The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 1 of 2

I went softly back to my bedroom to try the safer experiment of
the verandah roof first.

A complete change in my dress was imperatively necessary for many
reasons. I took off my silk gown to begin with, because the
slightest noise from it on that still night might have betrayed
me. I next removed the white and cumbersome parts of my
underclothing, and replaced them by a petticoat of dark flannel.
Over this I put my black travelling cloak, and pulled the hood on
to my head. In my ordinary evening costume I took up the room of
three men at least. In my present dress, when it was held close
about me, no man could have passed through the narrowest spaces
more easily than I. The little breadth left on the roof of the
verandah, between the flower-pots on one side and the wall and the
windows of the house on the other, made this a serious
consideration. If I knocked anything down, if I made the least
noise, who could say what the consequences might be?

I only waited to put the matches near the candle before I
extinguished it, and groped my way back into the sitting-room, I
locked that door, as I had locked my bedroom door--then quietly
got out of the window, and cautiously set my feet on the leaden
roof of the verandah.

My two rooms were at the inner extremity of the new wing of the
house in which we all lived, and I had five windows to pass before
I could reach the position it was necessary to take up immediately
over the library. The first window belonged to a spare room which
was empty. The second and third windows belonged to Laura's room.
The fourth window belonged to Sir Percival's room. The fifth
belonged to the Countess's room. The others, by which it was not
necessary for me to pass, were the windows of the Count's
dressing-room, of the bath-room, and of the second empty spare
room.

No sound reached my ears--the black blinding darkness of the night
was all round me when I first stood on the verandah, except at
that part of it which Madame Fosco's window over-looked. There,
at the very place above the library to which my course was
directed--there I saw a gleam of light! The Countess was not yet
in bed.

It was too late to draw back--it was no time to wait. I
determined to go on at all hazards, and trust for security to my
own caution and to the darkness of the night. "For Laura's sake!"
I thought to myself, as I took the first step forward on the roof,
with one hand holding my cloak close round me, and the other
groping against the wall of the house. It was better to brush
close by the wall than to risk striking my feet against the
flower-pots within a few inches of me, on the other side.

I passed the dark window of the spare room, trying the leaden roof
at each step with my foot before I risked resting my weight on it.
I passed the dark windows of Laura's room ("God bless her and keep
her to-night!"). I passed the dark window of Sir Percival's room.
Then I waited a moment, knelt down with my hands to support me,
and so crept to my position, under the protection of the low wall
between the bottom of the lighted window and the verandah roof.

When I ventured to look up at the window itself I found that the
top of it only was open, and that the blind inside was drawn down.
While I was looking I saw the shadow of Madame Fosco pass across
the white field of the blind--then pass slowly back again. Thus
far she could not have heard me, or the shadow would surely have
stopped at the blind, even if she had wanted courage enough to
open the window and look out?

I placed myself sideways against the railing of the verandah--
first ascertaining, by touching them, the position of the flower-
pots on either side of me. There was room enough for me to sit
between them and no more. The sweet-scented leaves of the flower
on my left hand just brushed my cheek as I lightly rested my head
against the railing.

The first sounds that reached me from below were caused by the
opening or closing (most probably the latter) of three doors in
succession--the doors, no doubt, leading into the hall and into
the rooms on each side of the library, which the Count had pledged
himself to examine. The first object that I saw was the red spark
again travelling out into the night from under the verandah,
moving away towards my window, waiting a moment, and then
returning to the place from which it had set out.

"The devil take your restlessness! When do you mean to sit down?"
growled Sir Percival's voice beneath me.

"Ouf! how hot it is!" said the Count, sighing and puffing wearily.

His exclamation was followed by the scraping of the garden chairs
on the tiled pavement under the verandah--the welcome sound which
told me they were going to sit close at the window as usual. So
far the chance was mine. The clock in the turret struck the
quarter to twelve as they settled themselves in their chairs. I
heard Madame Fosco through the open window yawning, and saw her
shadow pass once more across the white field of the blind.

Meanwhile, Sir Percival and the Count began talking together
below, now and then dropping their voices a little lower than
usual, but never sinking them to a whisper. The strangeness and
peril of my situation, the dread, which I could not master, of
Madame Fosco's lighted window, made it difficult, almost
impossible, for me, at first, to keep my presence of mind, and to
fix my attention solely on the conversation beneath. For some
minutes I could only succeed in gathering the general substance of
it. I understood the Count to say that the one window alight was
his wife's, that the ground floor of the house was quite clear,
and that they might now speak to each other without fear of
accidents. Sir Percival merely answered by upbraiding his friend
with having unjustifiably slighted his wishes and neglected his
interests all through the day. The Count thereupon defended
himself by declaring that he had been beset by certain troubles
and anxieties which had absorbed all his attention, and that the
only safe time to come to an explanation was a time when they
could feel certain of being neither interrupted nor overheard.
"We are at a serious crisis in our affairs, Percival," he said,
"and if we are to decide on the future at all, we must decide
secretly to-night."

That sentence of the Count's was the first which my attention was
ready enough to master exactly as it was spoken. From this point,
with certain breaks and interruptions, my whole interest fixed
breathlessly on the conversation, and I followed it word for word.

"Crisis?" repeated Sir Percival. "It's a worse crisis than you
think for, I can tell you."

"So I should suppose, from your behaviour for the last day or
two," returned the other coolly. "But wait a little. Before we
advance to what I do NOT know, let us be quite certain of what I
DO know. Let us first see if I am right about the time that is
past, before I make any proposal to you for the time that is to
come."

"Stop till I get the brandy and water. Have some yourself."

"Thank you, Percival. The cold water with pleasure, a spoon, and
the basin of sugar. Eau sucree, my friend--nothing more.

"Sugar-and-water for a man of your age!--There! mix your sickly
mess. You foreigners are all alike."

"Now listen, Percival. I will put our position plainly before
you, as I understand it, and you shall say if I am right or wrong.
You and I both came back to this house from the Continent with our
affairs very seriously embarrassed "

"Cut it short! I wanted some thousands and you some hundreds, and
without the money we were both in a fair way to go to the dogs
together. There's the situation. Make what you can of it. Go
on."

"Well, Percival, in your own solid English words, you wanted some
thousands and I wanted some hundreds, and the only way of getting
them was for you to raise the money for your own necessity (with a
small margin beyond for my poor little hundreds) by the help of
your wife. What did I tell you about your wife on our way to
England?--and what did I tell you again when we had come here, and
when I had seen for myself the sort of woman Miss Halcombe was?"

"How should I know? You talked nineteen to the dozen, I suppose,
just as usual."

"I said this: Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only
discovered two ways in which a man can manage a woman. One way is
to knock her down--a method largely adopted by the brutal lower
orders of the people, but utterly abhorrent to the refined and
educated classes above them. The other way (much longer, much
more difficult, but in the end not less certain) is never to
accept a provocation at a woman's hands. It holds with animals,
it holds with children, and it holds with women, who are nothing
but children grown up. Quiet resolution is the one quality the
animals, the children, and the women all fail in. If they can
once shake this superior quality in their master, they get the
better of HIM. If they can never succeed in disturbing it, he
gets the better of THEM. I said to you, Remember that plain truth
when you want your wife to help you to the money. I said,
Remember it doubly and trebly in the presence of your wife's
sister, Miss Halcombe. Have you remembered it? Not once in all
the implications that have twisted themselves about us in this
house. Every provocation that your wife and her sister could
offer to you, you instantly accepted from them. Your mad temper
lost the signature to the deed, lost the ready money, set Miss
Halcombe writing to the lawyer for the first time "

"First time! Has she written again?"

"Yes, she has written again to-day."

A chair fell on the pavement of the verandah--fell with a crash,
as if it had been kicked down.

It was well for me that the Count's revelation roused Sir
Pemival's anger as it did. On hearing that I had been once more
discovered I started so that the railing against which I leaned
cracked again. Had he followed me to the inn? Did he infer that I
must have given my letters to Fanny when I told him I had none for
the post-bag. Even if it was so, how could he have examined the
letters when they had gone straight from my hand to the bosom of
the girl's dress?

"Thank your lucky star," I heard the Count say next, "that you
have me in the house to undo the harm as fast as you do it. Thank
your lucky star that I said No when you were mad enough to talk of
turning the key to-day on Miss Halcombe, as you turned it in your
mischievous folly on your wife. Where are your eves? Can you look
at Miss Halcombe and not see that she has the foresight and the
resolution of a man? With that woman for my friend I would snap
these fingers of mine at the world. With that woman for my enemy,
I, with all my brains and experience--I, Fosco, cunning as the
devil himself, as you have told me a hundred times--I walk, in
your English phrase, upon egg-shells! And this grand creature--I
drink her health in my sugar-and-water--this grand creature, who
stands in the strength of her love and her courage, firm as a
rock, between us two and that poor, flimsy, pretty blonde wife of
yours--this magnificent woman, whom I admire with all my soul,
though I oppose her in your interests and in mine, you drive to
extremities as if she was no sharper and no bolder than the rest
of her sex. Percival! Percival! you deserve to fail, and you HAVE
failed."

There was a pause. I write the villain's words about myself
because I mean to remember them--because I hope yet for the day
when I may speak out once for all in his presence, and cast them
back one by one in his teeth.

Sir Percival was the first to break the silence again.

"Yes, yes, bully and bluster as much as you like," he said
sulkily; "the difficulty about the money is not the only
difficulty. You would be for taking strong measures with the
women yourself--if you knew as much as I do."

"We will come to that second difficulty all in good time,"
rejoined the Count. "You may confuse yourself, Percival, as much
as you please, but you shall not confuse me. Let the question of
the money be settled first. Have I convinced your obstinacy? have
I shown you that your temper will not let you help yourself?--Or
must I go back, and (as you put it in your dear straightforward
English) bully and bluster a little more?"

"Pooh! It's easy enough to grumble at ME. Say what is to be done--
that's a little harder."

"Is it? Bah! This is what is to be done: You give up all direction
in the business from to-night--you leave it for the future in my
hands only. I am talking to a Practical British man--ha? Well,
Practical, will that do for you?"

"What do you propose if I leave it all to you?"

"Answer me first. Is it to be in my hands or not?"

"Say it is in your hands--what then?"

"A few questions, Percival, to begin with. I must wait a little
yet, to let circumstances guide me, and I must know, in every
possible way, what those circumstances are likely to be. There is
no time to lose. I have told you already that Miss Halcombe has
written to the lawyer to-day for the second time."

"How did you find it out? What did she say?"

"If I told you, Percival, we should only come back at the end to
where we are now. Enough that I have found it out--and the
finding has caused that trouble and anxiety which made me so
inaccessible to you all through to-day. Now, to refresh my memory
about your affairs--it is some time since I talked them over with
you. The money has been raised, in the absence of your wife's
signature, by means of bills at three months--raised at a cost
that makes my poverty-stricken foreign hair stand on end to think
of it! When the bills are due, is there really and truly no
earthly way of paying them but by the help of your wife?"

"None."

"What! You have no money at the bankers?"

"A few hundreds, when I want as many thousands."

"Have you no other security to borrow upon?"

"Not a shred."

"What have you actually got with your wife at the present moment?"

"Nothing but the interest of her twenty thousand pounds--barely
enough to pay our daily expenses."

"What do you expect from your wife?"

"Three thousand a year when her uncle dies."

"A fine fortune, Percival. What sort of a man is this uncle?
Old?"

"No--neither old nor young."

"A good-tempered, freely-living man? Married? No--I think my
wife told me, not married."

"Of course not. If he was married, and had a son, Lady Glyde
would not be next heir to the property. I'll tell you what he is.
He's a maudlin, twaddling, selfish fool, and bores everybody who
comes near him about the state of his health."

"Men of that sort, Percival, live long, and marry malevolently
when you least expect it. I don't give you much, my friend, for
your chance of the three thousand a year. Is there nothing more
that comes to you from your wife?"

"Nothing."

"Absolutely nothing?"

"Absolutely nothing--except in case of her death."

"Aha! in the case of her death."

There was another pause. The Count moved from the
verandah to the gravel walk outside. I knew that he had moved by
his voice. "The rain has come at last," I heard him say. It had
come. The state of my cloak showed that it had been falling
thickly for some little time.

The Count went back under the verandah--I heard the chair creak
beneath his weight as he sat down in it again.

"Well, Percival," he said, "and in the case of Lady Glyde's death,
what do you get then?"

"If she leaves no children----"

"Which she is likely to do?"

"Which she is not in the least likely to do----"

"Yes?"

"Why, then I get her twenty thousand pounds."

"Paid down?"

"Paid down."

They were silent once more. As their voices ceased Madame Fosco's
shadow darkened the blind again. Instead of passing this time, it
remained, for a moment, quite still. I saw her fingers steal
round the corner of the blind, and draw it on one side. The dim
white outline of her face, looking out straight over me, appeared
behind the window. I kept still, shrouded from head to foot in my
black cloak. The rain, which was fast wetting me, dripped over
the glass, blurred it, and prevented her from seeing anything.
"More rain!" I heard her say to herself. She dropped the blind,
and I breathed again freely.

The talk went on below me, the Count resuming it this time.

"Percival! do you care about your wife?"

"Fosco! that's rather a downright question."

"I am a downright man, and I repeat it."

"Why the devil do you look at me in that way?"

"You won't answer me? Well, then, let us say your wife dies before
the summer is out----"

"Drop it, Fosco!"

"Let us say your wife dies----"

"Drop it, I tell you!"

"In that case, you would gain twenty thousand pounds, and you
would lose----"

"I should lose the chance of three thousand a year."

"The REMOTE chance, Percival--the remote chance only. And you
want money, at once. In your position the gain is certain--the
loss doubtful."

"Speak for yourself as well as for me. Some of the money I want
has been borrowed for you. And if you come to gain, my wife's
death would be ten thousand pounds in your wife's pocket. Sharp
as you are, you seem to have conveniently forgotten Madame Fosco's
legacy. Don't look at me in that way! I won't have it! What with
your looks and your questions, upon my soul, you make my flesh
creep!"

"Your flesh? Does flesh mean conscience in English? speak of your
wife's death as I speak of a possibility. Why not? The
respectable lawyers who scribble-scrabble your deeds and your
wills look the deaths of living people in the face. Do lawyers
make your flesh creep? Why should I? It is my business to-night to
clear up your position beyond the possibility of mistake, and I
have now done it. Here is your position. If your wife lives, you
pay those bills with her signature to the parchment. If your wife
dies, you pay them with her death."

As he spoke the light in Madame Fosco's room was extinguished, and
the whole second floor of the house was now sunk in darkness,

"Talk! talk!" grumbled Sir Percival. "One would think, to hear
you, that my wife's signature to the deed was got already."

"You have left the matter in my hands," retorted the Count, "and I
have more than two months before me to turn round in. Say no more
about it, if you please, for the present. When the bills are due,
you will see for yourself if my 'talk! talk!' is worth something,
or if it is not. And now, Percival, having done with the money
matters for to-night, I can place my attention at your disposal,
if you wish to consult me on that second difficulty which has
mixed itself up with our little embarrassments, and which has so
altered you for the worse, that I hardly know you again. Speak,
my friend--and pardon me if I shock your fiery national tastes by
mixing myself a second glass of sugar-and-water."

"It's very well to say speak," replied Sir Percival, in a far more
quiet and more polite tone than he had yet adopted, "but it's not
so easy to know how to begin."

"Shall I help you?" suggested the Count. "Shall I give this
private difficulty of yours a name? What if I call it--Anne
Catherick?"

"Look here, Fosco, you and I have known each other for a long
time, and if you have helped me out of one or two scrapes before
this, I have done the best I could to help you in return, as far
as money would go. We have made as many friendly sacrifices, on
both sides, as men could, but we have had our secrets from each
other, of course--haven't we?"

"You have had a secret from me, Percival. There is a skeleton in
your cupboard here at Blackwater Park that has peeped out in these
last few days at other people besides yourself."

"Well, suppose it has. If it doesn't concern you, you needn't be
curious about it, need you?"

"Do I look curious about it?"

"Yes, you do."

"So! so! my face speaks the truth, then? What an immense
foundation of good there must be in the nature of a man who
arrives at my age, and whose face has not yet lost the habit of
speaking the truth!--Come, Glyde! let us be candid one with the
other. This secret of yours has sought me: I have not sought it.
Let us say I am curious--do you ask me, as your old friend, to
respect your secret, and to leave it, once for all, in your own
keeping?"

"Yes--that's just what I do ask."

"Then my curiosity is at an end. It dies in me from this moment."

"Do you really mean that?"

"What makes you doubt me?"

"I have had some experience, Fosco, of your roundabout ways, and I
am not so sure that you won't worm it out of me after all."

The chair below suddenly creaked again--I felt the trellis-work
pillar under me shake from top to bottom. The Count had started
to his feet, and had struck it with his hand in indignation.

"Percival! Percival!" he cried passionately, "do you know me no
better than that? Has all your experience shown you nothing of my
character yet? I am a man of the antique type! I am capable of the
most exalted acts of virtue--when I have the chance of performing
them. It has been the misfortune of my life that I have had few
chances. My conception of friendship is sublime! Is it my fault
that your skeleton has peeped out at me? Why do I confess my
curiosity? You poor superficial Englishman, it is to magnify my
own self-control. I could draw your secret out of you, if I
liked, as I draw this finger out of the palm of my hand--you know
I could! But you have appealed to my friendship, and the duties of
friendship are sacred to me. See! I trample my base curiosity
under my feet. My exalted sentiments lift me above it. Recognise
them, Percival! imitate them, Percival! Shake hands--I forgive
you."

His voice faltered over the last words--faltered, as if he were
actually shedding tears!

Sir Percival confusedly attempted to excuse himself, but the Count
was too magnanimous to listen to him.

"No!" he said. "When my friend has wounded me, I can pardon him
without apologies. Tell me, in plain words, do you want my help?"

"Yes, badly enough."

"And you can ask for it without compromising yourself?"

"I can try, at any rate."

"Try, then."

"Well, this is how it stands:--I told you to-day that I had done
my best to find Anne Catherick, and failed."

"Yes, you did."

"Fosco! I'm a lost man if I DON'T find her."

"Ha! Is it so serious as that?"

A little stream of light travelled out under the verandah, and
fell over the gravel-walk. The Count had taken the lamp from the
inner part of the room to see his friend clearly by the light of
it.

"Yes!" he said. "Your face speaks the truth this time. Serious,
indeed--as serious as the money matters themselves."

"More serious. As true as I sit here, more serious!"

The light disappeared again and the talk went on.

"I showed you the letter to my wife that Anne Catherick hid in the
sand," Sir Percival continued. "There's no boasting in that
letter, Fosco--she DOES know the Secret."

"Say as little as possible, Percival, in my presence, of the
Secret. Does she know it from you?"

"No, from her mother."

"Two women in possession of your private mind--bad, bad, bad, my
friend! One question here, before we go any farther. The motive
of your shutting up the daughter in the asylum is now plain enough
to me, but the manner of her escape is not quite so clear. Do you
suspect the people in charge of her of closing their eyes
purposely, at the instance of some enemy who could afford to make
it worth their while?"

"No, she was the best-behaved patient they had--and, like fools,
they trusted her. She's just mad enough to be shut up, and just
sane enough to ruin me when she's at large--if you understand
that?"

"I do understand it. Now, Percival, come at once to the point,
and then I shall know what to do. Where is the danger of your
position at the present moment?"

"Anne Catherick is in this neighbourhood, and in communication
with Lady Glyde--there's the danger, plain enough. Who can read
the letter she hid in the sand, and not see that my wife is in
possession of the Secret, deny it as she may?"

"One moment, Percival. If Lady Glyde does know the Secret, she
must know also that it is a compromising secret for you. As your
wife, surely it is her interest to keep it?"

"Is it? I'm coming to that. It might be her interest if she cared
two straws about me. But I happen to be an encumbrance in the way
of another man. She was in love with him before she married me--
she's in love with him now--an infernal vagabond of a drawing-
master, named Hartright."

"My dear friend! what is there extraordinary in that? They are all
in love with some other man. Who gets the first of a woman's
heart? In all my experience I have never yet met with the man who
was Number One. Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five,
often. Number One, never! He exists, of course--but I have not
met with him."

"Wait! I haven't done yet. Who do you think helped Anne Catherick
to get the start, when the people from the mad-house were after
her? Hartright. Who do you think saw her again in Cumberland?
Hartright. Both times he spoke to her alone. Stop! don't
interrupt me. The scoundrel's as sweet on my wife as she is on
him. He knows the Secret, and she knows the Secret. Once let
them both get together again, and it's her interest and his
interest to turn their information against me."

"Gently, Percival--gently! Are you insensible to the virtue of
Lady Glyde?"

