Faith Moore (0:00)

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. Hello. Welcome back. I'm so happy to be here with you. I'm always so happy to be here with you. I've gotten so many lovely letters from people saying, okay, fine, I won't read ahead. I'll stay with you. I'll keep listening in real time. And that has made me very happy. Of course, I don't want to cramp your style. If you want to read ahead, go ahead and read ahead. One of the goals of this podcast is to make these books more accessible, more enjoyable, more exciting for you. And if you're thinking, I've got to absolutely know what happens, I can't wait for the next episode, then check that box. Right. You are enjoying this book the way it should be enjoyed. You are enjoying these books like stories, not like strange secret codes that your English teacher has to unpack and dissect for you before you can understand. No, these are stories. They're great stories. And the fact that you're like, I can't wait. I've got to know what's going on means that you are reading them like stories. So check that box. That's amazing. So I don't want to cramp your style. You do you. However, somebody said to me, you know, waiting is like. It allows the story to kind of marinate. And that's kind of the way I feel, too. It's like when you devour the whole thing. When you binge an entire season of a TV show or something like that, it does kind of take away that experience of letting the story just sit with you, live with you, walk around inside you for a while. And when you do that, I think you'll find that you start to think new things about the story that you wouldn't necessarily have thought because the story has kept going. And now all the answers to the questions that you might have had or the guesses or the thoughts might now be real revealed such that it doesn't matter anymore. And I think for a story like this that actually was written in installments or like a TV show where there are these specific chunks, it does kind of make sense to Wait, because the medium is actually set up for waiting. You know, books are divided into chapters, TV shows are divided into episodes. And I think we now have the ability to just binge right on through. And I think there's some value in that. But I also think there's some value in waiting and letting it sit with you and letting it live with you. I mean, this book has such an atmosphere. At least for me it does. It has such an atmosphere to it. And you can take that atmosphere with you into the rest of your day and all the things that you're doing. And that's kind of interesting. It's interesting to do that. You don't live in this book, only when you're reading it. You live in it all the time. That's what's amazing about a book. It happens inside your head. So you get to take it with you. So anyway, thank you for those emails. I'm excited that you guys are excited about waiting, but the wait is over almost. We are here in episode five of the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Last time we read Hartright's Narrative Chapter eight, and today we'll be reading Heart Rights Narrative Chapters nine through ten. So I'm so glad that you're here and joining us and along with us for the ride. Whether you're listening in real time or you're catching up with us later, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I always like to tell you, if I've been on someone else's podcast that I think you might enjoy. I was on a podcast recently called the Overthinkers and we had a really fun deep dive kind of conversation into why we should read classic books. There are no spoilers for the Woman in White because it was actually recorded before I had even revealed that we were doing the Woman in White. So I tease a little bit about what we're doing, but there are no spoilers for this book. So you can easily listen to that episode without worrying that I'm going to reveal something about the Woman in White. So I put a link in the show notes to that conversation if that's of interest to you. I really enjoyed it. I think that you will enjoy it too. We got to really talk about why these books are so important and I had a lot to say. So if that interests you, go ahead and click that link. And speaking of those links, I hope you'll check out all the links. You can find our merch store, you can find my donation page, you can find our membership page where you can Sign up to be a part of our online community, where people are gathering together online and talking about these books together, which is so fantastic. I love that that's happening. That's there. And of course, the link to contact me is there. And I hope that you will. I hope that you'll contact me right in with your questions and thoughts. You can also just go to my website, which is faithkmoore.com and click on contact and you can send me your questions and thoughts. And please do. I absolutely love to hear from you. And if you're enjoying this show and you haven't already, please consider just tapping those five stars right there in your podcast player. And if you have an extra second or two, please consider leaving a positive review. And if you know someone that you think might enjoy this show, copy a link to the show or a link to a particular episode and text it on over to them. That's how this show grows. It grows because of you, and it is growing. So thank you. Thank you to those of you who have already done all of those things. And thank you in advance to those of you who are considering doing them now. All right, so let's recap what we read last time. Remember, that was chapter eight of Heart Rate's narrative. Let's do a recap. And then I've got one question that I'd like to read for you after that, and we'll have a little conversation and then we'll move on to today's chapters. Here's the recap. So where we left off, Walter finally meets Laura Fairley, who is his other pupil. First, he meets Ms. Fairlie's