The Woman in White

Chapter 6

June 18th.--The misery of self-reproach which I suffered yesterday

evening, on hearing what Laura told me in the boat-house, returned

in the loneliness of the night, and kept me waking and wretched

for hours.

I lighted my candle at last, and searched through my old journals

to see what my share in the fatal error of her marriage had really

been, and what I might have once done to save her from it. The

result soothed me a little for it showed that, however blindly and

ignorantly I acted, I acted for the best. Crying generally does me

harm; but it was not so last night--I think it relieved me. I

rose this morning with a settled resolution and a quiet mind.

Nothing Sir Percival can say or do shall ever irritate me again,

or make me forget for one moment that I am staying here in

defiance of mortifications, insults, and threats, for Laura's

service and for Laura's sake.

The speculations in which we might have indulged this morning, on

the subject of the figure at the lake and the foot-steps in the

plantation, have been all suspended by a trifling accident which

has caused Laura great regret. She has lost the little brooch I

gave her for a keepsake on the day before her marriage. As she

wore it when we went out yesterday evening we can only suppose

that it must have dropped from her dress, either in the boat-house

or on our way back. The servants have been sent to search, and

have returned unsuccessful. And now Laura herself has gone to

look for it. Whether she finds it or not the loss will help to

excuse her absence from the house, if Sir Percival returns before

the letter from Mr. Gilmore's partner is placed in my hands.

One o'clock has just struck. I am considering whether I had

better wait here for the arrival of the messenger from London, or

slip away quietly, and watch for him outside the lodge gate.

My suspicion of everybody and everything in this house inclines me

to think that the second plan may be the best. The Count is safe

in the breakfast-room. I heard him, through the door, as I ran

upstairs ten minutes since, exercising his canary-birds at their

tricks:--"Come out on my little finger, my pret-pret-pretties!

Come out, and hop upstairs! One, two, three--and up! Three, two,

one--and down! One, two, three--twit-twit-twit-tweet!" The birds

burst into their usual ecstasy of singing, and the Count chirruped

and whistled at them in return, as if he was a bird himself. My

room door is open, and I can hear the shrill singing and whistling

at this very moment. If I am really to slip out without being

observed, now is my time.

FOUR O'CLOCK. The three hours that have passed since I made my

last entry have turned the whole march of events at Blackwater

Park in a new direction. Whether for good or for evil, I cannot

and dare not decide.

Let me get back first to the place at which I left off, or I shall

lose myself in the confusion of my own thoughts.

I went out, as I had proposed, to meet the messenger with my

letter from London at the lodge gate. On the stairs I saw no one.

In the hall I heard the Count still exercising his birds. But on

crossing the quadrangle outside, I passed Madame Fosco, walking by

herself in her favourite circle, round and round the great fish-

pond. I at once slackened my pace, so as to avoid all appearance

of being in a hurry, and even went the length, for caution's sake,

of inquiring if she thought of going out before lunch. She smiled

at me in the friendliest manner--said she preferred remaining near

the house, nodded pleasantly, and re-entered the hall. I looked

back, and saw that she had closed the door before I had opened the

wicket by the side of the carriage gates.

In less than a quarter of an hour I reached the lodge.

The lane outside took a sudden turn to the left, ran on straight

for a hundred yards or so, and then took another sharp turn to the

right to join the high-road. Between these two turns, hidden from

the lodge on one side, and from the way to the station on the

other, I waited, walking backwards and forwards. High hedges were

on either side of me, and for twenty minutes, by my watch, I

neither saw nor heard anything. At the end of that time the sound

of a carriage caught my ear, and I was met, as I advanced towards

the second turning, by a fly from the railway. I made a sign to

the driver to stop. As he obeyed me a respectable-looking man put

his head out of the window to see what was the matter.

"I beg your pardon," I said, "but am I right in supposing that you

are going to Blackwater Park?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"With a letter for any one?"

"With a letter for Miss Halcombe, ma'am."

"You may give me the letter. I am Miss Halcombe."

The man touched his hat, got out of the fly immediately, and gave

me the letter.

I opened it at once and read these lines. I copy them here,

thinking it best to destroy the original for caution's sake.

"DEAR MADAM,--Your letter received this morning has caused me very

great anxiety. I will reply to it as briefly and plainly as

possible.

"My careful consideration of the statement made by yourself, and

my knowledge of Lady Glyde's position, as defined in the

settlement, lead me, I regret to say, to the conclusion that a

loan of the trust money to Sir Percival (or, in other words, a

loan of some portion of the twenty thousand pounds of Lady Glyde's

fortune) is in contemplation, and that she is made a party to the

deed, in order to secure her approval of a flagrant breach of

trust, and to have her signature produced against her if she

should complain hereafter. It is impossible, on any other

supposition, to account, situated as she is, for her execution to

a deed of any kind being wanted at all.

"In the event of Lady Glyde's signing such a document, as I am

compelled to suppose the deed in question to be, her trustees

would be at liberty to advance money to Sir Percival out of her

twenty thousand pounds. If the amount so lent should not be paid

back, and if Lady Glyde should have children, their fortune will

then be diminished by the sum, large or small, so advanced. In

plainer terms still, the transaction, for anything that Lady Glyde

knows to the contrary, may be a fraud upon her unborn children.

