Rubelle. She had arrived in London about six months before with her
husband. They had come from Lyons, and they had taken a house in the
neighbourhood of Leicester Square, to be fitted up as a boarding-house
for foreigners, who were expected to visit England in large numbers to
see the Exhibition of 1851. Nothing was known against husband or wife in
the neighbourhood. They were quiet people, and they had paid their way
honestly up to the present time. The final inquiries related to Sir
Percival Glyde. He was settled in Paris, and living there quietly in a
small circle of English and French friends.

Foiled at all points, but still not able to rest, Miss Halcombe next
determined to visit the Asylum in which she then supposed Anne Catherick
to be for the second time confined. She had felt a strong curiosity
about the woman in former days, and she was now doubly interested –;
first, in ascertaining whether the report of Anne Catherick's attempted
personation of Lady Glyde was true, and secondly (if it proved to be
true), in discovering for herself what the poor creature's real motives
were for attempting the deceit.

Although Count Fosco's letter to Mr Fairlie did not mention the address
of the Asylum, that important omission cast no difficulties in Miss
Halcombe's way. When Mr Hartright had met Anne Catherick at Limmeridge,
she had informed him of the locality in which the house was situated,
and Miss Halcombe had noted down the direction in her diary, with all
the other particulars of the interview exactly as she heard them from Mr
Hartright's own lips. Accordingly she looked back at the entry and
extracted the address –; furnished herself with the Count's letter to Mr
Fairlie as a species of credential which might be useful to her, and
started by herself for the Asylum on the eleventh of October.

She passed the night of the eleventh in London. It had been her
intention to sleep at the house inhabited by Lady Glyde's old governess,
but Mrs Vesey's agitation at the sight of her lost pupil's nearest and
dearest friend was so distressing that Miss Halcombe considerately
refrained from remaining in her presence, and removed to a respectable
boarding-house in the neighbourhood, recoinmended by Mrs Vesey's married
sister. The next day she proceeded to the Asylum, which was situated not
far from London on the northern side of the metropolis.

She was immediately admitted to see the proprietor.

At first he appeared to be decidedly unwilling to let her communicate
with his patient. But on her showing him the postscript to Count Fosco's
letter –; on her reminding him that she was the `Miss Halcombe' there
referred to –; that she was a near relative of the (leceased Lady Glyde
–; and that she was therefore naturally interested, for family reasons,
in observing for herself the extent of Anne Catherick's delusion in
relation to her late sister –; the tone and manner of the owner of the
Asylum altered, and he withdrew his objections. He probably felt that a
continued refusal, under these circumstances, would not only be an act
of discourtesy in itself, but would also imply that the proceedings in
his establishment were not of a nature to bear investigation by
respectable strangers.

Miss Halcombe's own impression was that the owner of the Asylum had not
been received into the confidence of Sir Percival and the Count. His
consenting at all to let her visit his patient seemed to afford one
proof of this, and his readiness in making admissions which could
scarcely have escaped the lips of an accomplice. certainly appeared so
furnish another.

For example, in the course of the introductory conversation which took
place, he informed Miss Halcombe that Anne Catherick had been brought
back to him with the necessary order and certificates by Count Fosco on
the twenty-seventh of July –; the Count also producing a letter of
explanations and instructions signed by Sir Percival Glyde. On receiving
his inmate again, the proprietor of the Asylum acknowledged that he had
observed some curious personal changes in her. Such changes no doubt
were not without precedent in his experience of persons mentally
afflicted. Insane people were often at one time, outwardly as well as
inwardly, unlike what they were at another –; the change from better to
worse, or from worse to better, in the madness having a necessary
tendency to produce alterations of appearance externally. He allowed for
these, and he allowed also for the modification in the form of Anne
Catherick's delusion, which was reflected no doubt in her manner and
expression. But he was still perplexed at times by certain differences
between his patient before she had escaped and his patient since she had
been brought back. Those differences were too minute to be described. He
could not Say of course that she was absolutely altered in height or
shape or complexion, or in the colour of her hair and eyes, or in the
general form of her face –; the change was something that he felt more
than something that he saw. In short, the case had been a puzzle from
the first, and one more perplexity was added to it now.

It cannot be said that this conversation led to the result of even
partially preparing Miss Halcombe's mind for what was to come. But it
produced, nevertheless, a very serious effect upon her. She was so
completely unnerved by it, that some little time elapsed before she
could summon composure enough to follow the proprietor of the Asylum to
that part of the house in which the inmates were confined.

On inquiry, it turned out that the supposed Anne Catherick was then
taking exercise in the grounds attached to the establishment. One of the
nurses volunteered to conduct Miss Halcombe to the place, the proprietor
of the Asylum remaining in the house for a few minutes to attend to a
case which required his services, and then engaging to join his visitor
in the grounds.

The nurse led Miss Halcombe to a distant part of the property, which was
prettily laid out, and after looking about her a little, turned into a
turf walk, shaded by a shrubbery on either side. About half-way down
this walk two women were slowly approaching. The nurse pointed to them
and said, `There is Anne Catherick, ma'am, with the attendant who waits
on her. The attendant will answer any questions you wish to put.' With
those words the nurse left her to return to the duties of the house.

Miss Halcombe advanced on her side, and the women advanced on theirs.
When they were within a dozen paces of each other, one of the women
stopped for an instant, looked eagerly at the strange lady, shook off
the nurse's grasp on her, and the next moment rushed into Miss
Halcombe's arms. In that moment Miss Halcombe recognised her sister –;
recognised the dead-alive.

Fortunately for the success of the measures taken subsequently, no one
was present at that moment but the nurse. She was a young woman, and she
was so startled that she was at first quite incapable of interfering.
When she was able to do so her whole services were required by Miss
Halcombe, who had for the moment sunk altogether in the effort to keep
her own senses under the shock of the discovery. After waiting a few
minutes in the fresh air and the cool shade, her natural energy and
courage helped her a little, and she became sufficiently mistress of
herself to feel the necessity of recalling her presence of mind for her
unfortunate sister's sake.

She obtained permission to speak alone with the patient, on condition
that they both remained well within the nurse's view. There was no time
for questions –; there was only time for Miss Halcombe to impress on the
unhappy lady the necessity of con trolling herself, and to assure her of
immediate help and rescue if she did so. The prospect of escaping from
the Asylum by obedience to her sister's directions was sufficient to
quiet Lady Glyde, and to make her understand what was required of her.
Miss Halcombe next returned to the nurse, placed all the gold she then
had in her pocket (three sovereigns) in the nurse's hands, and asked
when and where she could speak to her alone.

The woman was at first surprised and distrustful. But on Miss Halcombe's
declaring that she only wanted to put some questions which she was too
much agitated to ask at that moment, and that she had no intention of
misleading the nurse into any dereliction of duty, the woman took the
money, and proposed three o'clock on the next day as the time for the
interview. She might then slip out for half an hour, after the patients
had dined, and she would meet the lady in a retired place, outside the
high north wall which screened the grounds of the house. Miss Halcombe
had only time to assent, and to whisper to her sister that she should
hear from her on the next day, when the proprietor of the Asylum joined
them. He noticed his visitor's agitation, which Miss Halcombe accounted
for by saying that her interview with Anne Catherick had a little
startled her at first. She took her leave as soon after as possible –;
that is to say, as soon as she could summon courage to force herself
from the presence of her unfortunate sister.

A very little reflection, when the capacity to reflect returned,
convinced her that any attempt to identify Lady Glyde and to rescue her
by legal means, would, even if successful, involve a delay that might be
fatal to her sister's intellects, which were shaken already by the
horror of the situation to which she had been consigned. By the time
Miss Halcombe had got back to London, she had determined to effect Lady
Glyde's escape pn–; vately, by means of the nurse.

She went at once to her stockbroker, and sold out of the funds all the
little property she possessed, amounting to rather less than seven
hundred pounds. Determined, if necessary, to pay the price of her
sister's liberty with every farthing she had in the world, she repaired
the next day, having the whole sum about her in bank-notes, to her
appointment outside the Asylum wall.

The nurse was there. Miss Halcombe approached the subject cautiously by
many preliminary questions.  She discovered, among other particulars,
that the nurse who had in former times attended on the true Anne
Catherick had been held responsible (although she was not to blame for
it) for the patient's escape, and had lost her place in consequence. The
same penalty, it was added, would attach to the person then speaking to
her, if the supposed Anne Catherick was missing a second time; and,
moreover, the nurse in this case had an especial interest in keeping her
place. She was engaged to be married, and she and her future husband
were waiting till they could save, together, between two and three
hundred pounds to start in business. The nurse's wages were good, and
she might succeed, by strict economy, in contributing her small share
towards the sum required in two years' time.

On this hint Miss Halcombe spoke. She declared that the supposed Anne
Catherick was nearly related to her, that she had been placed in the
Asylum under a fatal mistake, and that the nurse would be doing a good
and a Christian action in being the means of restoring them to one
another. Before there was time to start a single objection, Miss
Halcombe took four banknotes of a hundred pounds each from her
pocket-book, and offered them to the woman. as a compensation for the
risk she was to run, and for the loss of her place.

The nurse hesitated, through sheer incredulity and surprise. Miss
Halcombe pressed the point on her firmly.

`You will be doing a good action,` she repeated; `you will be helping
the most injured and unhappy woman alive. There is your marriage portion
for a reward. Bring her safely to me here, and I will put these four
bank-notes into your hand before I claim her.'

`Will you give me a letter saying those words, which I can show to my
sweetheart when he asks how I got the money?' inquired the woman.

`I will bring the letter with me, ready written and signed,' answered
Miss Halcombe.

`Then I'll risk it,' said the nurse.

`When?'

`Tomorrow.'

It was hastily agreed between them that Miss Halcombe should return
early the next morning and wait out of sight among the trees –; always,
however, keeping near the quiet spot of ground under the north wall. The
nurse could fix no time for her appearance, caution requiring that she
should wait and be guided by circunstances. On that understanding they
separated.

Miss Halcombe was at her place, with the promised letter and the
promised bank-notes, before ten the next morning. She waited more than
an hour and a half. At the end of that time the nurse came quickly round
the corner of the wall holding Lady Glyde by the arm. The moment they
met Miss Halcombe put the bank-notes and the letter into her hand, and
the sisters were united again.

