The Woman in White: Hartright 8

Summary

Storytime for Grownups: The Woman in White – Hartright 8

Episode Overview In the January 16, 2025 episode of Storytime for Grownups, host Faith Moore delves deeper into Wilkie Collins' classic novel, The Woman in White, specifically focusing on Chapter Eight of Hartright's narrative. This episode combines thoughtful discussion, listener interactions, and an engaging reading of the chapter, enriched with insightful commentary to enhance the listening experience.

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Engaging with Listeners: The Temptation to Read Ahead Early in the episode, Faith Moore and her co-host address the enthusiastic responses from listeners who are eager to read the book ahead of the podcast's release schedule. The co-host shares sentiments of both joy and frustration, saying:

“[00:44] Co-host: …it makes me so happy because that's exactly how you're supposed to feel when you're reading this book.”

However, they also express the challenges of adhering to the release timeline:

“[02:08] Co-host: …waiting is part of the experience of this book. So if you would like to join in in that way, I invite you to wait.”

This balance highlights the interactive nature of the podcast and the mutual passion for the literary journey.

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Introducing the Drawing Room Community Faith and her co-host introduce the Drawing Room, an online community designed for listeners to discuss The Woman in White in real-time. Inspired by the traditional Victorian drawing room—a place for social gatherings and literary discussions—the Drawing Room serves as an extension of the podcast's immersive experience. Addressing a listener’s confusion, the co-host clarifies:

“[05:04] Co-host: So our online community is the Drawing Room because… it's the place to sit and chat together.”

This platform aims to foster a sense of camaraderie among listeners, encouraging deeper engagement with the literature.

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Recap of Previous Chapters Before diving into Chapter Eight, Faith provides a concise recap of the story's progression:

“[08:12] Faith: Where we left off. Walter wakes up in his room at Linridge House…”

Key developments include Walter Hartright’s interactions with Marian Halcombe and Mr. Fairley, setting the stage for the unfolding mystery surrounding the Woman in White.

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Listener Analysis: Character Descriptions and Sensation Novels A thoughtful listener, Sarah F., offers a critique on character portrayals in the novel, particularly the unconventional descriptions of Marian Halcombe and Mr. Fairley. The co-host responds by exploring the essence of the sensation novel genre, emphasizing the underlying atmosphere of unease in seemingly normal settings:

“[10:32] Co-host: …sensation novel is that there is just this sort of atmosphere of not quite rightness to otherwise very ordinary events…”

They dissect Sarah's observations, highlighting how Marian's and Mr. Fairley’s atypical descriptions contribute to the novel's suspense and gothic elements:

“[12:30] Faith: And as Sarah says, that's kind of jarring. So, I mean, Walter's initial impression of Marian is kind of funny… but it's also jarring and odd.”

This analysis enriches listeners' understanding of character development and thematic depth within the story.

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Reading of Chapter Eight: Key Plot Points The core of the episode features Faith reading Chapter Eight of The Woman in White. Significant events in this chapter include:

• Introduction of Mrs. Vesey, the governess, and her contrasting portrayal alongside Miss Halcombe.
• Hartright’s growing intrigue and unease with the characters at Linridge House.
• The mysterious appearance of Miss Fairlie and the introduction of Anne Catherick, adding layers to the narrative’s suspense.

Faith intersperses the reading with analytical pauses, ensuring listeners grasp the complexities of the plot and character motivations.

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Closing Thoughts and Listener Engagement As the episode concludes, Faith reiterates the importance of listener interaction:

“[07:47] Faith: …I'd love to know what you thought of the chapters. Is there anything you'd like me to clarify?”

She encourages ongoing dialogue through her website and emphasizes the community aspect of the podcast, fostering a supportive environment for literary enthusiasts.

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Notable Quotes

• Co-host on Reading Ahead:
  “[02:08] Co-host: …waiting is part of the experience of this book. So if you would like to join in in that way, I invite you to wait.”

• Listener Comment on Character Descriptions:
  “[10:03] Faith: Introduction to the inhabitants of Limmeridge House was so unsettling…”

• On the Sensation Novel Genre:
  “[10:32] Co-host: …sensation novel is that there is just this sort of atmosphere of not quite rightness to otherwise very ordinary events…”

• Clarifying the Drawing Room:
  “[05:04] Co-host: So our online community is the Drawing Room because… it's the place to sit and chat together.”

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Conclusion This episode of Storytime for Grownups seamlessly blends literature appreciation with interactive discussion, deepening listeners' engagement with The Woman in White. Through insightful analysis, reader interactions, and immersive storytelling, Faith Moore continues to create a rich auditory experience for classic literature enthusiasts.

Transcript

[Faith Moore]

Hello and welcome to Storytime for Grown Ups. I'm Faith Moore and this season we're reading the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Each episode I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair and settle in. It's story time.

[Unknown Co-host]

Hi.

[Faith Moore]

Welcome back.

[Unknown Co-host]

Okay, so many, many of you have been telling me that you can't help it. You've gone out and you've bought the book and you just have to read ahead because you cannot wait for the next episode to find out what happen. Which makes me so happy because that's exactly how you're supposed to feel when you're reading this book. But I have to tell you that I cannot wait to hear from you. It's like torture putting out each episode, waiting for the Monday or the Thursday when I get to put out the next episode and then waiting for your emails to come in to know what you think of the episodes. And I don't get to read ahead. There's no reading ahead on your emails. So I would just like to tell you I feel, feel your pain. I understand. I'm also kind of sitting here on tenterhooks because I cannot wait to hear what you think after each of these episodes. So thank you for writing in. Thank you for those emails. I love to get them.

[Faith Moore]

But also I would just like to.

[Unknown Co-host]

Make a very quick pitch for not reading ahead. So many things in this world are instant. Now you can binge an entire season of television. You can find information at your fingertips. You know, you want to know what was the name of that actor in that show? Boom, there it is. You want to know what they serve at the restaurant that you're going to.

[Faith Moore]

There's the menu. Everything is instant.

[Unknown Co-host]

And I do think there's something to be said for waiting for that feeling of like, oh, I just absolutely have to know. I have to know what's next. Of sitting with that, of thinking about it, of wondering about it, of talking to people about it and coming up with ideas and thoughts and guesses and conjectures about what's going to happen and then finally, finally getting to know what it was. Anyway, you do you. I'm not judging you. I understand that feeling. And I might also go out and buy the book of your emails if I possibly could. So I get it. Do what you want to do. But I do want to just say that just make the case for waiting. And remember, this book came out serially.

