It first informed Mr. Fairlie that Anne Catherick (of whom he might
hear full particulars from Miss Halcombe when she reached Limmeridge)
had been traced and recovered in the neighbourhood of Blackwater Park,
and had been for the second time placed under the charge of the medical
man from whose custody she had once escaped.
This was the first part of the postscript. The second part warned Mr.
Fairlie that Anne Catherick’s mental malady had been aggravated by her
long freedom from control, and that the insane hatred and distrust of
Sir Percival Glyde, which had been one of her most marked delusions
in former times, still existed under a newly-acquired form. The
unfortunate woman’s last idea in connection with Sir Percival was the
idea of annoying and distressing him, and of elevating herself, as she
supposed, in the estimation of the patients and nurses, by assuming
the character of his deceased wife, the scheme of this personation
having evidently occurred to her after a stolen interview which she had
succeeded in obtaining with Lady Glyde, and at which she had observed
the extraordinary accidental likeness between the deceased lady and
herself. It was to the last degree improbable that she would succeed
a second time in escaping from the Asylum, but it was just possible
she might find some means of annoying the late Lady Glyde’s relatives
with letters, and in that case Mr. Fairlie was warned beforehand how to
receive them.
The postscript, expressed in these terms, was shown to Miss Halcombe
when she arrived at Limmeridge. There were also placed in her
possession the clothes Lady Glyde had worn, and the other effects she
had brought with her to her aunt’s house. They had been carefully
collected and sent to Cumberland by Madame Fosco.
Such was the posture of affairs when Miss Halcombe reached Limmeridge
in the early part of September.
Shortly afterwards she was confined to her room by a relapse, her
weakened physical energies giving way under the severe mental
affliction from which she was now suffering. On getting stronger again,
in a month’s time, her suspicion of the circumstances described as
attending her sister’s death still remained unshaken. She had heard
nothing in the interim of Sir Percival Glyde, but letters had reached
her from Madame Fosco, making the most affectionate inquiries on the
part of her husband and herself. Instead of answering these letters,
Miss Halcombe caused the house in St. John’s Wood, and the proceedings
of its inmates, to be privately watched.
Nothing doubtful was discovered. The same result attended the next
investigations, which were secretly instituted on the subject of Mrs.
Rubelle. She had arrived in London about six months before with her
husband. They had come from Lyons, and they had taken a house in the
neighbourhood of Leicester Square, to be fitted up as a boarding-house
for foreigners, who were expected to visit England in large numbers to
see the Exhibition of 1851. Nothing was known against husband or wife
in the neighbourhood. They were quiet people, and they had paid their
way honestly up to the present time. The final inquiries related to Sir
Percival Glyde. He was settled in Paris, and living there quietly in a
small circle of English and French friends.
Foiled at all points, but still not able to rest, Miss Halcombe
next determined to visit the Asylum in which she then supposed
Anne Catherick to be for the second time confined. She had felt a
strong curiosity about the woman in former days, and she was now
doubly interested—first, in ascertaining whether the report of Anne
Catherick’s attempted personation of Lady Glyde was true, and secondly
(if it proved to be true), in discovering for herself what the poor
creature’s real motives were for attempting the deceit.
Although Count Fosco’s letter to Mr. Fairlie did not mention the
address of the Asylum, that important omission cast no difficulties
in Miss Halcombe’s way. When Mr. Hartright had met Anne Catherick at
Limmeridge, she had informed him of the locality in which the house
was situated, and Miss Halcombe had noted down the direction in her
diary, with all the other particulars of the interview exactly as she
heard them from Mr. Hartright’s own lips. Accordingly she looked back
at the entry and extracted the address—furnished herself with the
Count’s letter to Mr. Fairlie as a species of credential which might be
useful to her, and started by herself for the Asylum on the eleventh of
October.
She passed the night of the eleventh in London. It had been her
intention to sleep at the house inhabited by Lady Glyde’s old
governess, but Mrs. Vesey’s agitation at the sight of her lost pupil’s
nearest and dearest friend was so distressing that Miss Halcombe
considerately refrained from remaining in her presence, and removed to
a respectable boarding-house in the neighbourhood, recommended by Mrs.
Vesey’s married sister. The next day she proceeded to the Asylum, which
was situated not far from London on the northern side of the metropolis.
She was immediately admitted to see the proprietor.
At first he appeared to be decidedly unwilling to let her communicate
with his patient. But on her showing him the postscript to Count
Fosco’s letter—on her reminding him that she was the “Miss Halcombe”
there referred to—that she was a near relative of the deceased Lady
Glyde—and that she was therefore naturally interested, for family
reasons, in observing for herself the extent of Anne Catherick’s
delusion in relation to her late sister—the tone and manner of the
owner of the Asylum altered, and he withdrew his objections. He
probably felt that a continued refusal, under these circumstances,
would not only be an act of discourtesy in itself, but would also imply
that the proceedings in his establishment were not of a nature to bear
investigation by respectable strangers.