The nurse had dressed Lady Glyde, with excellent forethought, in a
bonnet, veil, and shawl of her own. Miss Halcombe only detained her to
suggest a means of turning the pursuit in a false direction, when the
escape was discovered at the Asylum. She was to go back to the house, to
mention in the hearing of the other nurses that Anne Catherick had been
inquiring latterly about the distance from London to Hampshire. to wait
till the last moment, before discovery was inevitable, and then to give
the alarm that Anne was missing. The supposed inquiries about Hampshire,
when communicated to the owner of the Asylum, would lead him to imagine
that his patient had returned to Blackwater Park, under the influence of
the delusion which made her persist in asserting herself to be Lady
Glyde, and the first pursuit would, in all probability, be turned in
that direction The nurse consented to follow these suggestions, the more
readily as they offered her the means of securing herself against any
worse consequences than the loss of her place, by remaining in the
Asylum, and so maintaining the appearance of innocence, at least. She at
once returned to the house, and Miss Halcombe lost no time in taking her
sister back with her to London. They caught the afternoon train to
Carlisle the same afternoon, and arrived at Limmeridge, without accident
or difficulty of any kind, that night.

During the latter part of their journey they were alone in the carriage,
and Miss Halcombe was able to collect such remembrances of the past as
her sister's confused and weakened memory was able to recall. The
terrible story of the conspiracy so obtained was presented in fragments,
sadly incoherent in themselves, and widely detached from each other.
Imperfect as the revelation was, it must nevertheless be recorded here
before this explanatory narrative closes with the events of the next day
at Limmeridge House.

Lady Glyde's recollection of the events which followed her departure
from Blackwater Park began with her arrival at the London terminus of
the South Western Railway. She had omitted to make a memorandum
beforehand of the day on which she took the journey. All hope of fixing
that important date by any evidence of hers, or of Mrs Michelson's, must
be given up for lost.

On the arrival of the train at the platform Lady Glyde found Count Fosco
waiting for her. He was at the carriage door as soon as the porter could
open it. The train was unusually crowded, and there was great confusion
in getting the luggage. Some person whom Count Fosco brought with him
procured the luggage which belonged to Lady Glyde. It was marked with
her name. She drove away alone with the Count in a vehicle which she did
not particularly notice at the time.

Her first question, on leaving the terminus, referred to Miss Halcombe.
The Count informed her that Miss Halcombe had not yet gone to
Cumberland, after-consideration having caused him to doubt the prudence
of her taking so long a journey without some days' previous rest.

Lady Glyde next inquired whether her sister was then staying in the
Count's house. Her recollection of the answer was confused, her only
distinct impression in relation to it being that the Count declared he
was then taking her to see Miss Halcombe. Lady Glyde's experience of
London was so limited that she could not tell, at the time, through what
streets they were driving. But they never left the streets, and they
never passed any gardens or trees. When the carriage stopped, it stopped
in a small street behind a square –; a square in which there were shops,
and public buildings, and many people. From these recollections (of
which Lady Glyde was certain) it seems quite clear that Count Fosco did
not take her to his own residence in the suburb of St John's Wood.

They entered the house, and went upstairs to a back room, either on the
first or second floor. The luggage was carefully brought in. A female
servant opened the door, and a man with a dark beard, apparently a
foreigner, met them in the hall, and with great politeness showed them
the way upstairs. In answer to Lady Glyde's inquiries, the Count assured
her that Miss Halcombe was in the house, and that she should be
immediately informed of her sister's arrival. He and the foreigner then
went away and left her by herself in the room. It was poorly furnished
as a sitting-room, and it looked out on the backs of houses.

The place was remarkably quiet –; no footsteps went up or down the
stairs –; she only heard in the room beneath her a dull, rumbling sound
of men's voices talking. Before she had been long left alone the Count
returned, to explain that Miss Halcombe was then taking rest, and could
not be disturbed for a little while. He was accompanied into the room by
a gentleman (an Englishman), whom he legged to present as a friend of
his.

After this singular introduction –; in the course of which no names, to
the best of Lady Glyde's recollection, had been mentioned –; she was
left alone with the stranger. He was perfectly civil, but he startled
and confused her by some odd questions about herself, and by looking at
her, while he asked them, in a strange manner. After remaining a short
time he went out, and a minute or two afterwards a second stranger –;
also an Enghshman –; came in. This person introduced himself as another
friend of Count Fosco's, and he, in his turn, looked at her very oddly,
and asked some curious questions –; never, as well as she could
remember, addressing her by name, and going out again, after a little
while, like the first man. By this time she was so frightened about
herself, and so uneasy about her sister, that she had thoughts of
venturing downstairs again, and claiming the protection and assistance
of the only woman she had seen in the house –; the servant who answered
the door.

Just as she had risen from her chair, the Count came back into the room.

The moment he appeared she asked anxiously how long the meeting between
her sister and herself was to be still delayed. At first he returned an
evasive answer, but on being pressed, he acknowledged, with great
apparent reluctance, that Miss Halcombe was by no means so well as he
had hitherto represented her to be. His tone and manner, in making this
reply, so alarmed Lady Glyde, or rather so painfully increased the
uneasiness which she had felt in the company of the two strangers, that
a sudden faintness overcame her, and she was obliged to ask for a glass
of water. The Count called from the door for water, and for a bottle of
smelling-salts. Both were brought in by the foreign-looking man with the
beard. The water, when Lady Glyde attempted to drink it, had so strange
a taste that it increased her faintness, and she hastily took the bottle
of salts from Count Fosco, and smelt at it. Her head became giddy on the
instant. The Count caught the bottle as it dropped out of her hand, and
the last impression of which she was conscious was that he held it to
her nostrils again.

From this point her recollections were found to be confused,
fragmentary, and difficult to reconcile with any reasonable probability.

Her own impression was that she recovered her senses later in the
evening, that she then left the house, that she went (as she had
previously arranged to go, at Blackwater Park) to Mrs Vesey's –; that
she drank tea there, and that she passed the night under Mrs Vesey's
roof. She was totally unable to say how, or when, or in what company she
left the house to which Count Fosco had brought her. But she persisted
in asserting that she had been to Mrs Vesey's, and still more
extraordinary, that she had been helped to undress and get to bed by Mrs
Rubelle ! She could not remember what the conversation was at Mrs
Vesey's, or whom she saw there besides that lady, or why Mrs Rubelle
should have been present in the house to help her.

Her recollection of what happened to her the next morning was still more
vague and unreliable.

She had some dim idea of driving out (at what hour she could not say)
with Count Fosco, and with Mrs Rubelle again for a female attendant. But
when, and why, she left Mrs Vesey she could not tell; neither did she
know what direction the carriage drove in, or where it set her down, or
whether the Count and Mrs Rubelle did or did not remain with her all the
time she was out. At this point in her sad story there was a total
blank. She had no impressions of the faintest kind to communicate –; no
idea whether one day, or more than one day, had passed –; until she came
to herself suddenly in a strange place, surrounded by women who were all
unknown to her.

This was the Asylum. Here she first heard herself called by Anne
Catherick's name, and here, as a last remarkable circumstance in the
story of the conspiracy, her own eyes informed her that she had Anne
Catherick's clothes on. The nurse, on the first night in the Asylum, had
shown her the marks on each article of her underclothing as it was taken
off, and had said, not at all irritably or unkindly, `took at your own
name on your own clothes, and don't worry us all any more about being
Lady Glyde. She's dead and buried, and you're alive and hearty. Do look
at your clothes now ! There it is, in good marking ink, and there you
will find it on all your old things, which we have kept in the house –;
Anne Catherick, as plain as print!' And there it was, when Miss Halcombe
examined the linen her sister wore, on the night of their arrival at
Limmeridge House.

These were the only recollections –; all of them uncertain, and some of
them contradictory –; which could be extracted from Lady Glyde by
careful questioning on the journey to Cumberland. Miss Halcombe
abstained from pressing her with any inquiries relating to events in the
Asylum –; her mind being but too ewidently unfit to bear the trial of
reverting to them. It was known, by the voluntary admission of the owner
of the madhouse, that she was received there on the twenty-seventh of
July. From that date until the fifteenth of October (the day of her
rescue) she had been under restraint, her identity with Anne Catherick
systematically asserted, and her sanity, from first to last, practically
denied. Faculties less delicately balanced, constitution less tenderly
organised, must have suffered under such an ordeal as this. No man could
have gone through it and come out of it unchanged.

Arriving at Limmeridge late on the evening of the fifteenth, Miss
Halcombe wisely resolved not to attempt the assertion of Lady Glyde's
identity until the next day.

The first thing in the morning she went to Mr Fairlie's room, and using
all possible cautions and preparations beforehand, at last told him in
so many words what had happened. As soon as his first astonishment and
alarm had subsided, he angrily declared that Miss Halcombe had allowed
herself to be duped by Anne Catherick. He referred her to Count Fosco's
letter, and to what she had herself told him of the personal resemblance
between Anne and his deceased niece, and he positively declined to admit
to his presence, even for one minute only, a madwoman, whom it was an
insult and an outrage to have brought into his house at all.

Miss Halcombe left the room –; waited till the first heat of her
indignation had passed away –; decided on reflection that Mr Fairlie
should see his niece in the interests of common humanity before he
closed his doors on her as a stranger –; and thereupon, without a word
of previous warning, took Lady Glyde with her to his room. The servant
was posted at the door to prevent their entrance, but Miss Halcombe
insisted on passing him, and made her way into Mr Fairhe's presence,
leading her sister by the hand.

The scene that followed, though it only lasted for a few minutes, was
too painful to be described –; Miss Halcombe herself shrank from
referring to it. Let it be enough to say that Mr Fairlie declared, in
the most positive terms, that he did not recognise the woman who had
been brought into his room –; that he saw nothing in her face and manner
to make him doubt for a moment that his niece lay buried in Limmeridge
churchyard, and that he would call on the law to protect him if before
the day was over she was not removed from the house.

Taking the very worst view of Mr Fairlie's selfishness, indolence, and
habitual want of feeling, it was manifestly impossible to suppose that
he was capable of such infamy as secretly recognising and openly
disowning his brother's child. Miss Halcombe hunianely and sensibly
allowed all due force to the influence of prejudice and alarm in
preventing him from fairly exercising his perceptions, and accounted for
what had happened in that way. But when she next put the servants to the
test, and found that they too were, in every case, uncertain, to say the
least of it, whether the lady presented to them was their young mistress
or Anne Catherick, of whose resemblance to her they had all heard, the
sad conclusion was inevitable that the change produced in Lady Glyde's
face and manner by her imprisonment in the Asylum was far more serious
than Miss Halcombe had at first supposed. The vile deception which had
asserted her death defied exposure even in the house where she was born,
and among the people with whom she had lived.