[Faith Moore]

So when it first came out, people.

[Unknown Co-host]

Didn'T have a choice. They had to wait for the next part. And so waiting is part of the experience of this book. So if you would like to join in in that way, I invite you to wait. I invite you to live into the suspense of this book by allowing that time to pass and allowing yourself to wonder for a while. But either way, I am so glad that you are here. I am thrilled to be reading this book with you.

[Faith Moore]

And as I say, I absolutely love your comments and questions.

[Unknown Co-host]

So please keep those coming. It's faithkmoore.com and you click on Contact or you can just scroll down. There's a link in the show notes, you can click on that.

[Faith Moore]

Send me your questions and thoughts. You're never bothering me.

[Unknown Co-host]

I will always write back unless you say something mean.

[Faith Moore]

And your questions and comments are really.

[Unknown Co-host]

What make this show what it is. So keep those coming. Speaking of talking about this book with other people, which is such an amazing thing to be able to do. I mean, when in our lives do we get to just sit down and really dive into something, really sink your teeth into a book like this and discuss it with someone else who's reading it at the same time as you are? I cannot speak highly enough of being able to do that. And I would say probably most of the people that you know are not currently reading this book. However, there are all kinds of people out there who are currently reading this book because they are reading it with us. They are listening along to Storytime for Grown Ups. And that's why I have created the Drawing Room, which is our online community. It's a membership program that you can join if you choose. And I got a really funny email about Drawing Room today and I would like to just read that to you before we get into our recap and our questions for the day because I. I do think that this is an important clarification. So I would like to read you this letter.

[Faith Moore]

It's from Carol.

[Unknown Co-host]

Carol writes, maybe I missed it, but have you explained how Drawing Room is short for withdrawing room? Otherwise newbies may think you're inviting us to an art studio. Okay. So yes, I also worried about this and I think I did say this to begin with, but I will say it again. So our online community is the Drawing Room because in an old Victorian house or a Regency house, a kind of.

[Faith Moore]

Country manor, just like that kind of.

[Unknown Co-host]

House where Walter has found himself now at the point in the book Where We Are. There would be a room called the Drawing room, and it would be short for withdrawing room. Because after dinner you would withdraw from the dining room into the drawing room.

[Faith Moore]

And the drawing room was the place.

[Unknown Co-host]

To sit and chat together. You might play cards, somebody might start playing on the piano. Tea would be served there, or sometimes even coffee.

[Faith Moore]

And it was the place to sit and chat.

[Unknown Co-host]

And often these people, the lord of the manor, the lady of the manor.

[Faith Moore]

Would invite all of their friends to.

[Unknown Co-host]

Come for a long visit, maybe many weeks at a time. And every evening they would all gather in the drawing room and there would.

[Faith Moore]

Be maybe a fire in the fireplace.

[Unknown Co-host]

And everyone would have their lovely cup of tea and probably at some point a discussion of literature would just spontaneously come about. And that is what I hope our online community, the Drawing Room, can be. So, yes, it is not an art studio. It has nothing to do with drawing, but rather withdrawing.

[Faith Moore]

And so I hope that if you.

[Unknown Co-host]

Are interested or if you can, you will withdraw with us into this other room. This podcast is the main room of this house. It will not change. It is here for you always in exactly this way. And if you're not interested in leaving this big main room, that's completely fine. But I did want to just mention this, if you are interested in joining us afterwards, withdrawing with us afterwards to the drawing room, where you will be able to chat online with other storytime listeners who are listening to this book in real time, or maybe not in real time.

[Faith Moore]

There are various channels.

[Unknown Co-host]

So if you're actually also reading Jane Eyre with us right now, you can go into that channel and talk to Jane Eyre people over there. There's, you know, the Pride and Prejudice channel and general channels. It's all.

[Faith Moore]

It's all there.

[Unknown Co-host]

Your friends are waiting for you there in the drawing room. It's always tea time and you are always welcome. So there's a link in the show notes for more information about those membership levels, if you're interested. And again, if you're not, don't click the link. But if you are, I hope you will click it. I hope you will join us. It's really fun over there. I've been popping in from time to and I'm really enjoying myself, so I hope you'll come.

[Faith Moore]

All right, so last time we read.

[Unknown Co-host]

Hartright's narrative chapters six through seven, and today we're going to be reading Hartright's narrative chapter eight.

[Faith Moore]

So I have one question which I.

[Unknown Co-host]

Would love to read to you today. I think it's actually a Comment. But it's exactly the comment that I was hoping that I would get. So I'm very excited for today's discussion. So first, let's just do a recap of what we read last time, and then we'll get into that comment. Here's the recap.

[Faith Moore]

So where we left off. Walter wakes up in his room at Linridge House, and he finds that he is by the sea. So he comes down to breakfast and meets one of his pupils. Her name is Marian Halcombe.

[Unknown Co-host]

And he finds that she's beautiful, except for her face, which seems very masculine to him. He says she's ugly. She's this very chatty woman and acts very familiarly to him, meaning she acts like they've known each other forever. And it turns out that she is.

[Faith Moore]

The half sister of Mrs. Fairley, who is Walter's other pupil.

[Unknown Co-host]

Ms. Fairley is currently in her room with a headache, but she's the half sister.

[Faith Moore]

They have the same mother, Mrs. Fairley, who's now dead.

[Unknown Co-host]

And both of their fathers are also dead. But Ms. Fairley is rich, while Marian is poor.

[Faith Moore]

So Mr. Fairley was rich and left her money, whereas Mr. Halcomb was poor.

[Unknown Co-host]

So Marian has nothing.

[Faith Moore]

Walter decides that he's going to tell.

[Unknown Co-host]

Marian about the woman in white and.

[Faith Moore]

Her connection to Marian's mother, Mrs. Fairley. Marian says she doesn't know who the.

[Unknown Co-host]

Woman in white might be, but she's.

[Faith Moore]

Very intrigued by his story.

[Unknown Co-host]

And she decides that she's going to.

[Faith Moore]

Search through her mother's letters to see.

[Unknown Co-host]

If she can find anything about this person.

[Faith Moore]

So then Walter is called to go and see his employer, Mr. Fairley.

[Unknown Co-host]

Mr. Fairley is Ms. Fairley's uncle and also her guardian.

[Faith Moore]

He's a very strange person. He says he's an invalid because of his nerves.

[Unknown Co-host]

And he can't bear any noise or light or anything. But it seems like actually he doesn't really have anything wrong with him. And he's just kind of putting on heirs. Walter is very glad when he can leave with the paintings that Mr. Fairley wants him to mount. So he's supposed to work on mounting these paintings as part of his job.