"Under these serious circumstances, I would recommend Lady Glyde

to assign as a reason for withholding her signature, that she

wishes the deed to be first submitted to myself, as her family

solicitor (in the absence of my partner, Mr. Gilmore). No

reasonable objection can be made to taking this course--for, if

the transaction is an honourable one, there will necessarily be no

difficulty in my giving my approval.

"Sincerely assuring you of my readiness to afford any additional

help or advice that may be wanted, I beg to remain, Madam, your

faithful servant,

WILLIAM KYRLE.

I read this kind and sensible letter very thankfully. It supplied

Laura with a reason for objecting to the signature which was

unanswerable, and which we could both of us understand. The

messenger waited near me while I was reading to receive his

directions when I had done.

"Will you be good enough to say that I understand the letter, and

that I am very much obliged?" I said. "There is no other reply

necessary at present."

Exactly at the moment when I was speaking those words, holding the

letter open in my hand, Count Fosco turned the corner of the lane

from the high-road, and stood before me as if he had sprung up out

of the earth.

The suddenness of his appearance, in the very last place under

heaven in which I should have expected to see him, took me

completely by surprise. The messenger wished me good-morning, and

got into the fly again. I could not say a word to him--I was not

even able to return his bow. The conviction that I was

discovered--and by that man, of all others--absolutely petrified

me.

"Are you going back to the house, Miss Halcombe?" he inquired,

without showing the least surprise on his side, and without even

looking after the fly, which drove off while he was speaking to

me.

I collected myself sufficiently to make a sign in the affirmative.

"I am going back too," he said. "Pray allow me the pleasure of

accompanying you. Will you take my arm? You look surprised at

seeing me!"

I took his arm. The first of my scattered senses that came back

was the sense that warned me to sacrifice anything rather than

make an enemy of him.

"You look surprised at seeing me!" he repeated in his quietly

pertinacious way.

"I thought, Count, I heard you with your birds in the breakfast-

room," I answered, as quietly and firmly as I could.

"Surely. But my little feathered children, dear lady, are only

too like other children. They have their days of perversity, and

this morning was one of them. My wife came in as I was putting

them back in their cage, and said she had left you going out alone

for a walk. You told her so, did you not?"

"Certainly."

"Well, Miss Halcombe, the pleasure of accompanying you was too

great a temptation for me to resist. At my age there is no harm in

confessing so much as that, is there? I seized my hat, and set off

to offer myself as your escort. Even so fat an old man as Fosco

is surely better than no escort at all? I took the wrong path--I

came back in despair, and here I am, arrived (may I say it?) at

the height of my wishes."

He talked on in this complimentary strain with a fluency which

left me no exertion to make beyond the effort of maintaining my

composure. He never referred in the most distant manner to what

he had seen in the lane, or to the letter which I still had in my

hand. This ominous discretion helped to convince me that he must

have surprised, by the most dishonourable means, the secret of my

application in Laura's interest to the lawyer; and that, having

now assured himself of the private manner in which I had received

the answer, he had discovered enough to suit his purposes, and was

only bent on trying to quiet the suspicions which he knew he must

have aroused in my mind. I was wise enough, under these

circumstances, not to attempt to deceive him by plausible

explanations, and woman enough, notwithstanding my dread of him,

to feel as if my hand was tainted by resting on his arm.

On the drive in front of the house we met the dog-cart being taken

round to the stables. Sir Percival had just returned. He came

out to meet us at the house-door. Whatever other results his

journey might have had, it had not ended in softening his savage

temper.

"Oh! here are two of you come back," he said, with a lowering

face. "What is the meaning of the house being deserted in this

way? Where is Lady Glyde?"

I told him of the loss of the brooch, and said that Laura had gone

into the plantation to look for it.

"Brooch or no brooch," he growled sulkily, "I recommend her not to

forget her appointment in the library this afternoon. I shall

expect to see her in half an hour."

I took my hand from the Count's arm, and slowly ascended the

steps. He honoured me with one of his magnificent bows, and then

addressed himself gaily to the scowling master of the house.

"Tell me, Percival," he said, "have you had a pleasant drive? And

has your pretty shining Brown Molly come back at all tired?"

"Brown Molly be hanged--and the drive too! I want my lunch."

"And I want five minutes' talk with you, Percival, first,"

returned the Count. "Five minutes' talk, my friend, here on the

grass."

"What about?"

"About business that very much concerns you."

I lingered long enough in passing through the hall-door to hear

this question and answer, and to see Sir Percival thrust his hands

into his pockets in sullen hesitation.

"If you want to badger me with any more of your infernal

scruples," he said, "I for one won't hear them. I want my lunch."

"Come out here and speak to me," repeated the Count, still

perfectly uninfluenced by the rudest speech that his friend could

make to him.

Sir Percival descended the steps. The Count took him by the arm,

and walked him away gently. The "business," I was sure, referred

to the question of the signature. They were speaking of Laura and

of me beyond a doubt. I felt heart-sick and faint with anxiety.

