No. 58.] SATURDAY,
JUNE 2, 1860 [PRICE 2d.
THE WOMAN IN WHITE.
———•———
PART THE SECOND. HARTRIGHT’S
NARRATIVE.
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 up-stairs 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 beard, apparently a foreigner, met
them in the hall, and with great politeness showed them the way up-stairs.
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
down stairs 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.
Such, reduced to plain terms, was the narrative obtained 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 madhouse, that
she was received there on the thirtieth 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 madhouse 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 chance
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 reflexion 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
known, 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 recal,
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 when 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 reflexion 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.
I next 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 permission 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 inquiries 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.
All The Year Round, 2 June 1860, Vol.III, No.58, pp.169-174
Weekly Part 28.
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