in the churchyard, he called it 'a woman in
white.'"

"Not Anne Catherick!"

"Yes, Anne Catherick."

She put her hand through my arm, and leaned
on it heavily.

"I don't know why," she said, in low tones,
"but there is something in this suspicion of
yours that seems to startle and unnerve me. I
feel——" She stopped, and tried to laugh it off.
"Mr. Hartright," she went on, "I will show
you the grave, and then go back at once to the
house. I had better not leave Laura too long
alone. I had better go back, and sit with her."

We were close to the churchyard when she
spoke. The church, a dreary building of grey
stone, was situated in a little valley, so as to
be sheltered from the bleak winds blowing
over the moorland all round it. The burial-
ground advanced, from the side of the church, a
little way up the slope of the hill. It was
surrounded by a rough, low stone wall, and was
bare and open to the sky, except at one
extremity, where a brook trickled down the
stony hill side, and a clump of dwarf trees
threw their narrow shadows over the short,
meagre grass. Just beyond the brook and the
trees, and not far from one of the three stone
stiles which afforded entrance, at various points,
to the churchyard, rose the white marble cross
that distinguished Mrs. Fairlie's grave from the
humbler monuments scattered about it.

"I need go no farther with you," said Miss
Halcombe, pointing to the grave. "You will
let me know if you find anything to confirm the
idea you have just mentioned to me. Let us
meet again at the house."

She left me. I descended at once to the
churchyard, and crossed the stile which led
directly to Mrs. Fairlie's grave.

The grass about it was too short, and the
ground too hard, to show any marks of footsteps.
Disappointed thus far, I next looked attentively
at the cross, and at the square block of marble
below it, on which the inscription was cut.

The natural whiteness of the cross was a little
clouded, here and there, by weather-stains; and
rather more than one half of the square block
beneath it, on the side which bore the inscription,
was in the same condition. The other half
however, attracted my attention at once by its
singular freedom from stain or impurity of any
kind. I looked closer, and saw that it had been
cleaned—recently cleaned, in a downward direction
from top to bottom. The boundary line
between the part that had been cleaned and the
part that had not, was traceable wherever the
inscription left a blank space of marble—sharply
traceable as a line that had been produced by
artificial means. Who had begun the cleansing
of the marble, and who had left it unfinished?

I looked about me, wondering how the question
was to be solved. No sign of a habitation
could be discerned from the point at which I
was standing: the burial-ground was left in
the lonely possession of the dead. I returned to
the church, and walked round it till I came to
the back of the building; then crossed the
boundary wall beyond, by another of the stone
stiles; and found myself at the head of a path
leading down into a deserted stone quarry.
Against one side of the quarry a little two-room
cottage was built; and just outside the door an
old woman was engaged in washing.

I walked up to her, and entered into conversation
about the church and burial-ground. She
was ready enough to talk; and almost the first
words she said informed me that her husband
filled the two offices of clerk and sexton. I said
a few words next in praise of Mrs. Fairlie's
monument. The old woman shook her head, and
told me I had not seen it at its best. It
was her husband's business to look after it; but
he had been so ailing and weak, for months and
months past, that he had hardly been able to
crawl into church on Sundays to do his duty;
and the monument had been neglected in
consequence. He was getting a little better now;
and, in a week or ten days' time, he hoped to
be strong enough to set to work and clean it.

This information—extracted from a long
rambling answer, in the broadest Cumberland
dialect—told me all that I most wanted to know.
I gave the poor woman a trifle, and returned at
once to Limmeridge House.

The partial cleansing of the monument had
evidently been accomplished by a strange hand.
Connecting what I had discovered, thus far,
with what I had suspected after hearing the
story of the ghost seen at twilight, I wanted
nothing more to confirm my resolution to watch
Mrs. Fairlie's grave, in secret, that evening;
returning to it at sunset, and waiting within sight
of it till the night fell. The work of cleansing
the monument had been left unfinished; and
the person by whom it had been begun might
return to complete it.

On getting back to the house, I informed Miss
Halcombe of what I intended to do. She looked
surprised and uneasy, while I was explaining
my purpose; but she made no positive objection
to the execution of it. She only said, "I hope
it may end well." Just as she was leaving me
again, I stopped her to inquire, as calmly as I
could, after Miss Fairlie's health. She was in
better spirits; and Miss Halcombe hoped she
might be induced to take a little walking exercise
while the afternoon sun lasted.

I returned to my own room, to resume setting
the drawings in order. It was necessary to do
this, and doubly necessary to keep my mind
employed on anything that would help to distract
my attention from myself, and from the hopeless
future that lay before me. From time to
time, I paused in my work to look out of window
and watch the sky as the sun sank nearer and
nearer to the horizon. On one of those
occasions I saw a figure on the broad gravel walk
under my window. It was Miss Fairlie.

I had not seen her since the morning; and I
had hardly spoken to her then. Another day
at Limmeridge was all that remained to me; and
after that day my eyes might never look on her
again. This thought was enough to hold me at