"That for the virtue of Lady Glyde! I believe in nothing about her
but her money. Don't you see how the case stands? She might be
harmless enough by herself; but if she and that vagabond
Hartright----"

"Yes, yes, I see. Where is Mr. Hartright?"

"Out of the country. If he means to keep a whole skin on his
bones, I recommend him not to come back in a hurry."

"Are you sure he is out of the country?"

"Certain. I had him watched from the time he left Cumberland to
the time he sailed. Oh, I've been careful, I can tell you! Anne
Catherick lived with some people at a farm-house near Limmeridge.
I went there myself, after she had given me the slip, and made
sure that they knew nothing. I gave her mother a form of letter
to write to Miss Halcombe, exonerating me from any bad motive in
putting her under restraint. I've spent, I'm afraid to say how
much, in trying to trace her, and in spite of it all, she turns up
here and escapes me on my own property! How do I know who else may
see her, who else may speak to her? That prying scoundrel,
Hartright, may come back with-out my knowing it, and may make use
of her to-morrow----"

"Not he, Percival! While I am on the spot, and while that woman is
in the neighbourhood, I will answer for our laying hands on her
before Mr. Hartright--even if he does come back. I see! yes, yes,
I see! The finding of Anne Catherick is the first necessity--make
your mind easy about the rest. Your wife is here, under your
thumb--Miss Halcombe is inseparable from her, and is, therefore,
under your thumb also--and Mr. Hartright is out of the country.
This invisible Anne of yours is all we have to think of for the
present. You have made your inquiries?"

"Yes. I have been to her mother, I have ransacked the village--
and all to no purpose."

"Is her mother to be depended on?"

"Yes."

"She has told your secret once."

"She won't tell it again."

"Why not? Are her own interests concerned in keeping it, as well
as yours?"

"Yes--deeply concerned."

"I am glad to hear it, Percival, for your sake. Don't be
discouraged, my friend. Our money matters, as I told you, leave
me plenty of time to turn round in, and I may search for Anne
Catherick to-morrow to better purpose than you. One last question
before we go to bed."

"What is it?"

"It is this. When I went to the boat-house to tell Lady Glyde
that the little difficulty of her signature was put off, accident
took me there in time to see a strange woman parting in a very
suspicious manner from your wife. But accident did not bring me
near enough to see this same woman's face plainly. I must know
how to recognise our invisible Anne. What is she like?"

"Like? Come! I'll tell you in two words. She's a sickly likeness
of my wife."

The chair creaked, and the pillar shook once more. The Count was
on his feet again--this time in astonishment.

"What!!!" he exclaimed eagerly.

"Fancy my wife, after a bad illness, with a touch of something
wrong in her head--and there is Anne Catherick for you," answered
Sir Percival.

"Are they related to each other?"

"Not a bit of it."

"And yet so like?"

"Yes, so like. What are you laughing about?"

There was no answer, and no sound of any kind. The Count was
laughing in his smooth silent internal way.

"What are you laughing about?" reiterated Sir Percival.

"Perhaps at my own fancies, my good friend. Allow me my Italian
humour--do I not come of the illustrious nation which invented the
exhibition of Punch? Well, well, well, I shall know Anne Catherick
when I see her--and so enough for to-night. Make your mind easy,
Percival. Sleep, my son, the sleep of the just, and see what I
will do for you when daylight comes to help us both. I have my
projects and my plans here in my big head. You shall pay those
bills and find Anne Catherick--my sacred word of honour on it, but
you shall! Am I a friend to be treasured in the best corner of
your heart, or am I not? Am I worth those loans of money which
you so delicately reminded me of a little while since? Whatever
you do, never wound me in my sentiments any more. Recognise them,
Percival! imitate them, Percival! I forgive you again--I shake
hands again. Good-night!"

Not another word was spoken. I heard the Count close the library
door. I heard Sir Percival barring up the window-shutters. It
had been raining, raining all the time. I was cramped by my
position and chilled to the bones. When I first tried to move,
the effort was so painful to me that I was obliged to desist. I
tried a second time, and succeeded in rising to my knees on the
wet roof.

As I crept to the wall, and raised myself against it, I looked
back, and saw the window of the Count's dressing-room gleam into
light. My sinking courage flickered up in me again, and kept my
eyes fixed on his window, as I stole my way back, step by step,
past the wall of the house.

The clock struck the quarter after one, when I laid my hands on
the window-sill of my own room. I had seen nothing and heard
nothing which could lead me to suppose that my retreat had been
discovered.

X

June 20th.--Eight o'clock. The sun is shining in a clear sky. I
have not been near my bed--I have not once closed my weary wakeful
eyes. From the same window at which I looked out into the
darkness of last night, I look out now at the bright stillness of
the morning.

I count the hours that have passed since I escaped to the shelter
of this room by my own sensations--and those hours seem like
weeks.

How short a time, and yet how long to ME--since I sank down in the
darkness, here, on the floor--drenched to the skin, cramped in
every limb, cold to the bones, a useless, helpless, panic-stricken
creature.

I hardly know when I roused myself. I hardly know when I groped
my way back to the bedroom, and lighted the candle, and searched
(with a strange ignorance, at first, of where to look for them)
for dry clothes to warm me. The doing of these things is in my
mind, but not the time when they were done.

Can I even remember when the chilled, cramped feeling left me, and
the throbbing heat came in its place?

Surely it was before the sun rose? Yes, I heard the clock strike
three. I remember the time by the sudden brightness and
clearness, the feverish strain and excitement of all my faculties
which came with it. I remember my resolution to control myself,
to wait patiently hour after hour, till the chance offered of
removing Laura from this horrible place, without the danger of
immediate discovery and pursuit. I remember the persuasion
settling itself in my mind that the words those two men had said
to each other would furnish us, not only with our justification
for leaving the house, but with our weapons of defence against
them as well. I recall the impulse that awakened in me to
preserve those words in writing, exactly as they were spoken,
while the time was my own, and while my memory vividly retained
them. All this I remember plainly: there is no confusion in my
head yet. The coming in here from the bedroom, with my pen and
ink and paper, before sunrise--the sitting down at the widely-
opened window to get all the air I could to cool me--the ceaseless
writing, faster and faster, hotter and hotter, driving on more and
more wakefully, all through the dreadful interval before the house
was astir again--how clearly I recall it, from the beginning by
candle-light, to the end on the page before this, in the sunshine
of the new day!

Why do I sit here still? Why do I weary my hot eyes and my burning
head by writing more? Why not lie down and rest myself, and try to
quench the fever that consumes me, in sleep?

I dare not attempt it. A fear beyond all other fears has got
possession of me. I am afraid of this heat that parches my skin.
I am afraid of the creeping and throbbing that I feel in my head.
If I lie down now, how do I know that I may have the sense and the
strength to rise again?

Oh, the rain, the rain--the cruel rain that chilled me last night!

Nine o'clock. Was it nine struck, or eight? Nine, surely? I am
shivering again--shivering, from head to foot, in the summer air.
Have I been sitting here asleep? I don't know what I have been
doing.

Oh, my God! am I going to be ill?

Ill, at such a time as this!

My head--I am sadly afraid of my head. I can write, but the lines
all run together. I see the words. Laura--I can write Laura, and
see I write it. Eight or nine--which was it?

So cold, so cold--oh, that rain last night!--and the strokes of
the clock, the strokes I can't count, keep striking in my head----

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

Note
[At this place the entry in the Diary ceases to be legible. The
two or three lines which follow contain fragments of words only,
mingled with blots and scratches of the pen. The last marks on
the paper bear some resemblance to the first two letters (L and A)
of the name of Lady Glyde.

On the next page of the Diary, another entry appears. It is in a
man's handwriting, large, bold, and firmly regular, and the date
is "June the 21st." It contains these lines--]

POSTSCRIPT BY A SINCERE FRIEND

The illness of our excellent Miss Halcombe has afforded me the
opportunity of enjoying an unexpected intellectual pleasure.

I refer to the perusal (which I have just completed) of this
interesting Diary.

There are many hundred pages here. I can lay my hand on my heart,
and declare that every page has charmed, refreshed, delighted me.

To a man of my sentiments it is unspeakably gratifying to be able
to say this.

Admirable woman!

I allude to Miss Halcombe.

Stupendous effort!

I refer to the Diary.

Yes! these pages are amazing. The tact which I find here, the
discretion, the rare courage, the wonderful power of memory, the
accurate observation of character, the easy grace of style, the
charming outbursts of womanly feeling, have all inexpressibly
increased my admiration of this sublime creature, of this
magnificent Marian. The presentation of my own character is
masterly in the extreme. I certify, with my whole heart, to the
fidelity of the portrait. I feel how vivid an impression I must
have produced to have been painted in such strong, such rich, such
massive colours as these. I lament afresh the cruel necessity
which sets our interests at variance, and opposes us to each
other. Under happier circumstances how worthy I should have been
of Miss Halcombe--how worthy Miss Halcombe would have been of ME.

The sentiments which animate my heart assure me that the lines I
have just written express a Profound Truth.

Those sentiments exalt me above all merely personal
considerations. I bear witness, in the most disinterested manner,
to the excellence of the stratagem by which this unparalleled
woman surprised the private interview between Percival and myself--
also to the marvellous accuracy of her report of the whole
conversation from its beginning to its end.

Those sentiments have induced me to offer to the unimpressionable
doctor who attends on her my vast knowledge of chemistry, and my
luminous experience of the more subtle resources which medical and
magnetic science have placed at the disposal of mankind. He has
hitherto declined to avail himself of my assistance. Miserable
man!

Finally, those sentiments dictate the lines--grateful,
sympathetic, paternal lines--which appear in this place. I close
the book. My strict sense of propriety restores it (by the hands
of my wife) to its place on the writer's table. Events are
hurrying me away. Circumstances are guiding me to serious issues.
Vast perspectives of success unroll themselves before my eyes. I
accomplish my destiny with a calmness which is terrible to myself.
Nothing but the homage of my admiration is my own. I deposit it
with respectful tenderness at the feet of Miss Halcombe.

I breathe my wishes for her recovery.

I condole with her on the inevitable failure of every plan that
she has formed for her sister's benefit. At the same time, I
entreat her to believe that the information which I have derived
from her Diary will in no respect help me to contribute to that
failure. It simply confirms the plan of conduct which I had
previously arranged. I have to thank these pages for awakening
the finest sensibilities in my nature--nothing more.

To a person of similar sensibility this simple assertion will
explain and excuse everything.

Miss Halcombe is a person of similar sensibility.

In that persuasion I sign myself,
                                    Fosco.

THE STORY CONTINUED BY FREDERICK FAIRLIE, ESQ., OF LIMMERIDGE
HOUSE[2]

[2] The manner in which Mr. Fairlie's Narrative and other
Narratives that are shortly to follow it, were originally
obtained, forms the subject of an explanation which will appear at
a later period.

It is the grand misfortune of my life that nobody will let me
alone.

Why--I ask everybody--why worry ME? Nobody answers that question,
and nobody lets me alone. Relatives, friends, and strangers all
combine to annoy me. What have I done? I ask myself, I ask my
servant, Louis, fifty times a day--what have I done? Neither of us
can tell. Most extraordinary!

The last annoyance that has assailed me is the annoyance of being
called upon to write this Narrative. Is a man in my state of
nervous wretchedness capable of writing narratives? When I put
this extremely reasonable objection, I am told that certain very
serious events relating to my niece have happened within my
experience, and that I am the fit person to describe them on that
account. I am threatened if I fail to exert myself in the manner
required, with consequences which I cannot so much as think of
without perfect prostration. There is really no need to threaten
me. Shattered by my miserable health and my family troubles, I am
incapable of resistance. If you insist, you take your unjust
advantage of me, and I give way immediately. I will endeavour to
remember what I can (under protest), and to write what I can (also
under protest), and what I can't remember and can't write, Louis
must remember and write for me. He is an ass, and I am an
invalid, and we are likely to make all sorts of mistakes between
us. How humiliating!

I am told to remember dates. Good heavens! I never did such a
thing in my life--how am I to begin now?

I have asked Louis. He is not quite such an ass as I have
hitherto supposed. He remembers the date of the event, within a
week or two--and I remember the name of the person. The date was
towards the end of June, or the beginning of July, and the name
(in my opinion a remarkably vulgar one) was Fanny.

At the end of June, or the beginning of July, then, I was
reclining in my customary state, surrounded by the various objects
of Art which I have collected about me to improve the taste of the
barbarous people in my neighbourhood. That is to say, I had the
photographs of my pictures, and prints, and coins, and so forth,
all about me, which I intend, one of these days, to present (the
photographs, I mean, if the clumsy English language will let me
mean anything) to present to the institution at Carlisle (horrid
place!), with a view to improving the tastes of the members (Goths
and Vandals to a man). It might be supposed that a gentleman who
was in course of conferring a great national benefit on his
countrymen was the last gentleman in the world to be unfeelingly
worried about private difficulties and family affairs. Quite a
mistake, I assure you, in my case.

However, there I was, reclining, with my art-treasures about me,
and wanting a quiet morning. Because I wanted a quiet morning, of
course Louis came in. It was perfectly natural that I should
inquire what the deuce he meant by making his appearance when I
had not rung my bell. I seldom swear--it is such an
ungentlemanlike habit--but when Louis answered by a grin, I think
it was also perfectly natural that I should damn him for grinning.
At any rate, I did.

This rigorous mode of treatment, I have observed, invariably
brings persons in the lower class of life to their senses. It
brought Louis to HIS senses. He was so obliging as to leave off
grinning, and inform me that a Young Person was outside wanting to
see me. He added (with the odious talkativeness of servants),
that her name was Fanny.

"Who is Fanny?"

"Lady Glyde's maid, sir."

"What does Lady Glyde's maid want with me .

"A letter, sir----"

"Take it."

"She refuses to give it to anybody but you, sir."

"Who sends the letter?"

"Miss Halcombe, sir."

The moment I heard Miss Halcombe's name I gave up. It is a habit
of mine always to give up to Miss Halcombe. I find, by
experience, that it saves noise. I gave up on this occasion.
Dear Marian!

"Let Lady Glyde's maid come in, Louis. Stop! Do her shoes creak?"

I was obliged to ask the question. Creaking shoes invariably
upset me for the day. I was resigned to see the Young Person, but
I was NOT resigned to let the Young Person's shoes upset me.
There is a limit even to my endurance.

Louis affirmed distinctly that her shoes were to be depended upon.
I waved my hand. He introduced her. Is it necessary to say that
she expressed her sense of embarrassment by shutting up her mouth
and breathing through her nose? To the student of female human
nature in the lower orders, surely not.

Let me do the girl justice. Her shoes did NOT creak. But why do
Young Persons in service all perspire at the hands? Why have they
all got fat noses and hard cheeks? And why are their faces so
sadly unfinished, especially about the corners of the eyelids? I
am not strong enough to think deeply myself on any subject, but I
appeal to professional men, who are. Why have we no variety in
our breed of Young Persons?

"You have a letter for me, from Miss Halcombe? Put it down on the
table, please, and don't upset anything. How is Miss Halcombe?"

"Very well, thank you, sir."

"And Lady Glyde?"

I received no answer. The Young Person's face became more
unfinished than ever, and I think she began to cry. I certainly
saw something moist about her eyes. Tears or perspiration? Louis
(whom I have just consulted) is inclined to think, tears. He is
in her class of life, and he ought to know best. Let us say,
tears.

Except when the refining process of Art judiciously removes from
them all resemblance to Nature, I distinctly object to tears.
Tears are scientifically described as a Secretion. I can
understand that a secretion may be healthy or unhealthy, but I
cannot see the interest of a secretion from a sentimental point of
view. Perhaps my own secretions being all wrong together, I am a
little prejudiced on the subject. No matter. I behaved, on this
occasion, with all possible propriety and feeling. I closed my
eyes and said to Louis--

"Endeavour to ascertain what she means."

Louis endeavoured, and the Young Person endeavoured. They
succeeded in confusing each other to such an extent that I am
bound in common gratitude to say, they really amused me. I think
I shall send for them again when I am in low spirits. I have just
mentioned this idea to Louis. Strange to say, it seems to make
him uncomfortable. Poor devil!

Surely I am not expected to repeat my niece's maid's explanation
of her tears, interpreted in the English of my Swiss valet? The
thing is manifestly impossible. I can give my own impressions and
feelings perhaps. Will that do as well? Please say, Yes.

My idea is that she began by telling me (through Louis) that her
master had dismissed her from her mistress's service. (Observe,
throughout, the strange irrelevancy of the Young Person. Was it
my fault that she had lost her place?) On her dismissal, she had
gone to the inn to sleep. (I don't keep the inn--why mention it
to ME?) Between six o'clock and seven Miss Halcombe had come to
say good-bye, and had given her two letters, one for me, and one
for a gentleman in London. (I am not a gentleman in London--hang
the gentleman in London!) She had carefully put the two letters
into her bosom (what have I to do with her bosom?); she had been
very unhappy, when Miss Halcombe had gone away again; she had not
had the heart to put bit or drop between her lips till it was near
bedtime, and then, when it was close on nine o'clock, she had
thought she should like a cup of tea. (Am I responsible for any
of these vulgar fluctuations, which begin with unhappiness and end
with tea?) Just as she was WARMING THE POT (I give the words on
the authority of Louis, who says he knows what they mean, and
wishes to explain, but I snub him on principle)--just as she was
warming the pot the door opened, and she was STRUCK OF A HEAP (her
own words again, and perfectly unintelligible this time to Louis,
as well as to myself) by the appearance in the inn parlour of her
ladyship the Countess. I give my niece's maid's description of my
sister's title with a sense of the highest relish. My poor dear
sister is a tiresome woman who married a foreigner. To resume:
the door opened, her ladyship the Countess appeared in the
parlour, and the Young Person was struck of a heap. Most
remarkable!

I must really rest a little before I can get on any farther. When
I have reclined for a few minutes, with my eyes closed, and when
Louis has refreshed my poor aching temples with a little eau-de-
Cologne, I may be able to proceed.

Her ladyship the Countess----

No. I am able to proceed, but not to sit up. I will recline and
dictate. Louis has a horrid accent, but he knows the language,
and can write. How very convenient!

Her ladyship, the Countess, explained her unexpected appearance at
the inn by telling Fanny that she had come to bring one or two
little messages which Miss Halcombe in her hurry had forgotten.
The Young Person thereupon waited anxiously to hear what the
messages were, but the Countess seemed disinclined to mention them
(so like my sister's tiresome way!) until Fanny had had her tea.
Her ladyship was surprisingly kind and thoughtful about it
(extremely unlike my sister), and said, "I am sure, my poor girl,
you must want your tea. We can let the messages wait till
afterwards. Come, come, if nothing else will put you at your
ease, I'll make the tea and have a cup with you." I think those
were the words, as reported excitably, in my presence, by the
Young Person. At any rate, the Countess insisted on making the
tea, and carried her ridiculous ostentation of humility so far as
to take one cup herself, and to insist on the girl's taking the
other. The girl drank the tea, and according to her own account,
solemnised the extraordinary occasion five minutes afterwards by
fainting dead away for the first time in her life. Here again I
use her own words. Louis thinks they were accompanied by an
increased secretion of tears. I can't say myself. The effort of
listening being quite as much as I could manage, my eyes were
closed.

Where did I leave off? Ah, yes--she fainted after drinking a cup
of tea with the Countess--a proceeding which might have interested
me if I had been her medical man, but being nothing of the sort I
felt bored by hearing of it, nothing more. When she came to
herself in half an hour's time she was on the sofa, and nobody was
with her but the landlady. The Countess, finding it too late to
remain any longer at the inn, had gone away as soon as the girl
showed signs of recovering, and the landlady had been good enough
to help her upstairs to bed.

Left by herself, she had felt in her bosom (I regret the necessity
of referring to this part of the subject a second time), and had
found the two letters there quite safe, but strangely crumpled.
She had been giddy in the night, but had got up well enough to
travel in the morning. She had put the letter addressed to that
obtrusive stranger, the gentleman in London into the post, and had
now delivered the other letter into my hands as she was told.
This was the plain truth, and though she could not blame herself
for any intentional neglect, she was sadly troubled in her mind,
and sadly in want of a word of advice. At this point Louis thinks
the secretions appeared again. Perhaps they did, but it is of
infinitely greater importance to mention that at this point also I
lost my patience, opened my eyes, and interfered.

"What is the purport of all this?" I inquired.

My niece's irrelevant maid stared, and stood speechless.

"Endeavour to explain," I said to my servant. "Translate me,
Louis."