It might be of the last importance to both of us to know what they

were saying to each other at that moment, and not one word of it

could by any possibility reach my ears.

I walked about the house, from room to room, with the lawyer's

letter in my bosom (I was afraid by this time even to trust it

under lock and key), till the oppression of my suspense half

maddened me. There were no signs of Laura's return, and I thought

of going out to look for her. But my strength was so exhausted by

the trials and anxieties of the morning that the heat of the day

quite overpowered me, and after an attempt to get to the door I

was obliged to return to the drawing-room and lie down on the

nearest sofa to recover.

I was just composing myself when the door opened softly and the

Count looked in.

"A thousand pardons, Miss Halcombe," he said; "I only venture to

disturb you because I am the bearer of good news. Percival--who

is capricious in everything, as you know--has seen fit to alter

his mind at the last moment, and the business of the signature is

put off for the present. A great relief to all of us, Miss

Halcombe, as I see with pleasure in your face. Pray present my

best respects and felicitations, when you mention this pleasant

change of circumstances to Lady Glyde."

He left me before I had recovered my astonishment. There could be

no doubt that this extraordinary alteration of purpose in the

matter of the signature was due to his influence, and that his

discovery of my application to London yesterday, and of my having

received an answer to it to-day, had offered him the means of

interfering with certain success.

I felt these impressions, but my mind seemed to share the

exhaustion of my body, and I was in no condition to dwell on them

with any useful reference to the doubtful present or the

threatening future. I tried a second time to run out and find

Laura, but my head was giddy and my knees trembled under me.

There was no choice but to give it up again and return to the

sofa, sorely against my will.

The quiet in the house, and the low murmuring hum of summer

insects outside the open window, soothed me. My eyes closed of

themselves, and I passed gradually into a strange condition, which

was not waking--for I knew nothing of what was going on about me,

and not sleeping--for I was conscious of my own repose. In this

state my fevered mind broke loose from me, while my weary body was

at rest, and in a trance, or day-dream of my fancy--I know not

what to call it--I saw Walter Hartright. I had not thought of him

since I rose that morning--Laura had not said one word to me

either directly or indirectly referring to him--and yet I saw him

now as plainly as if the past time had returned, and we were both

together again at Limmeridge House.

He appeared to me as one among many other men, none of whose faces

I could plainly discern. They were all lying on the steps of an

immense ruined temple. Colossal tropical trees--with rank

creepers twining endlessly about their trunks, and hideous stone

idols glimmering and grinning at intervals behind leaves and

stalks and branches--surrounded the temple and shut out the sky,

and threw a dismal shadow over the forlorn band of men on the

steps. White exhalations twisted and curled up stealthily from

the ground, approached the men in wreaths like smoke, touched

them, and stretched them out dead, one by one, in the places where

they lay. An agony of pity and fear for Walter loosened my

tongue, and I implored him to escape. "Come back, come back!" I

said. "Remember your promise to HER and to ME. Come back to us

before the Pestilence reaches you and lays you dead like the

rest!"

He looked at me with an unearthly quiet in his face. "Wait," he

said, "I shall come back. The night when I met the lost Woman on

the highway was the night which set my life apart to be the

instrument of a Design that is yet unseen. Here, lost in the

wilderness, or there, welcomed back in the land of my birth, I am

still walking on the dark road which leads me, and you, and the

sister of your love and mine, to the unknown Retribution and the

inevitable End. Wait and look. The Pestilence which touches the

rest will pass ME."

I saw him again. He was still in the forest, and the numbers of

his lost companions had dwindled to very few. The temple was

gone, and the idols were gone--and in their place the figures of

dark, dwarfish men lurked murderously among the trees, with bows

in their hands, and arrows fitted to the string. Once more I

feared for Walter, and cried out to warn him. Once more he turned

to me, with the immovable quiet in his face.

"Another step," he said, "on the dark road. Wait and look. The

arrows that strike the rest will spare me."

I saw him for the third time in a wrecked ship, stranded on a

wild, sandy shore. The overloaded boats were making away from him

for the land, and he alone was left to sink with the ship. I

cried to him to hail the hindmost boat, and to make a last effort

for his life. The quiet face looked at me in return, and the

unmoved voice gave me back the changeless reply. "Another step on

the journey. Wait and look. The Sea which drowns the rest will

spare me."

I saw him for the last time. He was kneeling by a tomb of white

marble, and the shadow of a veiled woman rose out of the grave

beneath and waited by his side. The unearthly quiet of his face

had changed to an unearthly sorrow. But the terrible certainty of

his words remained the same. "Darker and darker," he said;

"farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful,

and the young--and spares me. The Pestilence that wastes, the

Arrow that strikes, the Sea that drowns, the Grave that closes

over Love and Hope, are steps of my journey, and take me nearer

and nearer to the End."

My heart sank under a dread beyond words, under a grief beyond

tears. The darkness closed round the pilgrim at the marble tomb--

closed round the veiled woman from the grave--closed round the

dreamer who looked on them. I saw and heard no more.

I was aroused by a hand laid on my shoulder. It was Laura's.

