I found myself in a large, lofty room, with a magnificent carved ceiling, and with a carpet over the floor, so thick and soft that it felt like piles of velvet under my feet. One side of the room was occupied by a long bookcase of some rare wood that was quite new to me. Mr. Fairlie was over fifty and under sixty years old. His beardless face was thin, worn, and pale, but not wrinkled; his nose was high and hooked; his eyes were large; his hair was scanty. He was dressed in a dark frock-coat.^[21] Two rings adorned his white delicate hands.

“I am very glad to see you at Limmeridge, Mr. Hartright,” he said in a croaking voice. “Pray sit down. And don’t trouble yourself to move the chair, please. Movement of any kind is painful to me. My nerves are very delicate, you know. Have you got everything you want? Do you like your room?

“Everything is fine,” I started to say, but to my surprise Mr. Fairlie stopped me.

“Pray excuse me. But could you speak in a lower voice? Loud sound of any kind is torture to me. You will pardon an invalid? Yes. My nerves are very delicate. Have you met Marian and Laura?”

“I’ve only met Marian,” I said.

“I beg your pardon,” interposed Mr. Fairlie. “Do you mind my closing my eyes while you speak? Even this light is too much for them. Yes?”

“The only point, Mr. Fairlie, that remains to be discussed,” I said, “refers, I think, to the question: what kind of art would you like me to teach the two young ladies?”

“Ah! just so,” said Mr. Fairlie. “I’m afraid I don’t feel strong enough to discuss that,” said Mr. Fairlie. “You must ask Marian and Laura. Mr Hartright, it’s been a real pleasure meeting you, but now I’m getting tired. Please don’t bang the door on your way out. So kind of you.”

When the sea-green curtains were closed, and when the two doors were shut behind me, I stopped for a moment in the little circular hall beyond, and drew a long, luxurious breath of relief. It was a great relief to get out of Mr Fairlie’s room. It was like coming to the surface of the water after deep diving, to find myself once more on the outside of Mr. Fairlie’s room.

The remaining hours of the morning passed away pleasantly enough, in looking over the drawings, arranging them in sets, trimming their ragged edges, and accomplishing the other necessary preparations.

At two o’clock I descended again to the breakfast-room, a little anxiously. My introduction to Miss Fairlie was now close at hand.

When I entered the room, I found Miss Halcombe seated at the luncheon-table.

“How did you find Mr. Fairlie?” inquired Miss Halcombe. “Was he particularly nervous this morning, Mr. Hartright? I see in your face^[22] that he was particularly nervous; and I ask no more. Laura is in the garden, do come and meet her.”

We went out while she was speaking, and approached a pretty summer-house, built of wood, in the form of a miniature Swiss chalet.^[23] I saw a young lady sitting inside at a table, drawing, with her head bent closely over her work. She was wearing a pretty summer dress and had golden hair. This was Miss Fairlie.

How can I describe her? The water-colour drawing that I made of Laura Fairlie lies on my desk while I write. I look at it. Does my poor portrait of her, my patient labour of long and happy days, show me all her beauty? A fair, delicate girl, in a pretty light dress.

“There’s Laura,” whispered Miss Halcombe. Then more loudly she said, “Look there, Mr. Hartright,” said Miss Halcombe, pointing to the sketch-book on the table. “The moment Laura hears that you are in the house, she takes her sketch-book, and begins to draw!”

At once the young lady looked up from her drawing and her eyes met mine. She had a lovely face and the most beautiful smile in the world. But there was something else about her too – something that troubled and disturbed me. Had I met her before? I didn’t think so. But she reminded me of somebody I knew. Miss Fairlie laughed.

“I must say that I like to draw, but I am conscious of my ignorance. Now I know you are here, Mr. Hartright. I hope Mr. Hartright will pay me no compliments,” said Miss Fairlie, as we all left the summer-house.

“But why?” I asked.