[Faith Moore]

So we left Walter coming down to.

[Unknown Co-host]

Lunch, excited to meet Ms. Fairley and.

[Faith Moore]

Also to learn if Marian has found.

[Unknown Co-host]

Out anything about the woman in white. All right, so today's question comes to us from Sarah F. Sarah writes, our.

[Faith Moore]

Introduction to the inhabitants of Limmeridge House was so unsettling. The way he set up Marian Halcombe.

[Unknown Co-host]

To be this great beauty, only to reveal she is Extremely masculine and ugly. And then immediately showed Mr. Fairley to.

[Faith Moore]

Be hyper feminine in the worst way, was so jarring.

[Unknown Co-host]

Okay, so this is a great catch. I am so glad that Sarah brought this up. So remember when we were talking about sensation novels, we defined the sensation novel.

[Faith Moore]

As basically a story in which something.

[Unknown Co-host]

Disturbing or unsettling or strange happens in a normal or like a domestic setting. And nothing disturbing has happened per se, in the book so far. And we actually still have no idea what this crime or whatever it is that we're supposed to be hearing as the judge or the jury even is. But there has been kind of all along a sense that things just aren't quite right, right? We've had a series of basically normal events, all kind of tinged with something unsettling or odd. Like Walter feeling like he doesn't want.

[Faith Moore]

To take this job that Pesca got.

[Unknown Co-host]

For him, even though it's exactly the kind of job that he needs. Or Walter's walk home from his mother's house, which should be just a normal walk, being interrupted by this very strange woman dressed all in white who turns out to have escaped from an asylum. Or the fact that because Walter's train.

[Faith Moore]

Was late, he shows up at the.

[Unknown Co-host]

House in the middle of the night and everyone is asleep. And he doesn't even really know where he is or what it looks like around him or who is sleeping in the house with him, right? So part of the genre of the.

[Faith Moore]

Sensation novel is that there is just.

[Unknown Co-host]

This sort of atmosphere of not quite rightness to otherwise very ordinary events and very ordinary situations. And that's been happening for Walter pretty.

[Faith Moore]

Much since the story began.

[Unknown Co-host]

These little undercurrents of something strange, something odd.

[Faith Moore]

And here's another one, right? He meets two of the people who.

[Unknown Co-host]

Live in the house, right? Marian Halcombe, who's one of the young ladies that he's going to be teaching to paint. And Mr. Fairley, the master of the house.

[Faith Moore]

And again, there is something just a.

[Unknown Co-host]

Little bit off, something just a little.

[Faith Moore]

Bit not quite right.

[Unknown Co-host]

Marian is a woman, but she's described like a man. And Mr. Fairley is a man, but he's described like a woman.

[Faith Moore]

And as Sarah says, that's kind of jarring. So, I mean, Walter's initial impression of.

[Unknown Co-host]

Marian is kind of funny, right? He goes into such depth on the beauty of her form and her figure and everything, to the point where, I don't know about you, but I'm sort of like, okay, wow, cool it, Walter. But the payoff, the punchline really is that Actually, when she turns around, she's ugly. And it's sort of funny, but it's.

[Faith Moore]

Also jarring and odd.

[Unknown Co-host]

And another one of these kind of seeming normal scenarios turning just a bit strange. But it's not just that Marian is ugly.

[Faith Moore]

It's that she is somehow masculine, right?

[Unknown Co-host]

She doesn't fit the traditional picture of womanly behavior and womanly appearance that Walter has in his mind.

[Faith Moore]

Here are a few of the things.

[Unknown Co-host]

That Walter says about Marian. These are quotes.

[Faith Moore]

The dark down on her upper lip.

[Unknown Co-host]

Was almost a mustache. Here's another one.

[Faith Moore]

A large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw.

[Unknown Co-host]

Her expression, bright, frank and intelligent.

[Faith Moore]

Appeared, while she was silent. To be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability. Without which the beauty of the handsomest.

[Unknown Co-host]

Woman alive is beauty incomplete. And here's one. The masculine form and masculine look of the features, right? So over and over again, he's going out of his way to compare Marian.

[Faith Moore]

Halcombe to a man. But her body and the way that she moves.

[Unknown Co-host]

And sometimes the way that she speaks or interacts are feminine.

[Faith Moore]

But her face and her expression and.

[Unknown Co-host]

The way she speaks frankly and openly. And things like that are more masculine. And Walter finds this very disconcerting.

[Faith Moore]

He says that this strange mix of.

[Unknown Co-host]

Male and female in Marian.

[Faith Moore]

Produces. And here's a quote. A sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep.

[Unknown Co-host]

When we recognize, yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradict of a dream. So again, something is off here. Something is not quite right. But he likes Marian, and we like Marian. At least I do on first meeting her. And he ends up telling her about.

[Faith Moore]

The woman in white. And feeling eager to hear if she's.

[Unknown Co-host]

Going to be able to find anything in her mother's letters to explain who the woman is. But it's worth noting the strangeness, but also what it might mean for Marian as a character.

[Faith Moore]

That she doesn't quite find fit the mold of femininity.

[Unknown Co-host]

I mean, even Marian understands this about herself, right? She sees that there's something masculine about her. And she holds herself apart from other women. She says, here's another quote. How can you expect four women to dine together alone every day and not quarrel?

[Faith Moore]

We are such fools.

[Unknown Co-host]

We can't entertain each other at table. You see, I don't think very much of my own sex. And also, here's one more quote.

[Faith Moore]

Women can't draw. Their minds are too flighty and their.

[Unknown Co-host]

Eyes are too inattentive. So I think this is something we'll come back to. And also Something to keep in mind as we go along this way, in which Marian Halcombe is both feminine and masculine. And then we've got Mr. Fairley.

[Faith Moore]

So Mr. Fairley is the man of the house, right?

[Unknown Co-host]

He's the lord of the manor. He owns Lynmeridge House and the estate, and he's Walter's employer. And all of this implies a kind of powerful and masculine sort of person.

[Faith Moore]

And then we meet him and he's.

[Unknown Co-host]

Described in these very feminine terms. Here's what it says. Says his feet were effeminately small and were clad in buff colored silk stockings.

[Faith Moore]

And little womanish bronze leather slippers.

[Unknown Co-host]

We're also told he has white, delicate hands. And Walter says that there is something singularly and unpleasantly delicate in its association with a man. So all of these are things which.