Louis endeavoured and translated. In other words, he descended
immediately into a bottomless pit of confusion, and the Young
Person followed him down. I really don't know when I have been so
amused. I left them at the bottom of the pit as long as they
diverted me. When they ceased to divert me, I exerted my
intelligence, and pulled them up again.

It is unnecessary to say that my interference enabled me, in due
course of time, to ascertain the purport of the Young Person's
remarks.

I discovered that she was uneasy in her mind, because the train of
events that she had just described to me had prevented her from
receiving those supplementary messages which Miss Halcombe had
intrusted to the Countess to deliver. She was afraid the messages
might have been of great importance to her mistress's interests.
Her dread of Sir Percival had deterred her from going to
Blackwater Park late at night to inquire about them, and Miss
Halcombe's own directions to her, on no account to miss the train
in the morning, had prevented her from waiting at the inn the next
day. She was most anxious that the misfortune of her fainting-fit
should not lead to the second misfortune of making her mistress
think her neglectful, and she would humbly beg to ask me whether I
would advise her to write her explanations and excuses to Miss
Halcombe, requesting to receive the messages by letter, if it was
not too late. I make no apologies for this extremely prosy
paragraph. I have been ordered to write it. There are people,
unaccountable as it may appear, who actually take more interest in
what my niece's maid said to me on this occasion than in what I
said to my niece's maid. Amusing perversity!

"I should feel very much obliged to you, sir, if you would kindly
tell me what I had better do," remarked the Young Person.

"Let things stop as they are," I said, adapting my language to my
listener. "I invariably let things stop as they are. Yes. Is
that all?"

"If you think it would be a liberty in me, sir, to write, of
course I wouldn't venture to do so. But I am so very anxious to
do all I can to serve my mistress faithfully----"

People in the lower class of life never know when or how to go out
of a room. They invariably require to be helped out by their
betters. I thought it high time to help the Young Person out. I
did it with two judicious words--

"Good-morning."

Something outside or inside this singular girl suddenly creaked.
Louis, who was looking at her (which I was not), says she creaked
when she curtseyed. Curious. Was it her shoes, her stays, or her
bones? Louis thinks it was her stays. Most extraordinary!

As soon as I was left by myself I had a little nap--I really
wanted it. When I awoke again I noticed dear Marian's letter. If
I had had the least idea of what it contained I should certainly
not have attempted to open it. Being, unfortunately for myself,
quite innocent of all suspicion, I read the letter. It
immediately upset me for the day.

I am, by nature, one of the most easy-tempered creatures that ever
lived--I make allowances for everybody, and I take offence at
nothing. But as I have before remarked, there are limits to my
endurance. I laid down Marian's letter, and felt myself--justly
felt myself--an injured man.

I am about to make a remark. It is, of course, applicable to the
very serious matter now under notice, or I should not allow it to
appear in this place.

Nothing, in my opinion, sets the odious selfishness of mankind in
such a repulsively vivid light as the treatment, in all classes of
society, which the Single people receive at the hands of the
Married people. When you have once shown yourself too considerate
and self-denying to add a family of your own to an already
overcrowded population, you are vindictively marked out by your
married friends, who have no similar consideration and no similar
self-denial, as the recipient of half their conjugal troubles, and
the born friend of all their children. Husbands and wives TALK of
the cares of matrimony, and bachelors and spinsters BEAR them.
Take my own case. I considerately remain single, and my poor dear
brother Philip inconsiderately marries. What does he do when he
dies? He leaves his daughter to ME. She is a sweet girl--she is
also a dreadful responsibility. Why lay her on my shoulders?
Because I am bound, in the harmless character of a single man, to
relieve my married connections of all their own troubles. I do my
best with my brother's responsibility--I marry my niece, with
infinite fuss and difficulty, to the man her father wanted her to
marry. She and her husband disagree, and unpleasant consequences
follow. What does she do with those consequences? She transfers
them to ME. Why transfer them to ME? Because I am bound, in the
harmless character of a single man, to relieve my married
connections of all their own troubles. Poor single people! Poor
human nature!

It is quite unnecessary to say that Marian's letter threatened me.
Everybody threatens me. All sorts of horrors were to fall on my
devoted head if I hesitated to turn Limmeridge House into an
asylum for my niece and her misfortunes. I did hesitate,
nevertheless.

I have mentioned that my usual course, hitherto, had been to
submit to dear Marian, and save noise. But on this occasion, the
consequences involved in her extremely inconsiderate proposal were
of a nature to make me pause. If I opened Limmeridge House as an
asylum to Lady Glyde, what security had I against Sir Percival
Glyde's following her here in a state of violent resentment
against ME for harbouring his wife? I saw such a perfect labyrinth
of troubles involved in this proceeding that I determined to feel
my ground, as it were. I wrote, therefore, to dear Marian to beg
(as she had no husband to lay claim to her) that she would come
here by herself, first, and talk the matter over with me. If she
could answer my objections to my own perfect satisfaction, then I
assured her that I would receive our sweet Laura with the greatest
pleasure, but not otherwise.

I felt, of course, at the time, that this temporising on my part
would probably end in bringing Marian here in a state of virtuous
indignation, banging doors. But then, the other course of
proceeding might end in bringing Sir Percival here in a state of
virtuous indignation, banging doors also, and of the two
indignations and bangings I preferred Marian's, because I was used
to her. Accordingly I despatched the letter by return of post.
It gained me time, at all events--and, oh dear me! what a point
that was to begin with.

When I am totally prostrated (did I mention that I was totally
prostrated by Marian's letter?) it always takes me three days to
get up again. I was very unreasonable--I expected three days of
quiet. Of course I didn't get them.

The third day's post brought me a most impertinent letter from a
person with whom I was totally unacquainted. He described himself
as the acting partner of our man of business--our dear, pig-headed
old Gilmore--and he informed me that he had lately received, by
the post, a letter addressed to him in Miss Halcombe's
handwriting. On opening the envelope, he had discovered, to his
astonishment, that it contained nothing but a blank sheet of
notepaper. This circumstance appeared to him so suspicious (as
suggesting to his restless legal mind that the letter had been
tampered with) that he had at once written to Miss Halcombe, and
had received no answer by return of post. In this difficulty,
instead of acting like a sensible man and letting things take
their proper course, his next absurd proceeding, on his own
showing, was to pester me by writing to inquire if I knew anything
about it. What the deuce should I know about it? Why alarm me as
well as himself? I wrote back to that effect. It was one of my
keenest letters. I have produced nothing with a sharper
epistolary edge to it since I tendered his dismissal in writing to
that extremely troublesome person, Mr. Walter Hartright.

My letter produced its effect. I heard nothing more from the
lawyer.

This perhaps was not altogether surprising. But it was certainly
a remarkable circumstance that no second letter reached me from
Marian, and that no warning signs appeared of her arrival. Her
unexpected absence did me amazing good. It was so very soothing
and pleasant to infer (as I did of course) that my married
connections had made it up again. Five days of undisturbed
tranquillity, of delicious single blessedness, quite restored me.
On the sixth day I felt strong enough to send for my photographer,
and to set him at work again on the presentation copies of my art-
treasures, with a view, as I have already mentioned, to the
improvement of taste in this barbarous neighbourhood. I had just
dismissed him to his workshop, and had just begun coquetting with
my coins, when Louis suddenly made his appearance with a card in
his hand.

"Another Young Person?" I said. "I won't see her. In my state of
health Young Persons disagree with me. Not at home."

"It is a gentleman this time, sir "

A gentleman of course made a difference. I looked at the card.

Gracious Heaven! my tiresome sister's foreign husband, Count
Fosco.

Is it necessary to say what my first impression was when I looked
at my visitor's card? Surely not! My sister having married a
foreigner, there was but one impression that any man in his senses
could possibly feel. Of course the Count had come to borrow money
of me.

"Louis," I said, "do you think he would go away if you gave him
five shillings?"

Louis looked quite shocked. He surprised me inexpressibly by
declaring that my sister's foreign husband was dressed superbly,
and looked the picture of prosperity. Under these circumstances
my first impression altered to a certain extent. I now took it
for granted that the Count had matrimonial difficulties of his own
to contend with, and that he had come, like the rest of the
family, to cast them all on my shoulders.

"Did he mention his business?" I asked.

"Count Fosco said he had come here, sir, because Miss Halcombe was
unable to leave Blackwater Park."

Fresh troubles, apparently. Not exactly his own, as I had
supposed, but dear Marian's. Troubles, anyway. Oh dear!

"Show him in," I said resignedly.

The Count's first appearance really startled me. He was such an
alarmingly large person that I quite trembled. I felt certain
that he would shake the floor and knock down my art-treasures. He
did neither the one nor the other. He was refreshingly dressed in
summer costume--his manner was delightfully self-possessed and
quiet--he had a charming smile. My first impression of him was
highly favourable. It is not creditable to my penetration--as the
sequel will show--to acknowledge this, but I am a naturally candid
man, and I DO acknowledge it notwithstanding.

"Allow me to present myself, Mr. Fairlie," he said. "I come from
Blackwater Park, and I have the honour and the happiness of being
Madame Fosco's husband. Let me take my first and last advantage
of that circumstance by entreating you not to make a stranger of
me. I beg you will not disturb yourself--I beg you will not
move."

"You are very good," I replied. "I wish I was strong enough to
get up. Charmed to see you at Limmeridge. Please take a chair."

"I am afraid you are suffering to-day," said the Count.

"As usual," I said. "I am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed
up to look like a man."

"I have studied many subjects in my time," remarked this
sympathetic person. "Among others the inexhaustible subject of
nerves. May I make a suggestion, at once the simplest and the
most profound? Will you let me alter the light in your room?

"Certainly--if you will be so very kind as not to let any of it in
on me."

He walked to the window. Such a contrast to dear Marian! so
extremely considerate in all his movements!

"Light," he said, in that delightfully confidential tone which is
so soothing to an invalid, "is the first essential. Light
stimulates, nourishes, preserves. You can no more do without it,
Mr. Fairlie, than if you were a flower. Observe. Here, where you
sit, I close the shutters to compose you. There, where you do NOT
sit, I draw up the blind and let in the invigorating sun. Admit
the light into your room if you cannot bear it on yourself.
Light, sir, is the grand decree of Providence. You accept
Providence with your own restrictions. Accept light on the same
terms."

I thought this very convincing and attentive. He had taken me in
up to that point about the light, he had certainly taken me in.

"You see me confused," he said, returning to his place--"on my
word of honour, Mr. Fairlie, you see me confused in your
presence."

"Shocked to hear it, I am sure. May I inquire why?"

"Sir, can I enter this room (where you sit a sufferer), and see
you surrounded by these admirable objects of Art, without
discovering that you are a man whose feelings are acutely
impressionable, whose sympathies are perpetually alive? Tell me,
can I do this?"

If I had been strong enough to sit up in my chair I should, of
course, have bowed. Not being strong enough, I smiled my
acknowledgments instead. It did just as well, we both understood
one another.

"Pray follow my train of thought," continued the Count. "I sit
here, a man of refined sympathies myself, in the presence of
another man of refined sympathies also. I am conscious of a
terrible necessity for lacerating those sympathies by referring to
domestic events of a very melancholy kind. What is the inevitable
consequence? I have done myself the honour of pointing it out to
you already. I sit confused."

Was it at this point that I began to suspect he was going to bore
me? I rather think it was.

"Is it absolutely necessary to refer to these unpleasant matters?"
I inquired. "In our homely English phrase, Count Fosco, won't
they keep?"

The Count, with the most alarming solemnity, sighed and shook his
head.

"Must I really hear them?"

He shrugged his shoulders (it was the first foreign thing he had
done since he had been in the room), and looked at me in an
unpleasantly penetrating manner. My instincts told me that I had
better close my eyes. I obeyed my instincts.

"Please break it gently," I pleaded. "Anybody dead?"

"Dead!" cried the Count, with unnecessary foreign fierceness.
"Mr. Fairlie, your national composure terrifies me. In the name
of Heaven, what have I said or done to make you think me the
messenger of death?"

"Pray accept my apologies," I answered. "You have said and done
nothing. I make it a rule in these distressing cases always to
anticipate the worst. It breaks the blow by meeting it half-way,
and so on. Inexpressibly relieved, I am sure, to hear that nobody
is dead. Anybody ill?"

I opened my eyes and looked at him. Was he very yellow when he
came in, or had he turned very yellow in the last minute or two? I
really can't say, and I can't ask Louis, because he was not in the
room at the time.

"Anybody ill?" I repeated, observing that my national composure
still appeared to affect him.

"That is part of my bad news, Mr. Fairlie. Yes. Somebody is
ill."

"Grieved, I am sure. Which of them is it?"

"To my profound sorrow, Miss Halcombe. Perhaps you were in some
degree prepared to hear this? Perhaps when you found that Miss
Halcombe did not come here by herself, as you proposed, and did
not write a second time, your affectionate anxiety may have made
you fear that she was ill?"

I have no doubt my affectionate anxiety had led to that melancholy
apprehension at some time or other, but at the moment my wretched
memory entirely failed to remind me of the circumstance. However,
I said yes, in justice to myself. I was much shocked. It was so
very uncharacteristic of such a robust person as dear Marian to be
ill, that I could only suppose she had met with an accident. A
horse, or a false step on the stairs, or something of that sort.

"Is it serious?" I asked.

"Serious--beyond a doubt," he replied. "Dangerous--I hope and
trust not. Miss Halcombe unhappily exposed herself to be wetted
through by a heavy rain. The cold that followed was of an
aggravated kind, and it has now brought with it the worst
consequence--fever."

When I heard the word fever, and when I remembered at the same
moment that the unscrupulous person who was now addressing me had
just come from Blackwater Park, I thought I should have fainted on
the spot.

"Good God!" I said. "Is it infectious?"

"Not at present," he answered, with detestable composure. "It may
turn to infection--but no such deplorable complication had taken
place when I left Blackwater Park. I have felt the deepest
interest in the case, Mr. Fairlie--I have endeavoured to assist
the regular medical attendant in watching it--accept my personal
assurances of the uninfectious nature of the fever when I last saw
it."

Accept his assurances! I never was farther from accepting anything
in my life. I would not have believed him on his oath. He was
too yellow to be believed. He looked like a walking-West-Indian-
epidemic. He was big enough to carry typhus by the ton, and to
dye the very carpet he walked on with scarlet fever. In certain
emergencies my mind is remarkably soon made up. I instantly
determined to get rid of him.

"You will kindly excuse an invalid," I said--"but long conferences
of any kind invariably upset me. May I beg to know exactly what
the object is to which I am indebted for the honour of your
visit?"

I fervently hoped that this remarkably broad hint would throw him
off his balance--confuse him--reduce him to polite apologies--in
short, get him out of the room. On the contrary, it only settled
him in his chair. He became additionally solemn, and dignified,
and confidential. He held up two of his horrid fingers and gave
me another of his unpleasantly penetrating looks. What was I to
do? I was not strong enough to quarrel with him. Conceive my
situation, if you please. Is language adequate to describe it? I
think not.

"The objects of my visit," he went on, quite irrepressibly, "are
numbered on my fingers. They are two. First, I come to bear my
testimony, with profound sorrow, to the lamentable disagreements
between Sir Percival and Lady Glyde. I am Sir Percival's oldest
friend--I am related to Lady Glyde by marriage--I am an eye-
witness of all that has happened at Blackwater Park. In those
three capacities I speak with authority, with confidence, with
honourable regret. Sir, I inform you, as the head of Lady Glyde's
family, that Miss Halcombe has exaggerated nothing in the letter
which she wrote to your address. I affirm that the remedy which
that admirable lady has proposed is the only remedy that will
spare you the horrors of public scandal. A temporary separation
between husband and wife is the one peaceable solution of this
difficulty. Part them for the present, and when all causes of
irritation are removed, I, who have now the honour of addressing
you--I will undertake to bring Sir Percival to reason. Lady Glyde
is innocent, Lady Glyde is injured, but--follow my thought here!--
she is, on that very account (I say it with shame), the cause of
irritation while she remains under her husband's roof. No other
house can receive her with propriety but yours. I invite you to
open it."

Cool. Here was a matrimonial hailstorm pouring in the South of
England, and I was invited, by a man with fever in every fold of
his coat, to come out from the North of England and take my share
of the pelting. I tried to put the point forcibly, just as I have
put it here. The Count deliberately lowered one of his horrid
fingers, kept the other up, and went on--rode over me, as it were,
without even the common coach-manlike attention of crying "Hi!"
before he knocked me down.

"Follow my thought once more, if you please," he resumed. "My
first object you have heard. My second object in coming to this
house is to do what Miss Halcombe's illness has prevented her from
doing for herself. My large experience is consulted on all
difficult matters at Blackwater Park, and my friendly advice was
requested on the interesting subject of your letter to Miss
Halcombe. I understood at once--for my sympathies are your
sympathies--why you wished to see her here before you pledged
yourself to inviting Lady Glyde. You are most right, sir, in
hesitating to receive the wife until you are quite certain that
the husband will not exert his authority to reclaim her. I agree
to that. I also agree that such delicate explanations as this
difficulty involves are not explanations which can be properly
disposed of by writing only. My presence here (to my own great
inconvenience) is the proof that I speak sincerely. As for the
explanations themselves, I--Fosco--I, who know Sir Percival much
better than Miss Halcombe knows him, affirm to you, on my honour
and my word, that he will not come near this house, or attempt to
communicate with this house, while his wife is living in it. His
affairs are embarrassed. Offer him his freedom by means of the
absence of Lady Glyde. I promise you he will take his freedom,
and go back to the Continent at the earliest moment when he can
get away. Is this clear to you as crystal? Yes, it is. Have you
questions to address to me? Be it so, I am here to answer. Ask,
Mr. Fairlie--oblige me by asking to your heart's content."

He had said so much already in spite of me, and he looked so
dreadfully capable of saying a great deal more also in spite of
me, that I declined his amiable invitation in pure self-defence.

"Many thanks," I replied. "I am sinking fast. In my state of
health I must take things for granted. Allow me to do so on this
occasion. We quite understand each other. Yes. Much obliged, I
am sure, for your kind interference. If I ever get better, and
ever have a second opportunity of improving our acquaintance "

He got up. I thought he was going. No. More talk, more time for
the development of infectious influences--in my room, too--
remember that, in my room!

"One moment yet," he said, "one moment before I take my leave. I
ask permission at parting to impress on you an urgent necessity.
It is this, sir. You must not think of waiting till Miss Halcombe
recovers before you receive Lady Glyde. Miss Halcombe has the
attendance of the doctor, of the housekeeper at Blackwater Park,
and of an experienced nurse as well--three persons for whose
capacity and devotion I answer with my life. I tell you that. I
tell you, also, that the anxiety and alarm of her sister's illness
has already affected the health and spirits of Lady Glyde, and has
made her totally unfit to be of use in the sick-room. Her
position with her husband grows more and more deplorable and
dangerous every day. If you leave her any longer at Blackwater
Park, you do nothing whatever to hasten her sister's recovery, and
at the same time, you risk the public scandal, which you and I,
and all of us, are bound in the sacred interests of the family to
avoid. With all my soul, I advise you to remove the serious
responsibility of delay from your own shoulders by writing to Lady
Glyde to come here at once. Do your affectionate, your
honourable, your inevitable duty, and whatever happens in the
future, no one can lay the blame on you. I speak from my large
experience--I offer my friendly advice. Is it accepted--Yes, or
No?"

I looked at him--merely looked at him--with my sense of his
amazing assurance, and my dawning resolution to ring for Louis and
have him shown out of the room expressed in every line of my face.
It is perfectly incredible, but quite true, that my face did not
appear to produce the slightest impression on him. Born without
nerves--evidently born without nerves.

"You hesitate?" he said. "Mr. Fairlie! I understand that
hesitation. You object--see, sir, how my sympathies look straight
down into your thoughts!--you object that Lady Glyde is not in
health and not in spirits to take the long journey, from Hampshire
to this place, by herself. Her own maid is removed from her, as
you know, and of other servants fit to travel with her, from one
end of England to another, there are none at Blackwater Park. You
object, again, that she cannot comfortably stop and rest in
London, on her way here, because she cannot comfortably go alone
to a public hotel where she is a total stranger. In one breath, I
grant both objections--in another breath, I remove them. Follow
me, if you please, for the last time. It was my intention, when I
returned to England with Sir Percival, to settle myself in the
neighbourhood of London. That purpose has just been happily
accomplished. I have taken, for six months, a little furnished
house in the quarter called St. John's Wood. Be so obliging as to
keep this fact in your mind, and observe the programme I now
propose. Lady Glyde travels to London (a short journey)--I myself
meet her at the station--I take her to rest and sleep at my house,
which is also the house of her aunt--when she is restored I escort
her to the station again--she travels to this place, and her own
maid (who is now under your roof) receives her at the carriage-
door. Here is comfort consulted--here are the interests of
propriety consulted--here is your own duty--duty of hospitality,
sympathy, protection, to an unhappy lady in need of all three--
smoothed and made easy, from the beginning to the end. I
cordially invite you, sir, to second my efforts in the sacred
interests of the family. I seriously advise you to write, by my
hands, offering the hospitality of your house (and heart), and the
hospitality of my house (and heart), to that injured and
unfortunate lady whose cause I plead to-day."