In a less critical situation the effort need not have been given up as
hopeless even yet.

For example, the maid, Fanny, who happened to be then absent from
Limmeridge, was expected back in two days, and there would be a chance
of gaining her recognition to start with, seeing that she had been in
much more constant communication with her mistress, and had been much
more heartily attached to her than the other servants. Again, Lady Glyde
might have been privately kept in the house or in the village to wait
until her health was a little recovered and her mind was a little
steadied again. When her inemory could be once more trusted to serve
her, she would naturally refer to persons and events in the past with a
certainty and a familiarity which no imposter could simulate, and so the
fact of her identity, which her own appearance had failed to establish,
might subsequently be proved, with time to help her, by the surer test
of her own words.

But the circumstances under which she had regained her freedom rendered
all recourse to such means as these simply impracticable. The pursuit
from the Asylum, diverted to Hampshire for the time only, would
infallibly next take the direction of Cumberland. The persons appointed
to seek the fugitive might arrive at Limmeridge House at a few hours'
notice, and in Mr Fairlie's present temper of mind they niight count on
the immediate exertion of his local influence and authority to assist
them. The commonest consideration for Lady Glyde's safety forced on Miss
Halcombe the necessity of resigning the struggle to do her justice, and
of removing her at once from the place of all others that was now most
dangerous to her –; the neighbourhood of her own home.

An immediate return to London was the first and wisest measure of
security which suggested itself. In the great city all traces of them
might be most speedily and most surely effaced. There were no
preparations to make –; no farewell words of kindness to exchange with
any one. On the afternoon of that memorable day of the sixteenth Miss
Halcombe roused her sister to a last exertion of courage, and without a
living soul to wish them well at parting, the two took their way into
the world alone, and turned their backs for ever on Limmeridge House.

They had passed the hill above the churchyard, when Lady Glyde insisted
on turning back to look her last at her mother's grave. Miss Ha!combe
tried to shake her resolution, but, in this one instance, tried in vain.
She was immovable. Her dim eyes lit with a sudden fire, and flashed
through the veil that hung over them –; her wasted fingers strengthened
moment by moment round the friendly arm by which they had held so
listlessly till this time. I believe in my soul that the hand of God was
pointing their way back to them, and that the most innocent and the most
afflicted of His creatures was chosen in that dread moment to see it.

They retraced their steps to the burial-ground, and by that act sealed
the future of our three lives.




This was the story of the past –; the story so far as we knew it then.

Two obvious conclusions presented themselves to my mind after hearing
it. In the first place, I saw darkly what the nature of the conspiracy
had been, how chances had been watched, and how circumstances had been
handled to ensure impunity to a daring and an intricate crime. While all
details were still a mystery to me, the vile manner in which the
personal resemblance between the woman in white and Lady Glyde had been
turned to account was clear beyond doubt. It was plain that Anne
Catherick had been introduced into Count Fosco's house as Lady Glyde –;
it was plain that Lady Glyde had taken the dead woman's place in the
Asylum –; the substitution having been so managed as to make innocent
people (the doctor and the two servants certainly, and the owner of the
mad-house in all probability) accomplices in the crime.

The second conclusion came as the necessary consequence of the first. We
three had no mercy to expect from Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde.
The success of the conspiracy had brought with it a clear gain to those
two men of thirty thousand pounds –; twenty thousand to one, ten
thousand to the other through his wife. They had that interest, as well
as other interests, in ensuring their impunity from exposure, and they
would leave no stone unturned, no sacrifice unattempted, no treachery
untried, to discover the place in which their victim was concealed, and
to part her from the only friends she had in the world –; Marian
Halcombe and myself.

The sense of this serious peril –; a peril which every day and every
hour might bring nearer and nearer to us –; was the one influence that
guided me in fixing the place of our retreat. I chose it in the far east
of London, where there were fewest idle people to lounge and look about
them in the streets. I chose it in a poor and a populous neighbourhood
–; because the harder the struggle for existence among the men and women
about us, the less the risk of their having the time or taking the pains
to notice chance strangers who came among them. These were the great
advantages I looked to, but our locality was a gain to us also in
another and a hardly less important respect. We could live cheaply by
the daily work of my hands, and could save every farthing we possessed
to forward the purpose, the righteous purpose, of redressing an infamous
wrong –; which, from first to last, I now kept steadily in view.

In a week's time Marian Halcombe and I had settled how the course of our
new lives should be directed.

There were no other lodgers in the house, and we had the means of going
in and out without passing through the shop. l arranged, for the present
at least, that neither Marian nor Laura should stir outside the door
without my being with them, and that in my absence from home they should
let no one into their rooms on any pretence whatever. This rule
established, I went to a friend whom I had known in former days –; a
wood engraver in large practice –; to seek for employment, telling him,
at the same time, that I had reasons for wishing to remain unknown.

He at once concluded that I was in debt, expressed his regret in the
usual forms, and then promised to do what he could to assist me. I left
his false impression undisturbed, and accepted the work he had to give.
He knew that he could trust my experience and my industry. I had what he
wanted, steadiness and facility, and though my earnings were but small,
they sufficed for our necessities. As soon as we could feel certain of
this, Marian Halcombe and I put together what we possessed. She had
between two and three hundred pounds left of her own property, and I had
nearly as much remaining from the purchase-money obtained by the sale of
my drawing-master's practice before I left England. Together we made up
between us more than four hundred pounds. l deposited this little
fortune in a bank, to be kept for the expense of those secret inquiries
and investigations which I was determined to set on foot, and to carry
on by myself if I could find no one to help me. We calculated our weekly
expenditure to the last farthing, and we never touched our little fund
except in Laura's interests and for Laura's sake.

The house-work, which, if we had dared trust a stranger near us, would
have been done by a servant, was taken on the first day, taken as her
own right, by Marian Halcombe. `What a woman's hands are fit for,' she
said, `early and late, these hands of mine shall do.' They trembled as
she held them out. The wasted arms told their sad story of the Past, as
she turned up the sleeves of the poor plain dress that she wore for
safety's sake; but the unquenchable spirit of the woman burnt bright in
her even yet. I saw the big tears rise thick in her eyes, and fall
slowly over her cheeks as she looked at me. She dashed them away with a
touch of her old energy, and smiled with a faint reflection of her old
good spirits. `Don't doubt my courage, Walter,' she pleaded, `it's my
weakness that cries, not me. The house-work shall conquer it if I
can't.' And she kept her word –; the victory was won when we met in the
evening, and she sat down to rest. Her large steady black eyes looked at
me with a flash of their bright firmness of bygone days. `I am not quite
broken down yet,' she said. `I am worth tmsting with my share of the
work.' Before I could answer, she added in a whisper, `And worth
trusting with my share in the risk and the danger too. Remember that, if
the time comes !'

I did remember it when the time came.

As early as the end of October the daily course of our lives had assumed
its settled direction, and we three were as completely isolated in our
place of concealment as if the house we lived in had been a desert
island, and the great network of streets and the thousands of our
fellow-creatures all round us the waters of an illimitable sea. I could
now reckon on some leisure time for considering what my future plan of
action should be, and how I might arm myself most securely at the outset
for the coming struggle with Sir Percival and the Count.

I gave up all hope of appealing to my recognition of Laura, or to
Marian's recognition of her, in proof of her identity. If we had loved
her less dearly, if the instinct implanted in us by that love had not
been far more certain than any exercise of reasoning, far keener than
any process of observation, even we might have hesitated on first seeing
her.

The outward changes wrought by the suffering and the terror of the past
had fearfully, almost hopelessly, strengthened the fatal resemblance
between Anne Catherick and herself. In my narrative of events at the
time of my residence in Limmeridge House, I have recorded, from my own
observation of the two, how the likeness, striking as it was when viewed
generally, failed in many important points of similarity when tested in
detail. In those former days, if they had both been seen together side
by side, no person could for a moment have mistaken them one for the
other –; as has happened often in the instances of twins. I could not
say this now. The sorrow and suffering which I had once blamed myself
for associating even by a passing thought with the future of Laura
Fairlie, had set their profaning marks on the youth and beauty of her
face; and the fatal resemblance which I had once seen and shuddered at
seeing, in idea only, was now a real and living resemblance which
asserted itself before my own eyes. Strangers, acquaintances, friends
even who could not look at her as we looked, if she had been shown to
them in the first days of her rescue from the Asylum, might have doubted
if she were the Laura Fairlie they had once seen, and doubted without
blame.

The one remaining chance, which I had at first thought might be trusted
to serve us –; the chance of appealing to her recollection of persons
and events with which no imposter could be familiar, was proved, by the
sad test of our later experience, to be hopeless. Every little caution
that Marian and I practised towards her –; every little remedy we tried,
to strengthen and steady slowly the weakened, shaken faculties, was a
fresh protest in itself against the risk of turning her mind back on the
troubled and the terrible past.

The only events of former days which we ventured on encouraging her to
recall were the little trivial domestic events of that happy time at
Limmeridge, when I first went there and taught her to draw. The day when
I roused those remembrances by showing her the sketch of the
summer-house which she had given me on the morning of our farewell, and
which had never been separated from me since, was the birthday of our
first hope. Tenderly and gradually, the memory of the old walks and
drives dawned upon her, and the poor weary pining eyes looked at Marian
and at me with a new interest, with a faltering thoughtfulness in them,
which from that moment we cherished and kept alive. I bought her a
little box of colours, and a sketch-book like the old sketch-book which
I had seen in her hands on the morning that we first met. Once again –;
oh me, once again ! –; at spare hours saved from my work, in the dull
London light, in the poor London room, I sat by her side to guide the
faltering touch, to help the feeble hand. Day by day I raised and raised
the new interest till its place in the blank of her existence was at
last assured –; till she could think of her drawing and talk of it, and
patiently practise it by herself, with some faint reflection of the
innocent pleasure in my encouragement, the growing enjoyment in her own
progress, which belonged to the lost life and the lost happiness of past
days.