[Faith Moore]

You would be much more likely to.

[Unknown Co-host]

Hear about a woman than a man, particularly in a book from this time period. And Walter finds this very jarring as well. But Mr. Fairley is also funny. He's so over the top and so ridiculous. You know, I got quite a few letters this time about Mr. Fairley. And some of you compared him to Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice. Some of you compared him to Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice.

[Faith Moore]

But he's another one of these very.

[Unknown Co-host]

Overwrought sort of ridiculous characters who uses the excuse of his nerves, right, to basically demand things from people and behave however he wants at the expense of everyone else. So he's funny and you're allowed to think he's funny.

[Faith Moore]

But again, like with Marian, there's an edge to that humor because there's something.

[Unknown Co-host]

Really disconcerting about him as well, about the way in which the person who has the most power, who's ostensibly in charge here, who should be calling all the shots, the way in which this person is actually a completely useless sort of person. And that's worth paying attention to as well, I think.

[Faith Moore]

The fact that we are now in.

[Unknown Co-host]

A situation in which the person in charge, the person who actually does have all the power, is such a wet dish rag, essentially. So here's Walter in this basically normal situation, right, starting a new job in a nice house.

[Faith Moore]

Here he is feeling just a little bit ill at ease and also still.

[Unknown Co-host]

Not having met Marian's sister, his other pupil, or her old governess, who apparently also lives there. So there are still people living in the house with him that he hasn't met, people who are still mysterious to him, if you will. So let's meet those people, if we can, with Walter that's what's going to happen next. Let's meet these people and let's see what's going to happen next. Don't forget to write to me faithkmoore.com and click on Contact. I would love to know what you think of this chapter. I will be waiting on tenterhooks. All right, let's get started with Heart Wright's narrative. Chapter eight of the Woman in White.

[Faith Moore]

By Wilkie COLLINS it's story time. 8 When I entered the room, I found Ms. Halcombe and an elderly lady seated at the luncheon table. The elderly lady, when I was presented to her, proved to be Ms. Fairlie's former governess, Mrs. Vesey, who had been briefly described to me by my lively companion at the breakfast table as possessed of all the cardinal virtues and counting for nothing. Meaning she's a good woman but completely uninteresting and unimportant. I can do little more than offer my humble testimony to the truthfulness of Miss Halcombe's sketch of the old lady's character. Mrs. Vasey looked the personification of human composure and female amiability, a calm enjoyment of a calm existence beamed in drowsy smiles on her plump, placid face. Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vasey sat through life, sat in the house early and late, sat in the garden, sat in unexpected window seats.

[Unknown Co-host]

And passages, sat on a camp stool.

[Faith Moore]

When her friends tried to take her.

[Unknown Co-host]

Out walking, sat before she looked at anything, before she talked of anything, before.

[Faith Moore]

She answered yes or no to the commonest question, always with the same serene smile on her lips, the same vacantly attentive turn of the head, the same snugly comfortable position of her hands and arms under every possible change of domestic circumstances, a mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady who never by any chance suggested the idea that.

[Unknown Co-host]

She had been actually alive since the.

[Faith Moore]

Hour of her birth. Nature has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co existent productions that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vacy was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the mother of us all. Now, Mrs. Vesey, said Ms. Halcombe, looking brighter, sharper, and readier than ever, by contrast with the undemonstrative old lady at her side. What will you have? A cutlet? Mrs. Vacy crossed her dimpled hands on the edge of the table, smiled placidly, and said, yes, dear. What is that opposite, Mr. Hartright? Boiled chicken, is it not? I thought you liked boiled chicken better.

[Unknown Co-host]

Than cutlet, Mrs. Vacy.

[Faith Moore]

Mrs. Vacy took her dimpled hands off the edge of the table and crossed them on her lap instead, nodded contemplatively at the boiled chicken and said, yes, dear. Well, but which will you have to day? Shall Mr. Hartright give you some chicken, or shall I give you some cutlet? Mrs. Vacy put one of her dimpled hands back again on the edge of the table, hesitated drowsily, and said, which you please, dear. Mercy on me.

[Unknown Co-host]

It's a question of your taste, my good lady, not for mine.

[Faith Moore]

Suppose you have a little of both. And suppose you begin with the chicken, because Mr. Hartright looks devoured by anxiety to carve for you. Mrs. Vacy put the other dimpled hand.

[Unknown Co-host]

Back on the edge of the table.

[Faith Moore]

Brightened dimly one moment, went out again the next, bowed obediently and said, if you please, sir, surely a mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old.

[Unknown Co-host]

Lady, but enough perhaps for the present of Mrs. Vasey.

[Faith Moore]

All this time there were no signs of Miss Fairley. We finished our luncheon and still she never appeared. Miss Halcombe, whose quick eye nothing escaped, noticed the looks that I cast from time to time in the direction of the door.

[Unknown Co-host]

I understand you, Mr. Hartright, she said, you are wondering what has become of your other pupil.

[Faith Moore]

She has been downstairs and has got over her headache, but has not sufficiently.

[Unknown Co-host]

Recovered her appetite to join us at lunch.

[Faith Moore]

If you will put yourself under my.

[Unknown Co-host]

Charge, I think I can undertake to.

[Faith Moore]

Find her somewhere in the garden. She took up a parasol lying on a chair near her and led the way out by a long window at the bottom of the room, which opened on to the lawn. It is almost unnecessary to say that we left Mrs. Vacy, still seated at the table with her dimpled hands still crossed on the edge of it, apparently.

[Unknown Co-host]

Settled in that position for the rest of the afternoon.

[Faith Moore]

As we crossed the lawn, Ms. Halcombe looked at me significantly and shook her head.

[Unknown Co-host]

That mysterious adventure of yours, she said.

[Faith Moore]

Still remains involved in its own appropriate midnight darkness.

[Unknown Co-host]

I have been all the morning looking.

[Faith Moore]

Over my mother's letters, and I have made no discoveries yet. However, don't despair, Mr. Hartright. This is a matter of curiosity, and.

[Unknown Co-host]

You have Got a woman for your ally?

[Faith Moore]

Under such conditions, success is certain sooner or later. The letters are not exhausted. I have three packets still left, and you may confidently rely on my spending the whole evening over them. Here then, was one of my anticipations of the morning still unfulfilled. I began to wonder, next whether my introduction to Ms. Fairlie would disappoint the.

[Unknown Co-host]

Expectations that I had been forming of.

[Faith Moore]

Her since breakfast time.