former governess, Mrs. Vasey, who is very agreeable, but basically just sits around doing nothing all the time. But then he meets Laura and he's immediately taken with her. So he goes out with Laura and Marian to do some sketching, and he feels that perhaps he's enjoying Laura's company a bit too much and needs to focus more on his job, which is to teach them drawing. Marian has been reading her mother's letters, but she hasn't found anything yet about the woman in white. So after dinner, they all go into the drawing room and Laura plays the piano while Marian keeps reading the letters. And eventually she finds something which she reads to Walter. And Laura is outside at this point. So the letter explains that a little girl came to Mrs. Fairley's school because her mother had come into town to nurse her sick sister. The girl's name was Anne, Anne Catherick. And there was something A bit off about her. She was a bit slow, but Mrs. Fairlie really liked her and gave her some of Laura's old clothes to wear and told her that she looked good in white, which prompted Anne Catherick to say she would always wear white as a way to honor Mrs. Fairley's kindness to her. But there was one last thing in the letter which Walter doesn't really actually need to hear. Because as he's listening to the letter and looking at Laura, he realizes that Laura looks nearly identical to the woman in white. So Marian and Walter agree not to tell Laura about any of this. And Laura comes back in and they just kind of keep going as if nothing happened. Alright, so today's question comes to us from Terry Nelson. Terry writes, I am especially intrigued by the beautiful daughter who is something of a mystery. The description of her pacing outside the doors while the letter about the woman in white is being read. I got the impression that she was trying to listen in while not seeming to. The something missing about her is a hint that we will learn something important later on. Is she hiding something or is the something missing a character trait that she lacks? Okay, so I love this question for a couple of different reasons. But first, before I get into that, I just want to clarify that the something wanting that Walter feels when he looks at Laura Fairley, it turns out to be the fact that Laura Fairley and the woman in white, who we've now learned is named Anne Catherick, right? It's that Laura and Anne Catherick look almost identical. So the nagging feeling that Walter had about Laura when he first met her, which was another one of those sensation novel things, right, he meets a beautiful woman, but there's something not quite right about her. So that nagging feeling that Walter has about Laura is that he was unconsciously aware that she looked just like the woman in white. And the letter from Marian's mother about Anne Catherick when she was a child at the school in Limridge. And all of that reveals this. It reveals that they looked nearly identical back then. And it causes Walter to suddenly put it all together and figure out that they still look nearly identical now. It was like that was the problem, but he hadn't figured it out yet. And he does figure it out in that moment. Here's that quote. It says, 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 Lynmeridge. House, which is actually very strange. Right. Why should Laura Fairley look nearly identical to this other woman who isn't related to her and who she only knew for a little while as a child and maybe doesn't even remember? And Walter finds this very strange and unsettling. And I'm going to talk more about that in just a second. But I want to back up for just a second here. We've talked a lot at this point about the sensation novel and what that is. And we've been following the kind of various ways that these otherwise normal events and people and experiences are being tinged just kind of ever so slightly with something odd or unsettling. And all of that is still true, and it will remain true. And we're going to keep tracking those things. But the other thing that this book is, is the precursor to the detective novel, right? We talked about this in our intro episode as well, and we'll talk more about it as we go along. But what I think is so wonderful about this and so brilliant is that even though we know that this is a crime story, essentially, even though we know from the frame narrative that something awful has happened and that it really should have been heard in a court of law, and it's so awful and there's been such a miscarriage of justice somehow, that even though the court won't hear it, it's got to be set down in writing for some reason. So even though we know all of that, we. We don't actually know what the crime is. We don't know what the mystery is that is part of the mystery. What exactly is it that happened? I mean, when you think of a detective novel or a crime novel now like a modern one, the formula is usually that a crime has been committed, usually in the first chapter or so. And then the rest of the book is about trying to figure out who done it, right? Who committed the crime and how did they do it. Like there's a body in an old country house and the house guests are all suspects, or someone has been kidnapped, and the police have to track down the kidnappers and rescue the person, whatever it is, right? There's a crime, and the story is who did it, how did they do it, and can they be brought to justice. But in this story, we don't actually know what the crime is, but we do know that some sort of crime happened. We know that something bad is going to happen to someone, and we know that this someone is going to be affiliated with Walter Hartright somehow, because he's the one putting this whole narrative together, we assume it has something to do with the Woman in White, because that's what the book is called. But other than that, we actually have no idea. And I love this. I love that there's this thing