The Woman in White

Chapter 8

When I entered the room, I found Miss Halcombe and an elderly lady

seated at the luncheon-table.

The elderly lady, when I was presented to her, proved to be Miss

Fairlie's former governess, Mrs. Vesey, who had been briefly

described to me by my lively companion at the breakfast-table, as

possessed of "all the cardinal virtues, and counting for nothing."

I can do little more than offer my humble testimony to the

truthfulness of Miss Halcombe's sketch of the old lady's

character. Mrs. Vesey looked the personification of human

composure and female amiability. A calm enjoyment of a calm

existence beamed in drowsy smiles on her plump, placid face. Some

of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life.

Mrs. Vesey SAT through life. Sat in the house, early and late;

sat in the garden; sat in unexpected window-seats in passages; sat

(on a camp-stool) when her friends tried to take her out walking;

sat before she looked at anything, before she talked of anything,

before she answered Yes, or No, to the commonest question--always

with the same serene smile on her lips, the same vacantly-

attentive turn of the head, the same snugly-comfortable position

of her hands and arms, under every possible change of domestic

circumstances. A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and

harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that

she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature

has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such

a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be

now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the

different processes that she is carrying on at the same time.

Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private

persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs.

Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences

of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.

"Now, Mrs. Vesey," said Miss Halcombe, looking brighter, sharper,

and readier than ever, by contrast with the undemonstrative old

lady at her side, "what will you have? A cutlet?"

Mrs. Vesey crossed her dimpled hands on the edge of the table,

smiled placidly, and said, "Yes, dear."

"What is that opposite Mr. Hartright? Boiled chicken, is it not? I

thought you liked boiled chicken better than cutlet, Mrs. Vesey?"

Mrs. Vesey took her dimpled hands off the edge of the table and

crossed them on her lap instead; nodded contemplatively at the

boiled chicken, and said, "Yes, dear."

"Well, but which will you have, to-day? Shall Mr. Hartright give

you some chicken? or shall I give you some cutlet?"

Mrs. Vesey put one of her dimpled hands back again on the edge of

the table; hesitated drowsily, and said, "Which you please, dear."

"Mercy on me! it's a question for your taste, my good lady, not

for mine. Suppose you have a little of both? and suppose you

begin with the chicken, because Mr. Hartright looks devoured by

anxiety to carve for you."

Mrs. Vesey put the other dimpled hand back on the edge of the

table; brightened dimly one moment; went out again the next; bowed

obediently, and said, "If you please, sir."

Surely a mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless

old lady! But enough, perhaps, for the present, of Mrs. Vesey.

All this time, there were no signs of Miss Fairlie. We finished

our luncheon; and still she never appeared. Miss Halcombe, whose

quick eye nothing escaped, noticed the looks that I cast, from

time to time, in the direction of the door.

"I understand you, Mr. Hartright," she said; "you are wondering

what has become of your other pupil. She has been downstairs, and

has got over her headache; but has not sufficiently recovered her

appetite to join us at lunch. If you will put yourself under my

charge, I think I can undertake to find her somewhere in the

garden."

She took up a parasol lying on a chair near her, and led the way

out, by a long window at the bottom of the room, which opened on

to the lawn. It is almost unnecessary to say that we left Mrs.

Vesey still seated at the table, with her dimpled hands still

crossed on the edge of it; apparently settled in that position for

the rest of the afternoon.

As we crossed the lawn, Miss Halcombe looked at me significantly,

and shook her head.

"That mysterious adventure of yours," she said, "still remains

involved in its own appropriate midnight darkness. I have been

all the morning looking over my mother's letters, and I have made

no discoveries yet. However, don't despair, Mr. Hartright. This

is a matter of curiosity; and you have got a woman for your ally.

Under such conditions success is certain, sooner or later. The

letters are not exhausted. I have three packets still left, and

you may confidently rely on my spending the whole evening over

them."