[Unknown Co-host]

And how did you get on with Mr. Fairlie? Inquired Ms. Halcombe as we left the lawn and turned into a shrubbery.

[Faith Moore]

Was he particularly nervous this morning?

[Unknown Co-host]

Never mind considering about your answer, Mr. Hartright.

[Faith Moore]

The mere fact of your being obliged.

[Unknown Co-host]

To consider is enough for me.

[Faith Moore]

I see in your face that he.

[Unknown Co-host]

Was particularly nervous, and as I am amiably unwilling to throw you into the.

[Faith Moore]

Same condition, I ask no more.

[Unknown Co-host]

So Walter was trying to think how.

[Faith Moore]

He could reply politely about Mr. Fairley.

[Unknown Co-host]

But Marion understood this and spared him the embarrassment.

[Faith Moore]

We turned off into a winding path while she was speaking and approached a pretty summer house built of wood in the form of a miniature Swiss chalet. The one room of the summer house, as we ascended the steps of the door, was occupied by a young lady. She was standing near a rustic table, looking out at the inland view of moor and hill, presented by a gap in the trees, and absently turning over the leaves of a little sketchbook that lay at her side. This was Miss Fairley. How can I describe her? How can I separate her from my own sensations and from all that has happened in the later time? How can I see her again as she looked when my eyes first rested on her, as she should look now to the eyes that are about to see her in these pages. The watercolor drawing that I made of Laura Fairley at an after period in the place and attitude in which I first saw her lies on my desk. While I write I look at it, and there dawns upon me brightly from the dark greenish brown background of the summer house, a light youthful figure clothed in a simple muslin dress, the pattern of it formed by broad alternate stripes of delicate blue and white. A scarf of the same material sits crisply and closely round her shoulders, and a little straw hat of the natural color, plainly and sparingly trimmed with ribbon to match the gown, covers her head and throws its soft pearly shadow over the upper part of her face. Her hair is of so faint and pale a brown, not flaxen, and yet almost as light, not golden and yet almost as glossy, that it nearly melts here and there into the shadow of the hat. It is plainly parted and drawn back over her ears. And the line of it ripples naturally as it crosses her forehead. The eyebrows are rather darker than the hair. And the eyes are of that soft, limpid turquoise blue. So often sung by the poets, so seldom seen in real life. Lovely eyes in color, lovely eyes in form. Large and tender and quietly thoughtful, but beautiful above all things in the clear truthfulness of look. That dwells in their inmost depths. And shines through all their changes of expression. With the light of a purer and a better world. The charm, most gently and yet most distinctly expressed. Which they shed over the whole face. So covers and transforms its little natural human blemishes elsewhere. That it is difficult to estimate the relative merits and defects of the other features. It is hard to see that the lower part of the face. Is too delicately refined away towards the chin. To be in full and fair proportion with the upper part. That the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend. Always hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractly perfect it may be, has erred a little in the other extreme. And has missed the ideal straightness of line. And that the sweet, sensitive lips Are subject to a slight nervous contraction when she smiles, which draws them upward a little at one corner towards the cheek. It might be possible to note these blemishes in another woman's face. But it is not easy to dwell on them in hers. So subtly are they connected with all that is individual and characteristic in her expression. And so closely does the expression depend for its full play in life, in every other feature, on the moving impulse of the eyes. Does my poor portrait of her. My fond, patient labor of long and happy days. Show me these things? Ah, how few of them are in the dim, mechanical drawing. And how many in the mind with which I regard it so he's made a painting of her, but really it's his memories of her that he's describing. A fair, delicate girl in a pretty light dress, trifling with the leaves of a sketchbook. While she looks up from it with truthful, innocent blue eyes. That is all the drawing can say. All perhaps, that even the deeper reach of thought and pen can say in their language either the woman who first gives life, light and form. To our shadowy conceptions of beauty. Fills a void in our spiritual nature. That has remained unknown to us till she appeared. Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too deep almost. For thoughts are touched at such times by other charms than those which the senses feel. And which the resources of expression can realize the mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls. Then and then only has it passed beyond the narrow region on which light falls in this world from the pencil and the pen. So he's saying that a woman can be beautiful, but she becomes something even more than beautiful when she sparks emotions in the viewer. Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within you, that the rest of her sex had no art to stir. Let the kind candid blue eyes meet yours as they met mine, with the one matchless look which we both remember so well. Let her voice speak the music that you once loved best, attuned as sweetly to your ear as to mine. Let her footstep, as she comes and goes in these pages, be like that other footstep to whose airy fall your own heart once be time. Take her as the visionary nursling of your own fancy, and she will grow upon you all the more clearly as the living woman who dwells in mine. Among the sensations that crowded on me when my eyes first looked upon her, familiar sensations which we all know, which spring to life in most of our hearts, die again in so many and renew their bright existence in so few, there was one that troubled and perplexed me, one that seemed strangely inconsistent and unaccountably out of place in Miss Fairlie's presence. Mingling with the vivid impression produced by the charm of her fair face and head, her sweet expression and her winning simplicity of manner was another impression which in a shadowy way suggested to me the idea of something wanting. At one time it seemed like something wanting in her, at another, like something wanting in myself, which hindered me from.

[Unknown Co-host]

Understanding her as I ought.

[Faith Moore]

The impression was always strongest in the most contradictory manner when she looked at me, or in other words, when I was most conscious of the harmony and charm of her face, and yet at the same time most troubled by the sense of an incompleteness which it was impossible to discover. Something wanting. Something wanting. And where it was and what it was, I could not say. The effect of this curious caprice of fancy, as I thought it then, was not of a nature to set me at my ease. During a first interview with Miss Fairlie, the few kind words of welcome which she spoke found me hardly self possessed enough to thank her in the customary phrases of reply. Observing my hesitation and no doubt attributing it naturally enough to some momentary shyness on my part, Miss Halcombe took the business of talking as easily and readily.

[Unknown Co-host]

As usual into her own hands.

[Faith Moore]

So Walter is very taken with Laura Fairley, but there's also something that seems a bit off about her or about his reaction to her, and it's making him feel very disconnected, concerted. Look there, Mr. Hartright, she said, pointing.

[Unknown Co-host]

To the sketchbook on the table and.

[Faith Moore]

To the little delicate wandering hand that.

[Unknown Co-host]

Was still trifling with it. Surely you will acknowledge that your model.

[Faith Moore]

Pupil is found at last.

[Unknown Co-host]

The moment she hears that you are in the house, she seizes her inestimable sketchbook, looks universal nature straight in the.