just kind of hanging over our heads and we don't know what it is or when it will happen or even who's involved. Again, it's another way that these sensation elements, this not quite rightness just kind of creeps into the narrative because here is Walter having this lovely time at this lovely country house with these nice ladies. La di da, whatever. But something is coming, and what will it be? And so within that atmosphere comes this revelation that somehow Laura Fairley and Anne Catherick look nearly identical. And Terry is absolutely right in her letter that this scene where this revelation comes out is so suspenseful and eerie. The way that Collins describes Laura walking back and forth and back and forth on the terrace as Marian reads this seemingly sort of mundane letter about this little girl. I don't know about you, but when I read that, I'm, like, gripping the edges of the book going, like, what is going to happen? What is going on? There's just this sense of, like, menace and foreboding that builds as Laura passes back and forth on the terrace. But why should it be so upsetting to Walter that Laura looks like Anne Catherick? I mean, it's weird. It's weird that two people who don't know each other and aren't related should look so alike. But it really seems to freak Walter out. But the reason for this has to do with how Walter feels about Laura Fairley. So when Walter first sees Laura in the summer house, first of all, she's a much more traditionally beautiful and feminine woman than Marian. And we get this kind of idyllic picture of her standing there with her little sketchbook and everything. But we also get this really beautiful passage that alerts us to the depth of Walter's feelings. I'll read it to you, and then we'll talk about it for a second. So here's that passage. It says, 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 beat 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. It's such a lovely passage because he's saying that for each of us, the person we fall in love with is the most beautiful, the most wonderful, most exciting and entrancing person. So while the love of your life is that person for you, the love of my life is that person for me. And they're different people. I'm not in love with the person you love. And so I don't see him or her the way that you do. So he's telling us that if you imagine Laura as your first love, as the person who lights you up and makes your heart sing, then you'll be picturing Laura the way that Walter saw her. It's so beautiful, it makes me want to cry. But it also tells us something. It foreshadows something, essentially, which is that Walter is in love with Laura Fairley. And he tells us, 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. Meaning she's still in his heart. He still loves her now when he's writing all of this and compiling this whole narrative for us to judge. So now, in the first meeting, he's not in love with her necessarily, but he's clearly very drawn to her. And he's telling us that it's not a passing fancy. He's still drawn to her even now. And that is why it's so upsetting to him to equate her with Anne Catherick. Because Anne Catherick is a potential lunatic, right? Someone who, if not actually insane, has some sort of mental deficits, which we learned about in the letter that Marian read. Those mental deficits seem to have followed her into adulthood. Since she's still wearing all white, right, we're told. Here's a quote. Her unusual slowness in acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in keeping them when they are once received into her mind. So in this case, the idea that stayed in her mind was that Mrs. Fairley told her that she looked good in white. And she told Mrs. Fairlie that she'd wear white forever. And even though that was a sort of childish promise to make, she seems to have kept it. So she's still not quite right in head, essentially. And she's being hunted down by men from an asylum. And we don't know if that's for her own good or not. And she seemed sort of pale and haggard and anxious when Walter met her on the road. So for Walter to associate that person with the lovely Laura Fairley, whom he's very drawn to and seems to him to be the sort of epitome of womanly virtue and grace, that's very unsettling and disturbing to him. Him. It's like seeing some alternate version of Laura in some alternate universe where something awful has happened to her and she's like a shell of herself or something. And it fills Walter with foreboding, as if somehow this accidental likeness is like a terrible omen or something. Here's what he says. He says to associate that forlorn, friendless, 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. And so, of course, we now have a sense of foreboding, right? What does it all mean? What even is going to happen? What is the big mystery, the crime, the miscarriage of justice that's going to take place? And now this sense of foreboding is kind of coalescing around Laura, right? Laura is the woman who lives in Walter's heart. She looks like this strange woman in white and. And. And what? Right? We don't know. So let's see if we can find out any more. And don't forget to Write into me faithkmore.com and click on Contact. I really want to know what you're thinking. I hope you're having fun with this. It's supposed to be fun. So just sit in the world, dive in, and then let me know what it was like for you. All right, let's get started with Hartright's narrative. Chapters nine through ten of the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. It's story time. 9. So ended my eventful first day at Limmeridge House. Miss Halcombe and I kept our secret after the discovery of the likeness. No fresh light seemed destined to break over the mystery of the woman in white. At the first safe opportunity, Miss Halcombe cautiously led her half sister to speak of their mother of old times and of Anne Catherick. Miss Fairlie's