Here, then, was one of my anticipations of the morning still

unfulfilled. I began to wonder, next, whether my introduction to

Miss Fairlie would disappoint the expectations that I had been

forming of her since breakfast-time.

"And how did you get on with Mr. Fairlie?" inquired Miss Halcombe,

as we left the lawn and turned into a shrubbery. "Was he

particularly nervous this morning? Never mind considering about

your answer, Mr. Hartright. The mere fact of your being obliged

to consider is enough for me. I see in your face that he WAS

particularly nervous; and, as I am amiably unwilling to throw you

into the same condition, I ask no more."

We turned off into a winding path while she was speaking, and

approached a pretty summer-house, built of wood, in the form of a

miniature Swiss chalet. The one room of the summer-house, as we

ascended the steps of the door, was occupied by a young lady. She

was standing near a rustic table, looking out at the inland view

of moor and hill presented by a gap in the trees, and absently

turning over the leaves of a little sketch-book that lay at her

side. This was Miss Fairlie.

How can I describe her? How can I separate her from my own

sensations, and from all that has happened in the later time? How

can I see her again as she looked when my eyes first rested on

her--as she should look, now, to the eyes that are about to see

her in these pages?

The water-colour drawing that I made of Laura Fairlie, at an after

period, in the place and attitude in which I first saw her, lies

on my desk while I write. I look at it, and there dawns upon me

brightly, from the dark greenish-brown background of the summer-

house, a light, youthful figure, clothed in a simple muslin dress,

the pattern of it formed by broad alternate stripes of delicate

blue and white. A scarf of the same material sits crisply and

closely round her shoulders, and a little straw hat of the natural

colour, plainly and sparingly trimmed with ribbon to match the

gown, covers her head, and throws its soft pearly shadow over the

upper part of her face. Her hair is of so faint and pale a brown--

not flaxen, and yet almost as light; not golden, and yet almost

as glossy--that it nearly melts, here and there, into the shadow

of the hat. It is plainly parted and drawn back over her ears,

and the line of it ripples naturally as it crosses her forehead.

The eyebrows are rather darker than the hair; and the eyes are of

that soft, limpid, turquoise blue, so often sung by the poets, so

seldom seen in real life. Lovely eyes in colour, lovely eyes in

form--large and tender and quietly thoughtful--but beautiful above

all things in the clear truthfulness of look that dwells in their

inmost depths, and shines through all their changes of expression

with the light of a purer and a better world. The charm--most

gently and yet most distinctly expressed--which they shed over the

whole face, so covers and transforms its little natural human

blemishes elsewhere, that it is difficult to estimate the relative

merits and defects of the other features. It is hard to see that

the lower part of the face is too delicately refined away towards

the chin to be in full and fair proportion with the upper part;

that the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend (always hard and

cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractedly perfect it may be),

has erred a little in the other extreme, and has missed the ideal

straightness of line; and that the sweet, sensitive lips are

subject to a slight nervous contraction, when she smiles, which

draws them upward a little at one corner, towards the cheek. It

might be possible to note these blemishes in another woman's face

but it is not easy to dwell on them in hers, so subtly are they

connected with all that is individual and characteristic in her

expression, and so closely does the expression depend for its full

play and life, in every other feature, on the moving impulse of

the eyes.

Does my poor portrait of her, my fond, patient labour of long and

happy days, show me these things? Ah, how few of them are in the

dim mechanical drawing, and how many in the mind with which I

regard it! A fair, delicate girl, in a pretty light dress,

trifling with the leaves of a sketch-book, while she looks up from

it with truthful, innocent blue eyes--that is all the drawing can

say; all, perhaps, that even the deeper reach of thought and pen

can say in their language, either. The woman who first gives

life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills

a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us

till she appeared. Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too

deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by other

charms than those which the senses feel and which the resources of

expression can realise. The mystery which underlies the beauty of

women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it

has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls.

Then, and then only, has it passed beyond the narrow region on

which light falls, in this world, from the pencil and the pen.

Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the

pulses within you that the rest of her s*x had no art to stir.

Let the kind, candid blue eyes meet yours, as they met mine, with

the one matchless look which we both remember so well. Let her

voice speak the music that you once loved best, attuned as sweetly

to your ear as to mine. Let her footstep, as she comes and goes,

in these pages, be like that other footstep to whose airy fall

your own heart once beat time. Take her as the visionary nursling

of your own fancy; and she will grow upon you, all the more

clearly, as the living woman who dwells in mine.

Among the sensations that crowded on me, when my eyes first looked

upon her--familiar sensations which we all know, which spring to

life in most of our hearts, die again in so many, and renew their

bright existence in so few--there was one that troubled and

perplexed me: one that seemed strangely inconsistent and

unaccountably out of place in Miss Fairlie's presence.

Mingling with the vivid impression produced by the charm of her

fair face and head, her sweet expression, and her winning

simplicity of manner, was another impression, which, in a shadowy

way, suggested to me the idea of something wanting. At one time

it seemed like something wanting in HER: at another, like

something wanting in myself, which hindered me from understanding

her as I ought. The impression was always strongest in the most

contradictory manner, when she looked at me; or, in other words,

when I was most conscious of the harmony and charm of her face,

and yet, at the same time, most troubled by the sense of an

incompleteness which it was impossible to discover. Something

wanting, something wanting--and where it was, and what it was, I

could not say.

The effect of this curious caprice of fancy (as I thought it then)

was not of a nature to set me at my ease, during a first interview

with Miss Fairlie. The few kind words of welcome which she spoke

found me hardly self-possessed enough to thank her in the

customary phrases of reply. Observing my hesitation, and no doubt

attributing it, naturally enough, to some momentary shyness on my

part, Miss Halcombe took the business of talking, as easily and

readily as usual, into her own hands.

"Look there, Mr. Hartright," she said, pointing to the sketch-book

on the table, and to the little delicate wandering hand that was

still trifling with it. "Surely you will acknowledge that your

model pupil is found at last? The moment she hears that you are in

the house, she seizes her inestimable sketch-book looks universal

Nature straight in the face, and longs to begin!"

Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good-humour, which broke out as

brightly as if it had been part of the sunshine above us, over her

lovely face.

"I must not take credit to myself where no credit is due," she

said, her clear, truthful blue eyes looking alternately at Miss

Halcombe and at me. "Fond as I am of drawing, I am so conscious

of my own ignorance that I am more afraid than anxious to begin.

Now I know you are here, Mr. Hartright, I find myself looking over

my sketches, as I used to look over my lessons when I was a little

girl, and when I was sadly afraid that I should turn out not fit

to be heard."

She made the confession very prettily and simply, and, with

quaint, childish earnestness, drew the sketch-book away close to

her own side of the table. Miss Halcombe cut the knot of the

little embarrassment forthwith, in her resolute, downright way.

"Good, bad, or indifferent," she said, "the pupil's sketches must

pass through the fiery ordeal of the master's judgment--and

there's an end of it. Suppose we take them with us in the

carriage, Laura, and let Mr. Hartright see them, for the first

time, under circumstances of perpetual jolting and interruption?

If we can only confuse him all through the drive, between Nature

as it is, when he looks up at the view, and Nature as it is not

when he looks down again at our sketch-books, we shall drive him

into the last desperate refuge of paying us compliments, and shall

slip through his professional fingers with our pet feathers of

vanity all unruffled."

"I hope Mr. Hartright will pay ME no compliments," said Miss

Fairlie, as we all left the summer-house.

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

"Because I shall believe all that you say to me," she answered

simply.

In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole

character: to that generous trust in others which, in her nature,

grew innocently out of the sense of her own truth. I only knew it

intuitively then. I know it by experience now.