She had dropped on her knees by the side of the sofa. Her face

was flushed and agitated, and her eyes met mine in a wild

bewildered manner. I started the instant I saw her.

"What has happened?" I asked. "What has frightened you?"

She looked round at the half-open door, put her lips close to my

ear, and answered in a whisper--

"Marian!--the figure at the lake--the footsteps last night--I've

just seen her! I've just spoken to her!"

"Who, for Heaven's sake?"

"Anne Catherick."

I was so startled by the disturbance in Laura's face and manner,

and so dismayed by the first waking impressions of my dream, that

I was not fit to bear the revelation which burst upon me when that

name passed her lips. I could only stand rooted to the floor,

looking at her in breathless silence.

She was too much absorbed by what had happened to notice the

effect which her reply had produced on me. "I have seen Anne

Catherick! I have spoken to Anne Catherick!" she repeated as if I

had not heard her. "Oh, Marian, I have such things to tell you!

Come away--we may be interrupted here--come at once into my room."

With those eager words she caught me by the hand, and led me

through the library, to the end room on the ground floor, which

had been fitted up for her own especial use. No third person,

except her maid, could have any excuse for surprising us here.

She pushed me in before her, locked the door, and drew the chintz

curtains that hung over the inside.

The strange, stunned feeling which had taken possession of me

still remained. But a growing conviction that the complications

which had long threatened to gather about her, and to gather about

me, had suddenly closed fast round us both, was now beginning to

penetrate my mind. I could not express it in words--I could

hardly even realise it dimly in my own thoughts. "Anne

Catherick!" I whispered to myself, with useless, helpless

reiteration--"Anne Catherick!"

Laura drew me to the nearest seat, an ottoman in the middle of the

room. "Look!" she said, "look here!"--and pointed to the bosom of

her dress.

I saw, for the first time, that the lost brooch was pinned in its

place again. There was something real in the sight of it,

something real in the touching of it afterwards, which seemed to

steady the whirl and confusion in my thoughts, and to help me to

compose myself.

"Where did you find your brooch?" The first words I could say to

her were the words which put that trivial question at that

important moment.

"SHE found it, Marian."

"Where?"

"On the floor of the boat-house. Oh, how shall I begin--how shall

I tell you about it! She talked to me so strangely--she looked so

fearfully ill--she left me so suddenly!"

Her voice rose as the tumult of her recollections pressed upon her

mind. The inveterate distrust which weighs, night and day, on my

spirits in this house, instantly roused me to warn her--just as

the sight of the brooch had roused me to question her, the moment

before.

"Speak low," I said. "The window is open, and the garden path

runs beneath it. Begin at the beginning, Laura. Tell me, word

for word, what passed between that woman and you."

"Shall I close the window?"

"No, only speak low--only remember that Anne Catherick is a

dangerous subject under your husband's roof. Where did you first

see her?"

"At the boat-house, Marian. I went out, as you know, to find my

brooch, and I walked along the path through the plantation,

looking down on the ground carefully at every step. In that way I

got on, after a long time, to the boat-house, and as soon as I was

inside it, I went on my knees to hunt over the floor. I was still

searching with my back to the doorway, when I heard a soft,

strange voice behind me say, 'Miss Fairlie.'"

"Miss Fairlie!"

"Yes, my old name--the dear, familiar name that I thought I had

parted from for ever. I started up--not frightened, the voice was

too kind and gentle to frighten anybody--but very much surprised.

There, looking at me from the doorway, stood a woman, whose face I

never remembered to have seen before--"

"How was she dressed?"

"She had a neat, pretty white gown on, and over it a poor worn

thin dark shawl. Her bonnet was of brown straw, as poor and worn

as the shawl. I was struck by the difference between her gown and

the rest of her dress, and she saw that I noticed it. 'Don't look

at my bonnet and shawl,' she said, speaking in a quick,

breathless, sudden way; 'if I mustn't wear white, I don't care

what I wear. Look at my gown as much as you please--I'm not

ashamed of that.' Very strange, was it not? Before I could say

anything to soothe her, she held out one of her hands, and I saw

my brooch in it. I was so pleased and so grateful, that I went

quite close to her to say what I really felt. 'Are you thankful

enough to do me one little kindness?' she asked. 'Yes, indeed,' I

answered, 'any kindness in my power I shall be glad to show you.'

'Then let me pin your brooch on for you, now I have found it.' Her

request was so unexpected, Marian, and she made it with such

extraordinary eagerness, that I drew back a step or two, not well

knowing what to do. 'Ah!' she said, 'your mother would have let

me pin on the brooch.' There was something in her voice and her

look, as well as in her mentioning my mother in that reproachful

manner, which made me ashamed of my distrust. I took her hand with

the brooch in it, and put it up gently on the bosom of my dress.

'You knew my mother?' I said. 'Was it very long ago? have I ever

seen you before?' Her hands were busy fastening the brooch: she

stopped and pressed them against my breast. 'You don't remember a

fine spring day at Limmeridge,' she said, 'and your mother walking

down the path that led to the school, with a little girl on each

side of her? I have had nothing else to think of since, and I

remember it. You were one of the little girls, and I was the

other. Pretty, clever Miss Fairlie, and poor dazed Anne Catherick

were nearer to each other then than they are now!'"