recollections of the little scholar at Limmeridge were, however, only of the most vague and general kind. She remembered the likeness between herself and her mother's favourite pupil as something which had been supposed to exist in past times. But she did not refer to the gift of the white dresses, or to the singular form of words in which the child had artlessly expressed her gratitude for them. She remembered that Anne had remained at Limmeridge for a few months only and had then left it to go back to her home in Hampshire. But she could not say whether the mother and daughter had ever returned or had ever been heard of afterwards. No further search on Miss Halcombe's part, through the few letters of Mrs. Fairlie's writing which she had left unread, assisted in clearing up the uncertainties still left to perplex us. We had identified the unhappy woman whom I had met in the night time with Anne Catherick. We had made some advance, at least, towards connecting the probably defective condition of the poor creature's intellect with the peculiarity of her being dressed all in white, and with the continuance in her maturer years of her childish gratitude towards Mrs. Fairlie. And there, so far as we knew at that time, our discoveries had ended. The days passed on, the weeks passed on, and the track of the golden autumn wound its bright way visibly through the green summer of the trees. Peaceful, fast flowing, happy time. My story glides by you now as swiftly as you once glided by me, you being the peaceful, happy time. So his time at Limmeridge House passed by happily and quickly. So now his story flows by too. Of all the treasures of enjoyment that you poured so freely into my heart, how much is left me that has purpose and value enough to be written on this page? Nothing but the saddest of all confessions that a man can make. The confession of his own folly. The secret which that confession discloses should be told with little effort, for it has indirectly escaped me. Already the poor, weak words which have failed to describe Miss Fairlie have succeeded in betraying the sensations she awakened in me. It is so with us all. Our words are giants when they do us an injury and dwarfs when they do us a service. I loved her. Ah, how well I know all the sadness and all the mockery that is contained in those three words. I can sigh over my mournful confession with the tenderest woman who reads it and pities me. I can laugh at it as bitterly as the hardest man who tosses it from him in contempt. I loved her. Feel for me or despise me, I confess it with the same immovable resolution. To own the truth. Was there no excuse for me? There was some excuse to be found, surely, in the conditions under which my term of hired service was passed at Lynbridge House House. My morning hours succeeded each other Calmly in the quiet and seclusion of my own room. I had just work enough to do in mounting my employer's drawings to keep my hands and eyes pleasurably employed while my mind was left free to enjoy the dangerous luxury of its own unbridled thoughts. A perilous solitude, for it lasted long enough to enervate, not long enough to fortify me. A perilous solitude, for it was followed by afternoons and evenings spent day after day and week after week alone in the society of two women, one of whom possessed all the accomplishments of grace, wit and high breeding. The other, all the charms of beauty, gentleness and simple truth that can purify and subdue the heart of man. Not a day passed in that dangerous intimacy of teacher and pupil in which my hand was not close to Miss Fairlie's. My cheek as we bent together over her sketchbook, almost touching hers. The more attentively she watched every movement of my brush, the more closely I was breathing the perfume of her hair and the warm fragrance of her breath. It was part of my service to live in the very light of her eyes. At one time, to be bending over her so close to her bosom as to tremble at the thought of touching it. At another, to feel her bending over me. Bending so close to see what I was about that her voice sank low when she spoke to me and her ribbons brushed my cheek in the wind before she could draw them back. So it's part of Walter's job to be very close to his pupils, to observe their work and correct their brush. But this closeness with Laura Fairley has turned into love for him. The evenings which followed the sketching excursions of the afternoon varied rather than checked. These innocent, these inevitable familiarities. My natural fondness for the music which she played with such tender feeling, such delicate womanly taste, and her natural enjoyment of giving me back by the practice of her art. The pleasure which I had offered to her by the practice of mine only wove another tie which drew us closer and closer to one another. The accidents of conversation. The simple habits which regulated even such a little thing as the position of our places at table. The play of Miss Halcombe's ever ready raillery always directed against my anxiety as teacher while it sparkled over her enthusiasm as pupil. The harmless expression of poor Mrs. Vasey's drowsy approval which connected Miss Fairlie and me as two model young people who never disturbed her. Every one of these trifles and many more combine to fold us together in the same domestic atmosphere and to lead us Both insensibly, to the same hopeless end. I should have remembered my position and have put myself secretly on my guard. I did so, but not till it was too late. All the discretion, all the experience which had availed me with other women and secured me against other temptations failed me with her. It had been my profession for years past to be in this close contact with young girls of all ages and of all orders of beauty. I had accepted the position as part of my calling in life. I had trained myself to leave all the sympathies natural to my age in my employer's