He waved his horrid hand at me--he struck his infectious breast--
he addressed me oratorically, as if I was laid up in the House of
Commons. It was high time to take a desperate course of some
sort. It was also high time to send for Louis, and adopt the
precaution of fumigating the room.

In this trying emergency an idea occurred to me--an inestimable
idea which, so to speak, killed two intrusive birds with one
stone. I determined to get rid of the Count's tiresome eloquence,
and of Lady Glyde's tiresome troubles, by complying with this
odious foreigner's request, and writing the letter at once. There
was not the least danger of the invitation being accepted, for
there was not the least chance that Laura would consent to leave
Blackwater Park while Marian was lying there ill. How this
charmingly convenient obstacle could have escaped the officious
penetration of the Count, it was impossible to conceive--but it
HAD escaped him. My dread that he might yet discover it, if I
allowed him any more time to think, stimulated me to such an
amazing degree, that I struggled into a sitting position--seized,
really seized, the writing materials by my side, and produced the
letter as rapidly as if I had been a common clerk in an office.
"Dearest Laura, Please come, whenever you like. Break the journey
by sleeping in London at your aunt's house. Grieved to hear of
dear Marian's illness. Ever affectionately yours." I handed these
lines, at arm's length, to the Count--I sank back in my chair--I
said, "Excuse me--I am entirely prostrated--I can do no more.
Will you rest and lunch downstairs? Love to all, and sympathy, and
so on. Good-morning."

He made another speech--the man was absolutely inexhaustible. I
closed my eyes--I endeavoured to hear as little as possible. In
spite of my endeavours I was obliged to hear a great deal. My
sister's endless husband congratulated himself, and congratulated
me, on the result of our interview--he mentioned a great deal more
about his sympathies and mine--he deplored my miserable health--he
offered to write me a prescription--he impressed on me the
necessity of not forgetting what he had said about the importance
of light--he accepted my obliging invitation to rest and lunch--he
recommended me to expect Lady Glyde in two or three days' time--he
begged my permission to look forward to our next meeting, instead
of paining himself and paining me, by saying farewell--he added a
great deal more, which, I rejoice to think, I did not attend to at
the time, and do not remember now. I heard his sympathetic voice
travelling away from me by degrees--but, large as he was, I never
heard him. He had the negative merit of being absolutely
noiseless. I don't know when he opened the door, or when he shut
it. I ventured to make use of my eyes again, after an interval of
silence--and he was gone.

I rang for Louis, and retired to my bathroom. Tepid water,
strengthened with aromatic vinegar, for myself, and copious
fumigation for my study, were the obvious precautions to take, and
of course I adopted them. I rejoice to say they proved
successful. I enjoyed my customary siesta. I awoke moist and
cool.

My first inquiries were for the Count. Had we really got rid of
him? Yes--he had gone away by the afternoon train. Had he
lunched, and if so, upon what? Entirely upon fruit-tart and cream.
What a man! What a digestion!

Am I expected to say anything more? I believe not. I believe I
have reached the limits assigned to me. The shocking
circumstances which happened at a later period did not, I am
thankful to say, happen in my presence. I do beg and entreat that
nobody will be so very unfeeling as to lay any part of the blame
of those circumstances on me. I did everything for the best. I am
not answerable for a deplorable calamity, which it was quite
impossible to foresee. I am shattered by it--I have suffered
under it, as nobody else has suffered. My servant, Louis (who is
really attached to me in his unintelligent way), thinks I shall
never get over it. He sees me dictating at this moment, with my
handkerchief to my eyes. I wish to mention, in justice to myself,
that it was not my fault, and that I am quite exhausted and
heartbroken. Need I say more?

THE STORY CONTINUED BY ELIZA MICHELSON
(Housekeeper at Blackwater Park)

I

I am asked to state plainly what I know of the progress of Miss
Halcombe's illness and of the circumstances under which Lady Glyde
left Blackwater Park for London.

The reason given for making this demand on me is, that my
testimony is wanted in the interests of truth. As the widow of a
clergyman of the Church of England (reduced by misfortune to the
necessity of accepting a situation), I have been taught to place
the claims of truth above all other considerations. I therefore
comply with a request which I might otherwise, through reluctance
to connect myself with distressing family affairs, have hesitated
to grant.

I made no memorandum at the time, and I cannot therefore be sure
to a day of the date, but I believe I am correct in stating that
Miss Halcombe's serious illness began during the last fortnight or
ten days in June. The breakfast hour was late at Blackwater Park--
sometimes as late as ten, never earlier than half-past nine. On
the morning to which I am now referring, Miss Halcombe (who was
usually the first to come down) did not make her appearance at the
table. After the family had waited a quarter of an hour, the
upper housemaid was sent to see after her, and came running out of
the room dreadfully frightened. I met the servant on the stairs,
and went at once to Miss Halcombe to see what was the matter. The
poor lady was incapable of telling me. She was walking about her
room with a pen in her hand, quite light-headed, in a state of
burning fever.

Lady Glyde (being no longer in Sir Percival's service, I may,
without impropriety, mention my former mistress by her name,
instead of calling her my lady) was the first to come in from her
own bedroom. She was so dreadfully alarmed and distressed that
she was quite useless. The Count Fosco, and his lady, who came
upstairs immediately afterwards, were both most serviceable and
kind. Her ladyship assisted me to get Miss Halcombe to her bed.
His lordship the Count remained in the sitting-room, and having
sent for my medicine-chest, made a mixture for Miss Halcombe, and
a cooling lotion to be applied to her head, so as to lose no time
before the doctor came. We applied the lotion, but we could not
get her to take the mixture. Sir Percival undertook to send for
the doctor. He despatched a groom, on horseback, for the nearest
medical man, Mr. Dawson, of Oak Lodge.

Mr. Dawson arrived in less than an hour's time. He was a
respectable elderly man, well known all round the country, and we
were much alarmed when we found that he considered the case to be
a very serious one.

His lordship the Count affably entered into conversation with Mr.
Dawson, and gave his opinions with a judicious freedom. Mr.
Dawson, not over-courteously, inquired if his lordship's advice
was the advice of a doctor, and being informed that it was the
advice of one who had studied medicine unprofessionally, replied
that he was not accustomed to consult with amateur physicians.
The Count, with truly Christian meekness of temper, smiled and
left the room. Before he went out he told me that he might be
found, in case he was wanted in the course of the day, at the
boat-house on the banks of the lake. Why he should have gone
there, I cannot say. But he did go, remaining away the whole day
till seven o'clock, which was dinner-time. Perhaps he wished to
set the example of keeping the house as quiet as possible. It was
entirely in his character to do so. He was a most considerate
nobleman.

Miss Halcombe passed a very bad night, the fever coming and going,
and getting worse towards the morning instead of better. No nurse
fit to wait on her being at hand in the neighbourhood, her
ladyship the Countess and myself undertook the duty, relieving
each other. Lady Glyde, most unwisely, insisted on sitting up
with us. She was much too nervous and too delicate in health to
bear the anxiety of Miss Halcombe's illness calmly. She only did
herself harm, without being of the least real assistance. A more
gentle and affectionate lady never lived--but she cried, and she
was frightened, two weaknesses which made her entirely unfit to be
present in a sick-room.

Sir Percival and the Count came in the morning to make their
inquiries.

Sir Percival (from distress, I presume, at his lady's affliction
and at Miss Halcombe's illness) appeared much confused and
unsettled in his mind. His lordship testified, on the contrary, a
becoming composure and interest. He had his straw hat in one hand,
and his book in the other, and he mentioned to Sir Percival in my
hearing that he would go out again and study at the lake. "Let us
keep the house quiet," he said. "Let us not smoke indoors, my
friend, now Miss Halcombe is ill. You go your way, and I will go
mine. When I study I like to be alone. Good-morning, Mrs.
Michelson."

Sir Percival was not civil enough--perhaps I ought in justice to
say, not composed enough--to take leave of me with the same polite
attention. The only person in the house, indeed, who treated me,
at that time or at any other, on the footing of a lady in
distressed circumstances, was the Count. He had the manners of a
true nobleman--he was considerate towards every one. Even the
young person (Fanny by name) who attended on Lady Glyde was not
beneath his notice. When she was sent away by Sir Percival, his
lordship (showing me his sweet little birds at the time) was most
kindly anxious to know what had become of her, where she was to go
the day she left Blackwater Park, and so on. It is in such little
delicate attentions that the advantages of aristocratic birth
always show themselves. I make no apology for introducing these
particulars--they are brought forward in justice to his lordship,
whose character, I have reason to know, is viewed rather harshly
in certain quarters. A nobleman who can respect a lady in
distressed circumstances, and can take a fatherly interest in the
fortunes of an humble servant girl, shows principles and feelings
of too high an order to be lightly called in question. I advance
no opinions--I offer facts only. My endeavour through life is to
judge not that I be not judged. One of my beloved husband's
finest sermons was on that text. I read it constantly--in my own
copy of the edition printed by subscription, in the first days of
my widowhood--and at every fresh perusal I derive an increase of
spiritual benefit and edification.

There was no improvement in Miss Halcombe, and the second night
was even worse than the first. Mr. Dawson was constant in his
attendance. The practical duties of nursing were still divided
between the Countess and myself, Lady Glyde persisting in sitting
up with us, though we both entreated her to take some rest. "My
place is by Marian's bedside," was her only answer. "Whether I am
ill, or well, nothing will induce me to lose sight of her."

Towards midday I went downstairs to attend to some of my regular
duties. An hour afterwards, on my way back to the sick-room, I
saw the Count (who had gone out again early, for the third time)
entering the hall, to all appearance in the highest good spirits.
Sir Percival, at the same moment, put his head out of the library
door, and addressed his noble friend, with extreme eagerness, in
these words--

"Have you found her?"

His lordship's large face became dimpled all over with placid
smiles, but he made no reply in words. At the same time Sir
Percival turned his head, observed that I was approaching the
stairs, and looked at me in the most rudely angry manner possible.

"Come in here and tell me about it," he said to the Count.
"Whenever there are women in a house they're always sure to be
going up or down stairs."

"My dear Percival," observed his lordship kindly, "Mrs. Michelson
has duties. Pray recognise her admirable performance of them as
sincerely as I do! How is the sufferer, Mrs. Michelson?"

"No better, my lord, I regret to say."

"Sad--most sad!" remarked the Count. "You look fatigued, Mrs.
Michelson. It is certainly time you and my wife had some help in
nursing. I think I may be the means of offering you that help.
Circumstances have happened which will oblige Madame Fosco to
travel to London either to-morrow or the day after. She will go
away in the morning and return at night, and she will bring back
with her, to relieve you, a nurse of excellent conduct and
capacity, who is now disengaged. The woman is known to my wife as
a person to be trusted. Before she comes here say nothing about
her, if you please, to the doctor, because he will look with an
evil eye on any nurse of my providing. When she appears in this
house she will speak for herself, and Mr. Dawson will be obliged
to acknowledge that there is no excuse for not employing her.
Lady Glyde will say the same. Pray present my best respects and
sympathies to Lady Glyde."

I expressed my grateful acknowledgments for his lordship's kind
consideration. Sir Percival cut them short by calling to his
noble friend (using, I regret to say, a profane expression) to
come into the library, and not to keep him waiting there any
longer.

I proceeded upstairs. We are poor erring creatures, and however
well established a woman's principles may be she cannot always
keep on her guard against the temptation to exercise an idle
curiosity. I am ashamed to say that an idle curiosity, on this
occasion, got the better of my principles, and made me unduly
inquisitive about the question which Sir Percival had addressed to
his noble friend at the library door. Who was the Count expected
to find in the course of his studious morning rambles at
Blackwater Park? A woman, it was to be presumed, from the terms of
Sir Percival's inquiry. I did not suspect the Count of any
impropriety--I knew his moral character too well. The only
question I asked myself was--Had he found her?

To resume. The night passed as usual without producing any change
for the better in Miss Halcombe. The next day she seemed to
improve a little. The day after that her ladyship the Countess,
without mentioning the object of her journey to any one in my
hearing, proceeded by the morning train to London--her noble
husband, with his customary attention, accompanying her to the
station.

I was now left in sole charge of Miss Halcombe, with every
apparent chance, in consequence of her sister's resolution not to
leave the bedside, of having Lady Glyde herself to nurse next.

The only circumstance of any importance that happened in the
course of the day was the occurrence of another unpleasant meeting
between the doctor and the Count.

His lordship, on returning from the station, stepped up into Miss
Halcombe's sitting-room to make his inquiries. I went out from
the bedroom to speak to him, Mr. Dawson and Lady Glyde being both
with the patient at the time. The Count asked me many questions
about the treatment and the symptoms. I informed him that the
treatment was of the kind described as "saline," and that the
symptoms, between the attacks of fever, were certainly those of
increasing weakness and exhaustion. Just as I was mentioning
these last particulars, Mr. Dawson came out from the bedroom.

"Good-morning, sir," said his lordship, stepping forward in the
most urbane manner, and stopping the doctor, with a high-bred
resolution impossible to resist, "I greatly fear you find no
improvement in the symptoms to-day?"

"I find decided improvement," answered Mr. Dawson.

"You still persist in your lowering treatment of this case of
fever?" continued his lordship.

"I persist in the treatment which is justified by my own
professional experience," said Mr. Dawson.

"Permit me to put one question to you on the vast subject of
professional experience," observed the Count. "I presume to offer
no more advice--I only presume to make an inquiry. You live at
some distance, sir, from the gigantic centres of scientific
activity--London and Paris. Have you ever heard of the wasting
effects of fever being reasonably and intelligibly repaired by
fortifying the exhausted patient with brandy, wine, ammonia, and
quinine? Has that new heresy of the highest medical authorities
ever reached your ears--Yes or No?"

"When a professional man puts that question to me I shall be glad
to answer him," said the doctor, opening the door to go out. "You
are not a professional man, and I beg to decline answering you."

Buffeted in this inexcusably uncivil way on one cheek, the Count,
like a practical Christian, immediately turned the other, and
said, in the sweetest manner, "Good-morning, Mr. Dawson."

If my late beloved husband had been so fortunate as to know his
lordship, how highly he and the Count would have esteemed each
other!

Her ladyship the Countess returned by the last train that night,
and brought with her the nurse from London. I was instructed that
this person's name was Mrs. Rubelle. Her personal appearance, and
her imperfect English when she spoke, informed me that she was a
foreigner.

I have always cultivated a feeling of humane indulgence for
foreigners. They do not possess our blessings and advantages, and
they are, for the most part, brought up in the blind errors of
Popery. It has also always been my precept and practice, as it
was my dear husband's precept and practice before me (see Sermon
XXIX. in the Collection by the late Rev. Samuel Michelson, M.A.),
to do as I would be done by. On both these accounts I will not
say that Mrs. Rubelle struck me as being a small, wiry, sly
person, of fifty or thereabouts, with a dark brown or Creole
complexion and watchful light grey eyes. Nor will I mention, for
the reasons just alleged, that I thought her dress, though it was
of the plainest black silk, inappropriately costly in texture and
unnecessarily refined in trimming and finish, for a person in her
position in life. I should not like these things to be said of
me, and therefore it is my duty not to say them of Mrs. Rubelle.
I will merely mention that her manners were, not perhaps
unpleasantly reserved, but only remarkably quiet and retiring--
that she looked about her a great deal, and said very little,
which might have arisen quite as much from her own modesty as from
distrust of her position at Blackwater Park; and that she declined
to partake of supper (which was curious perhaps, but surely not
suspicious?), although I myself politely invited her to that meal
in my own room.

At the Count's particular suggestion (so like his lordship's
forgiving kindness!), it was arranged that Mrs. Rubelle should not
enter on her duties until she had been seen and approved by the
doctor the next morning. I sat up that night. Lady Glyde
appeared to be very unwilling that the new nurse should be
employed to attend on Miss Halcombe. Such want of liberality
towards a foreigner on the part of a lady of her education and
refinement surprised me. I ventured to say, "My lady, we must all
remember not to be hasty in our judgments on our inferiors--
especially when they come from foreign parts." Lady Glyde did not
appear to attend to me. She only sighed, and kissed Miss
Halcombe's hand as it lay on the counterpane. Scarcely a
judicious proceeding in a sick-room, with a patient whom it was
highly desirable not to excite. But poor Lady Glyde knew nothing
of nursing--nothing whatever, I am sorry to say.

The next morning Mrs. Rubelle was sent to the sitting-room, to be
approved by the doctor on his way through to the bedroom.

I left Lady Glyde with Miss Halcombe, who was slumbering at the
time, and joined Mrs. Rubelle, with the object of kindly
preventing her from feeling strange and nervous in consequence of
the uncertainty of her situation. She did not appear to see it in
that light. She seemed to be quite satisfied, beforehand, that
Mr. Dawson would approve of her, and she sat calmly looking out of
window, with every appearance of enjoying the country air. Some
people might have thought such conduct suggestive of brazen
assurance. I beg to say that I more liberally set it down to
extraordinary strength of mind.

Instead of the doctor coming up to us, I was sent for to see the
doctor. I thought this change of affairs rather odd, but Mrs.
Rubelle did not appear to be affected by it in any way. I left
her still calmly looking out of the window, and still silently
enjoying the country air.

Mr. Dawson was waiting for me by himself in the breakfast-room.

"About this new nurse, Mrs. Michelson," said the doctor.

"Yes, sir?"

"I find that she has been brought here from London by the wife of
that fat old foreigner, who is always trying to interfere with me.
Mrs. Michelson, the fat old foreigner is a quack."

This was very rude. I was naturally shocked at it.

"Are you aware, sir," I said, "that you are talking of a
nobleman?"

"Pooh! He isn't the first quack with a handle to his name.
They're all Counts--hang 'em!"

"He would not be a friend of Sir Percival Glyde's, sir, if he was
not a member of the highest aristocracy--excepting the English
aristocracy, of course."

"Very well, Mrs. Michelson, call him what you like, and let us get
back to the nurse. I have been objecting to her already."

"Without having seen her, sir?"

"Yes, without having seen her. She may be the best nurse in
existence, but she is not a nurse of my providing. I have put
that objection to Sir Percival, as the master of the house. He
doesn't support me. He says a nurse of my providing would have
been a stranger from London also, and he thinks the woman ought to
have a trial, after his wife's aunt has taken the trouble to fetch
her from London. There is some justice in that, and I can't
decently say No. But I have made it a condition that she is to go
at once, if I find reason to complain of her. This proposal being
one which I have some right to make, as medical attendant, Sir
Percival has consented to it. Now, Mrs. Michelson, I know I can
depend on you, and I want you to keep a sharp eye on the nurse for
the first day or two, and to see that she gives Miss Halcombe no
medicines but mine. This foreign nobleman of yours is dying to
try his quack remedies (mesmerism included) on my patient, and a
nurse who is brought here by his wife may be a little too willing
to help him. You understand? Very well, then, we may go upstairs.
Is the nurse there? I'll say a word to her before she goes into
the sick-room."

We found Mrs. Rubelle still enjoying herself at the window. When
I introduced her to Mr. Dawson, neither the doctor's doubtful
looks nor the doctor's searching questions appeared to confuse her
in the least. She answered him quietly in her broken English, and
though he tried hard to puzzle her, she never betrayed the least
ignorance, so far, about any part of her duties. This was
doubtless the result of strength of mind, as I said before, and
not of brazen assurance, by any means.

We all went into the bedroom.

Mrs. Rubelle looked very attentively at the patient, curtseyed to
Lady Glyde, set one or two little things right in the room, and
sat down quietly in a corner to wait until she was wanted. Her
ladyship seemed startled and annoyed by the appearance of the
strange nurse. No one said anything, for fear of rousing Miss
Halcombe, who was still slumbering, except the doctor, who
whispered a question about the night. I softly answered, "Much as
usual," and then Mr. Dawson went out. Lady Glyde followed him, I
suppose to speak about Mrs. Rubelle. For my own part, I had made
up my mind already that this quiet foreign person would keep her
situation. She had all her wits about her, and she certainly
understood her business. So far, I could hardly have done much
better by the bedside myself.

