THE WOMAN IN WHITE.

PART THE THIRD. THE NARRATIVE OF ISIDOR
OTTAVIO BALDASSARE FOSCO. COUNT OF THE
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. KNIGHT GRAND CROSS
OF THE ORDER OF THE BRAZEN CROWN. ARCH-
MASTER OF THE ROSICRUCIAN MASONS OF
MESOPOTAMIA. ATTACHED, IN HONORARY
CAPACITIES, TO SOCIETIES MEDICAL, SOCIETIES
MUSICAL, SOCIETIES PHILOSOPHICAL, AND
SOCIETIES GENERAL BENEVOLENT, THROUGHOUT
EUROPE, &c. &c. &c.

IN the summer of eighteen hundred and fifty,
I arrived in England, charged with a delicate
political mission from abroad. Confidential persons
were semi-officially connected with me,
whose exertions I was authorised to direct—
Monsieur and Madame Rubelle being among the
number. Some weeks of spare time were at my
disposal, before I entered on my functions by
establishing myself in the suburbs of London.
Curiosity may stop here, to ask for some
explanation of those functions on my part. I
entirely sympathise with the request. I also
regret that diplomatic reserve forbids me to
comply with it.

I arranged to pass the preliminary period of
repose, to which I have just referred, in the
superb mansion of my late lamented friend, Sir
Percival Glyde. He arrived from the Continent
with his wife. I arrived from the Continent with
mine.  England is the land of domestic happiness
—how appropriately we entered it under these
domestic circumstances!

The bond of friendship which united Percival
and myself, was strengthened, on this occasion,
by a touching similarity in the pecuniary
position, on his side and on mine. We both wanted
money. Immense necessity! Universal want!
Is there a civilised human bring who does not
feel for us? How insensible must that man be!
Or how rich!

I enter into no sordid particulars, in discussing
this part of the subject. My mind recoils
from them. With a Roman austerity, I show
my empty purse and Percival's to the shrinking
public gaze. Let us allow the deplorable fact
to assert itself, once for all, in that manner—and
pass on.

We were received at the mansion by the
magnificent creature who is inscribed on my heart
as "Marian"—who is known in the colder
atmosphere of Society, as "Miss Halcombe."

Just Heaven! with what inconceivable rapidity
I learnt to adore that woman. At sixty, I worshipped
her with the volcanic ardour of eighteen.
All the gold of my rich nature was poured
hopelessly at her feet. My wife—poor angel!—my
wife, who adores me, got nothing but the
shillings and the pennies. Such is the World;
such Man; such Love. What are we (I ask)
but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent
Destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us
mercifully off our miserable little stage!

The preceding lines, rightly understood, express
an entire system of philosophy. It is Mine.

I resume.

The domestic position at the commencement
of our residence at Blackwater Park has been
drawn with amazing accuracy, with profound
mental insight, by the hand of Marian herself.
(Pass me the intoxicating familiarity of
mentioning this sublime creature by her Christian
name.) Accurate knowledge of the contents
of her journal—to which I obtained access by
clandestine means, unspeakably precious to me
in the remembrance—warns my eager pen from
topics which this essentially exhaustive woman
has already made her own.

The interests—interests, breathless and
immense!—with which I am here concerned, begin
with the deplorable calamity of Marian's
illness.

The situation, at this period, was emphatically
a serious one. Large sums of money, due at a
certain time, were wanted by Percival (I say
nothing of the modicums equally necessary to
myself); and the one source to look to for
supplying them was the fortune of his wife, of
which not one farthing was at his disposal until
her death. Bad, so far; but—in the language of
the all-pervading Shakespeare—worse remained
behind. My lamented friend had private troubles
of his own, into which the delicacy of my
disinterested attachment to him forbade me from
inquiring too curiously. I knew nothing but that
a woman, named Anne Catherick, was hidden in
the neighbourhood; that she was in
communication with Lady Glyde; and that the disclosure
of a secret, which would be the certain ruin of
Percival, might be the result. He had told me
himself that he was a lost man, unless his wife
was silenced, and unless Anne Catherick was
found. If he was a lost man, what would
become of our pecuniary interests? Courageous