Miss Halcombe’s own impression was that the owner of the Asylum had
not been received into the confidence of Sir Percival and the Count.
His consenting at all to let her visit his patient seemed to afford
one proof of this, and his readiness in making admissions which could
scarcely have escaped the lips of an accomplice, certainly appeared to
furnish another.
For example, in the course of the introductory conversation which
took place, he informed Miss Halcombe that Anne Catherick had been
brought back to him with the necessary order and certificates by Count
Fosco on the twenty-seventh of July—the Count also producing a letter
of explanations and instructions signed by Sir Percival Glyde. On
receiving his inmate again, the proprietor of the Asylum acknowledged
that he had observed some curious personal changes in her. Such changes
no doubt were not without precedent in his experience of persons
mentally afflicted. Insane people were often at one time, outwardly
as well as inwardly, unlike what they were at another—the change from
better to worse, or from worse to better, in the madness having a
necessary tendency to produce alterations of appearance externally.
He allowed for these, and he allowed also for the modification in the
form of Anne Catherick’s delusion, which was reflected no doubt in her
manner and expression. But he was still perplexed at times by certain
differences between his patient before she had escaped and his patient
since she had been brought back. Those differences were too minute
to be described. He could not say of course that she was absolutely
altered in height or shape or complexion, or in the colour of her hair
and eyes, or in the general form of her face—the change was something
that he felt more than something that he saw. In short, the case had
been a puzzle from the first, and one more perplexity was added to it
now.
It cannot be said that this conversation led to the result of even
partially preparing Miss Halcombe’s mind for what was to come. But it
produced, nevertheless, a very serious effect upon her. She was so
completely unnerved by it, that some little time elapsed before she
could summon composure enough to follow the proprietor of the Asylum to
that part of the house in which the inmates were confined.
On inquiry, it turned out that the supposed Anne Catherick was then
taking exercise in the grounds attached to the establishment. One of
the nurses volunteered to conduct Miss Halcombe to the place, the
proprietor of the Asylum remaining in the house for a few minutes to
attend to a case which required his services, and then engaging to join
his visitor in the grounds.
The nurse led Miss Halcombe to a distant part of the property, which
was prettily laid out, and after looking about her a little, turned
into a turf walk, shaded by a shrubbery on either side. About half-way
down this walk two women were slowly approaching. The nurse pointed to
them and said, “There is Anne Catherick, ma’am, with the attendant who
waits on her. The attendant will answer any questions you wish to put.”
With those words the nurse left her to return to the duties of the
house.
Miss Halcombe advanced on her side, and the women advanced on theirs.
When they were within a dozen paces of each other, one of the women
stopped for an instant, looked eagerly at the strange lady, shook
off the nurse’s grasp on her, and the next moment rushed into
Miss Halcombe’s arms. In that moment Miss Halcombe recognised her
sister—recognised the dead-alive.
Fortunately for the success of the measures taken subsequently, no
one was present at that moment but the nurse. She was a young woman,
and she was so startled that she was at first quite incapable of
interfering. When she was able to do so her whole services were
required by Miss Halcombe, who had for the moment sunk altogether in
the effort to keep her own senses under the shock of the discovery.
After waiting a few minutes in the fresh air and the cool shade,
her natural energy and courage helped her a little, and she became
sufficiently mistress of herself to feel the necessity of recalling her
presence of mind for her unfortunate sister’s sake.
She obtained permission to speak alone with the patient, on condition
that they both remained well within the nurse’s view. There was no time
for questions—there was only time for Miss Halcombe to impress on the
unhappy lady the necessity of controlling herself, and to assure her of
immediate help and rescue if she did so. The prospect of escaping from
the Asylum by obedience to her sister’s directions was sufficient to
quiet Lady Glyde, and to make her understand what was required of her.
Miss Halcombe next returned to the nurse, placed all the gold she then
had in her pocket (three sovereigns) in the nurse’s hands, and asked
when and where she could speak to her alone.
The woman was at first surprised and distrustful. But on Miss
Halcombe’s declaring that she only wanted to put some questions which
she was too much agitated to ask at that moment, and that she had no
intention of misleading the nurse into any dereliction of duty, the
woman took the money, and proposed three o’clock on the next day as the
time for the interview. She might then slip out for half an hour, after
the patients had dined, and she would meet the lady in a retired place,
outside the high north wall which screened the grounds of the house.
Miss Halcombe had only time to assent, and to whisper to her sister
that she should hear from her on the next day, when the proprietor of
the Asylum joined them. He noticed his visitor’s agitation, which Miss
Halcombe accounted for by saying that her interview with Anne Catherick
had a little startled her at first. She took her leave as soon after as
possible—that is to say, as soon as she could summon courage to force
herself from the presence of her unfortunate sister.