Remembering Mr. Dawson's caution to me, I subjected Mrs. Rubelle
to a severe scrutiny at certain intervals for the next three or
four days. I over and over again entered the room softly and
suddenly, but I never found her out in any suspicious action.
Lady Glyde, who watched her as attentively as I did, discovered
nothing either. I never detected a sign of the medicine bottles
being tampered with, I never saw Mrs. Rubelle say a word to the
Count, or the Count to her. She managed Miss Halcombe with
unquestionable care and discretion. The poor lady wavered
backwards and forwards between a sort of sleepy exhaustion, which
was half faintness and half slumbering, and attacks of fever which
brought with them more or less of wandering in her mind. Mrs.
Rubelle never disturbed her in the first case, and never startled
her in the second, by appearing too suddenly at the bedside in the
character of a stranger. Honour to whom honour is due (whether
foreign or English and I give her privilege impartially to Mrs.
Rubelle. She was remarkably uncommunicative about herself, and
she was too quietly independent of all advice from experienced
persons who understood the duties of a sick-room--but with these
drawbacks, she was a good nurse, and she never gave either Lady
Glyde or Mr. Dawson the shadow of a reason for complaining of her.

The next circumstance of importance that occurred in the house was
the temporary absence of the Count, occasioned by business which
took him to London. He went away (I think) on the morning of the
fourth day after the arrival of Mrs. Rubelle, and at parting he
spoke to Lady Glyde very seriously, in my presence, on the subject
of Miss Halcombe.

"Trust Mr. Dawson," he said, "for a few days more, if you please.
But if there is not some change for the better in that time, send
for advice from London, which this mule of a doctor must accept in
spite of himself. Offend Mr. Dawson, and save Miss Halcombe. I
say this seriously, on my word of honour and from the bottom of my
heart."

His lordship spoke with extreme feeling and kindness. But poor
Lady Glyde's nerves were so completely broken down that she seemed
quite frightened at him. She trembled from head to foot, and
allowed him to take his leave without uttering a word on her side.
She turned to me when he had gone, and said, "Oh, Mrs. Michelson,
I am heart-broken about my sister, and I have no friend to advise
me! Do you think Mr. Dawson is wrong? He told me himself this
morning that there was no fear, and no need to send for another
doctor."

"With all respect to Mr. Dawson," I answered, "in your ladyship's
place I should remember the Count's advice."

Lady Glyde turned away from me suddenly, with an appearance of
despair, for which I was quite unable to account.

"HIS advice!" she said to herself. "God help us--HIS advice!"

The Count was away from Blackwater Park, as nearly as I remember,
a week.

Sir Percival seemed to feel the loss of his lordship in various
ways, and appeared also, I thought, much depressed and altered by
the sickness and sorrow in the house. Occasionally he was so very
restless that I could not help noticing it, coming and going, and
wandering here and there and everywhere in the grounds. His
inquiries about Miss Halcombe, and about his lady (whose failing
health seemed to cause him sincere anxiety), were most attentive.
I think his heart was much softened. If some kind clerical
friend--some such friend as he might have found in my late
excellent husband--had been near him at this time, cheering moral
progress might have been made with Sir Percival. I seldom find
myself mistaken on a point of this sort, having had experience to
guide me in my happy married days.

Her ladyship the Countess, who was now the only company for Sir
Percival downstairs, rather neglected him, as I considered--or,
perhaps, it might have been that he neglected her. A stranger
might almost have supposed that they were bent, now they were left
together alone, on actually avoiding one another. This, of
course, could not be. But it did so happen, nevertheless, that
the Countess made her dinner at luncheon-time, and that she always
came upstairs towards evening, although Mrs. Rubelle had taken the
nursing duties entirely off her hands. Sir Percival dined by
himself, and William (the man out of livery) make the remark, in
my hearing, that his master had put himself on half rations of
food and on a double allowance of drink. I attach no importance
to such an insolent observation as this on the part of a servant.
I reprobated it at the time, and I wish to be understood as
reprobating it once more on this occasion.

In the course of the next few days Miss Halcombe did certainly
seem to all of us to be mending a little. Our faith in Mr. Dawson
revived. He appeared to be very confident about the case, and he
assured Lady Glyde, when she spoke to him on the subject, that he
would himself propose to send for a physician the moment he felt
so much as the shadow of a doubt crossing his own mind.

The only person among us who did not appear to be relieved by
these words was the Countess. She said to me privately, that she
could not feel easy about Miss Halcombe on Mr. Dawson's authority,
and that she should wait anxiously for her husband's opinion on
his return. That return, his letters informed her, would take
place in three days' time. The Count and Countess corresponded
regularly every morning during his lordship's absence. They were
in that respect, as in all others, a pattern to married people.

On the evening of the third day I noticed a change in Miss
Halcombe, which caused me serious apprehension. Mrs. Rubelle
noticed it too. We said nothing on the subject to Lady Glyde, who
was then lying asleep, completely overpowered by exhaustion, on
the sofa in the sitting-room.

Mr. Dawson did not pay his evening visit till later than usual.
As soon as he set eyes on his patient I saw his face alter. He
tried to hide it, but he looked both confused and alarmed. A
messenger was sent to his residence for his medicine-chest,
disinfecting preparations were used in the room, and a bed was
made up for him in the house by his own directions. "Has the
fever turned to infection?" I whispered to him. "I am afraid it
has," he answered; "we shall know better to-morrow morning.

By Mr. Dawson's own directions Lady Glyde was kept in ignorance of
this change for the worse. He himself absolutely forbade her, on
account of her health, to join us in the bed-room that night. She
tried to resist--there was a sad scene--but he had his medical
authority to support him, and he carried his point.

The next morning one of the men-servants was sent to London at
eleven o'clock, with a letter to a physician in town, and with
orders to bring the new doctor back with him by the earliest
possible train. Half an hour after the messenger had gone the
Count returned to Blackwater Park.

The Countess, on her own responsibility, immediately brought him
in to see the patient. There was no impropriety that I could
discover in her taking this course. His lordship was a married
man, he was old enough to be Miss Halcombe's father, and he saw
her in the presence of a female relative, Lady Glyde's aunt. Mr.
Dawson nevertheless protested against his presence in the room,
but I could plainly remark the doctor was too much alarmed to make
any serious resistance on this occasion.

The poor suffering lady was past knowing any one about her. She
seemed to take her friends for enemies. When the Count approached
her bedside her eyes, which had been wandering incessantly round
and round the room before, settled on his face with a dreadful
stare of terror, which I shall remember to my dying day. The
Count sat down by her, felt her pulse and her temples, looked at
her very attentively, and then turned round upon the doctor with
such an expression of indignation and contempt in his face, that
the words failed on Mr. Dawson's lips, and he stood for a moment,
pale with anger and alarm--pale and perfectly speechless.

His lordship looked next at me.

"When did the change happen?" he asked.

I told him the time.

"Has Lady Glyde been in the room since?"

I replied that she had not. The doctor had absolutely forbidden
her to come into the room on the evening before, and had repeated
the order again in the morning.

"Have you and Mrs. Rubelle been made aware of the full extent of
the mischief?" was his next question.

We were aware, I answered, that the malady was considered
infectious. He stopped me before I could add anything more.

"It is typhus fever," he said.

In the minute that passed, while these questions and answers were
going on, Mr. Dawson recovered himself, and addressed the Count
with his customary firmness.

"It is NOT typhus fever," he remarked sharply. "I protest against
this intrusion, sir. No one has a right to put questions here but
me. I have done my duty to the best of my ability--"

The Count interrupted him--not by words, but only by pointing to
the bed. Mr. Dawson seemed to feel that silent contradiction to
his assertion of his own ability, and to grow only the more angry
under it.

"I say I have done my duty," he reiterated. "A physician has been
sent for from London. I will consult on the nature of the fever
with him, and with no one else. I insist on your leaving the
room."

"I entered this room, sir, in the sacred interests of humanity,"
said the Count. "And in the same interests, if the coming of the
physician is delayed, I will enter it again. I warn you once more
that the fever has turned to typhus, and that your treatment is
responsible for this lamentable change. If that unhappy lady
dies, I will give my testimony in a court of justice that your
ignorance and obstinacy have been the cause of her death."

Before Mr. Dawson could answer, before the Count could leave us,
the door was opened from the sitting-room, and we saw Lady Glyde
on the threshold.

"I MUST and WILL come in," she said, with extraordinary firmness.

Instead of stopping her, the Count moved into the sitting-room,
and made way for her to go in. On all other occasions he was the
last man in the world to forget anything, but in the surprise of
the moment he apparently forgot the danger of infection from
typhus, and the urgent necessity of forcing Lady Glyde to take
proper care of herself.

To my astonishment Mr. Dawson showed more presence of mind. He
stopped her ladyship at the first step she took towards the
bedside. "I am sincerely sorry, I am sincerely grieved," he said.
"The fever may, I fear, be infectious. Until I am certain that it
is not, I entreat you to keep out of the room."

She struggled for a moment, then suddenly dropped her arms and
sank forward. She had fainted. The Countess and I took her from
the doctor and carried her into her own room. The Count preceded
us, and waited in the passage till I came out and told him that we
had recovered her from the swoon.

I went back to the doctor to tell him, by Lady Glyde's desire,
that she insisted on speaking to him immediately. He withdrew at
once to quiet her ladyship's agitation, and to assure her of the
physician's arrival in the course of a few hours. Those hours
passed very slowly. Sir Percival and the Count were together
downstairs, and sent up from time to time to make their inquiries.
At last, between five and six o'clock, to our great relief, the
physician came.

He was a younger man than Mr. Dawson, very serious and very
decided. What he thought of the previous treatment I cannot say,
but it struck me as curious that he put many more questions to
myself and to Mrs. Rubelle than he put to the doctor, and that he
did not appear to listen with much interest to what Mr. Dawson
said, while he was examining Mr. Dawson's patient. I began to
suspect, from what I observed in this way, that the Count had been
right about the illness all the way through, and I was naturally
confirmed in that idea when Mr. Dawson, after some little delay,
asked the one important question which the London doctor had been
sent for to set at rest.

"What is your opinion of the fever?" he inquired.

"Typhus," replied the physician "Typhus fever beyond all doubt."

That quiet foreign person, Mrs. Rubelle, crossed her thin brown
hands in front of her, and looked at me with a very significant
smile. The Count himself could hardly have appeared more
gratified if he had been present in the room and had heard the
confirmation of his own opinion.

After giving us some useful directions about the management of the
patient, and mentioning that he would come again in five days'
time, the physician withdrew to consult in private with Mr.
Dawson. He would offer no opinion on Miss Halcombe's chances of
recovery--he said it was impossible at that stage of the illness
to pronounce one way or the other.

The five days passed anxiously.

Countess Fosco and myself took it by turns to relieve Mrs.
Rubelle, Miss Halcombe's condition growing worse and worse, and
requiring our utmost care and attention. It was a terribly trying
time. Lady Glyde (supported, as Mr. Dawson said, by the constant
strain of her suspense on her sister's account) rallied in the
most extraordinary manner, and showed a firmness and determination
for which I should myself never have given her credit. She
insisted on coming into the sick-room two or three times every
day, to look at Miss Halcombe with her own eyes, promising not to
go too close to the bed, if the doctor would consent to her wishes
so far. Mr. Dawson very unwillingly made the concession required
of him--I think he saw that it was hopeless to dispute with her.
She came in every day, and she self-denyingly kept her promise. I
felt it personally so distressing (as reminding me of my own
affliction during my husband's last illness) to see how she
suffered under these circumstances, that I must beg not to dwell
on this part of the subject any longer. It is more agreeable to
me to mention that no fresh disputes took place between Mr. Dawson
and the Count. His lordship made all his inquiries by deputy, and
remained continually in company with Sir Percival downstairs.

On the fifth day the physician came again and gave us a little
hope. He said the tenth day from the first appearance of the
typhus would probably decide the result of the illness, and he
arranged for his third visit to take place on that date. The
interval passed as before--except that the Count went to London
again one morning and returned at night.

On the tenth day it pleased a merciful Providence to relieve our
household from all further anxiety and alarm. The physician
positively assured us that Miss Halcombe was out of danger. "She
wants no doctor now--all she requires is careful watching and
nursing for some time to come, and that I see she has."  Those
were his own words. That evening I read my husband's touching
sermon on Recovery from Sickness, with more happiness and
advantage (in a spiritual point of view) than I ever remember to
have derived from it before.

The effect of the good news on poor Lady Glyde was, I grieve to
say, quite overpowering. She was too weak to bear the violent
reaction, and in another day or two she sank into a state of
debility and depression which obliged her to keep her room. Rest
and quiet, and change of air afterwards, were the best remedies
which Mr. Dawson could suggest for her benefit. It was fortunate
that matters were no worse, for, on the very day after she took to
her room, the Count and the doctor had another disagreement--and
this time the dispute between them was of so serious a nature that
Mr. Dawson left the house.

I was not present at the time, but I understood that the subject
of dispute was the amount of nourishment which it was necessary to
give to assist Miss Halcombe's convalescence after the exhaustion
of the fever. Mr. Dawson, now that his patient was safe, was less
inclined than ever to submit to unprofessional interference, and
the Count (I cannot imagine why) lost all the self-control which
he had so judiciously preserved on former occasions, and taunted
the doctor, over and over again, with his mistake about the fever
when it changed to typhus. The unfortunate affair ended in Mr.
Dawson's appealing to Sir Percival, and threatening (now that he
could leave without absolute danger to Miss Halcombe) to withdraw
from his attendance at Blackwater Park if the Count's interference
was not peremptorily suppressed from that moment. Sir Percival's
reply (though not designedly uncivil) had only resulted in making
matters worse, and Mr. Dawson had thereupon withdrawn from the
house in a state of extreme indignation at Count Fosco's usage of
him, and had sent in his bill the next morning.

We were now, therefore, left without the attendance of a medical
man. Although there was no actual necessity for another doctor--
nursing and watching being, as the physician had observed, all
that Miss Halcombe required--I should still, if my authority had
been consulted, have obtained professional assistance from some
other quarter, for form's sake.

The matter did not seem to strike Sir Percival in that light. He
said it would be time enough to send for another doctor if Miss
Halcombe showed any signs of a relapse. In the meanwhile we had
the Count to consult in any minor difficulty, and we need not
unnecessarily disturb our patient in her present weak and nervous
condition by the presence of a stranger at her bedside. There was
much that was reasonable, no doubt, in these considerations, but
they left me a little anxious nevertheless. Nor was I quite
satisfied in my own mind of the propriety of our concealing the
doctor's absence as we did from Lady Glyde. It was a merciful
deception, I admit--for she was in no state to bear any fresh
anxieties. But still it was a deception, and, as such, to a
person of my principles, at best a doubtful proceeding.

A second perplexing circumstance which happened on the same day,
and which took me completely by surprise, added greatly to the
sense of uneasiness that was now weighing on my mind.

I was sent for to see Sir Percival in the library. The Count, who
was with him when I went in, immediately rose and left us alone
together. Sir Percival civilly asked me to take a seat, and then,
to my great astonishment, addressed me in these terms--

"I want to speak to you, Mrs. Michelson, about a matter which I
decided on some time ago, and which I should have mentioned
before, but for the sickness and trouble in the house. In plain
words, I have reasons for wishing to break up my establishment
immediately at this place--leaving you in charge, of course, as
usual. As soon as Lady Glyde and Miss Halcombe can travel they
must both have change of air. My friends, Count Fosco and the
Countess, will leave us before that time to live in the
neighbourhood of London, and I have reasons for not opening the
house to any more company, with a view to economising as carefully
as I can. I don't blame you, but my expenses here are a great
deal too heavy. In short, I shall sell the horses, and get rid of
all the servants at once. I never do things by halves, as you
know, and I mean to have the house clear of a pack of useless
people by this time to-morrow."

I listened to him, perfectly aghast with astonishment.

"Do you mean, Sir Percival, that I am to dismiss the indoor
servants under my charge without the usual month's warning?" I
asked.

"Certainly I do. We may all be out of the house before another
month, and I am not going to leave the servants here in idleness,
with no master to wait on."

"Who is to do the cooking, Sir Percival, while you are still
staying here?"

"Margaret Porcher can roast and boil--keep her. What do I want
with a cook if I don't mean to give any dinner-parties?"

"The servant you have mentioned is the most unintelligent servant
in the house, Sir Percival "

"Keep her, I tell you, and have a woman in from the village to do
the cleaning and go away again. My weekly expenses must and shall
be lowered immediately. I don't send for you to make objections,
Mrs. Michelson--I send for you to carry out my plans of economy.
Dismiss the whole lazy pack of indoor servants to-morrow, except
Porcher. She is as strong as a horse--and we'll make her work
like a horse."

"You will excuse me for reminding you, Sir Percival, that if the
servants go to-morrow they must have a month's wages in lieu of a
month's warning."

"Let them! A month's wages saves a month's waste and gluttony in
the servants' hall."

This last remark conveyed an aspersion of the most offensive kind
on my management. I had too much self-respect to defend myself
under so gross an imputation. Christian consideration for the
helpless position of Miss Halcombe and Lady Glyde, and for the
serious inconvenience which my sudden absence might inflict on
them, alone prevented me from resigning my situation on the spot.
I rose immediately. It would have lowered me in my own estimation
to have permitted the interview to continue a moment longer.

"After that last remark, Sir Percival, I have nothing more to say.
Your directions shall be attended to." Pronouncing those words, I
bowed my head with the most distant respect, and went out of the
room.

The next day the servants left in a body. Sir Percival himself
dismissed the grooms and stablemen, sending them, with all the
horses but one, to London. Of the whole domestic establishment,
indoors and out, there now remained only myself, Margaret Porcher,
and the gardener--this last living in his own cottage, and being
wanted to take care of the one horse that remained in the stables.

With the house left in this strange and lonely condition--with the
mistress of it ill in her room--with Miss Halcombe still as
helpless as a child--and with the doctor's attendance withdrawn
from us in enmity--it was surely not unnatural that my spirits
should sink, and my customary composure be very hard to maintain.
My mind was ill at ease. I wished the poor ladies both well
again, and I wished myself away from Blackwater Park.

II

The next event that occurred was of so singular a nature that it
might have caused me a feeling of superstitious surprise, if my
mind had not been fortified by principle against any pagan
weakness of that sort. The uneasy sense of something wrong in the
family which had made me wish myself away from Blackwater Park,
was actually followed, strange to say, by my departure from the
house. It is true that my absence was for a temporary period
only, but the coincidence was, in my opinion, not the less
remarkable on that account.

My departure took place under the following circumstances--

A day or two after the servants all left I was again sent for to
see Sir Percival. The undeserved slur which he had cast on my
management of the household did not, I am happy to say, prevent me
from returning good for evil to the best of my ability, by
complying with his request as readily and respectfully as ever.
It cost me a struggle with that fallen nature, which we all share
in common, before I could suppress my feelings. Being accustomed
to self-discipline, I accomplished the sacrifice.

I found Sir Percival and Count Fosco sitting together again. On
this occasion his lordship remained present at the interview, and
assisted in the development of Sir Percival's views.

The subject to which they now requested my attention related to
the healthy change of air by which we all hoped that Miss Halcombe
and Lady Glyde might soon be enabled to profit. Sir Percival
mentioned that both the ladies would probably pass the autumn (by
invitation of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire) at Limmeridge House,
Cumberland. But before they went there, it was his opinion,
confirmed by Count Fosco (who here took up the conversation and
continued it to the end), that they would benefit by a short
residence first in the genial climate of Torquay. The great
object, therefore, was to engage lodgings at that place, affording
all the comforts and advantages of which they stood in need, and
the great difficulty was to find an experienced person capable of
choosing the sort of residence which they wanted. In this
emergency the Count begged to inquire, on Sir Percival's behalf,
whether I would object to give the ladies the benefit of my
assistance, by proceeding myself to Torquay in their interests.

It was impossible for a person in my situation to meet any
proposal, made in these terms, with a positive objection.

I could only venture to represent the serious inconvenience of my
leaving Blackwater Park in the extraordinary absence of all the
indoor servants, with the one exception of Margaret Porcher. But
Sir Percival and his lordship declared that they were both willing
to put up with inconvenience for the sake of the invalids. I next
respectfully suggested writing to an agent at Torquay, but I was
met here by being reminded of the imprudence of taking lodgings
without first seeing them. I was also informed that the Countess
(who would otherwise have gone to Devonshire herself) could not,
in Lady Glyde's present condition, leave her niece, and that Sir
Percival and the Count had business to transact together which
would oblige them to remain at Blackwater Park. In short, it was
clearly shown me that if I did not undertake the errand, no one
else could be trusted with it. Under these circumstances, I could
only inform Sir Percival that my services were at the disposal of
Miss Halcombe and Lady Glyde.