[Faith Moore]

Face, and longs to begin. Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good humour which broke out as brightly as if it had been part of the sunshine above us over her lovely face. I must not take credit to myself where no credit is due, she said, her clear, truthful blue eyes looking alternately at Miss Halcombe and at me. Fond as I am of drawing, I am so conscious of my own ignorance that I am more afraid than anxious to begin.

[Unknown Co-host]

Now I know you are here, Mr. Hartright.

[Faith Moore]

I find myself looking over my sketches as I used to look over my lessons when I was a little girl, and when I was sadly afraid that I should turn out not fit to be heard. She made the confession very prettily and simply, and with quaint, childish earnestness drew the sketchbook away close to her own side of the table. Miss Halcombe cut the knot of the little embarrassment forthwith in her resolute, downright way.

[Unknown Co-host]

Good, bad or indifferent, she said, the.

[Faith Moore]

Pupil'S sketches must pass through the fiery ordeal of the master's judgment and there's.

[Unknown Co-host]

An end of it.

[Faith Moore]

Suppose we take them with us in.

[Unknown Co-host]

The carriage, Laura, and let Mr. Hartright.

[Faith Moore]

See them for the first time under circumstances of perpetual jolting and interruption.

[Unknown Co-host]

If we can only confuse him all through the drive between nature as it is when he looks up at the view, and nature as it is not when he looks down again at our sketchbooks.

[Faith Moore]

We shall drive him into the last.

[Unknown Co-host]

Desperate refuge of paying us compliments, and shall slip through his professional fingers with our pet feathers of vanity all unruffled.

[Faith Moore]

I hope Mr. Hartright will pay me.

[Unknown Co-host]

No compliments, said Miss Fairlie as we all left the summer house, meaning she.

[Faith Moore]

Hopes he won't give her any compliments.

[Unknown Co-host]

That she doesn't deserve. May I venture to inquire why you express that hope?

[Faith Moore]

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, to that generous trust in others which in her nature grew innocently out of the sense of her own truth. I only knew it intuitively then. I know it by experience now. We merely waited to rouse good Mrs. Vesey from the place which she still occupied at the deserted luncheon table before we entered the open carriage for our promised drive. The old lady and Miss Halcombe occupied the back seat, and Miss Fairlie and I sat together in front with the sketchbook open between us, fairly exhibited at last, to my professional eyes all serious criticism on the drawings. Even if I had been disposed to volunteer, it was rendered impossible by Miss Halcombe's lively resolution to see nothing but the ridiculous side of the fine arts as practised by herself, her sister, and ladies in general. I can remember the conversation that passed far more easily than the sketches that I mechanically looked over. That part of the talk, especially in which Miss Fairlie took any share, is still as vividly impressed on my memory as if I had heard it only.

[Unknown Co-host]

A few hours ago.

[Faith Moore]

Yes, let me acknowledge that on this first day I let the charm of her presence lure me from the recollection.

[Unknown Co-host]

Of myself and my position.

[Faith Moore]

Meaning he's supposed to be looking at their sketches and starting to teach them.

[Unknown Co-host]

Drawing, but instead he's enjoying Miss Fairlie's company.

[Faith Moore]

The most trifling of the questions that she put to me on the subject of using her pencil and mixing her colors, the slightest alterations of expression in the lovely eyes that looked into mine with such an earnest desire to learn all that I could teach and to discover all that I could show attracted more of my attention than the finest view we passed through or the grandest changes of light and shade as they flowed into each other over the waving moorland and the level beach. At any time and under any circumstances of human interest, it is not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds. We go to nature for comfort, in trouble and sympathy and joy only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes is not, even in the best of us one of the original instincts of our nature as children. We none of us possess it. No uninstructed man or woman possesses it. Those whose lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever changing wonders of sea and land are also those who are most universally insensible to every aspect of nature, not directly associated with the human interest of their calling. Our capacity for appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilized accomplishments which we all learn as an art and more. That very capacity is rarely practised by any of us, except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied. How much share have the attractions of nature ever had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of mouth from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass, all that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal certainty, equal profit and equal satisfaction to ourselves in the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth can show. There is surely a reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the creature.

[Unknown Co-host]

And the creation around it, a reason.

[Faith Moore]

Which may perhaps be found in the widely differing destinies of man and his earthly sphere. The grandest mountain prospect that the eye.

[Unknown Co-host]

Can range over is appointed to annihilation.

[Faith Moore]

The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to immortality. So he's saying that humans are much more concerned with their own issues and their own joys than in communing with.

[Unknown Co-host]

The landscape around them.

[Faith Moore]

We had been out nearly three hours when the carriage again passed through the gates of Limmeridge House. On our way back, I had let the ladies settle for themselves the first point of view, which they were to sketch under my instructions on the afternoon of the next day, when they withdrew to dress for dinner. And when I was alone again in my little sitting room, my spirits seemed to leave me on a sudden.

[Unknown Co-host]

I felt ill at ease and dissatisfied with myself.

[Faith Moore]

I hardly knew why. Perhaps I was now conscious for the first time of having enjoyed our drive too much in the character of a guest and too little in the character of a drawing master. Perhaps that strange sense of something wanting, either in Miss Fairlie or in myself, which had perplexed me when I was first introduced to her, haunted me still. Anyhow, it was a relief to my spirits when the dinner hour called me out of my solitude and took me back to the society of the ladies of the house. I was struck, on entering the drawing room by the curious contrast, rather in material than in colour, of the dresses.

[Unknown Co-host]

Which they now wore.

[Faith Moore]

While Mrs. Vesey and Ms. Halcombe were richly clad, each in the manner most becoming to her age, the first in silver grey, and the second in that delicate primrose yellow color which matches so well with a dark complexion and black hair. Miss Fairlie was unpretendingly and almost poorly dressed in plain white muslin. It was spotlessly pure. It was beautifully put on, but still it was the sort of dress which the wife or daughter of a poor man might have worn. And it made her, so far as externals went, look less affluent in circumstances than her own governess. At a later period, when I learnt to know more of Miss Fairlie's character, I discovered that this curious contrast on the wrong side was due to her natural delicacy of feeling and natural intensity of aversion to the slightest personal display of her own wealth. Neither Mrs. Facey nor Ms. Halcombe could ever induce her to let the advantage in dress desert the two ladies who were poor to lean to the side of the one lady who was rich. So Miss Fairley is acutely conscious of not wanting to look like she's wealthy.

[Unknown Co-host]

Even though she is.

[Faith Moore]

So she dressed far less opulently than.