“Because I shall believe all that you say to me,” she answered simply.

In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole character. Then I realised. Impossible as it may seem, Laura Fairlie looked very much like the woman in white!

We had been out nearly three hours, when the carriage again passed through the gates of Limmeridge House. On our way back I offered the ladies to choose the view which they were to sketch, under my instructions, on the afternoon of the next day.

When the dinner was over we returned together to the drawing-room. The drawing-room was on the ground-floor, and was of the same shape and size as the breakfast-room. At my request^[24] Miss Fairlie placed herself at the piano. How vividly that peaceful home-picture of the drawing-room comes back to me while I write! From the place where I sat I could see Miss Halcombe’s graceful figure, half of it in soft light, half in mysterious shadow.

Miss Fairlie was playing, Miss Halcombe was reading – till the light failed us. For half an hour more the music still went on. We went out to admire the night.

Then I heard Miss Halcombe’s voice – low, eager, and altered from its natural lively tone – pronounce my name.

“Mr. Hartright,” she said, “will you come here for a minute? I want to speak to you.”

I entered the room again immediately. Miss Halcombe was sitting with the letters scattered on her lap. On the side nearest to the terrace there stood a low sofa, on which I took my place. In this position I was not far from the glass doors, and I could see Miss Fairlie plainly.

“I’ve found out something interesting,” said Miss Halcombe. “I’ve been reading my mother’s letters and in one of them she mentions a little girl called Anne Catherick,^[25] who was visiting Limmeridge one summer with her mother. My mother had set up a school for the village children and while Anne was in Limmeridge, she went to this school. My mother writes about Anne Catherick with great affection.”

Miss Halcombe paused, and looked at me across the piano.

“Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the road seem young?” she asked. “Young enough to be two – or three-and-twenty?”

“Yes, Miss Halcombe, as young as that.”

“And she was strangely dressed, from head to foot, all in white?”

“All in white.”

“All in white?” Miss Halcombe repeated. “The most important sentences in the letter, Mr. Hartright, are those at the end, which I will read to you immediately. The doctor may have been wrong when he discovered the child’s defects of intellect, and predicted that she would ‘grow out of them.’ She may never have grown out of them.”

I said a few words in answer – I hardly know what. All my attention was concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie’s dress.

“Listen to the last sentences of the letter,” said Miss Halcombe. “I think they will surprise you.”

As she raised the letter to the light of the candle, Miss Fairlie turned from the balustrade, looked doubtfully up and down the terrace, and then stopped, facing us.

“Anne told my mother that she would always wear white to remember her by, as my mother’s favourite colour was white.”

“So it’s quite possible that the woman in white is Anne Catherick,” I said slowly. “What happened to Anne?”

“I don’t know,” said Miss Halcombe. “She and her mother left Limmeridge after a few months and never came back. There is no further mention of her in my mother’s letters.”

I looked further. There stood Miss Fairlie, a white figure, alone in the moonlight; in her attitude, in the turn of her head, in her complexion, in the shape of her face, the living image of the woman in white!

During the following weeks, I experienced some of the happiest and most peaceful moments in my life. Every afternoon I went with Miss Halcombe, or Marian as I called her, and Laura into the countryside to draw and paint.

* * *

Miss Halcombe and I kept our secret. I enjoyed Marian’s company very much and I admired and respected her greatly. But feelings of a different kind were awakening within me for Laura.

* * *

The days passed on, the weeks passed on, and every day Laura and I were growing closer. As I was teaching how to hold her pencil to draw, my hand would nearly touch her hand or my cheek would touch her cheek. At those moments, I was breathing the perfume of her hair, and the warm fragrance of her breath. In the evenings after dinner we would light the tall candles in the sitting room and Laura would play the piano. I loved to sit and listen to the beautiful music while darkness fell outside.

I loved her. Yes, the truth was that I was falling deeply in love with Laura. I tried hard to keep my feelings hidden, but I suspected that Marian had guessed.

