"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 under
foot 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, Miss Halcombe, to ask
your pardon and hers. Enough myself, to be
guided by your advice, and to prove my gratitude
in that way, if I can prove it 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. 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 say—it 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
death-bed, 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. Your absence (if I had less belief in
your honour, and your courage, and your sense,
I should not trust to them as I am trusting
now)—your absence 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
Miss 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 to-day," I said, bitterly. "The
sooner the better."

"No; not to-day," she replied. "The only
reason you can assign to Mr. Fairlie 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. Some
one 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