We merely waited to rouse good Mrs. Vesey from the place which she

still occupied at the deserted luncheon-table, before we entered

the open carriage for our promised drive. The old lady and Miss

Halcombe occupied the back seat, and Miss Fairlie and I sat

together in front, with the sketch-book open between us, fairly

exhibited at last to my professional eyes. All serious criticism

on the drawings, even if I had been disposed to volunteer it, was

rendered impossible by Miss Halcombe's lively resolution to see

nothing but the ridiculous side of the Fine Arts, as practised by

herself, her sister, and ladies in general. I can remember the

conversation that passed far more easily than the sketches that I

mechanically looked over. That part of the talk, especially, in

which Miss Fairlie took any share, is still as vividly impressed

on my memory as if I had heard it only a few hours ago.

Yes! let me acknowledge that on this first day I let the charm of

her presence lure me from the recollection of myself and my

position. The most trifling of the questions that she put to me,

on the subject of using her pencil and mixing her colours; the

slightest alterations of expression in the lovely eyes that looked

into mine with such an earnest desire to learn all that I could

teach, and to discover all that I could show, attracted more of my

attention than the finest view we passed through, or the grandest

changes of light and shade, as they flowed into each other over

the waving moorland and the level beach. At any time, and under

any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how

little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we

live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort

in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of

those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so

largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of

us, one of the original instincts of our nature. As children, we

none of us possess it. No uninstructed man or woman possesses it.

Those whose lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever-

changing wonders of sea and land are also those who are most

universally insensible to every aspect of Nature not directly

associated with the human interest of their calling. Our capacity

of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth,

one of the civilised accomplishments which we all learn as an Art;

and, more, that very capacity is rarely practised by any of us

except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied. How

much share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the

pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our

friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little

narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of

mouth from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass,

all that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal

certainty, equal profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in

the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth

can show. There is surely a reason for this want of inborn

sympathy between the creature and the creation around it, a reason

which may perhaps be found in the widely-differing destinies of

man and his earthly sphere. The grandest mountain prospect that

the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest

human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to

immortality.

We had been out nearly three hours, when the carriage again passed

through the gates of Limmeridge House.

On our way back I had let the ladies settle for themselves the

first point of view which they were to sketch, under my

instructions, on the afternoon of the next day. When they

withdrew to dress for dinner, and when I was alone again in my

little sitting-room, my spirits seemed to leave me on a sudden. I

felt ill at ease and dissatisfied with myself, I hardly knew why.

Perhaps I was now conscious for the first time of having enjoyed

our drive too much in the character of a guest, and too little in

the character of a drawing-master. Perhaps that strange sense of

something wanting, either in Miss Fairlie or in myself, which had

perplexed me when I was first introduced to her, haunted me still.

Anyhow, it was a relief to my spirits when the dinner-hour called

me out of my solitude, and took me back to the society of the

ladies of the house.

I was struck, on entering the drawing-room, by the curious

contrast, rather in material than in colour, of the dresses which

they now wore. While Mrs. Vesey and Miss Halcombe were richly

clad (each in the manner most becoming to her age), the first in

silver-grey, and the second in that delicate primrose-yellow

colour which matches so well with a dark complexion and black

hair, Miss Fairlie was unpretendingly and almost poorly dressed in

plain white muslin. It was spotlessly pure: it was beautifully

put on; but still it was the sort of dress which the wife or

daughter of a poor man might have worn, and it made her, so far as

externals went, look less affluent in circumstances than her own

governess. At a later period, when I learnt to know more of Miss

Fairlie's character, I discovered that this curious contrast, on

the wrong side, was due to her natural delicacy of feeling and

natural intensity of aversion to the slightest personal display of

her own wealth. Neither Mrs. Vesey nor Miss Halcombe could ever

induce her to let the advantage in dress desert the two ladies who

were poor, to lean to the side of the one lady who was rich.

When the dinner was over we returned together to the drawing-room.