[Unknown Co-host]

Marian and Mrs. Facey, who actually are poor.

[Faith Moore]

When the dinner was over, we returned together to the drawing room, although Mr. Fairlie, emulating the magnificent condescension of the monarch who had picked up Titian's brush for him, had instructed his butler to consult my wishes in relation to the.

[Unknown Co-host]

Wine that I might prefer after dinner.

[Faith Moore]

I was resolute enough to resist the temptation of sitting in solitary grandeur among bottles of my own choosing, and sensible enough to ask the ladies permission to leave the table with them habitually on the civilized foreign plan. During the period of my residence at Linridge House. So normally men would stay in the dining room while the women went into the drawing room for about an hour or so after dinner. But since Walter is the only man.

[Unknown Co-host]

He'S not going to just sit there alone, so he's asked the ladies if.

[Faith Moore]

He can join them right away in the drawing room each night. The drawing room, to which we had now withdrawn for the rest of the evening, was on the ground floor and was of the same shape and size as the breakfast room. Large glass doors at the lower end opened onto a terrace, beautifully ornamented along its whole length with a profusion of flowers. This soft, hazy twilight was just shading leaf and blossom alike into harmony with its own sober hues as we entered the room, and the sweet evening scent of the flowers met us with its fragrant welcome through the open glass doors. Good Mrs. Vasey, always the first of the party to sit down, took possession of an armchair in a corner and dozed off comfortably to sleep. At my request, Miss Fairlie placed herself at the piano as I followed her to a seat near the instrument. I saw Miss Halcombe retire into a recess of one of the side windows to proceed with the search through her mother's letters. By the last quiet rays of the evening light, how vividly that peaceful home picture of the drawing room comes back.

[Unknown Co-host]

To me while I write.

[Faith Moore]

From the place where I sat, I could see Miss Halcombe's graceful figure, half of it in soft light, half in mysterious shadow, bending intently over the letters in her lap, while nearer to me. The fair profile of the player at the piano was just delicately defined against the faintly deepening background of the inner wall of the room. Outside on the terrace, the clustering flowers and long grasses and creepers waved so gently in the light evening air that the sound of their rustling never reached us. The sky was without a cloud, and the dawning mystery of moonlight began to tremble already in the region of the eastern heaven. The sense of peace and seclusion soothed all thought and feeling into a rapt, unearthly repose, and the balmy quiet that deepened ever with the deepening light seemed to hover over us with a gentler influence still when there stole upon it from the piano the heavenly tenderness of the music of Mozart. It was an evening of sights and sounds never to forget. We all sat silent in the places we had chosen. Mrs. Vesey still sleeping, Miss Fairlie still playing, Miss Halcombe still reading, till the light failed us. By this time the moon had stolen round to the terrace, and soft, mysterious rays of light were slanting already across the lower end of the room. Room. The change from the twilight obscurity was so beautiful that we banished the lamps by common consent when the servant brought them in and kept the large room unlighted except by the glimmer of the two candles at the piano for half an hour more. The music still went on after that. The beauty of the moonlight view on the terrace tempted Miss Fairlie out to look at it, and I followed her. When the candles at the piano had been lighted, Miss Halcombe had changed her place so as to continue her examination of the letters. By their assistance, we left her on a low chair at one side of the instrument, so absorbed over her reading that she did not seem to notice when we moved. We had been out on the terrace together, just in front of the glass doors, hardly so long as five minutes, I should think. And Miss Fairlie was, by my advice, just tying her white handkerchief over her head as a precaution against the night air, when 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?

[Unknown Co-host]

I want to speak to you.

[Faith Moore]

I entered the room again immediately. The piano stood about half way down along the inner wall, on the side of the instrument farthest from the terrace. Miss Halcombe was sitting with the letters scattered on her lap and with one in her hand selected from them and held close to the candle. On the side nearest to the terrace there stood a low ottoman on which I took my place in this position. I was not far from the glass doors, and I could see Miss Fairlie plainly as she passed and repassed the opening on the terrace, walking softly from end to end of it in the full radiance of the moon. I want you to listen while I read the concluding passages in this letter, said Miss Halcombe. Tell me if you think they throw any light upon your strange adventure on the road to London. The letter is addressed by my mother to her second husband, Mr. Fairlie, and the date refers to a period of.

[Unknown Co-host]

Between 11 and 12 years, since at.

[Faith Moore]

That time Mr. And Mrs. Fairlie and my half sister Laura had been living for years in this house, and I was away from them, completing my education at a school in Paris. She looked and spoke earnestly and as I thought, a little uneasily as well, at the moment when she raised the letter to the candle before beginning to read it, Miss Fairlie passed us on the terrace, looked in for a moment, and seeing that we were engaged, slowly walked on. Miss Halcombe began to read as so this is a letter that Mrs. Fairlie, Marian and Laura's mother wrote to Mr. Fairley. Laura's will be tired, my dear Philip, of hearing perpetually about my schools and my scholars. Lay the blame prey on the dull uniformity of life at Limmeridge and not on me. Besides, this time I have something really interesting to tell you about a new scholar. You know, old Mrs. Kemp at the village shop. Well, after years of ailing, the doctor has at last given her up and she is dying slowly, day by day. Her only living relation, a sister, arrived last week to take care of her. This sister comes all the way from Hampshire. Her name is Mrs. Catherick. Four days ago Mrs. Catherick came here to see me and brought her only child with her, a sweet little girl about a year older than our darling Laura. As the last sentence fell from the reader's lips, Ms. Fairlie passed us on the terrace once more. She was softly singing to herself one of the melodies which she had Been playing earlier in the evening. Miss Halcombe waited till she had passed out of sight again and then went on with the letter. Mrs. Catherick is a decent, well behaved, respectable woman, middle aged and with the remains of having been moderately, only moderately nice looking. There is something in her manner and in her appearance, however, which I can't make out. She is reserved about herself to the point of downright secrecy, and there is.

[Unknown Co-host]

A look in her face, I can't.

[Faith Moore]

Describe it, which suggests to me that she has something on her mind. She is altogether what you would call a walking mystery. Her errand at Limmeridge House, however, was simple enough. When she left Hampshire to nurse her sister, Mrs. Kemp, through her last illness, she had been obliged to bring her daughter with her through having no one at home to take care of the little girl.

[Unknown Co-host]

Mrs. Kemp may die in a week's.