We helped her mind slowly by this simple means, we took her out between
us to walk on fine days, in a quiet old City square near at hand, where
there was nothing to confuse or alarm her –; we spared a few pounds from
the fund at the banker's to get her wine, and the delicate strengthening
food that she required –; we amused her in the evenings with children's
games at cards, with scrapbooks full of prints which I borrowed from the
engraver who employed me –; by these, and other trifling attentions like
them, we composed her and steadied her, and hoped all things, as
cheerfully as we could from time and care, and love that never neglected
and never despaired of her. But to take her mercilessly from seclusion
and repose –; to confront her with strangers, or with aquaintances who
were little better than strangers –; to rouse the painful impressions of
her past life which we had so carefully hushed to rest –; this, even in
her own interests, we dared not do. Whatever sacrifices it cost,
whatever long, weary, heart-breaking delays it involved, the wrong that
had been inflicted on her, if mortal means could grapple it, must be
redressed without her knowledge and without her help.

This resolution settled, it was next necessary to decide how the first
risk should be ventured, and what the first proceedings should be.

After consulting with Marian, I resolved to begin by gathering together
as many facts as could be collected –; then to ask the advice of Mr
Kyrle (whom we knew we could trust), and to ascertain from him, in the
first instance, if the legal remedy lay fairly within our reach. I owed
it to Laura's interests not to stake her whole future on my own unaided
exertions, so long as there was the faintest prospect of strengthening
our position by obtaining reliable assistance of any kind.

The first source of information to which I applied was the journal kept
at Blackwater Park by Marian Halcombe. There were passages in this diary
relating to myself which she thought it best that I should not see.
Accordingly, she read to me from the manuscript, and I took the notes I
wanted as she went on. We could only find time to pursue this occupation
by sitting up late at night. Three nights were devoted to the purpose,
and were enough to put me in possession of all that Marian could tell.

My next proceeding was to gain as much additional evidence as I could
procure from other people without exciting suspicion. I went myself to
Mrs Vesey to ascertain if Laura's impression of having slept there was
correct or not. In this case, from consideration for Mrs Vesey's age and
infinity, and in all subsequent cases of the same kind from
considerations of caution, I kept our real position a secret, and was
always careful to speak of Laura as `the late Lady Glyde'.

Mrs Vesey's answer to my inquiries only confirmed the apprehensions
which I had previously felt. Laura had certainly written to say she
would pass the night under the roof of her old friend –; but she had
never been near the house.

Her mind in this instance, and, as I feared, in other instances besides,
confusedly presented to her something which she had only intended to do
in the false light of something which she had really done. The
unconscious contradiction of herself was easy to account for in this way
–; but it was likely to lead to serious results. It was a stunble on the
threshold at starting –; it was a flaw in the evidence which told
fatally against us.

When I next asked for the letter which Laura had written to Mrs Vesey
from Blackwater Park, it was given to me without the envelope, which had
been thrown into the wastepaper basket, and long since destroyed. In the
letter itself no date was mentioned –; not even the day of the week. It
only contained these lines: –; `Dearest Mrs Vesey, I am in sad distress
and anxiety, and I may come to your house tomorrow night, and ask for a
bed. I can't tell you what is the matter in this letter –; I write it in
such fear of being found out that I can fix my mind on nothing. Pray be
at home to see me. I will give you a thousand kisses, and

tell you everything. Your affectionate Laura.' What help was there in
those lines? None.

On returning from Mrs Vesey's, I instructed Marian to write (observing
the same caution which I practised myself) to Mrs Michelson. She was to
express, if she pleased, some general suspicion of Count Fosco's
conduct, and she was to ask the housekeeper to supply us with a plain
statement of events, in the interests of truth. While we were waiting
for the answer, which reached us in a week's time, I went to the doctor
in St John's Wood, introducing myself as sent by Miss Halcombe to
collect, if possible, more particulars of her sister's last illness than
Mr Kyrle had found the time to procure. By Mr Goodricke's assistance, I
obtained a copy of the certificate of death, and an interview with the
woman (Jane Gould) who had been employed to prepare the body for the
grave. Through this person I also discovered a means of communicating
with the servant, Hester Pinhorn. She had recently left her place in
consequence of a disagreement with her mistress, and she was lodging
with some people in the neighbourhood whom Mrs Gould knew. In the manner
here indicated I obtained the Narratives of the housekeeper, of the
doctor, of Jane Gould, and of Hester Pinhorn, exactly as they are
presented in these pages.

Furnished with such additional evidence as these documents afforded, I
considered myself to be sufficiently prepared for a consultation with Mr
Kyrle, and Marian wrote accordingly to mention my name to him, and to
specify the day and hour at which I requested to see him on private
business.

There was time enough in the morning for me to take Laura out for her
walk as usual, and to see her quietly settled at her drawing afterwards.
She looked up at me with a new anxiety in her face as I rose to leave
the room, and her fingers began to toy doubtfully, in the old way, with
the brushes and pencils on the table.

`You are not tired of me yet?' she said. `You are not going away because
you are tired of me? I will try to do better –; I will try to get well.
Are you as fond of me, Walter, as you used to be, now I am so pale and
thin, and so slow in learning to draw ? '

She spoke as a child might have spoken, she showed me her

thoughts as a child might have shown them. I waited a few minutes longer
–; waited to tell her that she was dearer to me now than she had ever
been in the past times. `Try to get well again,' I said, encouraging the
new hope in the future which I saw dawning in her mind, `try to get well
again, for Marian's sake and for mine.'

`Yes,' she said to herself, returning to her drawing. `I must

try, because they are both so fond of me.' She suddenly looked up

again. `Don't be gone long ! I can't get on with my drawing,

Walter, when you are not here to help me.'

`I shall soon be back, my darling –; soon be back to see how you are
getting on.'

My voice faltered a little in spite of me. I forced myself from the
room. It was no time, then, for parting with the self-control which
might yet serve me in my need before the day was out.

As I opened the door, I beckoned to Marian to follow me to the stairs.
It was necessary to prepare her for a result which I felt might sooner
or later follow my showing myself openly in the streets.

`I shall, in all probability, be back in a few hours,' I said, `and you
will take care, as usual, to let no one inside the doors in my absence.
But if anything happens –;'

`What can happen?' she interposed quickly. `Tell me plainly, Walter, if
there is any danger, and I shall know how to meet it.'

`The only danger,' I replied, `is that Sir Percival Glyde may have been
recalled to London by the news of Laura's escape. You are aware that he
had me watched before I left England, and that he probably knows me by
sight, although I don't know him?'

She laid her hand on my shoulder and looked at me in anxious silence. I
saw she umderstood the serious risk that threatened us.

`It is not likely,' I said, `that I shall be seen in London again so
soon, either by Sir Percival himself or by the persons in his employ.
But it is barely possible that an accident may happen. In that case, you
will not be alarmed if I fail to return tonight, and you will satisfy
any inquiry of Laura's with the best excuse that you can make for me? lf
I find the least reason to suspect that I am watched, I will take good
care that no spy follows me back to this house. Don't doubt my return,
Marian, however it may be delayed –; and fear nothing.'

`Nothing !' she answered firmly. `You shall not regret, Walter, that you
have only a woman to help you.' She paused, and detained me for a moment
longer. `Take care !' she said, pressing my hand anxiously –; `take
care!'

I left her, and set forth to pave the way for discovery –; the dark and
doubtful way, which began at the lawyer's door.




No circumstances of the slightest importance happened on my way to the
offices of Messrs Gilmore & Kyrle, in Chancery Lane.

While my card was being taken into Mr Kyrle, a consideration occurred to
me which I deeply regretted not having thought of before. The
information derived from Marian's diary made it a matter of certainty
that Count Fosco had opened her first letter from Blackwater Park to Mr
Kyrle, and had, by means of his wife, intercepted the second. He was
therefore well aware of the address of the office, and he would
naturally infer that if Marian wanted advice and assistance, after
Laura's escape from the Asylum, she would apply once more to the
experience of Mr Kyrle. In this case the office in Chancery Lane was the
very first place which he and Sir Percival would cause to be watched,
and if the same persons were chosen for the purpose who had been
employed to follow me, before my departure from England, the fact of my
return would in all probability be ascertained on that very day. I had
thought, generally, of the chances of my being recognised in the
streets, but the special risk connected with the office had never
occurred to me until the present moment. It was too late now to repair
this unfortunate error in judgment –; too late to wish that I had made
arrangements for meeting the lawyer in some place privately appointed
beforehand. I could only resolve to be cautious on leaving Chancery
Lane, and not to go straight home again under any circumstances
whatever.

After waiting a few minutes I was shown into Mr Kyrle's private room. He
was a pale, thin, quiet, self-possessed man, with a very attentive eye,
a very low voice, and a very undemonstrative manner –; not (as I judged)
ready with his sympathy where strangers were concermed, and not at all
easy to disturb in his professional composure. A better man for my
purpose could hardly have been found. If he committed himself to a
decision at all, and if the decision was favourable, the strength of our
case was as good as proved from that moment.

`Before I enter on the business which brings me here,' I said, `I ought
to warn you, Mr Kyrle, that the shortest statement I can make of it may
occupy some little time.'

`My time is at Miss Halcombe's diposal,' he replied. `Where any
interests of hers are concerned, I represent my partner personally, as
well as professionally. It was his request that I should do so, when he
ceased to take an active part in business.'

`May I inquire whether Mr Gilmore is in England?'

`He is not, he is living with his relatives in Germany. His health has
improved, but the period of his return is still uncertain.'

While we were exchanging these few preiminary words, he had been
searching among the papers before him, and he now produced from them a
sealed letter. I thought he was about to hand the letter to me, but,
apparently changing his mind, he placed it by itself on the table,
settled himself in his chair, and silently waited to hear what I had to
say.

Without wasting a moment in prefatory words of any sort, I entered on my
narrative, and put him in full possession of the events which have
already been related in these pages.

Lawyer as he was to the very marrow of his bones, I startled him out of
his professional composure. Expressions of incredulity and surprise,
which he could not repress, interrupted me several times before I had
done. I persevered, however, to the end, and as soon as I reached it,
boldly asked the one important question –;

`What is your opinion, Mr Kyrle?'

He was too cautious to commit himself to an answer without taking time
to recover his self-possession fist.

`Before I give my opinion,' he said, `I must beg permission to clear the
ground by a few questions.'

He put the questions –; sharp, suspicious, unbelieving questions, which
clearly showed me, as they proceeded, that he thought I was the victim
of a delusion, and that he might even have doubted, but for my
introduction to him by Miss Halcombe, whether I was not attempting the
perpetration of a cunninglydesigned fraud.

`Do you believe that I have spoken the truth, Mr Kyrle?' I asked, when
he had done examining me.

