(of Chancery Lane, Solicitor)
I
I write these lines at the request of my friend, Mr. Walter Hartright.
They are intended to convey a description of certain events which
seriously affected Miss Fairlie’s interests, and which took place after
the period of Mr. Hartright’s departure from Limmeridge House.
There is no need for me to say whether my own opinion does or does not
sanction the disclosure of the remarkable family story, of which my
narrative forms an important component part. Mr. Hartright has taken
that responsibility on himself, and circumstances yet to be related
will show that he has amply earned the right to do so, if he chooses
to exercise it. The plan he has adopted for presenting the story to
others, in the most truthful and most vivid manner, requires that it
should be told, at each successive stage in the march of events, by
the persons who were directly concerned in those events at the time of
their occurrence. My appearance here, as narrator, is the necessary
consequence of this arrangement. I was present during the sojourn of
Sir Percival Glyde in Cumberland, and was personally concerned in one
important result of his short residence under Mr. Fairlie’s roof. It is
my duty, therefore, to add these new links to the chain of events, and
to take up the chain itself at the point where, for the present only,
Mr. Hartright has dropped it.