So ended my eventful first day at Limmeridge House.
Miss Halcombe and I kept our secret. After the discovery of the
likeness no fresh light seemed destined to break over the mystery
of the woman in white. At the first safe opportunity Miss Halcombe
cautiously led her half-sister to speak of their mother, of old
times, and of Anne Catherick. Miss Fairlie’s recollections of the
little scholar at Limmeridge were, however, only of the most vague
and general kind. She remembered the likeness between herself and her
mother’s favourite pupil, as something which had been supposed to
exist in past times; but she did not refer to the gift of the white
dresses, or to the singular form of words in which the child had
artlessly expressed her gratitude for them. She remembered that Anne
had remained at Limmeridge for a few months only, and had then left
it to go back to her home in Hampshire; but she could not say whether
the mother and daughter had ever returned, or had ever been heard
of afterwards. No further search, on Miss Halcombe’s part, through
the few letters of Mrs. Fairlie’s writing which she had left unread,
assisted in clearing up the uncertainties still left to perplex us. We
had identified the unhappy woman whom I had met in the night-time with
Anne Catherick—we had made some advance, at least, towards connecting
the probably defective condition of the poor creature’s intellect
with the peculiarity of her being dressed all in white, and with the
continuance, in her maturer years, of her childish gratitude towards
Mrs. Fairlie—and there, so far as we knew at that time, our discoveries
had ended.
The days passed on, the weeks passed on, and the track of the golden
autumn wound its bright way visibly through the green summer of the
trees. Peaceful, fast-flowing, happy time! my story glides by you now
as swiftly as you once glided by me. Of all the treasures of enjoyment
that you poured so freely into my heart, how much is left me that has
purpose and value enough to be written on this page? Nothing but the
saddest of all confessions that a man can make—the confession of his
own folly.
The secret which that confession discloses should be told with little
effort, for it has indirectly escaped me already. The poor weak words,
which have failed to describe Miss Fairlie, have succeeded in betraying
the sensations she awakened in me. It is so with us all. Our words are
giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.