`So far as your own convictions are concermed, I am certain you have
spoken the truth,' he replied. `I have the highest esteem for Miss
Halcombe, and I have therefore every reason to respect a gentleman whose
mediation she trusts in a matter of this kind. I will even go farther,
if you like, and admit, for courtesy's sake and for arguments sake, that
the identity of Lady Glyde as a living person is a proved fact to Miss
Halcombe and yourself. But came to me for a legal opinion. As a lawyer,
and as a lawyer yonoulyc, oit is my duty to tell you, Mr Hartright, that
you have not the shadow of a case.'18

`You put it strongly, Mr Kyrle.'

`I will try to put it plainly as well. The evidence of Lady Glyde's
death is, on the face of it, clear and satisfactory. There is her aunt's
testimony to prove that she came to Count Fosco's house, that she fell
ill, and that she died. There is the testimony of the medical
certificate to prove the death, and to show that it took place under
natural circumstances. There is the fact of the funeral at Limmeridge,
and there is the assertion of the inscription on the tomb. That is the
case you want to overthrow. What evidence have you to support the
declaration on your side that the person who died and was buried was not
Lady Glyde? Let us run through the main points of your statement and see
what they are worth. Miss Halcombe goes to a certain private Asylum, and
there sees a certain female patient. It is known that a woman named Anne
Catherick, and bearing an extraordinary personal resemblance to Lady
Glyde, escaped from the Asylum; it is known that the person received
there last July was received as Anne Catherick brought back; it is known
that the gentleman who brought her back warned Mr Fairlie that it was
part of her insanity to be bent on personating his dead niece; and it is
known that she did repeatedly declare herself in the Asylum (where no
one believed her) to be Lady Glyde. These are all facts. What have you
to set against them? Miss Halcombe's recognition of the woman, which
recognition after-events invalidate or contradict. Does Miss Halcombe
assert her supposed sister's identity to the owner of the Asylum, and
take legal means for rescuing her? No, she secretly bribes a nurse to
let her escape. When the patient has been released in this doubtful
manner, and is taken to Mr Fairlie, does he recognise her? Is he
staggered for one instant in his belief of his niece's death? No. Do the
servants recognise her? No. Is she kept in the neighbourhood to assert
her own identity and to stand the test of further proceedings? No, she
is privately taken to London. In the meantime you have recognised her
also, but you are not a relative –; you are not even an old friend of
the family. The servants contradict you, and Mr Fairlie contradicts Miss
Halcombe, and the supposed Lady Glyde contradicts herself. She declares
she passed the night in London at a certain house. Your own evidence
shows that she has never been near that house, and your own admission is
that her condition of mind prevents you from producing her anywhere to
submit to investigation, and to speak for herself. I pass over minor
points of evidence on both sides to save time, and I ask you, if this
case were to go now into a court of law –; to go before a jury, bound to
take facts as they reasonably appear –; where are your proofs?'

I was obliged to wait and collect myself before I could answer him. It
was the first time the story of Laura and the story of Marian had been
presented to me from a stranger's point of view –; the first time the
terrible obstacles that lay across our path had been made to show
themselves in their true character.

`There can be no doubt,' I said, `that the facts, as you have stated
them, appear to tell against us, but –;'

`But you think those facts can be explained away,' interposed Mr Kyrle.
`Let me tell you the result of my experience on that point. When an
English jury has to choose between a plain fact on the surface and a
long explanation under the surface, it always takes the fact in
preference to the explanation. For example, Lady Glyde (I call the lady
you represent by that name for argument's sake) declares she has slept
at a certain house, and it is proved that she has not slept at that
house. You explain this circumstance by entering into the state of her
mind, and deducing from it a metaphysical conclusion. I don't say the
conclusion is wrong –; I only say that the jury will take the fact of
her contradicting herself in preference to any reason for the
contradiction that you can offer.'

`But is it not possible,' I urged, `by dint of patience and exertion, to
discover additional evidence? Miss Halcombe and I have a few hundred
pounds –;'

He looked at me with a half-suppressed pity, and shook his head.

`Consider the subject, Mr Hartright, from your own point of view,' he
said. `If you are right about Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco (which
I don't admit, mind), every imaginable difficulty would be thrown in the
way of your getting fresh evidence. Every obstacle of litigation would
be raised –; every point in the case would be systematically contested
–; and by the time we had spent our thousands instead of our hundreds,
the final result would, in all probability, be against us. Questions of
identity, where instances of personal resemblance are concerned, are, in
themselves, the hardest of all questions to settle –; the hardest, even
when they are free from the complications which beset the case we are
now discussing. I really see no prospect of throwing any light whatever
on this extraordinary affair. Even if the person buried in Limmeridge
churchyard be not Lady Glyde, she was, in life, on your showing, so like
her, that we should gain nothing, if we applied for the necessary
authority to have the body exhumed. In short, there is no case, Mr
Hartright –; there is really no case.'

I was determined to believe that there was a case, and in that
determination shifted my ground, and appealed to him once more.

Are there not other proofs that we might produce besides the proof of
identity?' I asked.

`Not as you are situated,' he replied. `The simplest and surest of all
proofs, the proof by comparison of dates, is, as I understand,
altogether out of your reach. lf you could show a discrepancy between
the date of the doctor's certificate and the date of Lady Glyde's
journey to London, the matter would wear a totally different aspect, and
I should be the first to say, Let us go on.'

`That date may yet be recovered, Mr Kyrle.'

`On the day when it is recovered, Mr Hartright, you will have a case. If
you have any prospect, at this moment, of getting at it –; tell me, and
we shall see if I can advise you.'

I considered. The housekeeper could not help us –; Laura could not help
us –; Marian could not help us. In all probability, the only persons in
existence who Mew the date were Sir Percival and the Count.

`I can think of no means of ascertaining the date at present,' I said,
`because I can think of no persons who are sure to know it, but Count
Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde.'

Mr Kyrle's calmly attentive face relaxed, for the first time, into a
smile.

`With your opinion of the conduct of those two gentlemen,' he said, `you
don't expect help in that quarter, I presume? If they have combined to
gain large sums of money by a conspiracy, they are not likely to confess
it, at any rate.'

`They may be forced to confess it, Mr Kyrle.'

`By whom?'

`By me.'

We both rose. He looked me attentively in the face with more appearance
of interest than he had shown yet. I coidd see that I had perplexed him
a little.

`You are very determined,' he said. `You have, no doubt, a personal
motive for proceeding, into which it is not my business to inquire. If a
case can be produced in the future, I can only say, my best assistance
is at your service. At the same time I must warn you, as the money
question always enters into the law question, that I see little hope,
even if you ultimately establish the fact of Lady Glyde's being alive,
of recovering her fortune. The foreigner would probably leave the
country before proceedings were commenced, and Sir Percival's
embarrassments are numerous enough and pressing enough to transfer
almost any sum of money he may possess from himself to his creditors.
You are of course aware –;'

I stopped him at that point.

`Let me beg that we may not discuss Lady Glyde's affairs,' I said. `I
have never known anything about them in former times, and I know nothing
of them now –; except that her fortune is lost. You are right in
assuming that I have personal motives for stirring in this matter. I
wish those motives to be always as disinterested as they are at the
present moment –;'

He tried to interpose and explain. I was a little heated, I suppose, by
feeling that he had doubted me, and I went on bluntly, without waiting
to hear him.

`There shall be no money motive,' I said, `no idea of personal advantage
in the service I mean to render to Lady Glyde. She has been cast out as
a stranger from the house in which she was born –; a lie which records
her death has been written on her mother's tomb –; and there are two
men, alive and unpunished, who are responsible for it. That house shall
open again to receive her in the presence of every soul who followed the
false funeral to the grave –; that lie shall be publicly erased from the
tombstone by the authority of the head of the family, and those two men
shall answer for their crime to ME, though the justice that sits in
tribunals is powerless to pursue them. I have given my life to that
purpose, and, alone as I stand, if God spares me, I will accomplish it.'

He drew back towards his table, and said nothing. His face showed
plainly that he thought my delusion had got the better of my reason, and
that he considered it totally useless to give me any more advice.

`We each keep our opinion, Mr Kyrle,' I said, `and we must wait till the
events of the future decide between us. In the meantime, I am much
obliged to you for the attention you have given to my statement. You
have shown me that the legal remedy lies, in every sense of the word,
beyond our means. We cannot produce the law proof, and we are not rich
enough to pay the law expenses. It is something gained to know that.'

I bowed and walked to the door. He called me back and gave me the letter
which I had seen him place on the table by itself at the beginning of
our interview.

`This came by post a few days ago,' he said. `Perhaps you will not mind
delivering it? Pray tell Miss Halcombe, at the same time, that I
sincerely regret being, thus far, unable to help her, except by advice,
which will not be more welcome, I am afraid, to her than to you.'

I looked at the letter while he was speaking. It was addressed to `Miss
Halcombe. Care of Messrs Gilmore & Kyrle, Chancery Lane.' The
handwriting was quite unknown to me.

On leaving the room I asked one last question.

`Do you happen to know,' I said, `if Sir Percival Glyde is still in
Paris?'

`He has returned to London,' replied Mr Kyrle. `At least I heard so from
his solicitor, whom I met yesterday.'

After that answer I went out.

On leaving the office the first precaution to be observed was to abstain
from attracting attention by stopping to look about me. I walked towards
one of the quietest of the large squares on the north of Holborn, then
suddenly stopped and turned round at a place where a long stretch of
pavement was left behind me.

There were two men at the corner of the square who had stopped also, and
who were standing talking together. After a moment's reflection I turned
back so as to pass them. One moved as I came near, and turned the corner
leading from the square into the street. The other remained stationary.
I looked at hmn as I passed and instantly recognised one of the men who
had watched me before I left England.

If I had been free to follow my own instincts, I should probably have
begun by speaking to the man, and have ended by knocking him down. But I
was bound to consider consequences. If I once placed myself publicly in
the wrong, I put the weapons at once into Sir Percival's hands. There
was no choice but to oppose cunning by cunning. I turned into the street
down which the second man had disappeared, and passed him, waiting in a
doorway. He was a stranger to me, and I was glad to make sure of his
personal appearance in case of future annoyance. Having done this, I
again walked northward till I reached the New Road. There I turned aside
to the west (having the men behind me all the time), and waited at a
point where I knew myself to be at some distance from a cab-stand, until
a fast two-wheel cab, empty, should happen to pass me. One passed in a
few minutes. I jumped in and told the man to drive rapidly towards Hyde
Park. There was no second fast cab for the spies behind me. I saw them
dart across to the other side of the road, to follow me by running,
until a cab or a cab-stand came in their way. But I had the start of
them, and when I stopped the driver and got out, they were nowhere in
sight. I crossed Hyde Park and made sure, on the open ground, that I was
free. When I at last turned my steps homewards, it was not tlll many
hours later –; not till after dark.