"Did you remember her, Laura, when she told you her name?"

"Yes, I remembered your asking me about Anne Catherick at

Limmeridge, and your saying that she had once been considered like

me."

"What reminded you of that, Laura?"

"SHE reminded me. While I was looking at her, while she was very

close to me, it came over my mind suddenly that we were like each

other! Her face was pale and thin and weary--but the sight of it

startled me, as if it had been the sight of my own face in the

glass after a long illness. The discovery--I don't know why--gave

me such a shock, that I was perfectly incapable of speaking to her

for the moment."

"Did she seem hurt by your silence?"

"I am afraid she was hurt by it. 'You have not got your mother's

face,' she said, 'or your mother's heart. Your mother's face was

dark, and your mother's heart, Miss Fairlie, was the heart of an

angel.' 'I am sure I feel kindly towards you,' I said, 'though I

may not be able to express it as I ought. Why do you call me Miss

Fairlie?----' 'Because I love the name of Fairlie and hate the

name of Glyde,' she broke out violently. I had seen nothing like

madness in her before this, but I fancied I saw it now in her

eyes. 'I only thought you might not know I was married,' I said,

remembering the wild letter she wrote to me at Limmeridge, and

trying to quiet her. She sighed bitterly, and turned away from

me. 'Not know you were married?' she repeated. 'I am here

BECAUSE you are married. I am here to make atonement to you,

before I meet your mother in the world beyond the grave.' She drew

farther and farther away from me, till she was out of the boat-

house, and then she watched and listened for a little while. When

she turned round to speak again, instead of coming back, she

stopped where she was, looking in at me, with a hand on each side

of the entrance. 'Did you see me at the lake last night?' she

said. 'Did you hear me following you in the wood? I have been

waiting for days together to speak to you alone--I have left the

only friend I have in the world, anxious and frightened about me--

I have risked being shut up again in the mad-house--and all for

your sake, Miss Fairlie, all for your sake.' Her words alarmed me,

Marian, and yet there was something in the way she spoke that made

me pity her with all my heart. I am sure my pity must have been

sincere, for it made me bold enough to ask the poor creature to

come in, and sit down in the boat-house, by my side."

"Did she do so?"

"No. She shook her head, and told me she must stop where she was,

to watch and listen, and see that no third person surprised us.

And from first to last, there she waited at the entrance, with a

hand on each side of it, sometimes bending in suddenly to speak to

me, sometimes drawing back suddenly to look about her. 'I was

here yesterday,' she said, 'before it came dark, and I heard you,

and the lady with you, talking together. I heard you tell her

about your husband. I heard you say you had no influence to make

him believe you, and no influence to keep him silent. Ah! I knew

what those words meant--my conscience told me while I was

listening. Why did I ever let you marry him! Oh, my fear--my mad,

miserable, wicked fear!--'She covered up her face in her poor worn

shawl, and moaned and murmured to herself behind it. I began to

be afraid she might break out into some terrible despair which

neither she nor I could master. 'Try to quiet yourself,' I said;

'try to tell me how you might have prevented my marriage.' She

took the shawl from her face, and looked at me vacantly. 'I ought

to have had heart enough to stop at Limmeridge,' she answered. 'I

ought never to have let the news of his coming there frighten me

away. I ought to have warned you and saved you before it was too

late. Why did I only have courage enough to write you that

letter? Why did I only do harm, when I wanted and meant to do

good? Oh, my fear--my mad, miserable, wicked fear! 'She repeated

those words again, and hid her face again in the end of her poor

worn shawl. It was dreadful to see her, and dreadful to hear

her."

"Surely, Laura, you asked what the fear was which she dwelt on so

earnestly?"

"Yes, I asked that."

"And what did she say?"

"She asked me in return, if I should not be afraid of a man who

had shut me up in a mad-house, and who would shut me up again, if

he could? I said, 'Are you afraid still? Surely you would not be

here if you were afraid now?' 'No,' she said, 'I am not afraid

now.' I asked why not. She suddenly bent forward into the boat-

house, and said, 'Can't you guess why?' I shook my head. 'Look at

me,' she went on. I told her I was grieved to see that she looked

very sorrowful and very ill. She smiled for the first time.

'Ill?' she repeated; 'I'm dying. You know why I'm not afraid of

him now. Do you think I shall meet your mother in heaven? Will

she forgive me if I do?' I was so shocked and so startled, that I

could make no reply. 'I have been thinking of it,' she went on,

'all the time I have been in hiding from your husband, all the

time I lay ill. My thoughts have driven me here--I want to make

atonement--I want to undo all I can of the harm I once did.' I

begged her as earnestly as I could to tell me what she meant. She

still looked at me with fixed vacant eyes. 'SHALL I undo the

harm?' she said to herself doubtfully. 'You have friends to take

your part. If YOU know his Secret, he will be afraid of you, he

won't dare use you as he used me. He must treat you mercifully

for his own sake, if he is afraid of you and your friends. And if

he treats you mercifully, and if I can say it was my doing----' I

listened eagerly for more, but she stopped at those words."