The days passed, the weeks passed; it was approaching the third month of my stay in Cumberland. We had parted one night as usual. Laura! No word had fallen from my lips, at that time or at any time before it, that could betray me. But when we met again in the morning, a change had come over her^[26] – a change that told me all.

There was a coldness in her hand, there was an unnatural immobility in her face, there was in all her movements the mute expression of constant fear. The change in Miss Fairlie was reflected in her half-sister. A week elapsed, leaving us all three still in this position of secret constraint towards one another. My situation was becoming intolerable.

From this position of helplessness I was rescued by Miss Halcombe. Her lips told me the bitter, the necessary, the unexpected truth.

It was on a Thursday in the week, and nearly at the end of the third month of my living in Cumberland.

In the morning, when I went down into the breakfast-room at the usual hour, Miss Halcombe, for the first time since I had known her, was absent from her customary place at the table.

Miss Fairlie was out on the lawn. She bowed to me, but did not come in. She waited on the lawn, and I waited in the breakfast-room, till Miss Halcombe came in.

In a few minutes Miss Halcombe entered. She made her apologies for being late rather absently.

Our morning meal was short and silent. Miss Halcombe, after once or twice hesitating and checking herself, spoke at last.

“I have seen your uncle this morning, Laura,” she said. “He confirms what I told you. Monday is the day – not Tuesday.^[27]”

Miss Fairlie looked down at the table beneath her. Her fingers moved nervously among the crumbs that were scattered on the cloth. Her lips themselves trembled visibly.

Miss Fairlie left the room. The kind sorrowful blue eyes looked at me, for a moment, with the sadness of a coming and a long farewell.

I turned towards the garden when the door had closed on her.^[28] Miss Halcombe was standing with her hat in her hand, and her shawl over her arm, by the large window that led out to the lawn, and was looking at me attentively.

“I want to say a word to you in private, Mr. Hartright. Get your hat and come out into the garden. We are not likely to be disturbed there^[29] at this hour in the morning.”

We were walking across the garden when the gardener passed with a letter in his hand. Marian stopped him.

“Is that letter for me?” she asked.

“No, it’s for Miss Laura,” answered the man, holding out the letter as he spoke. Marian took it from him and looked at the address.

“A strange handwriting,” she said to herself. “Where did you get this?” she continued, addressing the gardener.

“Well, miss,” said the lad, “I just got it from a woman.”

“What woman?”

“An old woman, miss.”

“Oh, an old woman. Any one you knew?”

“No, I have never met her before.”

“Which way did she go?”

“That gate,” said the under-gardener, turning towards the south.

“Curious,” said Miss Halcombe; handing the letter back to the lad, “take it to the house, and give it to one of the servants. And now, Mr. Hartright, if you have no objection, let us walk this way.”

She led me across the lawn, along the same path by which I had followed her on the day after my arrival at Limmeridge. She then brought me to the summer house – the same summer house where I had first seen Laura. We went inside and sat down. I waited, wondering what she would say.

“What I have to say to you I can say here.”

With those words she entered the summer-house, took one of the chairs at the little round table inside, and signed to me to take the other.

“Mr. Hartright,” she said, “As your friend, I am going to tell you, at once, that I have discovered your secret – without help or hint, mind, from any one else. Mr. Hartright, I know that you’re in love with Laura. I don’t even blame you and you’ve done nothing wrong. Shake hands – I have given you pain; I am going to give you more, but there is no help for it – shake hands with your friend, Marian Halcombe, first.”

I tried to look at her when she took my hand, but my eyes were dim. I tried to thank her, but my voice failed me.

“Listen to me,” she said. “There’s something I must tell you – something which will cause you great pain. You must leave Limmeridge House, Mr. Hartright, before more harm is done. It is my duty to say that to you.”

I felt terribly saddened by her words.

“I know I’m only a poor art teacher,” I began.

