'I shall never forget in the churchyard at Limmeridge. I think I know how you must have felt,' I said. 'Imagine the shock, Walter - seeing my dead sister walking towards me in that garden! We just ran into each other's arms, unable to say a word. He then called a nurse to take me to Anne Catherick, who was walking in the gardens. He was puzzled by some odd personal changes in her, but assumed they were caused by her mental illness. The director of the asylum, who seemed an honest person, told me that Anne Catherick had been brought back on 27th July. 'Well, Walter, you can guess what's coming, I'm sure. I knew the address because you had given it to me, all those months ago. First, I planned to visit the asylum in London and talk to poor Anne Catherick, to find out why she was claiming to be Laura. I wasn't well enough to do anything for about a month after returning to Limmeridge, but when I felt stronger, I decided to make some investigations myself. Fairlie that if she escaped again, she might try to annoy members of Lady Clyde's family. But because she hated Sir Percival and wanted to make trouble for him, she was now claiming that she was not Anne Catherick at all, but Lady Clyde. The Count said that Anne Catherick had been found and put back in the asylum from which she had escaped. Fairlie was no help at all - I heard that he didn't even leave his room to go to the funeral! But he did show me a letter he'd received from Count Fosco, which contained news of Anne Catherick. Kyrle's investigation was finished, and had shown nothing, he said. The hardest part for her was after she had returned to Limmeridge House. And mine to love.Īt the first opportunity we had, Marian told me everything that had happened to her and Laura. She is mine at last - mine to support to protect, to defend. Dead to her uncle, who has refused to recognize her dead to the lawyers, who have passed her fortune to her husband and aunt.īut to Marian and me she is alive! Penniless and sadly changed - her beauty faded, her mind confused - but alive, with her poor drawing teacher to fight her battles and to win her way back to the world of living beings. To the rest of the world, Laura, Lady Glyde, is dead. Marian and I are known to be the friends of mad Anne Catherick (address unknown), who falsely claims the identity of Lady Glyde. We employ no servant my elder sister, Marian, does the housework with her own hands. I earn our bread by doing drawings for cheap magazines. Marian and Laura, using the same name, are said to be my sisters. I have rented rooms under a different name. I leave my story in the quiet shadow of Limmeridge church, and begin again, one week later, in the noise and rush of a London street. A new future before me, like the sunlit view from a mountain top. Laura, Lady Glyde, was standing by the gravestone, looking at me over her grave.Ī life suddenly changed. She stopped by the side of the gravestone, and we stood face to face with the grave between us. I looked at her - at her, and at no one else, from that moment. The veiled woman came on, slowly and silently. Marian Halcombe sank to her knees, murmuring, 'Oh God, help him! Please, please help him, God!' The woman with the veiled face came towards me slowly. One of them lifted her veil, and in the still evening light I saw the face of Marian Halcombe.
They were looking towards the grave, looking towards me. Then, in the silence, I heard the soft sound of footsteps on the grass.īeyond me, standing together by the churchyard wall, were two women, their veils down, hiding their faces. J had lost all sense of time, kneeling there. Hours passed, and the evening sunlight threw long shadows among the sleeping places of the dead. It was a warm autumn afternoon when I arrived at the station and walked down the familiar road, seeing in the distance the high white walls of Limmeridge House, In the churchyard I found the grave -and knelt down beside the gravestone, closing my eyes.
'I can bear it better when I have seen her grave.' 'Let me go up to Limmeridge,' I begged my mother. I tried hard not to let my sorrow spoil the happiness of my return for my mother and sister, but by the third day I knew I had to go away alone for a while.
I have no secrets from my mother, and when I saw the loving pity in her eyes, I feared the worst. The joy of our meeting, however, soon turned to sadness. The first thing I did was to visit my mother and sister in their Hampstead cottage. I still remembered her as Laura Fairlie, and could not think of her by her husband's name. I had escaped death by disease, death by war, and death by drowning, and hoped that these experiences had strengthened me to face my future - a future without Laura Fairlie. On 13th October I850 I left the wild forests of Central America and returned to England.