outer hall as coolly as I left my umbrella there before I went upstairs. I had long since learnt to understand composedly and as a matter of course, that my situation in life was considered a guarantee against any of my female pupils feeling more than the most ordinary interest in me, and that I was admitted among beautiful and captivating women much as a harmless domestic animal is admitted among them. Meaning normally he's able to see that he is far beneath his pupils socially and therefore can't aspire to be with them romantically. This guardian experience I had gained early. This guardian experience had sternly and strictly guided me straight along my own poor narrow path without once letting me stray aside to the right hand or to the left. And now I and my trusty talisman were parted for the first time. Yes, my hardly earned self control was as completely lost to me as if I had never possessed it. Lost to me as it is lost every day to other men in other critical situations where women are concerned. I know now that I should have questioned myself from the first. I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it and barren as a desert when she went out again. Why, I always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress that I had noticed and remembered in no other woman's before. Why I saw her, heard her and touched her when we shook hands at night and morning. As I had never seen, heard and touched any other woman in my life. I should have looked into my own heart and found this new growth springing up there and plucked it out while it was young. Why was this easiest, simplest work of self culture always too much for me? The explanation has been written already in the three words that were many enough and plain enough for my confession. I loved her. The days passed, the weeks passed. It was approaching the third month of my stay in Cumberland. The delicious monotony of life in our calm seclusion flowed on with me like a smooth stream With a swimmer who glides down the current. All memory of the past, all thought of the future, all sense of the falseness and hopelessness of my own position. Lay hushed within me into deceitful rest. Lulled by the siren song that my own heart sung to me, with eyes shut to all sight and ears closed to all sound of danger, I drifted nearer and nearer to the fatal rocks. The warning that aroused me at last and startled me into sudden self accusing consciousness of my own weakness. Was the plainest, the truest, the kindest of all warnings. For it came silently from her. We had parted one night as usual. No word had fallen from my lips at that time or at any time before it that could betray me or startle her into sudden knowledge of the truth. But when we met again in the morning, a change had come over her. A change that told me all. I shrank then. I shrank still from invading the innermost sanctuary of her heart. And laying it open to others as I have laid open my own. Let it be enough to say that the time when she first surprised my secret was, I firmly believe, the time when she first surprised her own. And the time also when she changed towards me in the interval of one night. Meaning the moment that Laura realized that Walter loved her. Was the same moment that she realized that she loved him in return. And it caused her to change her behavior toward him. Her nature, too truthful to deceive others, was too noble to deceive itself. When the doubt that I had hushed asleep first laid its weary weight on her heart. The true face owned all and said in its own frank, simple language, I am sorry for him. I am sorry for myself. It said this and more which I could not then interpret. I understood but too well the change in her manner. To greater kindness and quicker readiness in interpreting all my wishes before others. To constraint and sadness and nervous anxiety to absorb herself in the first occupation she could seize on Whenever we happened to be left together alone. I understood why the sweet, sensitive lips smiled so rarely and so restrainedly now. And why the clear blue eyes looked at me sometimes with the pity of an angel, sometimes with the innocent perplexity of a child. But the change meant more than this. 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 and clinging self reproach. The sensations that I could trace to herself and to me. The unacknowledged sensations that we were feeling in common were not these. There were certain elements of the change in her that were still secretly drawing us together, and others that were as secretly beginning to drive us apart. So Laura seems to love Walter back, but to be holding herself firmly in check. And the easiness between them is gone. And Walter suspects there's some element to this whole situation that he doesn't yet know. In my doubt and perplexity, in my vague suspicion of something hidden which I was left to find by my own unaided efforts, I examined Miss Halcombe's looks and manner for enlightenment. Living in such intimacy as ours, no serious alteration could take place in any one of us which did not sympathetically affect the others. The change in Miss Fairleigh was reflected in her half sister. Although not a word escaped Miss Halcombe which hinted at an altered state of feeling towards myself, her penetrating eyes had contracted a new habit of always watching me. Sometimes the look was like suppressed anger, sometimes like suppressed dread, sometimes like neither. Like nothing. In short, which I could understand. A week elapsed, leaving us all three still in this position of secret constraint towards one another. My situation, aggravated by the sense of my own miserable weakness and forgetfulness of myself, now too late awakened in me, was becoming intolerable. I felt that I must cast off the oppression under which I was living at once and forever. Yet how to act for the best, or what to say. First was more than I could tell from this position of helplessness and humiliation. I was rescued by Miss Halcombe. Her lips told me the bitter, the necessary, the unexpected truth. Her hearty kindness sustained me. Under the shock of hearing it, her sense and courage turned to its right use, an event which threatened the worst that could happen to me and to others in Limmeridge House. 