“You must leave us, not because you are a teacher of drawing.”

She waited a moment, turned her face full on me, and reaching across the table, laid her hand firmly on my arm.

“Not because you are a teacher of drawing,” she repeated, “but because Laura Fairlie is engaged to be married. Her future husband is coming here on Monday with his lawyer. Our family lawyer, Mr. Gilmore, is coming here too. The two lawyers are going to draw up the marriage settlement between Laura and her husband. Once they have arranged this, a date for the wedding can be fixed.”

The last word went like a bullet to my heart. I never moved and never spoke. Hopes! Betrothed, or not betrothed, she was equally far from me. Would other men have remembered that in my place? Not if they had loved her as I did.

The pang passed, and nothing but the dull numbing pain of it remained. I felt Miss Halcombe’s hand again, tightening its hold on my arm – I raised my head and looked at her. Her large black eyes were rooted on me, watching the white change on my face, which I felt, and which she saw.

“Crush it!^[30]” she said. “Here, where you first saw her, crush it! Don’t shrink under it like a woman. Tear it out; trample it under foot like a man! Are you yourself again?^[31]”

“Enough myself, Miss Halcombe, to ask your pardon and hers. Enough myself to be guided by your advice, and to prove my gratitude in that way, if I can prove it.”

“It is an engagement of honour, not of love; her father sanctioned it on his deathbed, two years ago. Till you came here she was in the position of hundreds of other women, who marry men without love, and who learn to love them (when they don’t learn to hate!) after marriage, instead of before. Your absence and time will help us all three.”

“Let me go today,” I said bitterly. “The sooner the better.^[32] But what reason shall I give to Mr Fairlie as to why I’m going?”

“No, not today,” she replied. “You must wait till tomorrow to explain tell Mr. Fairlie the sudden change in your plans. Wait until the post arrives tomorrow. Then tell Mr Fairlie you’ve received a letter from London and that you have to return there at once on urgent business.”

I had just agreed to this plan when we heard footsteps. It was Laura’s maid.

“Oh, Miss Marian,” said the girl. “Please can you come quickly to the house? Miss Laura is very upset by a letter she received this morning.”

“It must be the same letter the gardener brought,” said Marian worriedly.

We hurried back to the house.

“We have arranged all that is necessary, Mr. Hartright,” she said. “We have understood each other, as friends should, and we may go back at once to the house. To tell you the truth, I am worried about Laura.”

Her words felt like arrows shot into my heart. I could hardly move or speak.

“May I know who the gentleman engaged to Miss Fairlie is?” I asked at last.

She answered in a hasty, absent way —

“A gentleman of large property in Hampshire.”

Hampshire! Anne Catherick’s native place. Again, and yet again, the woman in white. There was a fatality in it.

“And his name?” I said, as quietly and indifferently as I could.

“Sir Percival Glyde.^[33]”

Sir Percival! I stopped suddenly, and looked at Miss Halcombe.

“Sir Percival Glyde,” she repeated, imagining that I had not heard her former reply.

“Knight, or Baronet?” I asked, with an agitation that I could hide no longer.

She paused for a moment, and then answered, rather coldly —

“Baronet, of course.”

Baronet! Suddenly I was reminded of the woman in white. She had asked me if I knew any baronets and had told me of one who was cruel and wicked. Not a word more was said, on either side, as we walked back to the house. Miss Halcombe hastened immediately to her sister’s room, and I went to my studio.

She was engaged to be married, and her future husband was Sir Percival Glyde. A man of the rank of Baronet, and the owner of property in Hampshire.

There were hundreds of baronets in England, and dozens of landowners in Hampshire. I had not the shadow of a reason for connecting Sir Percival Glyde with the words that had been spoken to me by the woman in white. And yet, I did connect him with them.

I had been engaged with the drawings little more than half an hour, when there was a knock at the door. It opened, on my answering; and, to my surprise, Miss Halcombe entered the room.