It was thereupon arranged that I should leave the next morning,
that I should occupy one or two days in examining all the most
convenient houses in Torquay, and that I should return with my
report as soon as I conveniently could. A memorandum was written
for me by his lordship, stating the requisites which the place I
was sent to take must be found to possess, and a note of the
pecuniary limit assigned to me was added by Sir Percival.

My own idea on reading over these instructions was, that no such
residence as I saw described could be found at any watering-place
in England, and that, even if it could by chance be discovered, it
would certainly not be parted with for any period on such terms as
I was permitted to offer. I hinted at these difficulties to both
the gentlemen, but Sir Percival (who undertook to answer me) did
not appear to feel them. It was not for me to dispute the
question. I said no more, but I felt a very strong conviction
that the business on which I was sent away was so beset by
difficulties that my errand was almost hopeless at starting.

Before I left I took care to satisfy myself that Miss Halcombe was
going on favourably.

There was a painful expression of anxiety in her face which made
me fear that her mind, on first recovering itself, was not at
ease. But she was certainly strengthening more rapidly than I
could have ventured to anticipate, and she was able to send kind
messages to Lady Glyde, saying that she was fast getting well, and
entreating her ladyship not to exert herself again too soon. I
left her in charge of Mrs. Rubelle, who was still as quietly
independent of every one else in the house as ever. When I
knocked at Lady Glyde's door before going away, I was told that
she was still sadly weak and depressed, my informant being the
Countess, who was then keeping her company in her room. Sir
Percival and the Count were walking on the road to the lodge as I
was driven by in the chaise. I bowed to them and quitted the
house, with not a living soul left in the servants' offices but
Margaret Porcher.

Every one must feel what I have felt myself since that time, that
these circumstances were more than unusual--they were! almost
suspicious. Let me, however, say again that it was impossible for
me, in my dependent position, to act otherwise than I did.

The result of my errand at Torquay was exactly what I had
foreseen. No such lodgings as I was instructed to take could be
found in the whole place, and the terms I was permitted to give
were much too low for the purpose, even if I had been able to
discover what I wanted. I accordingly returned to Blackwater
Park, and informed Sir Percival, who met me at the door, that my
journey had been taken in vain. He seemed too much occupied with
some other subject to care about the failure of my errand, and his
first words informed me that even in the short time of my absence
another remarkable change had taken place in the house.

The Count and Countess Fosco had left Blackwater Park for their
new residence in St. John's Wood.

I was not made aware of the motive for this sudden departure--I
was only told that the Count had been very particular in leaving
his kind compliments to me. When I ventured on asking Sir
Percival whether Lady Glyde had any one to attend to her comforts
in the absence of the Countess, he replied that she had Margaret
Porcher to wait on her, and he added that a woman from the village
had been sent for to do the work downstairs.

The answer really shocked me--there was such a glaring impropriety
in permitting an under-housemaid to fill the place of confidential
attendant on Lady Glyde. I went upstairs at once, and met
Margaret on the bedroom landing. Her services had not been
required (naturally enough), her mistress having sufficiently
recovered that morning to be able to leave her bed. I asked next
after Miss Halcombe, but I was answered in a I slouching, sulky
way, which left me no wiser than I was before.

I did not choose to repeat the question, and perhaps provoke an
impertinent reply. It was in every respect more becoming to a
person in my position to present myself immediately in Lady
Glyde's room.

I found that her ladyship had certainly gained in health during
the last few days. Although still sadly weak and nervous, she was
able to get up without assistance, and to walk slowly about her
room, feeling no worse effect from the exertion than a slight
sensation of fatigue. She had been made a little anxious that
morning about Miss Halcombe, through having received no news of
her from any one. I thought this seemed to imply a blamable want
of attention on the part of Mrs. Rubelle, but I said nothing, and
remained with Lady Glyde to assist her to dress. When she was
ready we both left the room together to go to Miss Halcombe.

We were stopped in the passage by the appearance of Sir Percival.
He looked as if he had been purposely waiting there to see us.

"Where are you going?" he said to Lady Glyde.

"To Marian's room," she answered.

"It may spare you a disappointment," remarked Sir Percival, "if I
tell you at once that you will not find her there."

"Not find her there!"

"No. She left the house yesterday morning with Fosco and his
wife."

Lady Glyde was not strong enough to bear the surprise of this
extraordinary statement. She turned fearfully pale, and leaned
back against the wall, looking at her husband in dead silence.

I was so astonished myself that I hardly knew what to say. I
asked Sir Percival if he really meant that Miss Halcombe had left
Blackwater Park.

"I certainly mean it," he answered.

"In her state, Sir Percival! Without mentioning her intentions to
Lady Glyde!"

Before he could reply her ladyship recovered herself a little and
spoke.

"Impossible!" she cried out in a loud, frightened manner, taking a
step or two forward from the wall. "Where was the doctor? where
was Mr. Dawson when Marian went away?"

"Mr. Dawson wasn't wanted, and wasn't here," said Sir Percival.
"He left of his own accord, which is enough of itself to show that
she was strong enough to travel. How you stare! If you don't
believe she has gone, look for yourself. Open her room door, and
all the other room doors if you like."

She took him at his word, and I followed her. There was no one in
Miss Halcombe's room but Margaret Porcher, who was busy setting it
to rights. There was no one in the spare rooms or the dressing-
rooms when we looked into them afterwards. Sir Percival still
waited for us in the passage. As we were leaving the last room
that we had examined Lady Glyde whispered, "Don't go, Mrs.
Michelson! don't leave me, for God's sake!" Before I could say
anything in return she was out again in the passage, speaking to
her husband.

"What does it mean, Sir Percival? I insist--I beg and pray you
will tell me what it means."

"It means," he answered, "that Miss Halcombe was strong enough
yesterday morning to sit up and be dressed, and that she insisted
on taking advantage of Fosco's going to London to go there too."

"To London!"

"Yes--on her way to Limmeridge."

Lady Glyde turned and appealed to me.

"You saw Miss Halcombe last," she said. "Tell me plainly, Mrs.
Michelson, did you think she looked fit to travel?"

"Not in MY opinion, your ladyship."

Sir Percival, on his side, instantly turned and appealed to me
also.

"Before you went away," he said, "did you, or did you not, tell
the nurse that Miss Halcombe looked much stronger and better?"

"I certainly made the remark, Sir Percival."

He addressed her ladyship again the moment I offered that reply.

"Set one of Mrs. Michelson's opinions fairly against the other,"
he said, "and try to be reasonable about a perfectly plain matter.
If she had not been well enough to be moved do you think we should
any of us have risked letting her go? She has got three competent
people to look after her--Fosco and your aunt, and Mrs. Rubelle,
who went away with them expressly for that purpose. They took a
whole carriage yesterday, and made a bed for her on the seat in
case she felt tired. To-day, Fosco and Mrs. Rubelle go on with
her themselves to Cumberland "

"Why does Marian go to Limmeridge and leave me here by myself?"
said her ladyship, interrupting Sir Percival.

"Because your uncle won't receive you till he has seen your sister
first," he replied. "Have you forgotten the letter he wrote to
her at the beginning of her illness? It was shown to you, you read
it yourself, and you ought to remember it."

"I do remember it."

"If you do, why should you be surprised at her leaving you? You
want to be back at Limmeridge, and she has gone there to get your
uncle's leave for you on his own terms."

Poor Lady Glyde's eyes filled with tears.

"Marian never left me before," she said, "without bidding me good-
bye."

"She would have bid you good-bye this time," returned Sir
Percival, "if she had not been afraid of herself and of you. She
knew you would try to stop her, she knew you would distress her by
crying. Do you want to make any more objections? If you do, you
must come downstairs and ask questions in the dining-room. These
worries upset me. I want a glass of wine."

He left us suddenly.

His manner all through this strange conversation had been very
unlike what it usually was. He seemed to be almost as nervous and
fluttered, every now and then, as his lady herself. I should
never have supposed that his health had been so delicate, or his
composure so easy to upset.

I tried to prevail on Lady Glyde to go back to her room, but it
was useless. She stopped in the passage, with the look of a woman
whose mind was panic-stricken.

"Something has happened to my sister!" she said.

"Remember, my lady, what surprising energy there is in Miss
Halcombe," I suggested. "She might well make an effort which
other ladies in her situation would be unfit for. I hope and
believe there is nothing wrong--I do indeed."

"I must follow Marian," said her ladyship, with the same panic-
stricken look. "I must go where she has gone, I must see that she
is alive and well with my own eyes. Come! come down with me to
Sir Percival."

I hesitated, fearing that my presence might be considered an
intrusion. I attempted to represent this to her ladyship, but she
was deaf to me. She held my arm fast enough to force me to go
downstairs with her, and she still clung to me with all the little
strength she had at the moment when I opened the dining-room door.

Sir Percival was sitting at the table with a decanter of wine
before him. He raised the glass to his lips as we went in and
drained it at a draught. Seeing that he looked at me angrily when
he put it down again, I attempted to make some apology for my
accidental presence in the room.

"Do you suppose there are any secrets going on here?" he broke out
suddenly; "there are none--there is nothing underhand, nothing
kept from you or from any one." After speaking those strange words
loudly and sternly, he filled himself another glass of wine and
asked Lady Glyde what she wanted of him.

"If my sister is fit to travel I am fit to travel" said her
ladyship, with more firmness than she had yet shown. "I come to
beg you will make allowances for my anxiety about Marian, and let
me follow her at once by the afternoon train."

"You must wait till to-morrow," replied Sir Percival, "and then if
you don't hear to the contrary you can go. I don't suppose you
are at all likely to hear to the contrary, so I shall write to
Fosco by to-night's post."

He said those last words holding his glass up to the light, and
looking at the wine in it instead of at Lady Glyde. Indeed he
never once looked at her throughout the conversation. Such a
singular want of good breeding in a gentleman of his rank
impressed me, I own, very painfully.

"Why should you write to Count Fosco?" she asked, in extreme
surprise.

"To tell him to expect you by the midday train," said Sir
Percival. "He will meet you at the station when you get to
London, and take you on to sleep at your aunt's in St. John's
Wood."

Lady Glyde's hand began to tremble violently round my arm--why I
could not imagine.

"There is no necessity for Count Fosco to meet me," she said. "I
would rather not stay in London to sleep."

"You must. You can't take the whole journey to Cumberland in one
day. You must rest a night in London--and I don't choose you to
go by yourself to an hotel. Fosco made the offer to your uncle to
give you house-room on the way down, and your uncle has accepted
it. Here! here is a letter from him addressed to yourself. I
ought to have sent it up this morning, but I forgot. Read it and
see what Mr. Fairlie himself says to you."

Lady Glyde looked at the letter for a moment and then placed it in
my hands.

"Read it," she said faintly. "I don't know what is the matter
with me. I can't read it myself."

It was a note of only four lines--so short and so careless that it
quite struck me. If I remember correctly it contained no more
than these words--

"Dearest Laura, Please come whenever you like. Break the journey
by sleeping at your aunt's house. Grieved to hear of dear
Marian's illness. Affectionately yours, Frederick Fairlie."

"I would rather not go there--I would rather not stay a night in
London," said her ladyship, breaking out eagerly with those words
before I had quite done reading the note, short as it was. "Don't
write to Count Fosco! Pray, pray don't write to him!"

Sir Percival filled another glass from the decanter so awkwardly
that he upset it and spilt all the wine over the table. "My sight
seems to be failing me," he muttered to himself, in an odd,
muffled voice. He slowly set the glass up again, refilled it, and
drained it once more at a draught. I began to fear, from his look
and manner, that the wine was getting into his head.

"Pray don't write to Count Fosco," persisted Lady Glyde, more
earnestly than ever.

"Why not, I should like to know?" cried Sir Percival, with a
sudden burst of anger that startled us both. "Where can you stay
more properly in London than at the place your uncle himself
chooses for you--at your aunt's house? Ask Mrs. Michelson."

The arrangement proposed was so unquestionably the right and the
proper one, that I could make no possible objection to it. Much
as I sympathised with Lady Glyde in other respects, I could not
sympathise with her in her unjust prejudices against Count Fosco.
I never before met with any lady of her rank and station who was
so lamentably narrow-minded on the subject of foreigners. Neither
her uncle's note nor Sir Percival's increasing impatience seemed
to have the least effect on her. She still objected to staying a
night in London, she still implored her husband not to write to
the Count.

"Drop it!" said Sir Percival, rudely turning his back on us. "If
you haven't sense enough to know what is best for yourself other
people must know it foe you. The arrangement is made and there is
an end of it. You are only wanted to do what Miss Halcombe has
done for you---"

"Marian?" repeated her Ladyship, in a bewildered manner; "Marian
sleeping in Count Fosco's house!"

"Yes, in Count Fosco's house. She slept there last night to break
the journey, and you are to follow her example, and do what your
uncle tells you. You are to sleep at Fosco's to-morrow night, as
your sister did, to break the journey. Don't throw too many
obstacles in my way! don't make me repent of letting you go at
all!"

He started to his feet, and suddenly walked out into the verandah
through the open glass doors.

"Will your ladyship excuse me," I whispered, "if I suggest that we
had better not wait here till Sir Percival comes back? I am very
much afraid he is over-excited with wine."

She consented to leave the room in a weary, absent manner.

As soon as we were safe upstairs again, I did all I could to
compose her ladyship's spirits. I reminded her that Mr. Fairlie's
letters to Miss Halcombe and to herself did certainly sanction,
and even render necessary, sooner or later, the course that had
been taken. She agreed to this, and even admitted, of her own
accord, that both letters were strictly in character with her
uncle's peculiar disposition--but her fears about Miss Halcombe,
and her unaccountable dread of sleeping at the Count's house in
London, still remained unshaken in spite of every consideration
that I could urge. I thought it my duty to protest against Lady
Glyde's unfavourable opinion of his lordship, and I did so, with
becoming forbearance and respect.

"Your ladyship will pardon my freedom," I remarked, in conclusion,
"but it is said, 'by their fruits ye shall know them.' I am sure
the Count's constant kindness and constant attention, from the
very beginning of Miss Halcombe's illness, merit our best
confidence and esteem. Even his lordship's serious
misunderstanding with Mr. Dawson was entirely attributable to his
anxiety on Miss Halcombe's account."

"What misunderstanding?" inquired her ladyship, with a look of
sudden interest.

I related the unhappy circumstances under which Mr. Dawson had
withdrawn his attendance--mentioning them all the more readily
because I disapproved of Sir Percival's continuing to conceal what
had happened (as he had done in my presence) from the knowledge of
Lady Glyde.

Her ladyship started up, with every appearance of being
additionally agitated and alarmed by what I had told her.

"Worse! worse than I thought!" she said, walking about the room,
in a bewildered manner. "The Count knew Mr. Dawson would never
consent to Marian's taking a journey--he purposely insulted the
doctor to get him out of the house."

"Oh, my lady! my lady!" I remonstrated.

"Mrs. Michelson!" she went on vehemently, "no words that ever were
spoken will persuade me that my sister is in that man's power and
in that man's house with her own consent. My horror of him is
such, that nothing Sir Percival could say and no letters my uncle
could write, would induce me, if I had only my own feelings to
consult, to eat, drink, or sleep under his roof. Put my misery of
suspense about Marian gives me the courage to follow her anywhere,
to follow her even into Count Fosco's house."

I thought it right, at this point, to mention that Miss Halcombe
had already gone on to Cumberland, according to Sir Percival's
account of the matter.

"I am afraid to believe it!" answered her ladyship. "I am afraid
she is still in that man's house. If I am wrong, if she has
really gone on to Limmeridge, I am resolved I will not sleep to-
morrow night under Count Fosco's roof. My dearest friend in the
world, next to my sister, lives near London. You have heard me,
you have heard Miss Halcombe, speak of Mrs. Vesey? I mean to
write, and propose to sleep at her house. I don't know how I
shall get there--I don't know how I shall avoid the Count--but to
that refuge I will escape in some way, if my sister has gone to
Cumberland. All I ask of you to do, is to see yourself that my
letter to Mrs. Vesey goes to London to-night, as certainly as Sir
Percival's letter goes to Count Fosco. I have reasons for not
trusting the post-bag downstairs. Will you keep my secret, and
help me in this? it is the last favour, perhaps, that I shall ever
ask of you."

I hesitated, I thought it all very strange, I almost feared that
her ladyship's mind had been a little affected by recent anxiety
and suffering. At my own risk, however, I ended by giving my
consent. If the letter had been addressed to a stranger, or to
any one but a lady so well known to me by report as Mrs. Vesey, I
might have refused. I thank God--looking to what happened
afterwards--I thank God I never thwarted that wish, or any other,
which Lady Glyde expressed to me, on the last day of her residence
at Blackwater Park.

The letter was written and given into my hands. I myself put it
into the post-box in the village that evening.

We saw nothing more of Sir Percival for the rest of the day.

I slept, by Lady Glyde's own desire, in the next room to hers,
with the door open between us. There was something so strange and
dreadful in the loneliness and emptiness of the house, that I was
glad, on my side, to have a companion near me. Her ladyship sat
up late, reading letters and burning them, and emptying her
drawers and cabinets of little things she prized, as if she never
expected to return to Blackwater Park. Her sleep was sadly
disturbed when she at last went to bed--she cried out in it
several times, once so loud that she woke herself. Whatever her
dreams were, she did not think fit to communicate them to me.
Perhaps, in my situation, I had no right to expect that she should
do so. It matters little now. I was sorry for her, I was indeed
heartily sorry for her all the same.

The next day was fine and sunny. Sir Percival came up, after
breakfast, to tell us that the chaise would be at the door at a
quarter to twelve--the train to London stopping at our station at
twenty minutes after. He informed Lady Glyde that he was obliged
to go out, but added that he hoped to be back before she left. If
any unforeseen accident delayed him, I was to accompany her to the
station, and to take special care that she was in time for the
train. Sir Percival communicated these directions very hastily--
walking here and there about the room all the time. Her ladyship
looked attentively after him wherever he went. He never once
looked at her in return.

She only spoke when he had done, and then she stopped him as he
approached the door, by holding out her hand.

"I shall see you no more," she said, in a very marked manner.
"This is our parting--our parting, it may be for ever. Will you
try to forgive me, Percival, as heartily as I forgive YOU?"

His face turned of an awful whiteness all over, and great beads of
perspiration broke out on his bald forehead. "I shall come back,"
he said, and made for the door, as hastily as if his wife's
farewell words had frightened him out of the room.

I had never liked Sir Percival, but the manner in which he left
Lady Glyde made me feel ashamed of having eaten his bread and
lived in his service. I thought of saying a few comforting and
Christian words to the poor lady, but there was something in her
face, as she looked after her husband when the door closed on him,
that made me alter my mind and keep silence.

At the time named the chaise drew up at the gates. Her ladyship
was right--Sir Percival never came back. I waited for him till
the last moment, and waited in vain.

No positive responsibility lay on my shoulders, and yet I did not
feel easy in my mind. "It is of your own free will," I said, as
the chaise drove through the lodge-gates, "that your ladyship goes
to London?"

"I will go anywhere," she answered, "to end the dreadful suspense
that I am suffering at this moment."

She had made me feel almost as anxious and as uncertain about Miss
Halcombe as she felt herself. I presumed to ask her to write me a
line, if all went well in London. She answered, "Most willingly,
Mrs. Michelson."

"We all have our crosses to bear, my lady," I said, seeing her
silent and thoughtful, after she had promised to write.

She made no reply--she seemed to be too much wrapped up in her own
thoughts to attend to me.

"I fear your ladyship rested badly last night," I remarked, after
waiting a little.

"Yes," she said, "I was terribly disturbed by dreams."

"Indeed, my lady?" I thought she was going to tell me her dreams,
but no, when she spoke next it was only to ask a question.

"You posted the letter to Mrs. Vesey with your own hands?"

"Yes, my lady."

"Did Sir Percival say, yesterday, that Count Fosco was to meet me
at the terminus in London?"

"He did, my lady."

She sighed heavily when I answered that last question, and said no
more.

We arrived at the station, with hardly two minutes to spare. The
gardener (who had driven us) managed about the luggage, while I
took the ticket. The whistle of the train was sounding when I
joined her ladyship on the platform. She looked very strangely,
and pressed her hand over her heart, as if some sudden pain or
fright had overcome her at that moment.

"I wish you were going with me!" she said, catching eagerly at my
arm when I gave her the ticket.

If there had been time, if I had felt the day before as I felt
then, I would have made my arrangements to accompany her, even
though the doing so had obliged me to give Sir Percival warning on
the spot. As it was, her wishes, expressed at the last moment
only, were expressed too late for me to comply with them. She
seemed to understand this herself before I could explain it, and
did not repeat her desire to have me for a travelling companion.
The train drew up at the platform. She gave the gardener a
present for his children, and took my hand, in her simple hearty
manner, before she got into the carriage.