10. It was on a Thursday in the week, and nearly at the end of the third month of my sojourn 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. Not a word had dropped from my lips or from hers that could unsettle either of us. And yet the same unacknowledged sense of embarrassment made us shrink alike from meeting one another alone. She waited on the lawn and I waited in the breakfast room till Mrs. Vesey or Ms. Halcombe came in. How quickly I should have joined her. How readily we should have shaken hands and glided into our customary talk only a fortnight ago. In a few minutes, Miss Halcombe entered. She had a preoccupied look, and she made her apologies for being late, rather absently. I have been detained, she said, by a consultation with Mr. Fairlie on a domestic matter which he wished to speak to me about. Miss Fairlie came in from the garden, and the usual morning greeting passed between us. Her hand struck colder to mine than ever. She did not look at me, and she was very pale. Even Mrs. Vesey noticed it when she entered the room a moment after. I suppose it is the change in the wind, said the old lady. The winter is coming. Ah, my love, the winter is coming soon. In her heart and in mine it had come already. Our morning meal, once so full of pleasant, good humored discussion of the plans for the day, was short and silent. Miss Fairlie seemed to feel the oppression of the long pauses in the conversation and looked appealingly to her sister to fill them up. Miss Halcombe, after once or twice hesitating and checking herself in a most uncharacteristic manner, spoke at last. I have seen your uncle this morning, Laura, she said. He thinks the purple room is the one that ought to be got ready, and he confirms what I told you. Monday is the day, not Tuesday. While these words were being spoken, Miss Fairley looked down at the table beneath her. Her fingers moved nervously among the crumbs that were scattered on the cloth. The paleness on her cheeks spread to her lips, and the lips themselves trembled visibly. I was not the only person present who noticed this. Miss Halcombe saw it too, and at once set us the example of rising from table. Mrs. Vacy and Ms. Fairlie left the room together. The kind, sorrowful blue eyes looked at me for a moment with the prescient sadness of a coming and a long farewell. I felt the answering pang in my own heart, the pang that told me I must lose her soon and love her the more unchangeably for the loss. I turned towards the garden. When the door had closed on her, 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. Have you any leisure time to spare? She asked, before you begin your work in your own room? Certainly, Miss Halcombe. I have always time at your service. 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 at this hour in the morning. As we stepped out on to the lawn, one of the under gardeners, a mere lad, passed us on his way to the house with a letter in his hand, Miss Halcombe stopped him. Is that letter for me? She asked. Nay, miss, it's just said to be for Miss Fairlie, answered the lad, holding out the letter. As he spoke. Miss Halcombe took it from him and looked at the address. A strange handwriting, she said to herself. Who can Laura's correspondent be? Where did you get this? She continued, addressing the gardener. Well, Miss, said the lad, I just got it from a woman. What woman? A woman well stricken in age. Oh, an old woman. Anyone you knew? I cannot tack it on myself to say that she was other than a stranger to me. Meaning he didn't know the woman who handed him the letter. Which way did she go? The gate, said the under gardener, turning with great deliberation towards the south and embracing the whole of that part of England with one comprehensive sweep of his arm. Curious, said Miss Halcombe. I suppose it must be a begging letter. There, she added, 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. At the little summer house in which Laura Fairlie and I had first seen each other, she stopped and broke the silence which she had steadily maintained while we were walking together. 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. I suspected what was coming when she spoke to me in the breakfast room. I felt certain of it. Now, Mr. Hartright, she said, I am going to begin by making a frank avowal to you. I am going to say, without phrase making, which I detest, or paying compliments which I heartily despise, that I have come in the course of your residence with us to feel a strong friendly regard for you. I was predisposed in your favour when you first told me of your conduct towards that unhappy woman whom you met under such remarkable circumstances. Your management of the affair might not have been prudent, but it showed the self control, the delicacy and the compassion of a man who is naturally a gentleman. It made me expect good things from you. And you have not disappointed my expectations. She paused, but held up her hand at the same time as a sign that she awaited no answer from me before she proceeded. When I entered the summer House. No thought was in me of the woman in white. But now Ms. Halcombe's own words had put the memory of my adventure back in my mind. It remained there throughout the interview. Remained, and not without a result. As your friend, she proceeded, I am going to tell you at once in my own plain, blunt, downright language that I have discovered your secret without help or hint mind from anyone else. Mr. Hartright, you have thoughtlessly allowed yourself to form an attachmenta serious and devoted attachment, I'm afraid, to my sister Laura. I don't put you to the pain of confessing it in so many words because I see and know that you are too honest to den. I don't even blame you. I pity you for opening your heart to a hopeless affection. You have not attempted to take any underhand advantage. You have not spoken to my sister in secret. You are guilty of weakness and want of attention to your own best interests, but of nothing worse. If you had acted in any single respect less delicately and less modestly, I should have told you to leave the house without an instant's notice or an instant's consultation of anybody. As it is, I blame the misfortune of your years and your position. I don't blame you. 