"You tried to make her go on?"

"I tried, but she only drew herself away from me again, and leaned

her face and arms against the side of the boat-house. 'Oh!' I

heard her say, with a dreadful, distracted tenderness in her

voice, 'oh! if I could only be buried with your mother! If I could

only wake at her side, when the angel's trumpet sounds, and the

graves give up their dead at the resurrection!'--Marian! I

trembled from head to foot--it was horrible to hear her. 'But

there is no hope of that,' she said, moving a little, so as to

look at me again, 'no hope for a poor stranger like me. I shall

not rest under the marble cross that I washed with my own hands,

and made so white and pure for her sake. Oh no! oh no! God's

mercy, not man's, will take me to her, where the wicked cease from

troubling and the weary are at rest.' She spoke those words

quietly and sorrowfully, with a heavy, hopeless sigh, and then

waited a little. Her face was confused and troubled, she seemed

to be thinking, or trying to think. 'What was it I said just

now?' she asked after a while. 'When your mother is in my mind,

everything else goes out of it. What was I saying? what was I

saying?' I reminded the poor creature, as kindly and delicately as

I could. 'Ah, yes, yes,' she said, still in a vacant, perplexed

manner. 'You are helpless with your wicked husband. Yes. And I

must do what I have come to do here--I must make it up to you for

having been afraid to speak out at a better time.' 'What IS it you

have to tell me?' I asked. 'The Secret that your cruel husband is

afraid of,' she answered. 'I once threatened him with the Secret,

and frightened him. You shall threaten him with the Secret, and

frighten him too.' Her face darkened, and a hard, angry stare

fixed itself in her eyes. She began waving her hand at me in a

vacant, unmeaning manner. 'My mother knows the Secret,' she said.

'My mother has wasted under the Secret half her lifetime. One

day, when I was grown up, she said something to ME. And the next

day your husband----'"

"Yes! yes! Go on. What did she tell you about your husband?"

"She stopped again, Marian, at that point----"

"And said no more?"

"And listened eagerly. 'Hush!' she whispered, still waving her

hand at me. 'Hush!' She moved aside out of the doorway, moved

slowly and stealthily, step by step, till I lost her past the edge

of the boat-house."

"Surely you followed her?"

"Yes, my anxiety made me bold enough to rise and follow her. Just

as I reached the entrance, she appeared again suddenly, round the

side of the boat-house. 'The Secret,' I whispered to her--'wait

and tell me the Secret!' She caught hold of my arm, and looked at

me with wild frightened eyes. 'Not now,' she said, 'we are not

alone--we are watched. Come here to-morrow at this time--by

yourself--mind--by yourself.' She pushed me roughly into the boat-

house again, and I saw her no more."

"Oh, Laura, Laura, another chance lost! If I had only been near

you she should not have escaped us. On which side did you lose

sight of her?"

"On the left side, where the ground sinks and the wood is

thickest."

"Did you run out again? did you call after her?"

"How could I? I was too terrified to move or speak."

"But when you DID move--when you came out?"

"I ran back here, to tell you what had happened."

"Did you see any one, or hear any one, in the plantation?"

"No, it seemed to be all still and quiet when I passed through

it."

I waited for a moment to consider. Was this third person,

supposed to have been secretly present at the interview, a

reality, or the creature of Anne Catherick's excited fancy? It was

impossible to determine. The one thing certain was, that we had

failed again on the very brink of discovery--failed utterly and

irretrievably, unless Anne Catherick kept her appointment at the

boat-house for the next day.

"Are you quite sure you have told me everything that passed? Every

word that was said?" I inquired.

"I think so," she answered. "My powers of memory, Marian, are not

like yours. But I was so strongly impressed, so deeply

interested, that nothing of any importance can possibly have

escaped me."

"My dear Laura, the merest trifles are of importance where Anne

Catherick is concerned. Think again. Did no chance reference

escape her as to the place in which she is living at the present

time?"

"None that I can remember."

"Did she not mention a companion and friend--a woman named Mrs.

Clements?"

"Oh yes! yes! I forgot that. She told me Mrs. Clements wanted

sadly to go with her to the lake and take care of her, and begged

and prayed that she would not venture into this neighbourhood

alone."

"Was that all she said about Mrs. Clements?"

"Yes, that was all."

"She told you nothing about the place in which she took refuge

after leaving Todd's Corner?"

"Nothing--I am quite sure."

"Nor where she has lived since? Nor what her illness had been?"

"No, Marian, not a word. Tell me, pray tell me, what you think

about it. I don't know what to think, or what to do next."

"You must do this, my love: You must carefully keep the

appointment at the boat-house to-morrow. It is impossible to say

what interests may not depend on your seeing that woman again.

You shall not be left to yourself a second time. I will follow

you at a safe distance. Nobody shall see me, but I will keep

within hearing of your voice, if anything happens. Anne Catherick

has escaped Walter Hartright, and has escaped you. Whatever

happens, she shall not escape ME."

Laura's eyes read mine attentively.