Although Mr. Fairlie (emulating the magnificent condescension of

the monarch who had picked up Titian's brush for him) had

instructed his butler to consult my wishes in relation to the wine

that I might prefer after dinner, I was resolute enough to resist

the temptation of sitting in solitary grandeur among bottles of my

own choosing, and sensible enough to ask the ladies' permission to

leave the table with them habitually, on the civilised foreign

plan, during the period of my residence at Limmeridge House.

The drawing-room, to which we had now withdrawn for the rest of

the evening, was on the ground-floor, and was of the same shape

and size as the breakfast-room. Large glass doors at the lower

end opened on to a terrace, beautifully ornamented along its whole

length with a profusion of flowers. The soft, hazy twilight was

just shading leaf and blossom alike into harmony with its own

sober hues as we entered the room, and the sweet evening scent of

the flowers met us with its fragrant welcome through the open

glass doors. Good Mrs. Vesey (always the first of the party to

sit down) took possession of an arm-chair in a corner, and dozed

off comfortably to sleep. At my request Miss Fairlie placed

herself at the piano. As I followed her to a seat near the

instrument, I saw Miss Halcombe retire into a recess of one of the

side windows, to proceed with the search through her mother's

letters by the last quiet rays of the evening light.

How vividly that peaceful home-picture of the drawing-room comes

back to me while I write! From the place where I sat I could see

Miss Halcombe's graceful figure, half of it in soft light, half in

mysterious shadow, bending intently over the letters in her lap;

while, nearer to me, the fair profile of the player at the piano

was just delicately defined against the faintly-deepening

background of the inner wall of the room. Outside, on the

terrace, the clustering flowers and long grasses and creepers

waved so gently in the light evening air, that the sound of their

rustling never reached us. The sky was without a cloud, and the

dawning mystery of moonlight began to tremble already in the

region of the eastern heaven. The sense of peace and seclusion

soothed all thought and feeling into a rapt, unearthly repose; and

the balmy quiet, that deepened ever with the deepening light,

seemed to hover over us with a gentler influence still, when there

stole upon it from the piano the heavenly tenderness of the music

of Mozart. It was an evening of sights and sounds never to

forget.

We all sat silent in the places we had chosen--Mrs. Vesey still

sleeping, Miss Fairlie still playing, Miss Halcombe still reading--

till the light failed us. By this time the moon had stolen round

to the terrace, and soft, mysterious rays of light were slanting

already across the lower end of the room. The change from the

twilight obscurity was so beautiful that we banished the lamps, by

common consent, when the servant brought them in, and kept the

large room unlighted, except by the glimmer of the two candles at

the piano.

For half an hour more the music still went on. After that the

beauty of the moonlight view on the terrace tempted Miss Fairlie

out to look at it, and I followed her. When the candles at the

piano had been lighted Miss Halcombe had changed her place, so as

to continue her examination of the letters by their assistance.

We left her, on a low chair, at one side of the instrument, so

absorbed over her reading that she did not seem to notice when we

moved.

We had been out on the terrace together, just in front of the

glass doors, hardly so long as five minutes, I should think; and

Miss Fairlie was, by my advice, just tying her white handkerchief

over her head as a precaution against the night air--when I heard

Miss Halcombe's voice--low, eager, and altered from its natural

lively tone--pronounce my name.

"Mr. Hartright," she said, "will you come here for a minute? I

want to speak to you."

I entered the room again immediately. The piano stood about half-

way down along the inner wall. On the side of the instrument

farthest from the terrace Miss Halcombe was sitting with the

letters scattered on her lap, and with one in her hand selected

from them, and held close to the candle. On the side nearest to

the terrace there stood a low ottoman, on which I took my place.

In this position I was not far from the glass doors, and I could

see Miss Fairlie plainly, as she passed and repassed the opening

on to the terrace, walking slowly from end to end of it in the

full radiance of the moon.

"I want you to listen while I read the concluding passages in this

letter," said Miss Halcombe. "Tell me if you think they throw any

light upon your strange adventure on the road to London. The

letter is addressed by my mother to her second husband, Mr.