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, the sudden kindness, the warm, high minded, fearless sympathy which met me on such mercifully equal terms. Arms which appealed with such delicate and generous abruptness straight to my heart. My honor and my courage overcame me in an instant. 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, considerately avoiding all notice of my loss of self control. Listen to me and let us get it over at once. It is a real, true relief to me that I am not obliged in what I have now to say to enter into the question, the hard and cruel question, as I think it, of social inequalities, circumstances which will try you to the quick. Spare me the ungracious necessity of paining a man who has lived in friendly intimacy under the same roof with myself by any humiliating reference to matters of rank and station. So she's saying she's not going to have to talk about how far below Laura socially Walter is, because whatever she's about to tell him will make that irrelevant. And she's glad because to her Walter feels like an equal and she doesn't want to embarrass him by talking about how he could never marry someone like Laura. You must leave Limmeridge House, Mr. Hartright, before more harm is done. It is my duty to say that to you. You and it would be equally my duty to say it under precisely the same serious necessity if you were the representative of the oldest and wealthiest family in England. You must leave us. Not because you are a teacher of drawingshe 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 Fairley is engaged to be married. The last word went like a bullet to my heart. My arm lost all sensation of the hand that grasped it. I never moved and never spoke. The sharp autumn breeze that scattered the dead leaves at our feet came as cold to me on a sudden, as if my own mad hopes were dead leaves too, whirled away by the wind like the rest 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 Ms. 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, she said. Here, where you first saw her. Crush it. Don't shrink under it like a woman. Tear it out, trample it underfoot like a man. The suppressed vehemence with which she spoke, the strength which her will concentrated in the look she fixed on me and in the hold on my arm that she had not yet relinquished, communicated to mine, steadied me. We both waited for a minute in silence. At the end of that time I had justified her generous faith in my manhood. I had outwardly at least recovered my self control. Are you yourself again? Enough myself, Ms. Halcombe, to ask your pardon and hersenough myself to be guided by your advice and to prove my gratitude in that way, if I can prove it in no other. You have proved it already, she answered by those words, Mr. Hartright. Concealment is at an end between us. I cannot affect to hide from you what my sister has unconsciously shown to me. You must leave us, for her sake as well as for your own meaning. Laura loves him back, so he's gotta go because she can't be with him, and it'll be worse for her if he stays. Your presence Here your necessary intimacy with us, harmless as it has been, God knows in all other respects, has unsteadied her and made her wretched. I, who love her better than my own life, I, who have learnt to believe in that pure, noble, innocent nature as I believe in my religion, know but too well the secret misery of self reproach that she has been suffering since the first shadow of a feeling disloyal to her marriage engagement entered her heart. In spite of her. I don't sayit would be useless to attempt to say it after what has happened, that her engagement has ever had a strong hold on her affections. It is an engagement of honour, not of love. Her father sanctioned it on his deathbed two years since. She herself neither welcomed it nor shrank from it. She was content to make it till you came here. She was in the position of hundreds of other women who marry men without being greatly attracted to them or greatly repelled by them and who learn to love them when they don't learn to hate after marriage instead of before. I hope more earnestly than words can say. And you should have the self sacrificing courage to hope too that the new thoughts and feelings which have disturbed the old calmness and the old content have not taken root too deeply to be ever removed. So she's hoping that Laura's feelings for Walter won't make her married life a torment. Since before she was basically fine with marrying this guy her father picked. But now that she's in love with Walter, will it make it worse, your absence? If I had less belief in your honor and your courage and your sense, I should not trust to them as I am trusting now. Your absence. Confidence will help my efforts and time will help us all three. It is something to know that my first confidence in you was not all misplaced. It is something to know that you will not be less honest, less manly, less considerate towards the pupil whose relation to yourself you have had the misfortune to forget than towards the stranger and the outcast whose appeal to you was not made in vain. Again the chance reference to the woman in white. Was there no possibility of speaking of Ms. Fairlie and of me without