"You believe," she said, "in this secret that my husband is afraid

of? Suppose, Marian, it should only exist after all in Anne

Catherick's fancy? Suppose she only wanted to see me and to speak

to me, for the sake of old remembrances? Her manner was so

strange--I almost doubted her. Would you trust her in other

things?"

"I trust nothing, Laura, but my own observation of your husband's

conduct. I judge Anne Catherick's words by his actions, and I

believe there is a secret."

I said no more, and got up to leave the room Thoughts were

troubling me which I might have told her if we had spoken together

longer, and which it might have been dangerous for her to know.

The influence of the terrible dream from which she had awakened me

hung darkly and heavily over every fresh impression which the

progress of her narrative produced on my mind. I felt the ominous

future coming close, chilling me with an unutterable awe, forcing

on me the conviction of an unseen design in the long series of

complications which had now fastened round us. I thought of

Hartright--as I saw him in the body when he said farewell; as I

saw him in the spirit in my dream--and I too began to doubt now

whether we were not advancing blindfold to an appointed and an

inevitable end.

Leaving Laura to go upstairs alone, I went out to look about me in

the walks near the house. The circumstances under which Anne

Catherick had parted from her had made me secretly anxious to know

how Count Fosco was passing the afternoon, and had rendered me

secretly distrustful of the results of that solitary journey from

which Sir Percival had returned but a few hours since.

After looking for them in every direction and discovering nothing,

I returned to the house, and entered the different rooms on the

ground floor one after another. They were all empty. I came out

again into the hall, and went upstairs to return to Laura. Madame

Fosco opened her door as I passed it in my way along the passage,

and I stopped to see if she could inform me of the whereabouts of

her husband and Sir Percival. Yes, she had seen them both from

her window more than an hour since. The Count had looked up with

his customary kindness, and had mentioned with his habitual

attention to her in the smallest trifles, that he and his friend

were going out together for a long walk.

For a long walk! They had never yet been in each other's company

with that object in my experience of them. Sir Percival cared for

no exercise but riding, and the Count (except when he was polite

enough to be my escort) cared for no exercise at all.

When I joined Laura again, I found that she had called to mind in

my absence the impending question of the signature to the deed,

which, in the interest of discussing her interview with Anne

Catherick, we had hitherto overlooked. Her first words when I saw

her expressed her surprise at the absence of the expected summons

to attend Sir Percival in the library.

"You may make your mind easy on that subject," I said. "For the

present, at least, neither your resolution nor mine will be

exposed to any further trial. Sir Percival has altered his plans--

the business of the signature is put off."

"Put off?" Laura repeated amazedly. "Who told you so?"

"My authority is Count Fosco. I believe it is to his interference

that we are indebted for your husband's sudden change of purpose."

"It seems impossible, Marian. If the object of my signing was, as

we suppose, to obtain money for Sir Percival that he urgently

wanted, how can the matter be put off?"

"I think, Laura, we have the means at hand of setting that doubt

at rest. Have you forgotten the conversation that I heard between

Sir Percival and the lawyer as they were crossing the hall?"

"No, but I don't remember----"

"I do. There were two alternatives proposed. One was to obtain

your signature to the parchment. The other was to gain time by

giving bills at three months. The last resource is evidently the

resource now adopted, and we may fairly hope to be relieved from

our share in Sir Percival's embarrassments for some time to come."

"Oh, Marian, it sounds too good to be true!"

"Does it, my love? You complimented me on my ready memory not long

since, but you seem to doubt it now. I will get my journal, and

you shall see if I am right or wrong."

I went away and got the book at once.

On looking back to the entry referring to the lawyer's visit, we

found that my recollection of the two alternatives presented was

accurately correct. It was almost as great a relief to my mind as

to Laura's, to find that my memory had served me, on this

occasion, as faithfully as usual. In the perilous uncertainty of

our present situation, it is hard to say what future interests may

not depend upon the regularity of the entries in my journal, and

upon the reliability of my recollection at the time when I make

them.

Laura's face and manner suggested to me that this last

consideration had occurred to her as well as to myself. Anyway,

it is only a trifling matter, and I am almost ashamed to put it

down here in writing--it seems to set the forlornness of our

situation in such a miserably vivid light. We must have little

indeed to depend on, when the discovery that my memory can still

be trusted to serve us is hailed as if it was the discovery of a

new friend!

The first bell for dinner separated us. Just as it had done

ringing, Sir Percival and the Count returned from their walk. We

heard the master of the house storming at the servants for being

five minutes late, and the master's guest interposing, as usual,

in the interests of propriety, patience, and peace.

* * * * * * * * * *

The evening has come and gone. No extraordinary event has

happened. But I have noticed certain peculiarities in the conduct

of Sir Percival and the Count, which have sent me to my bed

feeling very anxious and uneasy about Anne Catherick, and about

the results which to-morrow may produce.