Fairlie, and the date refers to a period of between eleven and

twelve years since. At that time Mr. and Mrs. Fairlie, and my

half-sister Laura, had been living for years in this house; and I

was away from them completing my education at a school in Paris."

She looked and spoke earnestly, and, as I thought, a little

uneasily as well. At the moment when she raised the letter to the

candle before beginning to read it, Miss Fairlie passed us on the

terrace, looked in for a moment, and seeing that we were engaged,

slowly walked on.

Miss Halcombe began to read as follows:--

"'You will be tired, my dear Philip, of hearing perpetually about

my schools and my scholars. Lay the blame, pray, on the dull

uniformity of life at Limmeridge, and not on me. Besides, this

time I have something really interesting to tell you about a new

scholar.

"'You know old Mrs. Kempe at the village shop. Well, after years

of ailing, the doctor has at last given her up, and she is dying

slowly day by day. Her only living relation, a sister, arrived

last week to take care of her. This sister comes all the way from

Hampshire--her name is Mrs. Catherick. Four days ago Mrs.

Catherick came here to see me, and brought her only child with

her, a sweet little girl about a year older than our darling

Laura----'"

As the last sentence fell from the reader's lips, Miss Fairlie

passed us on the terrace once more. She was softly singing to

herself one of the melodies which she had been playing earlier in

the evening. Miss Halcombe waited till she had passed out of

sight again, and then went on with the letter--

"'Mrs. Catherick is a decent, well-behaved, respectable woman;

middle-aged, and with the remains of having been moderately, only

moderately, nice-looking. There is something in her manner and in

her appearance, however, which I can't make out. She is reserved

about herself to the point of down-right secrecy, and there is a

look in her face--I can't describe it--which suggests to me that

she has something on her mind. She is altogether what you would

call a walking mystery. Her errand at Limmeridge House, however,

was simple enough. When she left Hampshire to nurse her sister,

Mrs. Kempe, through her last illness, she had been obliged to

bring her daughter with her, through having no one at home to take

care of the little girl. Mrs. Kempe may die in a week's time, or

may linger on for months; and Mrs. Catherick's object was to ask

me to let her daughter, Anne, have the benefit of attending my

school, subject to the condition of her being removed from it to

go home again with her mother, after Mrs. Kempe's death. I

consented at once, and when Laura and I went out for our walk, we

took the little girl (who is just eleven years old) to the school

that very day.'"

Once more Miss Fairlie's figure, bright and soft in its snowy

muslin dress--her face prettily framed by the white folds of the

handkerchief which she had tied under her chin--passed by us in

the moonlight. Once more Miss Halcombe waited till she was out of

sight, and then went on--

"'I have taken a violent fancy, Philip, to my new scholar, for a

reason which I mean to keep till the last for the sake of

surprising you. Her mother having told me as little about the

child as she told me of herself, I was left to discover (which I

did on the first day when we tried her at lessons) that the poor

little thing's intellect is not developed as it ought to be at her

age. Seeing this I had her up to the house the next day, and

privately arranged with the doctor to come and watch her and

question her, and tell me what he thought. His opinion is that

she will grow out of it. But he says her careful bringing-up at

school is a matter of great importance just now, because her

unusual slowness in acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in

keeping them, when they are once received into her mind. Now, my

love, you must not imagine, in your off-hand way, that I have been

attaching myself to an i***t. This poor little Anne Catherick is

a sweet, affectionate, grateful girl, and says the quaintest,

prettiest things (as you shall judge by an instance), in the most

oddly sudden, surprised, half-frightened way. Although she is

dressed very neatly, her clothes show a sad want of taste in

colour and pattern. So I arranged, yesterday, that some of our

darling Laura's old white frocks and white hats should be altered

for Anne Catherick, explaining to her that little girls of her

complexion looked neater and better all in white than in anything

else. She hesitated and seemed puzzled for a minute, then flushed

up, and appeared to understand. Her little hand clasped mine

suddenly. She kissed it, Philip, and said (oh, so earnestly!), "I

will always wear white as long as I live. It will help me to

remember you, ma'am, and to think that I am pleasing you still,

when I go away and see you no more." This is only one specimen of

the quaint things she says so prettily. Poor little soul! She

shall have a stock of white frocks, made with good deep tucks, to

let out for her as she grows----'"

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

"Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the high-road seem young?"

she asked. "Young enough to be two- or three-and-twenty?"

