Miss Halcombe paused, and looked at me across the piano.
“Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the 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.”
“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. 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.”
I said a few words in answer – I hardly know what. All my attention was concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie’s 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, and then stopped, facing us.
“Anne told my mother that she would always wear white to remember her by, as my mother’s favourite colour was white.”
“So it’s quite possible that the woman in white is Anne Catherick,” I said slowly. “What happened to Anne?”
“I don’t know,” said Miss Halcombe. “She and her mother left Limmeridge after a few months and never came back. There is no further mention of her in my mother’s letters.”
I looked further. 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 of the woman in white!
During the following weeks, I experienced some of the happiest and most peaceful moments in my life. Every afternoon I went with Miss Halcombe, or Marian as I called her, and Laura into the countryside to draw and paint.
Miss Halcombe and I kept our secret. I enjoyed Marian’s company very much and I admired and respected her greatly. But feelings of a different kind were awakening within me for Laura.
The days passed on, the weeks passed on, and every day Laura and I were growing closer. As I was teaching how to hold her pencil to draw, my hand would nearly touch her hand or my cheek would touch her cheek. At those moments, I was breathing the perfume of her hair, and the warm fragrance of her breath. In the evenings after dinner we would light the tall candles in the sitting room and Laura would play the piano. I loved to sit and listen to the beautiful music while darkness fell outside.
I loved her. Yes, the truth was that I was falling deeply in love with Laura. I tried hard to keep my feelings hidden, but I suspected that Marian had guessed.
The days passed, the weeks passed; it was approaching the third month of my stay in Cumberland. We had parted one night as usual. Laura! No word had fallen from my lips, at that time or at any time before it, that could betray me. But when we met again in the morning, a change had come over her[26] – a change that told me all.
There was a coldness in her hand, there was an unnatural immobility in her face, there was in all her movements the mute expression of constant fear. The change in Miss Fairlie was reflected in her half-sister. A week elapsed, leaving us all three still in this position of secret constraint towards one another. My situation was becoming intolerable.
From this position of helplessness I was rescued by Miss Halcombe. Her lips told me the bitter, the necessary, the unexpected truth.
It was on a Thursday in the week, and nearly at the end of the third month of my living in Cumberland.
In the morning, when I went down into the breakfast-room at the usual hour, Miss Halcombe, for the first time since I had known her, was absent from her customary place at the table.
Miss Fairlie was out on the lawn. She bowed to me, but did not come in. She waited on the lawn, and I waited in the breakfast-room, till Miss Halcombe came in.
In a few minutes Miss Halcombe entered. She made her apologies for being late rather absently.
Our morning meal was short and silent. Miss Halcombe, after once or twice hesitating and checking herself, spoke at last.
“I have seen your uncle this morning, Laura,” she said. “He confirms what I told you. Monday is the day – not Tuesday.[27]”
Miss Fairlie looked down at the table beneath her. Her fingers moved nervously among the crumbs that were scattered on the cloth. Her lips themselves trembled visibly.
Miss Fairlie left the room. The kind sorrowful blue eyes looked at me, for a moment, with the sadness of a coming and a long farewell.
I turned towards the garden when the door had closed on her.[28] Miss Halcombe was standing with her hat in her hand, and her shawl over her arm, by the large window that led out to the lawn, and was looking at me attentively.
“I want to say a word to you in private, Mr. Hartright. Get your hat and come out into the garden. We are not likely to be disturbed there[29] at this hour in the morning.”
We were walking across the garden when the gardener passed with a letter in his hand. Marian stopped him.
“Is that letter for me?” she asked.
“No, it’s for Miss Laura,” answered the man, holding out the letter as he spoke. Marian took it from him and looked at the address.
“A strange handwriting,” she said to herself. “Where did you get this?” she continued, addressing the gardener.
“Well, miss,” said the lad, “I just got it from a woman.”
“What woman?”
“An old woman, miss.”
“Oh, an old woman. Any one you knew?”
“No, I have never met her before.”
“Which way did she go?”
“That gate,” said the under-gardener, turning towards the south.
“Curious,” said Miss Halcombe; handing the letter back to the lad, “take it to the house, and give it to one of the servants. And now, Mr. Hartright, if you have no objection, let us walk this way.”
She led me across the lawn, along the same path by which I had followed her on the day after my arrival at Limmeridge. She then brought me to the summer house – the same summer house where I had first seen Laura. We went inside and sat down. I waited, wondering what she would say.
“What I have to say to you I can say here.”
With those words she entered the summer-house, took one of the chairs at the little round table inside, and signed to me to take the other.
“Mr. Hartright,” she said, “As your friend, I am going to tell you, at once, that I have discovered your secret – without help or hint, mind, from any one else. Mr. Hartright, I know that you’re in love with Laura. I don’t even blame you and you’ve done nothing wrong. Shake hands – I have given you pain; I am going to give you more, but there is no help for it – shake hands with your friend, Marian Halcombe, first.”
I tried to look at her when she took my hand, but my eyes were dim. I tried to thank her, but my voice failed me.
“Listen to me,” she said. “There’s something I must tell you – something which will cause you great pain. You must leave Limmeridge House, Mr. Hartright,