raising the memory of Anne Catherick and setting her between us like a fatality that it was hopeless to avoid. Tell me what apology I can make to Mr. Fairlie for breaking my engagement. I said tell me when to go after that apology is accepted. I promise implicit obedience to you and to your advice. Time is every way of importance, she answered. You heard me refer this morning to Monday next, and to the necessity of setting the Purple Room in order. The visitor whom we expect on Monday. I could not wait for her to be more explicit, knowing what I knew now. The memory of Miss Fairlie's look and manner at the breakfast table told me that the expected visitor at Limmeridge House was her future husband. I tried to force it back, but something rose within me at that moment, stronger than my own will, and I interrupted Miss Halcombe. Let me go today, I said bitterly. The sooner the better. No, not today, she replied. The only reason you can assign to Mr. Fairley for your departure before the end of your engagement must be that an unforeseen necessity compels you to ask his permission to return at once to London. You must wait till tomorrow to tell him that at the time when the post comes in, because he will then understand the sudden change in your plans by associating it with the arrival of a letter from London. It is miserable and sickening to descend to deceit, even of the most harmless kind. But I know Mr. Fairlie, and if you once excite his suspicions that you are trifling with him, he will refuse to release you. Speak to him on Friday morning. Occupy yourself afterwards for the sake of your own interests with your employer in leaving your unfinished work in as little confusion as possible, and quit this place on Saturday. It will be time enough then, Mr. Hartright, for you and for all of us. Before I could assure her that she might depend on my acting in the strictest accordance with her wishes, we were both startled by advancing footsteps in the shrubbery. Someone was coming from the house to seek for us. I felt the blood rush into my cheeks and then leave them again. Could the third person, who was fast approaching us at such a time and under such circumstances, be Miss Fairlie? It was a relief. So sadly, so hopelessly, was my position towards her changed already. It was absolutely a relief to me when the person who had disturbed us appeared at the entrance of the summer house and proved to be only Miss Fairlie's maid. Could I speak to you for a moment, Miss? Said the girl in rather a flurried, unsettled manner. Miss Halcombe descended the steps into the shrubbery and walked aside a few paces with the maid. Left by myself, my mind reverted with a sense of forlorn wretchedness, which it is not in any words that I can find to describe to my approaching return to the solitude and the despair of my lonely London home. Thoughts of my kind old mother and of my sister, who had rejoiced with her so innocently over my prospects in Cumberland, thoughts whose long banishment from my heart it was now my shame and my reproach to realize for the first time came back to me with the loving mournfulness of. Of old neglected friends, my mother and my sister. What would they feel when I returned to them from my broken engagement with the confession of my miserable secret? They who had parted from me so hopefully on that last happy night in the Hampstead cottage? Anne Catherick again. Even the memory of the farewell evening with my mother and my sister could not return to me now, unconnected with that other memory of the moonlit walk back to London. What did it mean were that woman and I to meet once more? It was possible, at the least. Did she know that I lived in London? Yes, I had told her so, either before or after that strange question of hers, when she had asked me so distrustfully if I knew many men of the rank of baronet, either before or after. My mind was not calm enough then to remember which a few minutes elapsed before Miss Halcombe dismissed the maid and came back to me. She, too looked flurried and unsettled. Now 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 uneasy about Laura. She has sent to say she wants to see me directly, and the maid reports that her mistress is apparently very much agitated by a letter that she has received this morning. The same letter, no doubt, which I sent on to the house before we came here. We retraced our steps together hastily along the shrubbery path. Although Miss Halcombe had ended all that she thought it necessary to say on her side, I had not ended all that I wanted to say on mine. From the moment when I had discovered that the expected visitor at Limmeridge was Miss Fairlie's future husband, I had felt a bitter curiosity, a burning, envious eagerness to know who he was. It was possible that a future opportunity of putting the question might not easily offer, so I risked asking it on our way back to the house. Now that you are kind enough to tell me we have understood each other, Miss Halcomb, I said. Now that you are sure of my gratitude for your forbearance and my obedience to your wishes, may I venture to ask who. I hesitated. I had forced myself to think of him, but it was harder still to speak of him as her promised husband. Who the gentleman engaged to Miss Fairlie is her mind was evidently occupied with the message she had received from her sister. 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. Sir Sir Percival. Anne Catherick's question, that suspicious question about the men of the rank of baronet, whom I might happen to know, had hardly been dismissed from my mind by Miss Halcombe's return to me in the summer house before it was reached. Called again by her own answer, I stopped suddenly and looked at her. Sir Percival Glyde, she repeated, imagining that I had not heard her form a 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 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 continued.