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.

Such, reduced to plain terms, was the narrative
obtained 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
madhouse, that she was received there on the
thirtieth 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.