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.

                               III

THIS was the story of the past—the story, so
far as we knew it then.

Two obvious conclusions presented themselves
to my mind, after hearing it. In the first place,
I saw darkly what the nature of the conspiracy
had been; how chances had been watched, and
how circumstances had been handled to ensure
impunity to a daring and an intricate crime.
While all details were still a mystery to me, the
vile manner in which the personal resemblance
between the woman in white and Lady Glyde had
been turned to account, was clear beyond a doubt.
It was plain that Anne Catherick had been introduced
into Count Fosco's house as Lady Glyde;
it was plain that Lady Glyde had taken the dead
woman's place in the Asylum—the substitution
having been so managed as to make innocent
people (the doctor and the two servants
certainly; and the owner of the madhouse in all
probability) accomplices in the crime.

The second conclusion came as the necessary
consequence of the first. We three had no
mercy to expect from Count Fosco and Sir Percival
Glyde. The success of the conspiracy had
brought with it a clear gain to those two men
of thirty thousand pounds—twenty thousand to
one: ten thousand to the other, through his wife.
They had that interest, as well as other interests,
in ensuring their impunity from exposure; and
they would leave no stone unturned, no sacrifice
unattempted,no treachery untried, to discover the
place in which their victim was concealed, and to
part her from the only friends she had in the
world—Marian Halcombe and myself.

The sense of this serious peril—a peril which
every day and every hour might bring nearer and
nearer to us—was the one influence that guided
me in fixing the place of our retreat. I chose
it in the far East of London, where there were
fewest idle people to lounge and look about them
in the streets. I chose it in a poor and a populous
neighbourhood—because the harder the
struggle for existence among the men and women
about us, the less the chance of their having
the time or taking the pains to notice chance
strangers who came among them. Those were
the great advantages I looked to; but our locality
was a gain to us also, in another and a hardly