"Yes, Miss Halcombe, as young as that."

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

"All in white."

While the answer was passing my lips Miss Fairlie glided into view

on the terrace for the third time. Instead of proceeding on her

walk, she stopped, with her back turned towards us, and, leaning

on the balustrade of the terrace, looked down into the garden

beyond. My eyes fixed upon the white gleam of her muslin gown and

head-dress in the moonlight, and a sensation, for which I can find

no name--a sensation that quickened my pulse, and raised a

fluttering at my heart--began to steal over me.

"All in white?" Miss Halcombe repeated. "The most important

sentences in the letter, Mr. Hartright, are those at the end,

which I will read to you immediately. But I can't help dwelling a

little upon the coincidence of the white costume of the woman you

met, and the white frocks which produced that strange answer from

my mother's little scholar. The doctor may have been wrong when

he discovered the child's defects of intellect, and predicted that

she would 'grow out of them.' She may never have grown out of

them, and the old grateful fancy about dressing in white, which

was a serious feeling to the girl, may be a serious feeling to the

woman still."

I said a few words in answer--I hardly know what. All my

attention was concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie's

muslin dress.

"Listen to the last sentences of the letter," said Miss Halcombe.

"I think they will surprise you."

As she raised the letter to the light of the candle, Miss Fairlie

turned from the balustrade, looked doubtfully up and down the

terrace, advanced a step towards the glass doors, and then

stopped, facing us.

Meanwhile Miss Halcombe read me the last sentences to which she

had referred--

"'And now, my love, seeing that I am at the end of my paper, now

for the real reason, the surprising reason, for my fondness for

little Anne Catherick. My dear Philip, although she is not half

so pretty, she is, nevertheless, by one of those extraordinary

caprices of accidental resemblance which one sometimes sees, the

living likeness, in her hair, her complexion, the colour of her

eyes, and the shape of her face----'"

I started up from the ottoman before Miss Halcombe could pronounce

the next words. A thrill of the same feeling which ran through me

when the touch was laid upon my shoulder on the lonely high-road

chilled me again.

There stood Miss Fairlie, a white figure, alone in the moonlight;

in her attitude, in the turn of her head, in her complexion, in

the shape of her face, the living image, at that distance and

under those circumstances, of the woman in white! The doubt which

had troubled my mind for hours and hours past flashed into

conviction in an instant. That "something wanting" was my own

recognition of the ominous likeness between the fugitive from the

asylum and my pupil at Limmeridge House.

"You see it!" said Miss Halcombe. She dropped the useless letter,

and her eyes flashed as they met mine. "You see it now, as my

mother saw it eleven years since!"

"I see it--more unwillingly than I can say. To associate that

forlorn, friendless, lost woman, even by an accidental likeness

only, with Miss Fairlie, seems like casting a shadow on the future

of the bright creature who stands looking at us now. Let me lose

the impression again as soon as possible. Call her in, out of the

dreary moonlight--pray call her in!"

"Mr. Hartright, you surprise me. Whatever women may be, I thought

that men, in the nineteenth century, were above superstition."

"Pray call her in!"

"Hush, hush! She is coming of her own accord. Say nothing in her

presence. Let this discovery of the likeness be kept a secret

between you and me. Come in, Laura, come in, and wake Mrs. Vesey

with the piano. Mr. Hartright is petitioning for some more music,

and he wants it, this time, of the lightest and liveliest kind."