"You have been very kind to me and to my sister," she said--"kind
when we were both friendless. I shall remember you gratefully, as
long as I live to remember any one. Good-bye--and God bless you!"

She spoke those words with a tone and a look which brought the
tears into my eyes--she spoke them as if she was bidding me
farewell for ever.

"Good-bye, my lady," I said, putting her into the carriage, and
trying to cheer her; "good-bye, for the present only; good-bye,
with my best and kindest wishes for happier times."

She shook her head, and shuddered as she settled herself in the
carriage. The guard closed the door. "Do you believe in dreams?"
she whispered to me at the window. "My dreams, last night, were
dreams I have never had before. The terror of them is hanging
over me still." The whistle sounded before I could answer, and the
train moved. Her pale quiet face looked at me for the last time--
looked sorrowfully and solemnly from the window. She waved her
hand, and I saw her no more.

Towards five o'clock on the afternoon of that same day, having a
little time to myself in the midst of the household duties which
now pressed upon me, I sat down alone in my own room, to try and
compose my mind with the volume of my husband's Sermons. For the
first time in my life I found my attention wandering over those
pious and cheering words. Concluding that Lady Glyde's departure
must have disturbed me far more seriously than I had myself
supposed, I put the book aside, and went out to take a turn in the
garden. Sir Percival had not yet returned, to my knowledge, so I
could feel no hesitation about showing myself in the grounds.

On turning the corner of the house, and gaining a view of the
garden, I was startled by seeing a stranger walking in it. The
stranger was a woman--she was lounging along the path with her
back to me, and was gathering the flowers.

As I approached she heard me, and turned round.

My blood curdled in my veins. The strange woman in the garden was
Mrs. Rubelle!

I could neither move nor speak. She came up to me, as composedly
as ever, with her flowers in her hand.

"What is the matter, ma'am?" she said quietly.

"You here!" I gasped out. "Not gone to London! Not gone to
Cumberland!"

Mrs. Rubelle smelt at her flowers with a smile of malicious pity.

"Certainly not," she said. "I have never left Blackwater Park."

I summoned breath enough and courage enough for another question.

"Where is Miss Halcombe?"

Mrs. Rubelle fairly laughed at me this time, and replied in these
words--

"Miss Halcombe, ma'am, has not left Blackwater Park either."

When I heard that astounding answer, all my thoughts were startled
back on the instant to my parting with Lady Glyde. I can hardly
say I reproached myself, but at that moment I think I would have
given many a year's hard savings to have known four hours earlier
what I knew now.

Mrs. Rubelle waited, quietly arranging her nosegay, as if she
expected me to say something.

I could say nothing. I thought of Lady Glyde's worn-out energies
and weakly health, and I trembled for the time when the shock of
the discovery that I had made would fall on her. For a minute or
more my fears for the poor ladies silenced me. At the end of that
time Mrs. Rubelle looked up sideways from her flowers, and said,
"Here is Sir Percival, ma'am, returned from his ride."

I saw him as soon as she did. He came towards us, slashing
viciously at the flowers with his riding-whip. When he was near
enough to see my face he stopped, struck at his boot with the
whip, and burst out laughing, so harshly and so violently that the
birds flew away, startled, from the tree by which he stood.

"Well, Mrs. Michelson," he said, "you have found it out at last,
have you?"

I made no reply. He turned to Mrs. Rubelle.

"When did you show yourself in the garden?"

"I showed myself about half an hour ago, sir. You said I might
take my liberty again as soon as Lady Glyde had gone away to
London."

"Quite right. I don't blame you--I only asked the question." He
waited a moment, and then addressed himself once more to me. "You
can't believe it, can you?" he said mockingly. "Here! come along
and see for yourself."

He led the way round to the front of the house. I followed him,
and Mrs. Rubelle followed me. After passing through the iron
gates he stopped, and pointed with his whip to the disused middle
wing of the building.

"There!" he said. "Look up at the first floor. You know the old
Elizabethan bedrooms? Miss Halcombe is snug and safe in one of the
best of them at this moment. Take her in, Mrs. Rubelle (you have
got your key?); take Mrs. Michelson in, and let her own eyes
satisfy her that there is no deception this time."

The tone in which he spoke to me, and the minute or two that had
passed since we left the garden, helped me to recover my spirits a
little. What I might have done at this critical moment, if all my
life had been passed in service, I cannot say. As it was,
possessing the feelings, the principles, and the bringing up of a
lady, I could not hesitate about the right course to pursue. My
duty to myself, and my duty to Lady Glyde, alike forbade me to
remain in the employment of a man who had shamefully deceived us
both by a series of atrocious falsehoods.

"I must beg permission, Sir Percival, to speak a few words to you
in private," I said. "Having done so, I shall be ready to proceed
with this person to Miss Halcombe's room."

Mrs. Rubelle, whom I had indicated by a slight turn of my head,
insolently sniffed at her nosegay and walked away, with great
deliberation, towards the house door.

"Well," said Sir Percival sharply, "what is it now?"

"I wish to mention, sir, that I am desirous of resigning the
situation I now hold at Blackwater Park."  That was literally how
I put it. I was resolved that the first words spoken in his
presence should be words which expressed my intention to leave his
service.

He eyed me with one of his blackest looks, and thrust his hands
savagely into the pockets of his riding-coat.

"Why?" he said, "why, I should like to know?"

"It is not for me, Sir Percival, to express an opinion on what has
taken place in this house. I desire to give no offence. I merely
wish to say that I do not feel it consistent with my duty to Lady
Glyde and to myself to remain any longer in your service."

"Is it consistent with your duty to me to stand there, casting
suspicion on me to my face?" he broke out in his most violent
manner. "I see what you're driving at. You have taken your own
mean, underhand view of an innocent deception practised on Lady
Glyde for her own good. It was essential to her health that she
should have a change of air immediately, and you know as well as I
do she would never have gone away if she had been told Miss
Halcombe was still left here. She has been deceived in her own
interests--and I don't care who knows it. Go, if you like--there
are plenty of housekeepers as good as you to be had for the
asking. Go when you please--but take care how you spread scandals
about me and my affairs when you're out of my service. Tell the
truth, and nothing but the truth, or it will be the worse for you!
See Miss Halcombe for yourself--see if she hasn't been as well
taken care of in one part of the house as in the other. Remember
the doctor's own orders that Lady Glyde was to have a change of
air at the earliest possible opportunity. Bear all that well in
mind, and then say anything against me and my proceedings if you
dare!"

He poured out these words fiercely, all in a breath, walking
backwards and forwards, and striking about him in the air with his
whip.

Nothing that he said or did shook my opinion of the disgraceful
series of falsehoods that he had told in my presence the day
before, or of the cruel deception by which he had separated Lady
Glyde from her sister, and had sent her uselessly to London, when
she was half distracted with anxiety on Miss Halcombe's account.
I naturally kept these thoughts to myself, and said nothing more
to irritate him; but I was not the less resolved to persist in my
purpose. A soft answer turneth away wrath, and I suppressed my
own feelings accordingly when it was my turn to reply.

"While I am in your service, Sir Percival," I said, "I hope I know
my duty well enough not to inquire into your motives. When I am
out of your service, I hope I know my own place well enough not to
speak of matters which don't concern me "

"When do you want to go?" he asked, interrupting me without
ceremony. "Don't suppose I am anxious to keep you--don't suppose
I care about your leaving the house. I am perfectly fair and open
in this matter, from first to last. When do you want to go?"

"I should wish to leave at your earliest convenience, Sir
Percival."

"My convenience has nothing to do with it. I shall be out of the
house for good and all to-morrow morning, and I can settle your
accounts to-night. If you want to study anybody's convenience, it
had better be Miss Halcombe's. Mrs. Rubelle's time is up to-day,
and she has reasons for wishing to be in London to-night. If you
go at once, Miss Halcombe won't have a soul left here to look
after her."

I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that I was quite incapable
of deserting Miss Halcombe in such an emergency as had now
befallen Lady Glyde and herself. After first distinctly
ascertaining from Sir Percival that Mrs. Rubelle was certain to
leave at once if I took her place, and after also obtaining
permission to arrange for Mr. Dawson's resuming his attendance on
his patient, I willingly consented to remain at Blackwater Park
until Miss Halcombe no longer required my services. It was
settled that I should give Sir Percival's solicitor a week's
notice before I left, and that he was to undertake the necessary
arrangements for appointing my successor. The matter was
discussed in very few words. At its conclusion Sir Percival
abruptly turned on his heel, and left me free to join Mrs.
Rubelle. That singular foreign person had been sitting composedly
on the doorstep all this time, waiting till I could follow her to
Miss Halcombe's room.

I had hardly walked half-way towards the house when Sir Percival,
who had withdrawn in the opposite direction, suddenly stopped and
called me back.

"Why are you leaving my service?" he asked.

The question was so extraordinary, after what had just passed
between us, that I hardly knew what to say in answer to it.

"Mind! I don't know why you are going," he went on. "You must
give a reason for leaving me, I suppose, when you get another
situation. What reason? The breaking up of the family? Is that
it?"

"There can be no positive objection, Sir Percival, to that reason----"

"Very well! That's all I want to know. If people apply for your
character, that's your reason, stated by yourself. You go in
consequence of the breaking up of the family."

He turned away again before I could say another word, and walked
out rapidly into the grounds. His manner was as strange as his
language. I acknowledge he alarmed me.

Even the patience of Mrs. Rubelle was getting exhausted, when I
joined her at the house door.

"At last!" she said, with a shrug of her lean foreign shoulders.
She led the way into the inhabited side of the house, ascended the
stairs, and opened with her key the door at the end of the
passage, which communicated with the old Elizabethan rooms--a door
never previously used, in my time, at Blackwater Park. The rooms
themselves I knew well, having entered them myself on various
occasions from the other side of the house. Mrs. Rubelle stopped
at the third door along the old gallery, handed me the key of it,
with the key of the door of communication, and told me I should
find Miss Halcombe in that room. Before I went in I thought it
desirable to make her understand that her attendance had ceased.
Accordingly, I told her in plain words that the charge of the sick
lady henceforth devolved entirely on myself.

"I am glad to hear it, ma'am," said Mrs. Rubelle. "I want to go
very much."

"Do you leave to-day?" I asked, to make sure of her.

"Now that you have taken charge, ma'am, I leave in half an hour's
time. Sir Percival has kindly placed at my disposition the
gardener, and the chaise, whenever I want them. I shall want them
in half an hour's time to go to the station. I am packed up in
anticipation already. I wish you good-day, ma'am."

She dropped a brisk curtsey, and walked back along the gallery,
humming a little tune, and keeping time to it cheerfully with the
nosegay in her hand. I am sincerely thankful to say that was the
last I saw of Mrs. Rubelle.

When I went into the room Miss Halcombe was asleep. I looked at
her anxiously, as she lay in the dismal, high, old-fashioned bed.
She was certainly not in any respect altered for the worse since I
had seen her last. She had not been neglected, I am bound to
admit, in any way that I could perceive. The room was dreary, and
dusty, and dark, but the window (looking on a solitary court-yard
at the back of the house) was opened to let in the fresh air, and
all that could be done to make the place comfortable had been
done. The whole cruelty of Sir Percival's deception had fallen on
poor Lady Glyde. The only ill-usage which either he or Mrs.
Rubelle had inflicted on Miss Halcombe consisted, so far as I
could see, in the first offence of hiding her away.

I stole back, leaving the sick lady still peacefully asleep, to
give the gardener instructions about bringing the doctor. I
begged the man, after he had taken Mrs. Rubelle to the station, to
drive round by Mr. Dawson's, and leave a message in my name,
asking him to call and see me. I knew he would come on my
account, and I knew he would remain when he found Count Fosco had
left the house.

In due course of time the gardener returned, and said that he had
driven round by Mr. Dawson's residence, after leaving Mrs. Rubelle
at the station. The doctor sent me word that he was poorly in
health himself, but that he would call, if possible, the next
morning.

Having delivered his message the gardener was about to withdraw,
but I stopped him to request that he would come back before dark,
and sit up that night, in one of the empty bedrooms, so as to be
within call in case I wanted him. He understood readily enough my
unwillingness to be left alone all night in the most desolate part
of that desolate house, and we arranged that he should come in
between eight and nine.

He came punctually, and I found cause to be thankful that I had
adopted the precaution of calling him in. Before midnight Sir
Percival's strange temper broke out in the most violent and most
alarming manner, and if the gardener had not been on the spot to
pacify him on the instant, I am afraid to think what might have
happened.

Almost all the afternoon and evening he had been walking about the
house and grounds in an unsettled, excitable manner, having, in
all probability, as I thought, taken an excessive quantity of wine
at his solitary dinner. However that may be, I heard his voice
calling loudly and angrily in the new wing of the house, as I was
taking a turn backwards and forwards along the gallery the last
thing at night. The gardener immediately ran down to him, and I
closed the door of communication, to keep the alarm, if possible,
from reaching Miss Halcombe's ears. It was full half an hour
before the gardener came back. He declared that his master was
quite out of his senses--not through the excitement of drink, as I
had supposed, but through a kind of panic or frenzy of mind, for
which it was impossible to account. He had found Sir Percival
walking backwards and forwards by himself in the hall, swearing,
with every appearance of the most violent passion, that he would
not stop another minute alone in such a dungeon as his own house,
and that he would take the first stage of his journey immediately
in the middle of the night. The gardener, on approaching him, had
been hunted out, with oaths and threats, to get the horse and
chaise ready instantly. In a quarter of an hour Sir Percival had
joined him in the yard, had jumped into the chaise, and, lashing
the horse into a gallop, had driven himself away, with his face as
pale as ashes in the moonlight. The gardener had heard him
shouting and cursing at the lodge-keeper to get up and open the
gate--had heard the wheels roll furiously on again in the still
night, when the gate was unlocked--and knew no more.

The next day, or a day or two after, I forget which, the chaise
was brought back from Knowlesbury, our nearest town, by the ostler
at the old inn. Sir Percival had stopped there, and had
afterwards left by the train--for what destination the man could
not tell. I never received any further information, either from
himself or from any one else, of Sir Percival's proceedings, and I
am not even aware, at this moment, whether he is in England or out
of it. He and I have not met since he drove away like an escaped
criminal from his own house, and it is my fervent hope and prayer
that we may never meet again.

My own part of this sad family story is now drawing to an end.

I have been informed that the particulars of Miss Halcombe's
waking, and of what passed between us when she found me sitting by
her bedside, are not material to the purpose which is to be
answered by the present narrative. It will be sufficient for me
to say in this place, that she was not herself conscious of the
means adopted to remove her from the inhabited to the uninhabited
part of the house. She was in a deep sleep at the time, whether
naturally or artificially produced she could not say. In my
absence at Torquay, and in the absence of all the resident
servants except Margaret Porcher (who was perpetually eating,
drinking, or sleeping, when she was not at work), the secret
transfer of Miss Halcombe from one part of the house to the other
was no doubt easily performed. Mrs. Rubelle (as I discovered for
myself, in looking about the room) had provisions, and all other
necessaries, together with the means of heating water, broth, and
so on, without kindling a fire, placed at her disposal during the
few days of her imprisonment with the sick lady. She had declined
to answer the questions which Miss Halcombe naturally put, but had
not, in other respects, treated her with unkindness or neglect.
The disgrace of lending herself to a vile deception is the only
disgrace with which I can conscientiously charge Mrs. Rubelle.

I need write no particulars (and I am relieved to know it) of the
effect produced on Miss Halcombe by the news of Lady Glyde's
departure, or by the far more melancholy tidings which reached us
only too soon afterwards at Blackwater Park. In both cases I
prepared her mind beforehand as gently and as carefully as
possible, having the doctor's advice to guide me, in the last case
only, through Mr. Dawson's being too unwell to come to the house
for some days after I had sent for him. It was a sad time, a time
which it afflicts me to think of or to write of now. The precious
blessings of religious consolation which I endeavoured to convey
were long in reaching Miss Halcombe's heart, but I hope and
believe they came home to her at last. I never left her till her
strength was restored. The train which took me away from that
miserable house was the train which took her away also. We parted
very mournfully in London. I remained with a relative at
Islington, and she went on to Mr. Fairlie's house in Cumberland.

I have only a few lines more to write before I close this painful
statement. They are dictated by a sense of duty.

In the first place, I wish to record my own personal conviction
that no blame whatever, in connection with the events which I have
now related, attaches to Count Fosco. I am informed that a
dreadful suspicion has been raised, and that some very serious
constructions are placed upon his lordship's conduct. My
persuasion of the Count's innocence remains, however, quite
unshaken. If he assisted Sir Percival in sending me to Torquay,
he assisted under a delusion, for which, as a foreigner and a
stranger, he was not to blame. If he was concerned in bringing
Mrs. Rubelle to Blackwater Park, it was his misfortune and not his
fault, when that foreign person was base enough to assist a
deception planned and carried out by the master of the house. I
protest, in the interests of morality, against blame being
gratuitously and wantonly attached to the proceedings of the
Count.

In the second place, I desire to express my regret at my own
inability to remember the precise day on which Lady Glyde left
Blackwater Park for London. I am told that it is of the last
importance to ascertain the exact date of that lamentable journey,
and I have anxiously taxed my memory to recall it. The effort has
been in vain. I can only remember now that it was towards the
latter part of July. We all know the difficulty, after a lapse of
time, of fixing precisely on a past date unless it has been
previously written down. That difficulty is greatly increased in
my case by the alarming and confusing events which took place
about the period of Lady Glyde's departure. I heartily wish I had
made a memorandum at the time. I heartily wish my memory of the
date was as vivid as my memory of that poor lady's face, when it
looked at me sorrowfully for the last time from the carriage
window.

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 hard-working 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 back 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 morning, 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 he, "Lady Glyde is better. My mind is more
easy than it was, and I am going out to stretch my big 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--

(1) 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) HESTER 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 my 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 appearance 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 lips 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! my son! 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 burial-ground, the
brook bubbling cold over its stony bed. There was the marble
cross, fair and white, at the head of the tomb--the tomb 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 come back to me. Oh, my love! my
love! my heart may speak to you NOW! I 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 burial-ground.
I heard it nearing me slowly, until it came changed to my ear--
came like footsteps moving 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 in
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! 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.

[The Second Epoch of the Story closes here.]

THE THIRD EPOCH

THE STORY CONTINUED BY WALTER HARTRIGHT.

I

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

The history of the interval which I thus pass over must remain
unrecorded. My heart turns faint, my mind 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 supposed 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 but my 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 Anne 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 Glyde," 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 remember 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.

II

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 announcing 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 delayed, 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 servants. In 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 misled 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 remained unshaken.
She had heard nothing in the interim 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,
recommended 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 deceased 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 to 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
controlling 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 privately, 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 bank-notes 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?"

"To-morrow."

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 circumstances. 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 begged 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 Englishman--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, "Look 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 evidently unfit to bear the
trial of reverting to them. It was known, by the voluntary
admission of the owner of the mad-house, 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, constitutions 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. Fairlie'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 humanely 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
memory 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 impostor 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 might 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 Halcombe 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.

III

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 a 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. I 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. I
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
trusting 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 impostor 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 scrap-
books 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
acquaintances 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 infirmity, 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 stumble 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 to-morrow 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 understood 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 to-
night, and you will satisfy any inquiry of Laura's with the best
excuse that you can make for me? If 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.

IV

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

While my card was being taken in to 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 concerned, 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 disposal," 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 preliminary 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 first.

"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 cunningly-designed 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 concerned, 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 argument's sake, that the identity of Lady Glyde as a
living person is a proved fact to Miss Halcombe and yourself. But
you come to me for a legal opinion. As a lawyer, and as a lawyer
only, it is my duty to tell you, Mr. Hartright, that you have not
the shadow of a case."

"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 own 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. If 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 knew 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 could 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
established 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 him 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 till
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 first promising to
show me her drawing the moment I came in. The poor little dim
faint sketch--so trifling in itself, so touching in its
associations--was propped up carefully on the table with two
books, and was placed where the faint light of the one candle we
allowed ourselves might fall on it to the best advantage. I sat
down to look at the drawing, and to tell Marian, in whispers, what
had happened. The partition which divided us from the next room
was so thin that we could almost 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 storms 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 that 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 to-day?"

"I don't count the time from to-day, Marian. All I have done to-
day is to ask another man to act for me. I count from to-morrow----"

"Why from to-morrow?"

"Because to-morrow 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
opinion 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 to-morrow 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 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!"

V

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, 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 fly 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 own 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!