I know enough by this time, to be sure, that the aspect of Sir

Percival which is the most false, and which, therefore, means the

worst, is his polite aspect. That long walk with his friend had

ended in improving his manners, especially towards his wife. To

Laura's secret surprise and to my secret alarm, he called her by

her Christian name, asked if she had heard lately from her uncle,

inquired when Mrs. Vesey was to receive her invitation to

Blackwater, and showed her so many other little attentions that he

almost recalled the days of his hateful courtship at Limmeridge

House. This was a bad sign to begin with, and I thought it more

ominous still that he should pretend after dinner to fall asleep

in the drawing-room, and that his eyes should cunningly follow

Laura and me when he thought we neither of us suspected him. I

have never had any doubt that his sudden journey by himself took

him to Welmingham to question Mrs. Catherick--but the experience

of to-night has made me fear that the expedition was not

undertaken in vain, and that he has got the information which he

unquestionably left us to collect. If I knew where Anne Catherick

was to be found, I would be up to-morrow with sunrise and warn

her.

While the aspect under which Sir Percival presented himself to-

night was unhappily but too familiar to me, the aspect under which

the Count appeared was, on the other hand, entirely new in my

experience of him. He permitted me, this evening, to make his

acquaintance, for the first time, in the character of a Man of

Sentiment--of sentiment, as I believe, really felt, not assumed

for the occasion.

For instance, he was quiet and subdued--his eyes and his voice

expressed a restrained sensibility. He wore (as if there was some

hidden connection between his showiest finery and his deepest

feeling) the most magnificent waistcoat he has yet appeared in--it

was made of pale sea-green silk, and delicately trimmed with fine

silver braid. His voice sank into the tenderest inflections, his

smile expressed a thoughtful, fatherly admiration, whenever he

spoke to Laura or to me. He pressed his wife's hand under the

table when she thanked him for trifling little attentions at

dinner. He took wine with her. "Your health and happiness, my

angel!" he said, with fond glistening eyes. He ate little or

nothing, and sighed, and said "Good Percival!" when his friend

laughed at him. After dinner, he took Laura by the hand, and

asked her if she would be "so sweet as to play to him." She

complied, through sheer astonishment. He sat by the piano, with

his watch-chain resting in folds, like a golden serpent, on the

sea-green protuberance of his waistcoat. His immense head lay

languidly on one side, and he gently beat time with two of his

yellow-white fingers. He highly approved of the music, and

tenderly admired Laura's manner of playing--not as poor Hartright

used to praise it, with an innocent enjoyment of the sweet sounds,

but with a clear, cultivated, practical knowledge of the merits of

the composition, in the first place, and of the merits of the

player's touch in the second. As the evening closed in, he begged

that the lovely dying light might not be profaned, just yet, by

the appearance of the lamps. He came, with his horribly silent

tread, to the distant window at which I was standing, to be out of

his way and to avoid the very sight of him--he came to ask me to

support his protest against the lamps. If any one of them could

only have burnt him up at that moment, I would have gone down to

the kitchen and fetched it myself.

"Surely you like this modest, trembling English twilight?" he said

softly. "Ah! I love it. I feel my inborn admiration of all that

is noble, and great, and good, purified by the breath of heaven on

an evening like this. Nature has such imperishable charms, such

inextinguishable tenderness for me!--I am an old, fat man--talk

which would become your lips, Miss Halcombe, sounds like a

derision and a mockery on mine. It is hard to be laughed at in my

moments of sentiment, as if my soul was like myself, old and

overgrown. Observe, dear lady, what a light is dying on the

trees! Does it penetrate your heart, as it penetrates mine?"

He paused, looked at me, and repeated the famous lines of Dante on

the Evening-time, with a melody and tenderness which added a charm

of their own to the matchless beauty of the poetry itself.

"Bah!" he cried suddenly, as the last cadence of those noble

Italian words died away on his lips; "I make an old fool of

myself, and only weary you all! Let us shut up the window in our

bosoms and get back to the matter-of-fact world. Percival! I

sanction the admission of the lamps. Lady Glyde--Miss Halcombe--

Eleanor, my good wife--which of you will indulge me with a game at

dominoes?"

He addressed us all, but he looked especially at Laura.

She had learnt to feel my dread of offending him, and she accepted

his proposal. It was more than I could have done at that moment.

I could not have sat down at the same table with him for any

consideration. His eyes seemed to reach my inmost soul through

the thickening obscurity of the twilight. His voice trembled

along every nerve in my body, and turned me hot and cold

alternately. The mystery and terror of my dream, which had

haunted me at intervals all through the evening, now oppressed my

mind with an unendurable foreboding and an unutterable awe. I saw

the white tomb again, and the veiled woman rising out of it by

Hartright's side. The thought of Laura welled up like a spring in

the depths of my heart, and filled it with waters of bitterness,

never, never known to it before. I caught her by the hand as she

passed me on her way to the table, and kissed her as if that night

was to part us for ever. While they were all gazing at me in

astonishment, I ran out through the low window which was open

before me to the ground--ran out to hide from them in the

darkness, to hide even from myself.

We separated that evening later than usual. Towards mid-night the

summer silence was broken by the shuddering of a low, melancholy

wind among the trees. We all felt the sudden chill in the

atmosphere, but the Count was the first to notice the stealthy

rising of the wind. He stopped while he was lighting my candle

for me, and held up his hand warningly--

"Listen!" he said. "There will be a change to-morrow."