I found Marian waiting for me alone in the little sitting-room. She had
persuaded Laura to go to rest, after fist promissing to pened. The
partition which divided us from the next room was so thin that we could
ahnost hear Laura's breathing, and we might have disturbed her if we had
spoken aloud.

Marian preserved her composure while I described my interview with Mr
Kyrle. But her face became troubled when I spoke next of the men who had
followed me from the lawyer's office, and when I told her of the
discovery of Sir Percival's return.

`Bad news, Walter,' she said, `the worst news you could bring. Have you
nothing more to tell me?'

`I have something to give you,' I replied, handing her the note which Mr
Kyrle had confided to my care.

She looked at the address and recognised the handwriting instantly.

`You know your correspondent?' I said.

`Too well,' she answered. `My correspondent is Count Fosco.'

With that reply she opened the note. Her face flushed deeply while she
read it –; her eyes brightened with anger as she handed it to me to read
in my turn.

The note contained these lines –;

`Impelled by honourable admiration –; honourable to myself, honourable
to you –; I write, magnificent Marian, in the interests of your
tranquillity, to say two consoling words –;

`Fear nothing !

`Exercise your fine natural sense and remain in retirement. Dear and
admirable woman, invite no dangerous publicity. Resignation is sublime
–; adopt it. The modest repose of home is eternally fresh –; enjoy it.
The storns of life pass harmless over

the valley of Seclusion –; dwell, dear lady, in the valley.

`Do this and I authorise you to fear nothing. No new calamity

shall lacerate your sensibilities –; sensibilities precious to me as my

own. You shall not be molested, the fair companion of your retreat shall
not be pursued. She has found a new asylum in your

heart. Priceless asylum ! –; I envy her and leave her there.

` One last word of affectionate warning, of paternal caution, and

I tear myself from the charm of addressing you –; I close these fervent
lines.

`Advance no farther than you have gone already, compromise

no serious interests, threaten nobody. Do not, I implore you, force me
into action –; ME, the Man of Action –; when it is the cherished object
of my ambition to be passive, to restrict the vast reach of my energies
and my combinations for your sake. If you have rash friends, moderate
their deplorable ardour. If Mr Hartright returns to England, hold no
communication with him. I walk on a path of my own, and Percival follows
at my heels. On the day when Mr Hartright crosses that path, he is a
lost man.'

The only signature to these lines was the initial letter F, surrounded
by a circle of intricate flourishes. I threw the letter on the table
with all the contempt I felt for it.

`He is trying to frighten you –; a sure sign that he is frightened
himself,' I said.

She was too genuine a woman to treat the letter as I treated it. The
insolent familiarity of the language was too much for her self-control.
As she looked at me across the table, her hands clenched themselves in
her lap, and the old quick fiery temper flamed out again brightly in her
cheeks and her eyes.

`Walter!' she said, `if ever those two men are at your mercy and if you
are obliged to spare one of them, don't let it be the Count.'

`I will keep this letter, Marian, to help my memory when the time
comes.'

She looked at me attentively as I put the letter away in my pocket-book.

`When the time comes?' she repeated. `Can you speak of the future as if
you were certain of it? –; certain after what you have heard in Mr
Kyrle's office, after what has happened to you today?'

`I don't count the time from today, Marian. All I have done today is to
ask another man to act for me. I count from tomorrow –;'

`Why from tomorrow?'

` Because tomorrow I mean to act for myself.'

` How ?'

`I shall go to Blackwater by the first train, and return, I hope, at
night.'

`To Blackwater !'

`Yes. I have had time to think since I left Mr Kyrle. His opimion on one
Point confirms my own. We must persist to the last in hunting down the
date of Laura's journey. The one weak point in the conspiracy, and
probably the one chance of proving that she is a living woman, centre in
the discovery of that date.'

`You mean,' said Marian, `the discovery that Laura did not leave
Blackwater Park till after the date of her death on the doctor's
certificate?'

` Certainly.'

`What makes you think it might have been after? Laura can tell us
nothing of the time she was in London.'

`But the owner of the Asylum told you that she was received there on the
twenty-seventh of July. I doubt Count Fosco's ability to keep her in
London, and to keep her insensible to all that was passing around her,
more than one night. In that case, she must have started on the
twenty-sixth, and must have come to London one day after the date of her
own death on the doctor's certificate. If we can prove that date, we
prove our case against Sir Percival and the Count.'

`Yes, yes –; I see ! But how is the proof to be obtained?'

`Mrs Michelson's narrative has suggested to me two ways of trying to
obtain it. One of them is to question the doctor, Mr Dawson, who must
know when he resumed his attendance at Blackwater Park after Laura left
the house. The other is to make inquiries at the inn to which Sir
Percival drove away by himself at night. We know that his departure
followed Laura's after the lapse of a few hours, and we may get at the
date in that way. The attempt is at least worth making, and tomorrow I
am determined it shall be made.'

`And suppose it fails –; I look at the worst now, Walter; but I will
look at the best if disappointments come to try us –; suppose no one can
help you at Blackwater?'

`There are two men who can help me, and shall help me, in London –; Sir
Percival and the Count. Innocent people may well forget the date –; but
they are guilty, and they know it. If I fail everywhere else, I mean to
force a confession out of one or both of them on my own terms.'

All the woman flushed up in Marian's face as I spoke.

`Begin with the Count,' she whispered eagerly. `For my sake begin with
the Count.'

`We must begin, for Laura's sake, where there is the best chance of
success,' I replied.

The colour faded from her face again, and she shook her head sadly.

`Yes,' she said, `you are right –; it was mean and miserable of me to
say that. I try to be patient, Walter, and succeed better now than I did
in happier times. But I have a little of my old temper still left, and
it will get the better of me when I think of the Count !'

`His turn will come,' I said. `But remember, there is no weak place in
his life that we know of yet.' I waited a little to let her recover her
self-possession, and then spoke the decisive words –;

`Marian! There is a weak place we both know of in Sir Percival's life .'

`You mean the Secret !'

`Yes: the Secret. It is our only sure hold on him. I can force him from
his position of security, I can drag him and his villainy into the face
of day, by no other means. Whatever the Count may have done, Sir
Percival has consented to the conspiracy against Laura from another
motive besides the motive of gain. You heard him tell the Count that he
believed his wife knew enough to ruin him? You heard him say that he was
a lost man if the secret of Anne Catherick was known?'

`Yes! yes I I did.'

`Well, Marian, when our other resources have failed us, I mean to know
the Secret. My old superstition clings to me, even yet. I say again the
woman in white is a living influence in our three lives. The End is
appointed –; the End is drawing us on –; and Anne Catherick, dead in her
grave, points the way to it still!'




The story of my first inquiries in Hampshire is soon told.

My early departure from London enabled me to reach Mr Dawson's house in
the forenoon. Our interview, so far as the object of my visit was
concerned, led to no satisfactory result.

Mr Dawson's books certainly showed when he had resumed his attendance on
Miss Halcombe at Blackwater Park, but it was not possible to calculate
back from this date with any exactness, without such help from Mrs
Michelson as I knew she was unable to afford. She could not say from
memory (who, in similar cases, ever can?) how many days had elapsed
between the renewal of the doctor's attendance on his patient and the
previous departure of Lady Glyde. She was almost certain of having
mentioned the circumstance of the departure to Miss Halcombe, on the day
after it happened –; but then she was no more able to fix the date of
the day on which this disclosure took place, than to fix the date of the
day before, when Lady Glyde had left for London. Neither could she
calculate, with any nearer approach to exactness, the time that had
passed from the departure of her mistress, to the Period when the
undated letter from Madame Fosco arrived. Lastly, as if to complete the
series of difficulties, the doctor himself, having been ill at the time,
had omitted to make his usual entry of the day of the week and month
when the gardener from Blackwater Park had called on him to deliver Mrs
Michelson's message.

Hopeless of obtaining assistance from Mr Dawson, I resolved to try next
if I could establish the date of Sir Percival's arrival at Knowlesbury.

It seemed like a fatality ! When I reached Knowlesbury the inn was shut
up, and bills were posted on the walls. The speculation had been a bad
one, as I was informed, ever since the time of the railway. The new
hotel at the station had gradually absorbed the business,19 and the old
inn (which we knew to be the inn at which Sir Percival had put up), had
been closed about two months since. The proprietor had left the town
with all his goods and chattels, and where he had gone I could not
positively ascertain from any one. The four people of whom I inquired
gave me four different accounts of his plans and projects when he left
Knowlesbury.

There were still some hours to spare before the last train left for
London, and I drove back again in a ay from the Knowlesbury station to
Blackwater Park, with the purpose of questioning the gardener and the
person who kept the lodge. If they, too, proved unable to assist me, my
resources for the present were at an end, and I might return to town.

I dismissed the fly a mile distant from the park, and getting my
directions from the driver, proceeded by myself to the house.

As I turned into the lane from the high-road, I saw a man, with a
carpet-bag, walking before me rapidly on the way to the lodge. He was a
little man, dressed in shabby black, and wearing a remarkably large hat.
I set him down (as well as it was possible to judge) for a lawyer's
clerk, and stopped at once to widen the distance between us. He had not
heard me, and he walked on out of sight, without looking back. When I
passed through the gates myself, a little while afterwards, he was not
visible –; he had evidently gone on to the house.

There were two women in the lodge. One of them was old, the other I knew
at once, by Marian's description of her, to be Margaret Porcher.

I asked first if Sir Percival was at the Park, and receiving a reply in
the negative, inquired next when he had left it. Neither of the women
could tell me more than that he had gone away in the summer. I could
extract nothing from Margaret Porcher but vacant smiles and shakings of
the head. The old woman was a little more intelligent, and I managed to
lead her into speaking of the manner of Sir Percival's departure, and of
the alarm that it caused her. She remembered her master calling her out
of bed, and remembered his frightening her by swearing –; but the date
at which the occurrence happened was, as she honestly acknowledged,
`quite beyond her.'