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 self-
contemplation. 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 hearsay, 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.

VI

The address communicated by Mrs. Todd took me to a lodging-house
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 parlour, 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 object 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 disappearance.

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

On leaving the farm 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 into 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 had
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 anything
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.

VII

Thus far the information which I had received from Mrs. Clements--
though it established facts of which I had not previously been
aware--was of a preliminary character only.

It was clear that the series of deceptions which had removed Anne
Catherick to London, and separated her from Mrs. Clements, had
been accomplished solely by Count Fosco and the Countess, and the
question whether any part of the conduct of husband or wife had
been of a kind to place either of them within reach of the law
might be well worthy of future consideration. But the purpose I
had now in view led me in another direction than this. The
immediate object of my visit to Mrs. Clements was to make some
approach at least to the discovery of Sir Percival's secret, and
she had said nothing as yet which advanced me on my way to that
important end. I felt the necessity of trying to awaken her
recollections of other times, persons, and events than those on
which her memory had hitherto been employed, and when I next spoke
I spoke with that object indirectly in view.

"I wish I could be of any help to you in this sad calamity," I
said. "All I can do is to feel heartily for your distress. If
Anne had been your own child, Mrs. Clements, you could have shown
her no truer kindness--you could have made no readier sacrifices
for her sake."

"There's no great merit in that, sir," said Mrs. Clements simply.
"The poor thing was as good as my own child to me. I nursed her
from a baby, sir, bringing her up by hand--and a hard job it was
to rear her. It wouldn't go to my heart so to lose her if I
hadn't made her first short clothes and taught her to walk. I
always said she was sent to console me for never having chick or
child of my own. And now she's lost the old times keep coming
back to my mind, and even at my age I can't help crying about her--
I can't indeed, sir!"

I waited a little to give Mrs. Clements time to compose herself.
Was the light that I had been looking for so long glimmering on
me--far off, as yet--in the good woman's recollections of Anne's
early life?

"Did you know Mrs. Catherick before Anne was born?" I asked.

"Not very long, sir--not above four months. We saw a great deal
of each other in that time, but we were never very friendly
together."

Her voice was steadier as she made that reply. Painful as many of
her recollections might be, I observed that it was unconsciously a
relief to her mind to revert to the dimly-seen troubles of the
past, after dwelling so long on the vivid sorrows of the present.

"Were you and Mrs. Catherick neighbours?" I inquired, leading her
memory on as encouragingly as I could.

"Yes, sir--neighbours at Old Welmingham."

"OLD Welmingham? There are two places of that name, then, in
Hampshire?"

"Well, sir, there used to be in those days--better than three-and-
twenty years ago. They built a new town about two miles off,
convenient to the river--and Old Welmingham, which was never much
more than a village, got in time to be deserted. The new town is
the place they call Welmingham now--but the old parish church is
the parish church still. It stands by itself, with the houses
pulled down or gone to ruin all round it. I've lived to see sad
changes. It was a pleasant, pretty place in my time.

"Did you live there before your marriage, Mrs. Clements?"

"No, sir--I'm a Norfolk woman. It wasn't the place my husband
belonged to either. He was from Grimsby, as I told you, and he
served his apprenticeship there. But having friends down south,
and hearing of an opening, he got into business at Southampton.
It was in a small way, but he made enough for a plain man to
retire on, and settled at Old Welmingham. I went there with him
when he married me. We were neither of us young, but we lived
very happy together--happier than our neighbour, Mr. Catherick,
lived along with his wife when they came to Old Welmingham a year
or two afterwards."

"Was your husband acquainted with them before that?"

"With Catherick, sir--not with his wife. She was a stranger to
both of us. Some gentlemen had made interest for Catherick, and
he got the situation of clerk at Welmingham church, which was the
reason of his coming to settle in our neighbourhood. He brought
his newly-married wife along with him, and we heard in course of
time she had been lady's-maid in a family that lived at Varneck
Hall, near Southampton. Catherick had found it a hard matter to
get her to marry him, in consequence of her holding herself
uncommonly high. He had asked and asked, and given the thing up
at last, seeing she was so contrary about it. When he HAD given
it up she turned contrary just the other way, and came to him of
her own accord, without rhyme or reason seemingly. My poor
husband always said that was the time to have given her a lesson.
But Catherick was too fond of her to do anything of the sort--he
never checked her either before they were married or after. He
was a quick man in his feelings, letting them carry him a deal too
far, now in one way and now in another, and he would have spoilt a
better wife than Mrs. Catherick if a better had married him. I
don't like to speak ill of any one, sir, but she was a heartless
woman, with a terrible will of her own--fond of foolish admiration
and fine clothes, and not caring to show so much as decent outward
respect to Catherick, kindly as he always treated her. My husband
said he thought things would turn out badly when they first came
to live near us, and his words proved true. Before they had been
quite four months in our neighbourhood there was a dreadful
scandal and a miserable break-up in their household. Both of them
were in fault--I am afraid both of them were equally in fault."

"You mean both husband and wife?"

"Oh, no, sir! I don't mean Catherick--he was only to be pitied. I
meant his wife and the person--"

"And the person who caused the scandal?"

"Yes, sir. A gentleman born and brought up, who ought to have set
a better example. You know him, sir--and my poor dear Anne knew
him only too well."

"Sir Percival Glyde?"

"Yes, Sir Percival Glyde."

My heart beat fast--I thought I had my hand on the clue. How
little I knew then of the windings of the labyrinths which were
still to mislead me!

"Did Sir Percival live in your neighbourhood at that time?" I
asked.

"No, sir. He came among us as a stranger. His father had died
not long before in foreign parts. I remember he was in mourning.
He put up at the little inn on the river (they have pulled it down
since that time), where gentlemen used to go to fish. He wasn't
much noticed when he first came--it was a common thing enough for
gentlemen to travel from all parts of England to fish in our
river."

"Did he make his appearance in the village before Anne was born?"

"Yes, sir. Anne was born in the June month of eighteen hundred
and twenty-seven--and I think he came at the end of April or the
beginning of May."

"Came as a stranger to all of you? A stranger to Mrs. Catherick as
well as to the rest of the neighbours?"

"So we thought at first, sir. But when the scandal broke out,
nobody believed they were strangers. I remember how it happened
as well as if it was yesterday. Catherick came into our garden
one night, and woke us by throwing up a handful of gravel from the
walk at our window. I heard him beg my husband, for the Lord's
sake, to come down and speak to him. They were a long time
together talking in the porch. When my husband came back upstairs
he was all of a tremble. He sat down on the side of the bed and
he says to me, 'Lizzie! I always told you that woman was a bad
one--I always said she would end ill, and I'm afraid in my own
mind that the end has come already. Catherick has found a lot of
lace handkerchiefs, and two fine rings, and a new gold watch and
chain, hid away in his wife's drawer--things that nobody but a
born lady ought ever to have--and his wife won't say how she came
by them.' 'Does he think she stole them?' says I. 'No,' says he,
'stealing would be bad enough. But it's worse than that, she's
had no chance of stealing such things as those, and she's not a
woman to take them if she had. They're gifts, Lizzie--there's her
own initials engraved inside the watch--and Catherick has seen her
talking privately, and carrying on as no married woman should,
with that gentleman in mourning, Sir Percival Glyde. Don't you
say anything about it--I've quieted Catherick for to-night. I've
told him to keep his tongue to himself, and his eyes and his ears
open, and to wait a day or two, till he can be quite certain.' 'I
believe you are both of you wrong,' says I. 'It's not in nature,
comfortable and respectable as she is here, that Mrs. Catherick
should take up with a chance stranger like Sir Percival Glyde.'
'Ay, but is he a stranger to her?' says my husband. 'You forget
how Catherick's wife came to marry him. She went to him of her
own accord, after saying No over and over again when he asked her.
There have been wicked women before her time, Lizzie, who have
used honest men who loved them as a means of saving their
characters, and I'm sorely afraid this Mrs. Catherick is as wicked
as the worst of them. We shall see,' says my husband, 'we shall
soon see.' And only two days afterwards we did see."

Mrs. Clements waited for a moment before she went on. Even in
that moment, I began to doubt whether the clue that I thought I
had found was really leading me to the central mystery of the
labyrinth after all. Was this common, too common, story of a
man's treachery and a woman's frailty the key to a secret which
had been the life-long terror of Sir Percival Glyde?

"Well, sir, Catherick took my husband's advice and waited," Mrs.
Clements continued. "And as I told you, he hadn't long to wait.
On the second day he found his wife and Sir Percival whispering
together quite familiar, close under the vestry of the church. I
suppose they thought the neighbourhood of the vestry was the last
place in the world where anybody would think of looking after
them, but, however that may be, there they were. Sir Percival,
being seemingly surprised and confounded, defended himself in such
a guilty way that poor Catherick (whose quick temper I have told
you of already) fell into a kind of frenzy at his own disgrace,
and struck Sir Percival. He was no match (and I am sorry to say
it) for the man who had wronged him, and he was beaten in the
cruelest manner, before the neighbours, who had come to the place
on hearing the disturbance, could run in to part them. All this
happened towards evening, and before nightfall, when my husband
went to Catherick's house, he was gone, nobody knew where. No
living soul in the village ever saw him again. He knew too well,
by that time, what his wife's vile reason had been for marrying
him, and he felt his misery and disgrace, especially after what
had happened to him with Sir Percival, too keenly. The clergyman
of the parish put an advertisement in the paper begging him to
come back, and saying that he should not lose his situation or his
friends. But Catherick had too much pride and spirit, as some
people said--too much feeling, as I think, sir--to face his
neighbours again, and try to live down the memory of his disgrace.
My husband heard from him when he had left England, and heard a
second time, when he was settled and doing well in America. He is
alive there now, as far as I know, but none of us in the old
country--his wicked wife least of all--are ever likely to set eyes
on him again."

"What became of Sir Percival?" I inquired. "Did he stay in the
neighbourhood?"

"Not he, sir. The place was too hot to hold him. He was heard at
high words with Mrs. Catherick the same night when the scandal
broke out, and the next morning he took himself off."

"And Mrs. Catherick? Surely she never remained in the village
among the people who knew of her disgrace?"

"She did, sir. She was hard enough and heartless enough to set
the opinions of all her neighbours at flat defiance. She declared
to everybody, from the clergyman downwards, that she was the
victim of a dreadful mistake, and that all the scandal-mongers in
the place should not drive her out of it, as if she was a guilty
woman. All through my time she lived at Old Welmingham, and after
my time, when the new town was building, and the respectable
neighbours began moving to it, she moved too, as if she was
determined to live among them and scandalise them to the very
last. There she is now, and there she will stop, in defiance of
the best of them, to her dying day."

"But how has she lived through all these years?" I asked. "Was
her husband able and willing to help her?"

"Both able and willing, sir," said Mrs. Clements. "In the second
letter he wrote to my good man, he said she had borne his name,
and lived in his home, and, wicked as she was, she must not starve
like a beggar in the street. He could afford to make her some
small allowance, and she might draw for it quarterly at a place in
London."

"Did she accept the allowance?"

"Not a farthing of it, sir. She said she would never be beholden
to Catherick for bit or drop, if she lived to be a hundred. And
she has kept her word ever since. When my poor dear husband died,
and left all to me, Catherick's letter was put in my possession
with the other things, and I told her to let me know if she was
ever in want. 'I'll let all England know I'm in want,' she said,
'before I tell Catherick, or any friend of Catherick's. Take that
for your answer, and give it to HIM for an answer, if he ever
writes again.' "

"Do you suppose that she had money of her own?"

"Very little, if any, sir. It was said, and said truly, I am
afraid, that her means of living came privately from Sir Percival
Glyde."

After that last reply I waited a little, to reconsider what I had
heard. If I unreservedly accepted the story so far, it was now
plain that no approach, direct or indirect, to the Secret had yet
been revealed to me, and that the pursuit of my object had ended
again in leaving me face to face with the most palpable and the
most disheartening failure.

But there was one point in the narrative which made me doubt the
propriety of accepting it unreservedly, and which suggested the
idea of something hidden below the surface.

I could not account to myself for the circumstance of the clerk's
guilty wife voluntarily living out all her after-existence on the
scene of her disgrace. The woman's own reported statement that
she had taken this strange course as a practical assertion of her
innocence did not satisfy me. It seemed, to my mind, more natural
and more probable to assume that she was not so completely a free
agent in this matter as she had herself asserted. In that case,
who was the likeliest person to possess the power of compelling
her to remain at Welmingham? The person unquestionably from whom
she derived the means of living. She had refused assistance from
her husband, she had no adequate resources of her own, she was a
friendless, degraded woman--from what source should she derive
help but from the source at which report pointed--Sir Percival
Glyde?

Reasoning on these assumptions, and always bearing in mind the one
certain fact to guide me, that Mrs. Catherick was in possession of
the Secret, I easily understood that it was Sir Percival's
interest to keep her at Welmingham, because her character in that
place was certain to isolate her from all communication with
female neighbours, and to allow her no opportunities of talking
incautiously in moments of free intercourse with inquisitive bosom
friends. But what was the mystery to be concealed? Not Sir
Percival's infamous connection with Mrs. Catherick's disgrace, for
the neighbours were the very people who knew of it--not the
suspicion that he was Anne's father, for Welmingham was the place
in which that suspicion must inevitably exist. If I accepted the
guilty appearances described to me as unreservedly as others had
accepted them, if I drew from them the same superficial conclusion
which Mr. Catherick and all his neighbours had drawn, where was
the suggestion, in all that I had heard, of a dangerous secret
between Sir Percival and Mrs. Catherick, which had been kept
hidden from that time to this?

And yet, in those stolen meetings, in those familiar whisperings
between the clerk's wife and "the gentleman in mourning," the clue
to discovery existed beyond a doubt.

Was it possible that appearances in this case had pointed one way
while the truth lay all the while unsuspected in another
direction? Could Mrs. Catherick's assertion, that she was the
victim of a dreadful mistake, by any possibility be true? Or,
assuming it to be false, could the conclusion which associated Sir
Percival with her guilt have been founded in some inconceivable
error? Had Sir Percival, by any chance, courted the suspicion that
was wrong for the sake of diverting from himself some other
suspicion that was right? Here--if I could find it--here was the
approach to the Secret, hidden deep under the surface of the
apparently unpromising story which I had just heard.

My next questions were now directed to the one object of
ascertaining whether Mr. Catherick had or had not arrived truly at
the conviction of his wife's misconduct. The answers I received
from Mrs. Clements left me in no doubt whatever on that point.
Mrs. Catherick had, on the clearest evidence, compromised her
reputation, while a single woman, with some person unknown, and
had married to save her character. It had been positively
ascertained, by calculations of time and place into which I need
not enter particularly, that the daughter who bore her husband's
name was not her husband's child

The next object of inquiry, whether it was equally certain that
Sir Percival must have been the father of Anne, was beset by far
greater difficulties. I was in no position to try the
probabilities on one side or on the other in this instance by any
better test than the test of personal resemblance.

"I suppose you often saw Sir Percival when he was in your
village?" I said.

"Yes, sir, very often," replied Mrs. Clements.

"Did you ever observe that Anne was like him?"

"She was not at all like him, sir."

"Was she like her mother, then?"

"Not like her mother either, sir. Mrs. Catherick was dark, and
full in the face."

Not like her mother and not like her (supposed) father. I knew
that the test by personal resemblance was not to be implicitly
trusted, but, on the other hand, it was not to be altogether
rejected on that account. Was it possible to strengthen the
evidence by discovering any conclusive facts in relation to the
lives of Mrs. Catherick and Sir Percival before they either of
them appeared at Old Welmingham? When I asked my next questions I
put them with this view.

"When Sir Percival first arrived in your neighbourhood," I said,
"did you hear where he had come from last?"

"No, sir. Some said from Blackwater Park, and some said from
Scotland--but nobody knew."

"Was Mrs. Catherick living in service at Varneck Hall immediately
before her marriage?"

"Yes, sir."

"And had she been long in her place?"

"Three or four years, sir; I am not quite certain which."

"Did you ever hear the name of the gentleman to whom Varneck Hall
belonged at that time?"

"Yes, sir. His name was Major Donthorne."

"Did Mr. Catherick, or did any one else you knew, ever hear that
Sir Percival was a friend of Major Donthorne's, or ever see Sir
Percival in the neighbourhood of Varneck Hall?"

"Catherick never did, sir, that I can remember--nor any one else
either, that I know of."

I noted down Major Donthorne's name and address, on the chance
that he might still be alive, and that it might be useful at some
future time to apply to him. Meanwhile, the impression on my mind
was now decidedly adverse to the opinion that Sir Percival was
Anne's father, and decidedly favourable to the conclusion that the
secret of his stolen interviews with Mrs. Catherick was entirely
unconnected with the disgrace which the woman had inflicted on her
husband's good name. I could think of no further inquiries which
I might make to strengthen this impression--I could only encourage
Mrs. Clements to speak next of Anne's early days, and watch for
any chance-suggestion which might in this way offer itself to me.

"I have not heard yet," I said, "how the poor child, born in all
this sin and misery, came to be trusted, Mrs. Clements, to your
care."

"There was nobody else, sir, to take the little helpless creature
in hand," replied Mrs. Clements. "The wicked mother seemed to
hate it--as if the poor baby was in fault!--from the day it was
born. My heart was heavy for the child, and I made the offer to
bring it up as tenderly as if it was my own."

"Did Anne remain entirely under your care from that time?"

"Not quite entirely, sir. Mrs. Catherick had her whims and
fancies about it at times, and used now and then to lay claim to
the child, as if she wanted to spite me for bringing it up. But
these fits of hers never lasted for long. Poor little Anne was
always returned to me, and was always glad to get back--though she
led but a gloomy life in my house, having no playmates, like other
children, to brighten her up. Our longest separation was when her
mother took her to Limmeridge. Just at that time I lost my
husband, and I felt it was as well, in that miserable affliction,
that Anne should not be in the house. She was between ten and
eleven years old then, slow at her lessons, poor soul, and not so
cheerful as other children--but as pretty a little girl to look at
as you would wish to see. I waited at home till her mother
brought her back, and then I made the offer to take her with me to
London--the truth being, sir, that I could not find it in my heart
to stop at Old Welmingham after my husband's death, the place was
so changed and so dismal to me."

"And did Mrs. Catherick consent to your proposal?"

"No, sir. She came back from the north harder and bitterer than
ever. Folks did say that she had been obliged to ask Sir
Percival's leave to go, to begin with; and that she only went to
nurse her dying sister at Limmeridge because the poor woman was
reported to have saved money--the truth being that she hardly left
enough to bury her. These things may have soured Mrs. Catherick
likely enough, but however that may be, she wouldn't hear of my
taking the child away. She seemed to like distressing us both by
parting us. All I could do was to give Anne my direction, and to
tell her privately, if she was ever in trouble, to come to me.
But years passed before she was free to come. I never saw her
again, poor soul, till the night she escaped from the mad-house."

"You know, Mrs. Clements, why Sir Percival Glyde shut her up?"

"I only know what Anne herself told me, sir. The poor thing used
to ramble and wander about it sadly. She said her mother had got
some secret of Sir Percival's to keep, and had let it out to her
long after I left Hampshire--and when Sir Percival found she knew
it, he shut her up. But she never could say what it was when I
asked her. All she could tell me was, that her mother might be
the ruin and destruction of Sir Percival if she chose. Mrs.
Catherick may have let out just as much as that, and no more. I'm
next to certain I should have heard the whole truth from Anne, if
she had really known it as she pretended to do, and as she very
likely fancied she did, poor soul."

This idea had more than once occurred to my own mind. I had
already told Marian that I doubted whether Laura was really on the
point of making any important discovery when she and Anne
Catherick were disturbed by Count Fosco at the boat-house. It was
perfectly in character with Anne's mental affliction that she
should assume an absolute knowledge of the secret on no better
grounds than vague suspicion, derived from hints which her mother
had incautiously let drop in her presence. Sir Percival's guilty
distrust would, in that case, infallibly inspire him with the
false idea that Anne knew all from her mother, just as it had
afterwards fixed in his mind the equally false suspicion that his
wife knew all from Anne.

The time was passing, the morning was wearing away. It was
doubtful, if I stayed longer, whether I should hear anything more
from Mrs. Clements that would be at all useful to my purpose. I
had already discovered those local and family particulars, in
relation to Mrs. Catherick, of which I had been in search, and I
had arrived at certain conclusions, entirely new to me, which
might immensely assist in directing the course of my future
proceedings. I rose to take my leave, and to thank Mrs. Clements
for the friendly readiness she had shown in affording me
information.

"I am afraid you must have thought me very inquisitive," I said.
"I have troubled you with more questions than many people would
have cared to answer."