[Faith Moore]

Time or may linger on for months, and Mrs. Catherick's object was to ask me to let her daughter Anne have the benefit of attending my school, subject to the condition of her being removed from it, to go home again with her mother after Mrs. Kemp's death. I consented at once, and when Laura and I went out for our walk, we took the little girl, who was just 11 years old, to the school that very day. Once more, Miss Fairleigh's figure, bright and soft in its snowy muslin dress, her face prettily framed by the white folds of the handkerchief which she had tied under her chin, passed by us in the moonlight. Once more Miss Halcombe waited till she was out of sight and then went. I have taken a violent fancy, Philip, to my new scholar.

[Unknown Co-host]

Meaning she really likes this new little.

[Faith Moore]

Girl for a reason which I mean to keep till the last for the sake of surprising you. Her mother having told me as little about the child as she told me of herself, I was left to discover, which I did on the first day when we tried her at lessons, that the poor little thing's intellect is not developed as it ought to be at her age. Seeing this, I had her up to the house the next day and privately arranged with the doctor to come and watch her and question her and tell me what he thought. His opinion is that she will grow out of it, but he says her careful bringing up at school is a matter of great importance just now, because her unusual slowness in acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in keeping them when they are once received into her mind. So this little girl, Anne Catherick, seems to be slightly developmentally delayed, or something like that, and the doctor says that she's slow to pick things up, but once she does, she hangs on to them forever. Now, my love, you must not imagine in your offhand way that I have been attaching myself to an idiot. So an idiot at the time would have been an acceptable term for someone with mental handicaps. This poor little Anne Catherick is a sweet, affectionate, grateful girl and says the quaintest, prettiest things.

[Unknown Co-host]

Things as you shall judge by an.

[Faith Moore]

Instance in the most oddly sudden, surprised, half frightened way. Although she is dressed very neatly, her clothes show a sad want of taste in color and pattern. So I arranged yesterday that some of our darling Laura's old white frocks and white hats should be altered for Anne Catherick. Explaining to her that little girls of her complexion looked neater and better all in white than in anything else. She hesitated and seemed puzzled for a minute. It then flushed up and appeared to understand. Her little hand clasped mine. Suddenly she kissed it, Philip. And said oh so earnestly, I will always wear white as long as I live. It will help me to remember you, ma'am, and to think that I am pleasing you still when I go away and see you no more. This is only one specimen of the quaint things she says so prettily. Poor little soul. She shall have a stock of white frocks made with good deep tucks to let out for her as she grows. Miss Halcombe paused and looked at me across the piano. Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the high road seem young? She asked. Young enough to be 2 or 3 and 20? Yes, Ms. Halcombe, as young as that. And she was strangely dressed from head to foot. All in white. All in white. While the answer was passing my lips, Miss Fairley glided into view on the terrace for the third time. Time. Instead of proceeding on her walk, she stopped with her back turned towards us and leaning on the balustrade of the terrace, looked down into the garden beyond. My eyes fixed upon the white gleam of her muslin gown and headdress in the moonlight. And a sensation for which I can find no name, a sensation that quickened my pulse and raised a fluttering at my heart, began to steal over me. 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. But I can't help dwelling a little upon the coincidence of the white costume of the woman you met and the white frocks which produced that strange answer from my mother's little scholar. The doctor may have been wrong when he discovered the child's defects of intellect and predicted that she would grow out of them. Them she may never have grown out of them. And the old grateful fancy about dressing in white, which was a serious feeling to the girl, may be a serious feeling to the woman still, meaning the woman in white, may be this girl, Anne Catherick, now grown up, but still keeping her promise to always wear white. I said a few words in answer. I hardly know what. All my attention was concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie's muslin dress. Listen to the last sentences of the letter, said Miss Halcombe.

[Unknown Co-host]

I think they will surprise you.

[Faith Moore]

As she raised the letter to the light of the candle, Miss Fairlie turned from the balustrade, looked doubtfully up and down the terrace, advanced a step towards the glass doors, and then stopped facing us. Meanwhile, Miss Halcombe read me the last sentences to which she had referred.

[Unknown Co-host]

And now, my love, seeing that I am at the end of my paper.

[Faith Moore]

Now for the real reason, the surprising reason for my fondness for little Anne Catherick, my dear Philip, although she is not half so pretty, she is nevertheless.

[Unknown Co-host]

By one of those extraordinary caprices of.

[Faith Moore]

Accidental resemblance which one sometimes sees the living likeness in her hair, her complexion, the colour of her eyes and the shape of her face. I started up from the ottoman before Miss Halcombe could pronounce the next word words. A thrill of the same feeling which ran through me when the touch was laid upon my shoulder on the lonely high road chilled me again. 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 at that distance, and under those circumstances, of the woman in white. The doubt which had troubled my mind for hours and hours past flashed into conviction in an instant that something wanting was my own recognition of the ominous likeness between the fugitive from the asylum and my pupil at Limmeridge House. You see it? Said Miss Halcombe. She dropped the useless letter and her eyes flashed as they met mine. You see it now as my mother saw it 11 years since. I see it more unwillingly than I.

[Unknown Co-host]

Can say to associate that forlorn, friendless.

[Faith Moore]

Lost woman, even by an accidental likeness only with Miss Fairlie seems like casting a shadow on the future of the bright creature who stands looking at us now.

[Unknown Co-host]

Let me lose the impression again as soon as possible.

[Faith Moore]

Call her in. Out of the dreary moonlight. Pray call her in. Mr. Hartright, you surprise me. Whatever women may be, I thought that men in the 19th century were above superstition. Pray call her in. Hush, hush. She is coming of her own accord. Say nothing in her presence. Let this discovery of the likeness be kept a secret between you and me. Come in, Laura, come in and wake Mrs. Vacy with the piano. Mr. Hartright is petitioning for some more music and he wants it this time of the lightest and liveliest kind. Thank you so much for listening. I'd love to know what you thought of the chapters. Is there anything you'd like me to clarify? Did something particularly interest you? Please go to my website, faithkmoore.com click on contact and send me your questions and thoughts. Or you can click on the link in the Show Notes to contact me. I'll feature one or two of your entries at the start of the next episode. Speaking of links, don't forget to take a look at the other links in the Show Notes. You can learn more about me, check out our merch store, or pick up one of my books. Before I go, I'd like to ask a quick favor. This is an independent podcast. It's produced, recorded and marketed by me, so I need your help. Spread the word about the show by posting about it on social media or texting a link to your friends. Subscribe, tap those five stars and leave a positive review wherever you're listening. If you are able to support the show financially, there's a link in the Show Notes to make a donation. I would really, really appreciate it. Alright everyone, story time is over. To be.