On leaving the lodge I saw the gardener at work not far off. When I
first addressed him, he looked at me rather distrustfully, but on my
using Mrs Michelson's name, with a civil reference to himself, he
entered into conversation readily enough. There is no need to describe
what passed between us –; it ended, as all my other attempts to discover
the date had ended. The gardener knew that his master had driven away,
at night, `some time in July, the last fortnight or the last ten days in
the month' –; and knew no more.

While we were speaking together I saw the man in black, with the large
hat, come out from the house, and stand at some little distance
observing us.

Certain suspicions of his errand at Blackwater Park had already crossed
my mind. They were now increased by the gardener's inability (or
unwillingness) to tell me who the man was, and I determined to clear the
way before me, if possible, by speaking to him. The plainest question I
could put as a stranger would be to inquire if the house was allowed to
be shown to visitors. I walked up to the man at once, and accosted him
in those words.

His look and manner unmistakably betrayed that he knew who I was, and
that he wanted to irritate me into quarrelling with him. His reply was
insolent enough to have answered the purpose, if I had been less
determined to control myself. As it was, I met him with the most
resolute politeness, apologised for my involuntary intrusion (which he
called a `trespass,') and left the grounds. It was exactly as I
suspected. The recognition of me when I left Mr Kyrle's office had been
evidently communicated to Sir Percival Glyde, and the man in black had
been sent to the Park in anticipation of my making inquiries at the
house or in the neighbourhood. If I had given him the least chance of
lodging any sort of legal complaint against me, the interference of the
local magistrate would no doubt have been turned to account as a clog on
my proceedings, and a means of separating me from Marian and Laura for
some days at least.

I was prepared to be watched on the way from Blackwater Park to the
station, exactly as I had been watched in London the day before.- But I
could not discover at the time, whether I was really followed on this
occasion or not. The man in black might have had means of tracking me at
his disposal of which I was not aware, but I certainly saw nothing of
him, in his own person, either on the way to the station, or afterwards
on my arrival at the London terminus in the evening. I reached home on
foot, taking the precaution, before I approached our owm door, of
walking round by the loneliest street in the neighbourhood, and there
stopping and looking back more than once over the open space behind me.
I had first learnt to use this stratagem against suspected treachery in
the wilds of Central America –; and now I was practising it again, with
the same purpose and with even greater caution, in the heart of
civilised London I

Nothing had happened to alarm Marian during my absence. She asked
eagerly what success I had met with. When I told her she could not
conceal her surprise at the indifference with which I spoke of the
failure of my investigations thus far.

The truth was, that the ill-success of my inquiries had in no sense
daunted me. I had pursued them as a matter of duty, and I had expected
nothing from them. In the state of my mind at that time, it was almost a
relief to me to know that the struggle was now narrowed to a trial of
strength between myself and Sir Percival Glyde. The vindictive motive
had mingled itself all along with my other and better motives, and I
confess it was a satisfaction to me to feel that the surest way, the
only way left, of serving Laura's cause, was to fasten my hold firmly on
the villain who had married her.

While I acknowledge that I was not strong enough to keep my motives
above the reach of this instinct of revenge, I can honestly say
something in my own favour on the other side. No base speculation on the
future relations of Laura and myself, and on the private and personal
concessions which I might force from Sir Percival if I once had him at
my mercy, ever entered my mind. I never said to myself, `If I do
succeed, it shall be one result of my success that I put it out of her
husband's power to take her from me again.' I could not look at her and
think of the future with such thoughts as those. The sad sight of the
change in her from her former self, made the one interest of my love an
interest of tenderness and compassion which her father or her brother
might have felt, and which I felt, God knows, in my inmost heart. All my
hopes looked no farther on now than to the day of her recovery. There,
till she was strong again and happy again –; there, till she could look
at me as she had once looked, and speak to me as she had once spoken –;
the future of my happiest thoughts and my dearest wishes ended.

These words are written under no prompting of idle selfcontemplation.
Passages in this narrative are soon to come which will set the minds of
others in judgment on my conduct. It is right that the best and the
worst of me should be fairly balanced before that time.

On the morning after my return from Hampshire I took Marian upstairs
into my working-room, and there laid before her the plan that I had
matured thus far, for mastering the one assailable point in the life of
Sir Percival Glyde.

The way to the Secret lay through the mystery, hitherto impenetrable to
all of us, of the woman in white. The approach to that in its turn might
be gained by obtaining the assistance of Anne Catherick's mother, and
the only ascertainable means of prevailing on Mrs Catherick to act or to
speak in the matter depended on the chance of my discovering local
particulars and family particulars first of all from Mrs Clements. After
thinking the subject over carefully, I felt certain that I could only
begin the new inquiries by placing myself in communication with the
faithful friend and protectress of Anne Catherick.

The first difficulty then was to find Mrs Clements.

I was indebted to Marian's quick perception for meeting this necessity
at once by the best and simplest means. She proposed to write to the
farm near Limmeridge (Todd's Corner), to inquire whether Mrs Clements
had communicated with Mrs Todd during the past few months. How Mrs
Clements had been separated from Anne it was impossible for us to say,
but that separation once effected, it would certainly occur to Mrs
Clements to inquire after the missing woman in the neighbourhood of all
others to which she was known to be most attached –; the neighbourhood
of Limmeridge. I saw directly that Marian's proposal offered us a
prospect of success, and she wrote to Mrs Todd accordingly by that day's
post.

While we were waiting for the reply, I made myself master of all the
information Marian could afford on the subject of Sir percival's family,
and of his early life. She could only speak on these topics from
heresay, but she was reasonably certain of the truth of what little she
had to tell.

Sir Percival was an only child. His father, Sir felix Glyde, had
suffered from his birth under a painful and incurable deformity, and had
shunned all society from his earliest years. His sole happiness was in
the enjoyment of music, and he had married a lady with tastes similar to
his own, who was said to be a most accomplished musician. He inherited
the Blackwater property while still a young man. Neither he nor his
wife, after taking possession, made advances of any sort towards the
society of the neighbourhood, and no one endeavoured to tempt them into
abandoning their reserve, with the one disastrous exception of the
rector of the parish.

The rector was the worst of all innocent mischief-makers –; an
over-zealous man. He had heard that Sir Felix had left College with the
character of being little better than a revolutionist in politics and an
infidel in religion, and he arrived conscientiously at the conclusion
that it was his bounden duty to summon the lord of the manor to hear
sound views enunciated in the parish church. Sir Felix fiercely resented
the clergyman's well-meant but ill-directed interference, insulting him
so grossly and so publicly, that the families in the neighbourhood sent
letters of indignant remonstrance to the Park, and even the tenants of
the Blackwater property expressed their opinion as strongly as they
dared. The baronet, who had no country tastes of any kind, and no
attachment to the estate or to any one living on it, declared that
society at Blackwater should never have a second chance of annoying him,
and left the place from that moment.

After a short residence in London he and his wife departed for the
Continent, and never returned to England again. They lived part of the
time in France and part in Germany –; always keeping themselves in the
strict retirement which the morbid sense of his own personal deformity
had made a necessity to Sir Felix. Their son, Percival, had been born
abroad, and had been educated there by private tutors. His mother was
the first of his parents whom he lost. His father had died a few years
after her, either in 1825 or 1826. Sir Percival had been in England, as
a young man, once or twice before that period, but his acquaintance with
the late Mr Fairlie did not begin till after the time of his father's
death. They soon became very intimate, although Sir Percival was seldom,
or never, at Limmeridge House in those days. Mr Frederick Fairlie might
have met him once or twice in Mr Philip Fairlie's company, but he could
have known little of him at that or at any other time. Sir Percival's
only intimate friend in the Fairlie family had been Laura's father.

These were all the particulars that I could gain from Marian. They
suggested nothing which was useful to my present purpose, but I noted
them down carefully, in the event of their proving to be of imPortance
at any future period.

Mrs Todd's reply (addressed, by our own wish, to a post-office at some
distance from us) had arrived at its destination when I went to apply
for it. The chances, which had been all against us hitherto, turned from
this moment in our favour. Mrs Todd's letter contained the first item of
information of which we were in search.

Mrs Clements, it appeared, had (as we had conjectured) written to Todd's
Corner, asking pardon in the first place for the abrupt manner in which
she and Anne had left their friends at the farm-house (on the morning
after I had met the woman in white in Limmeridge churchyard), and then
informing Mrs Todd of Anne's disappearance, and entreating that she
would cause inquiries to be made in the neighbourhood, on the chance
that the lost woman might have strayed back to Limmeridge. In making
this request, Mrs Clements had been careful to add to it the address at
which she might always be heard of, and that address Mrs Todd now
transmitted to Marian. It was in London, and within half an hour's walk
of our own lodging.

In the words of the proverb, I was resolved not to let the grass grow
under my feet. The next morning I set forth to seek an interview with
Mrs Clements. This was my first step forward in the investigation. The
story of the desperate attempt to which I now stood committed begins
here.




The address communicated by Mrs Todd took me to a lodginghouse situated
in a respectable street near the Gray's Inn Road.

When I knocked the door was opened by Mrs Clements herself. She did not
appear to remember me, and asked what my business was.  I recalled to
her our meeting in Limmeridge churchyard at the close of my interview
there with the woman in white, taking special care to remind her that I
was the person who assisted Anne Catherick (as Anne had herself
declared) to escape the pursuit from the Asylum. This was my only claim
to the confidence of Mrs Clements. She remembered the circumstance the
moment I spoke of it, and asked me into the pariour, in the greatest
anxiety to know if I had brought her any news of Anne.

It was impossible for me to tell her the whole truth without, at the
same time, entering into particulars on the subject of the conspiracy
which it would have been dangerous to confide to a stranger. I could
only abstain most carefully from raising any false hopes, and then
explain that the object of my visit was to discover the persons who were
really responsible for Anne's disappearance. I even added, so as to
exonerate myself from any after-reproach of my own conscience, that I
entertained not the least hope of being able to trace her –; that I
believed we should never see her alive again –; and that my main
interest in the affair was to bring to punishment two men whom I
suspected to be concerned in luring her away, and at whose hands I and
some dear friends of mine had suffered a grievous wrong. With this
explanation I left it to Mrs Clements to say whether our interest in the
matter (whatever difference there might be in the motives which actuated
us) was not the same, and whether she felt any reluctance to forward my
objects by giving me such information on the subject of my inquiries as
she happened to possess.