A very little reflection, when the capacity to reflect returned,
convinced her that any attempt to identify Lady Glyde and to rescue her
by legal means, would, even if successful, involve a delay that might
be fatal to her sister’s intellects, which were shaken already by the
horror of the situation to which she had been consigned. By the time
Miss Halcombe had got back to London, she had determined to effect Lady
Glyde’s escape privately, by means of the nurse.
She went at once to her stockbroker, and sold out of the funds all the
little property she possessed, amounting to rather less than seven
hundred pounds. Determined, if necessary, to pay the price of her
sister’s liberty with every farthing she had in the world, she repaired
the next day, having the whole sum about her in bank-notes, to her
appointment outside the Asylum wall.
The nurse was there. Miss Halcombe approached the subject cautiously by
many preliminary questions. She discovered, among other particulars,
that the nurse who had in former times attended on the true Anne
Catherick had been held responsible (although she was not to blame for
it) for the patient’s escape, and had lost her place in consequence.
The same penalty, it was added, would attach to the person then
speaking to her, if the supposed Anne Catherick was missing a second
time; and, moreover, the nurse in this case had an especial interest
in keeping her place. She was engaged to be married, and she and her
future husband were waiting till they could save, together, between two
and three hundred pounds to start in business. The nurse’s wages were
good, and she might succeed, by strict economy, in contributing her
small share towards the sum required in two years’ time.
On this hint Miss Halcombe spoke. She declared that the supposed Anne
Catherick was nearly related to her, that she had been placed in
the Asylum under a fatal mistake, and that the nurse would be doing
a good and a Christian action in being the means of restoring them
to one another. Before there was time to start a single objection,
Miss Halcombe took four bank-notes of a hundred pounds each from her
pocket-book, and offered them to the woman, as a compensation for the
risk she was to run, and for the loss of her place.
The nurse hesitated, through sheer incredulity and surprise. Miss
Halcombe pressed the point on her firmly.
“You will be doing a good action,” she repeated; “you will be helping
the most injured and unhappy woman alive. There is your marriage
portion for a reward. Bring her safely to me here, and I will put these
four bank-notes into your hand before I claim her.”
“Will you give me a letter saying those words, which I can show to my
sweetheart when he asks how I got the money?” inquired the woman.
“I will bring the letter with me, ready written and signed,” answered
Miss Halcombe.
“Then I’ll risk it,” said the nurse.
“When?”
“To-morrow.”
It was hastily agreed between them that Miss Halcombe should return
early the next morning and wait out of sight among the trees—always,
however, keeping near the quiet spot of ground under the north wall.
The nurse could fix no time for her appearance, caution requiring that
she should wait and be guided by circumstances. On that understanding
they separated.
Miss Halcombe was at her place, with the promised letter and the
promised bank-notes, before ten the next morning. She waited more than
an hour and a half. At the end of that time the nurse came quickly
round the corner of the wall holding Lady Glyde by the arm. The moment
they met Miss Halcombe put the bank-notes and the letter into her hand,
and the sisters were united again.
The nurse had dressed Lady Glyde, with excellent forethought, in a
bonnet, veil, and shawl of her own. Miss Halcombe only detained her to
suggest a means of turning the pursuit in a false direction, when the
escape was discovered at the Asylum. She was to go back to the house,
to mention in the hearing of the other nurses that Anne Catherick had
been inquiring latterly about the distance from London to Hampshire, to
wait till the last moment, before discovery was inevitable, and then
to give the alarm that Anne was missing. The supposed inquiries about
Hampshire, when communicated to the owner of the Asylum, would lead him
to imagine that his patient had returned to Blackwater Park, under the
influence of the delusion which made her persist in asserting herself
to be Lady Glyde, and the first pursuit would, in all probability, be
turned in that direction.
The nurse consented to follow these suggestions, the more readily
as they offered her the means of securing herself against any worse
consequences than the loss of her place, by remaining in the Asylum,
and so maintaining the appearance of innocence, at least. She at
once returned to the house, and Miss Halcombe lost no time in taking
her sister back with her to London. They caught the afternoon train
to Carlisle the same afternoon, and arrived at Limmeridge, without
accident or difficulty of any kind, that night.
During the latter part of their journey they were alone in the
carriage, and Miss Halcombe was able to collect such remembrances of
the past as her sister’s confused and weakened memory was able to
recall. The terrible story of the conspiracy so obtained was presented
in fragments, sadly incoherent in themselves, and widely detached from
each other. Imperfect as the revelation was, it must nevertheless be
recorded here before this explanatory narrative closes with the events
of the next day at Limmeridge House.
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 upstairs 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 dark beard, apparently
a foreigner, met them in the hall, and with great politeness showed
them the way upstairs. 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 downstairs
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.
These were the only recollections—all of them uncertain, and some of
them contradictory—which could be extracted 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 mad-house, that she was received there on the twenty-seventh
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.