in the alteration of her manner, an uneasy consciousness of the risk she had run in sending the anonymous letter, and I instantly determined so to frame my answer as to surprise her into owning it.
“Miss Fairlie was not very well or very happy this morning,” I said.
She murmured a few words, but they were spoken so confusedly, and in such a low tone, that I could not even guess at what they meant.
“Did you ask me why Miss Fairlie was neither well nor happy this morning?” I continued.
“No,” she said quickly and eagerly—“oh no, I never asked that.”
“I will tell you without your asking,” I went on. “Miss Fairlie has received your letter.”
She had been down on her knees for some little time past, carefully removing the last weather-stains left about the inscription while we were speaking together. The first sentence of the words I had just addressed to her made her pause in her occupation, and turn slowly without rising from her knees, so as to face me. The second sentence literally petrified her. The cloth she had been holding dropped from her hands—her lips fell apart—all the little colour that there was naturally in her face left it in an instant.
“How do you know?” she said faintly. “Who showed it to you?” The blood rushed back into her face—rushed overwhelmingly, as the sense rushed upon her mind that her own words had betrayed her. She struck her hands together in despair. “I never wrote it,” she gasped affrightedly; “I know nothing about it!”
“Yes,” I said, “you wrote it, and you know about it. It was wrong to send such a letter, it was wrong to frighten Miss Fairlie. If you had anything to say that it was right and necessary for her to hear, you should have gone yourself to Limmeridge House—you should have spoken to the young lady with your own lips.”
She crouched down over the flat stone of the grave, till her face was hidden on it, and made no reply.
“Miss Fairlie will be as good and kind to you as her mother was, if you mean well,” I went on. “Miss Fairlie will keep your secret, and not let you come to any harm. Will you see her to-morrow at the farm? Will you meet her in the garden at Limmeridge House?”
“Oh, if I could die, and be hidden and at rest with You!” Her lips murmured the words close on the grave-stone, murmured them in tones of passionate endearment, to the dead remains beneath. “You know how I love your child, for your sake! Oh, Mrs. Fairlie! Mrs. Fairlie! tell me how to save her. Be my darling and my mother once more, and tell me what to do for the best.”
I heard her lips kissing the stone—I saw her hands beating on it passionately. The sound and the sight deeply affected me. I stooped down, and took the poor helpless hands tenderly in mine, and tried to soothe her.
It was useless. She snatched her hands from me, and never moved her face from the stone. Seeing the urgent necessity of quieting her at any hazard and by any means, I appealed to the only anxiety that she appeared to feel, in connection with me and with my opinion of her—the anxiety to convince me of her fitness to be mistress of her own actions.
“Come, come,” I said gently. “Try to compose yourself, or you will make me alter my opinion of you. Don’t let me think that the person who put you in the Asylum might have had some excuse—”
The next words died away on my lips. The instant I risked that chance reference to the person who had put her in the Asylum she sprang up on her knees. A most extraordinary and startling change passed over her. Her face, at all ordinary times so touching to look at, in its nervous sensitiveness, weakness, and uncertainty, became suddenly darkened by an expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear, which communicated a wild, unnatural force to every feature. Her eyes dilated in the dim evening light, like the eyes of a wild animal. She caught up the cloth that had fallen at her side, as if it had been a living creature that she could kill, and crushed it in both her hands with such convulsive strength, that the few drops of moisture left in it trickled down on the stone beneath her.
“Talk of something else,” she said, whispering through her teeth. “I shall lose myself if you talk of that.”
Every vestige of the gentler thoughts which had filled her mind hardly a minute since seemed to be swept from it now. It was evident that the impression left by Mrs. Fairlie’s kindness was not, as I had supposed, the only strong impression on her memory. With the grateful remembrance of her school-days at Limmeridge, there existed the vindictive remembrance of the wrong inflicted on her by her confinement in the Asylum. Who had done that wrong? Could it really be her mother?
It was hard to give up pursuing the inquiry to that final point, but I forced myself to abandon all idea of continuing it. Seeing her as I saw her now, it would have been cruel to think of anything but the necessity and the humanity of restoring her composure.
“I will talk of nothing to distress you,” I said soothingly.
“You want something,” she answered sharply and suspiciously. “Don’t look at me like that. Speak to me—tell me what you want.”
“I only want you to quiet yourself, and when you are calmer, to think over what I have said.”
“Said?” She paused—twisted the cloth in her hands, backwards and forwards, and whispered to herself, “What is it he said?” She turned again towards me, and shook her head impatiently. “Why don’t you help me?” she asked, with angry suddenness.
“Yes, yes,” I said, “I will help you, and you will soon remember. I ask you to see Miss Fairlie to-morrow and to tell her the truth about the letter.”
“Ah! Miss Fairlie—Fairlie—Fairlie—”
The mere utterance of the loved familiar name seemed to quiet her. Her face softened and grew like itself again.
“You need have no fear of Miss Fairlie,” I continued, “and no fear of getting into trouble through the letter. She knows so much about it already, that you will have no difficulty in telling her all. There can be little necessity for concealment where there is hardly anything left to conceal. You mention no names in the letter; but Miss Fairlie knows that the person you write of is Sir Percival Glyde—”
The instant I pronounced that name she started to her feet, and a scream burst from her that rang through the churchyard, and made my heart leap in me with the terror of it. The dark deformity of the expression which had just left her face lowered on it once more, with doubled and trebled intensity. The shriek at the name, the reiterated look of hatred and fear that instantly followed, told all. Not even a last doubt now remained. Her mother was guiltless of imprisoning her in the Asylum. A man had shut her up—and that man was Sir Percival Glyde.
The scream had reached other ears than mine. On one side I heard the door of the sexton’s cottage open; on the other I heard the voice of her companion, the woman in the shawl, the woman whom she had spoken of as Mrs. Clements.
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” cried the voice from behind the clump of dwarf trees.
In a moment more Mrs. Clements hurried into view.
“Who are you?” she cried, facing me resolutely as she set her foot on the stile. “How dare you frighten a poor helpless woman like that?”
She was at Anne Catherick’s side, and had put one arm around her, before