The Poor woman was at first too much confused and agitated to understand
thoroughly what I said to her. She could only reply that I was welcome
to anything she could tell me in return for the kindness I had shown to
Anne; but as she was not very quick and ready, at the best of times, in
talking to strangers, she would beg me to put her in the right way, and
to say where I wished her to begin.

Knowing by experience that the plainest narrative attainable from
persons who are not accustomed to arrange their ideas, is the narrative
which goes far enough back at the beginning to avoid all impediments of
retrospection in its course, I asked Mrs Clements to tell me first what
had happened after she had left Limmeridge, and so, by watchful
questioning, carried her on from point to point, till we reached the
period of Anne's dtsappearance.

The substance of the information which I thus obtained was as follows :
–;

On leaving the farn at Todd's Corner, Mrs Clements and Anne had
travelled that day as far as Derby, and had remained there a week on
Anne's account. They had then gone on to London, and had lived in the
lodging occupied by Mrs Clements at that time for a month or more, when
circumstances connected with the house and the landlord had obliged them
to change their quarters. Anne's terror of being discovered in London or
its neighbourhood, whenever they ventured to walk out, had gradually
communicated itself to Mrs Clements, and she had determined on removing
to one of the most out-of-the-way places in England –; to the town of
Grimsby in Lincolnshire, where her deceased husband had passed all his
early life. His relatives were respectable people settled in the town –;
they had always treated Mrs Clements with great kindness, and she
thought it impossible to do better than go there and take the advice of
her husband's friends. Anne would not hear of returning to her mother at
Welmingham, because she had been removed to the Asylum from that place,
and because Sir Percival would be certain to go back there and find her
again. There was serious weight in this objection, and Mrs Clements felt
that it was not to be easily removed.

At Grimsby the first serious symptoms of illness had shown themselves in
Anne. They appeared soon after the news of Lady Glyde's marriage had
been made public in the newspapers, and had reached her through that
medium.

The medical man who was sent for to attend the sick woman discovered at
once that she was suffering from a serious affection of the heart. The
illness lasted long, left her very weak, and returned at intervals,
though with mitigated severity, again and again. They remained at
Grimsby, in consequence, during the first half of the new year, and
there they might probably have stayed much longer, but for the sudden
resolution which Anne took at this time to venture back to Hampshire,
for the purpose of obtaining a private interview with Lady Glyde.

Mrs Clements did all in her power to oppose the execution of this
hazardous and unaccountable project. No explanation of her motives was
offered by Anne, except that she believed the day of her death was not
far off, and that she had something on her mind which must be
communicated to Lady Glyde, at any risk, in secret. Her resolution to
accomplish this purpose was so firmly settled that she declared her
intention of going to Hampshire by herself if Mrs Clements felt any
unwillingness to go with her. The doctor, on being consulted, was of
opinion that serious opposition to her wishes would, in all probability,
produce another and perhaps a fatal fit of illness, and Mrs Clements,
under this advice, yielded to necessity, and once more, with sad
forebodings of trouble and danger to come, allowed Anne Catherick to
have her own way.

On the journey from London to Hampshire Mrs Clements discovered that one
of their fellow-passengers was well acquainted with the neighbourhood of
Blackwater, and could give her all the information she needed on the
subject of localities. In this way she found out that the only place
they could go to, which was not dangerously near to Sir Percival's
residence, was a large village called Sandon. The distance here from
Blackwater Park was between three and four miles –; and that distance,
and back again, Anne had walked on each occasion when she had appeared
in the neighbourhood of the lake.

For the few days during which they were at Sandon without being
discovered they had lived a little away from the village, in the cottage
of a decent widow-woman who had a bedroom to let, and whose discreet
silence Mrs Clements had done her best to secure, for the first week at
least. She had also tried hard to induce Anne to be content with writing
to Lady Glyde, in the first instance; but the failure of the warning
contained in the anonymous letter sent to Limmeridge had made Anne
resolute to speak this time, and obstinate in the determination to go on
her errand alone.

Mrs Clements, nevertheless, followed her privately on each occasion when
she went to the lake, without, however, venturing near enough to the
boat-house to be witness of what took place there. When Anne returned
for the last time from the dangerous neighbourhood, the fatigue of
walking, day after day, distances which were far too great for her
strength, added to the exhausting effect of the agitation from which she
had suffered, produced the result which Mrs Clements had dreaded all
along. The old pain over the heart and the other symptoms of the illness
at Grimsby returned, and Anne was confined to her bed in the cottage.

In this emergency the first necessity, as Mrs Clements knew by
experience, was to endeavour to quiet Anne's anxiety of mind, and for
this purpose the good woman went herself the next day to the lake, to
try if she could find Lady Glyde (who would be sure, as Anne said, to
take her daily walk to the boat-house), and prevail on her to come back
privately to the cottage near Sandon. On reaching the outskirts of the
plantation Mrs Clements encountered, not Lady Glyde, but a tall, stout,
elderly gentleman, with a book in his hand –; in other words, Count
Fosco.

The Count, after looking at her very attentively for a moment, asked if
she expected to see any one in that place, and added, before she could
reply, that he was waiting there with a message from Lady Glyde, but
that he was not quite certain whether the person then before him
answered the description of the person with whom he was desired to
communicate.

Upon this Mrs Clements at once confided her errand to him, and entreated
that he would help to allay Anne's anxiety by trusting his message to
her. The Count most readily and kindly complied with her request. The
message, he said, was a very important one. Lady Glyde entreated Anne
and her good friend to return immediately to London, as she felt certain
that Sir Percival would discover them if they remained any longer in the
neighbourhood of Blackwater. She was herself going to London in a short
time, and if Mrs Clements and Anne would go there first, and would let
her know what their address was, they should hear from her and see her
in a fortnight or less. The Count added that he had already attempted to
give a friendly warning to Anne herself, but that she had been too much
startled by seeing that he was a stranger to let him approach and speak
to her.

To this Mrs Clements replied, in the greatest alarm and distress, that
she asked nothing better than to take Anne safely to London, but that
there was no present hope of removing her from the dangerous
neighbourhood, as she lay ill in her bed at that moment. The Count
inquired if Mrs Clements had sent for medical advice, and hearing that
she had hitherto hesitated to do so, from the fear of making their
position publicly known in the village, informed her that he was himself
a medical man, and that he would go back with her if she pleased, and
see what could be done for Anne. Mrs Clements (feeling a natural
confidence in the Count, as a person trusted with a secret message from
Lady Glyde) gratefully accepted the offer, and they went back together
to the cottage.

Anne was asleep when they got there. The Count started at the sight of
her (evidently from astonishment at her resemblance to Lady Glyde). Poor
Mrs Clements supposed that he was only shocked to see how ill she was.
He would not allow her to be awakened –; he was contented with putting
questions to Mrs Clements about her symptoms, with looking at her, and
with lightly touching her pulse. Sandon was a large enough place to have
a grocer's and druggist's shop in it, and thither the Count went to
write his prescription and to get the medicine made up. He brought it
back himself, and told Mrs Clements that the medicine was a powerful
stimulant, and that it would certainly give Anne strength to get up and
bear the fatigue of a journey to London of only a few hours. The remedy
was to be administered at stated times on that day and on the day after.
On the third day she would be well enough to travel, and he arranged to
meet Mrs Clements at the Blackwater station, and to see them off by the
mid-day train. If they did not appear he would assume that Anne was
worse, and would proceed at once to the cottage.

As events turned out, no such emergency as this occurred.

This medicine had an extraordinary effect on Anne, and the good results
of it were helped by the assurance Mrs Clements could now give her that
she would soon see Lady Glyde in London. At the appointed day and time
(when they had not been quite so long as a week in Hampshire
altogether), they arrived at the station. The Count was waiting there
for them, and was talking to an elderly lady, who appeared to be going
to travel by the train to London also. He most kindly assisted them, and
put them in to the carriage himself, begging Mrs Clements not to forget
to send her address to Lady Glyde. The elderly lady did not travel in
the same compartment, and they did not notice what became of her on
reaching the London terminus. Mrs Clements secured respectable lodgings
in a quiet neighbourhood, and then wrote, as she had engaged to do, to
inform Lady Glyde of the address.

A little more than a fortnight passed, and no answer came.

At the end of that time a lady (the same elderly lady whom they had seen
at the station) called in a cab, and said that she came from Lady Glyde,
who was then at an hotel in London, and who wished to see Mrs Clements,
for the purpose of arranging a future interview with Anne. Mrs Clements
expressed her willingness (Anne being present at the time, and
entreating her to do so) to forward the object in view, especially as
she was not required to be away from the house for more than half an
hour at the most. She and the elderly lady (clearly Madame Fosco) then
left in the cab. The lady stopped the cab, after it had driven some
distance, at a shop before they got to the hotel, and begged Mrs
Clements to wait for her for a few minutes while she made a purchase
that had been forgotten. She never appeared again.

After waiting some time Mrs Clements became alarmed, and ordered the
cabman to drive back to her lodgings. When she got there, after an
absence of rather more than half an hour, Anne was gone.

The only information to be obtained from the people of the house was
derived from the servant who waited on the lodgers. She had opened the
door to a boy from the street, who had left a letter for `the young
woman who lived on the second floor' (the part of the house which Mrs
Clements occupied). The servant liad delivered the letter, had then gone
downstairs, and five minutes afterwards had observed Anne open the front
door and go out dressed in her bonnet and shawl. She had probably taken
the letter with her, for it was not to be found, and it was therefore
impossible to tell what inducement had been offered to make her leave
the house. It must have been a strong one, for she would never stir out
alone in London of her own accord. If Mrs Clements had not known this by
experience nothing would have induced her to go away in the cab, even
for so short a time as half an hour only.

As soon as she could collect her thoughts, the first idea that naturally
occurred to Mrs Clements was to go and make inquiries at the Asylum, to
which she dreaded that Anne had been taken back.

She went there the next day, having been informed of the locality in
which the house was situated by Anne herself. The answer she received
(her application having in all probability been made a day or two before
the false Anne Catherick had really been consigned to safe keeping in
the Asylum) was, that no such person had been brought back there. She
had then written to Mrs Catherick at Welmingham to know if she had seen
or heard anythimg of her daughter, and had received an answer in the
negative. After that reply had reached her, she was at the end of her
resources, and perfectly ignorant where else to inquire or what else to
do. From that time to this she had remained in total ignorance of the
cause of Anne's disappearance and of the end of Anne's story.