inferred from his reply. His letter answered my
questions, by communicating these important
facts:

In the first place, "the late Sir Percival
Clyde, of Blackwater Park," had never set foot
in Verneck Hall. The deceased gentleman was
a total stranger to Major Donthorne, and to all
his family.

In the second place, "the late Mr. Philip
Fairlie, of Limmeridge House, "had been, in his
younger days, the intimate friend and constant
guest of Major Donthorne. Having refreshed
his memory by looking back to old letters and
other papers, the Major was in a position to say
positively, that Mr. Philip Fairlie was staying at
Varneck Hall in the month of August, eighteen
hundred and twenty-six, and that he remained
there, for the shooting, during the month of
September and part of October following. He
then left, to the best of the Major's belief, for
Scotland, and did not return to Varneck Hall
till after a lapse of time, when he reappeared in
the character of a newly-married man.

Taken by itself, this statement was, perhaps,
of little positive value — but, taken in connexion
with certain facts, every one of which either
Marian or I knew to be true, it suggested one
plain conclusion that was, to our minds, irresistible.

Knowing, now, that Mr. Philip Fairlie
had been at Varneck Hall in the autumn of
eighteen hundred and twenty-six, and that Mrs.
Catherick had been living there in service at
the same time, we knew also:— first, that Anne
had been born in June, eighteen hundred and
twenty-seven; secondly, that she had always
presented an extraordinary personal resemblance
to Laura; and, thirdly, that Laura herself was
strikingly like her father. Mr. Philip Fairlie
had been one of the notoriously handsome men
of his time. In disposition entirely unlike his
brother Frederick, he was the spoilt darling
of society, especially of the women— an easy,
light-hearted, impulsive, affectionate man; generous
to a fault; constitutionally lax in his
principles, and notoriously thoughtless of moral
obligations where women were concerned. Such
were the facts we knew; such was the character
of the man. Surely, the plain inference
that follows needs no pointing out?

Read by the new light which had now broken
upon me, even Mrs. Catherick's letter, in despite
of herself, rendered its mite of assistance towards
strengthening the conclusion at which
I had arrived. She had described Mrs. Fairlie
(in writing to me) as " plain-looking," and as
having " entrapped the handsomest man in England
into marrying her." Both assertions were
gratuitously made, and both were false. Jealous
dislike (which, in such a woman as Mrs. Catherick,
would express itself in petty malice rather
than not express itself at all) appeared to me to
be the only assignable cause for the peculiar
insolence of her reference to Mrs. Fairlie, under
circumstances which did not necessitate any reference
at all.

The mention here of Mrs. Fairlie's name
naturally suggests one other question. Did she
ever suspect whose child the little girl brought
to her at Limmeridge might be?

Marian's testimony was positive on this point.
Mrs. Fairlie's letter to her husband, which had
been read to me in former days — the letter
describing Anne's resemblance to Laura, and acknowledging
her affectionate interest in the little
stranger— had been written, beyond all question,
in perfect innocence of heart. It even seemed
doubtful, on consideration, whether Mr. Philip
Fairlie himself had been nearer than his wife to
any suspicion of the truth. The disgracefully deceitful
circumstances under which Mrs. Catherick
had married, the purpose of concealment
which the marriage was intended to answer,
might well keep her silent for caution's sake,
perhaps for her own pride's sake also— even assuming
that she had the means, in his absence,
of communicating with the father of her unborn
child.

As this surmise floated through my mind,
there rose on my memory the remembrance of
the Scripture denunciation which we have all
thought of, in our time, with wonder and with
awe: " The sins of the fathers shall be visited
on the children." But for the fatal resemblance
between the two daughters of one father, the conspiracy
of which Anne had been the innocent
instrument and Laura the innocent victim, could
never have been planned. With what unerring
and terrible directness the long chain of circumstances
led down from the thoughtless wrong
committed by the father to the heartless injury
inflicted on the child!

These thoughts came to me, and others with
them, which drew my mind away to the little
Cumberland churchyard where Anne Catherick
now lay buried. I thought of the bygone days
when I had met her by Mrs. Fairlie's grave, and
met her for the last time. I thought of her poor
helpless hands beating on the tombstone, and
her weary, yearning words, murmured to the
dead remains of her protectress and her friend.
"Oh, if I could die, and be hidden and at rest
with you!" Little more than a year had passed
since she breathed that wish; and how inscrutably,
how awfully, it had been fulfilled. The
words she had spoken to Laura by the shores
of the lake, the very words had now come
true. "Oh, if I could only be buried with your
mother! If I could only wake at her side
when the angel's trumpet sounds, and the
graves give up their dead at the resurrection!"
Through what mortal crime and horror, through
what darkest windings of the way down to
Death, the lost creature had wandered in
God's leading to the last home that, living, she
never hoped to reach! There (I said in my own
heart)— there, if ever I have the power to will
it, all that is mortal of her shall remain, and
share the grave-bed with the loved friend of her
childhood, with the dear remembrance of her
life. That rest shall be sacred — that companionship
always undisturbed!

So the ghostly figure which has haunted these
pages as it haunted my life, goes down into the