one carriage; and John Owen, with a clerk from
Mr. Kyrle's office, occupying places in another.
On reaching the Limmeridge station, we went
first to the farm-house at Todd's Corner. It
was my firm determination that Laura should not
enter her uncle's house till she appeared there
publicly recognised as his niece. I left Marian
to settle the question of accommodation with
Mrs. Todd, as soon as the good woman had
recovered from the bewilderment of hearing what
our errand was in Cumberland; and I arranged
with her husband that John Owen was to be
committed to the ready hospitality of the
farm-servants. These preliminaries completed, Mr.
Kyrle and I set forth together for Limmeridge
House.

I cannot write at any length of our interview with
Mr. Fairlie, for I cannot recall it to
mind, without feelings of impatience and
contempt, which make the scene, even in
remembrance only, utterly repulsive to me. I prefer
to record simply that I carried my point. Mr.
Fairlie attempted to treat us on his customary
plan. We passed without notice his polite
insolence at the outset of the interview. We
heard without sympathy the protestations with
which he tried next to persuade us that the
disclosure of the conspiracy had overwhelmed him.
He absolutely whined and whimpered, at last,
like a fretful child. "How was he to know that
his niece was alive, when he was told that she
was dead? He would welcome dear Laura,
with pleasure, if we would only allow him time
to recover. Did we think he looked as if he
wanted hurrying into his grave? No. Then,
why hurry him?" He reiterated these
remonstrances at every available opportunity, until I
checked them once for all, by placing him firmly
between two inevitable alternatives. I gave him
his choice between doing his niece justice, on
my terms—or facing the consequences of a
public assertion of her identity in a court of
law. Mr. Kyrle, to whom he turned for help,
told him plainly that he must decide the question,
then and there. Characteristically choosing
the alternative which promised soonest to
release him from all personal anxiety, he
announced, with a sudden outburst of energy, that
he was not strong enough to bear any more
bullying, and that we might do as we pleased.

Mr. Kyrle and I at once went down stairs,
and agreed upon a form of letter which was to
be sent round to the tenants who had attended
the false funeral, summoning them, in Mr. Fairlie's
name, to assemble in Limmeridge House, on
the next day but one. An order, referring to
the same date, was also written, directing a
statuary in Carlisle to send a man to Limmeridge
churchyard, for the purpose of erasing an
inscription—Mr. Kyrle, who had arranged to
sleep in the house, undertaking that Mr. Fairlie
should hear these letters read to him, and should
sign them with his own hand.

I occupied the interval-day, at the farm,
in writing a plain narrative of the conspiracy,
and in adding to it a statement of the
practical contradiction which facts offered to the
assertion of Laura's death. This I submitted
to Mr. Kyrle, before I read it, the next day, to
the assembled tenants. We also arranged the
form in which the evidence should be presented
at the close of the reading. After these matters
were settled, Mr. Kyrle endeavoured to turn the
conversation, next, to Laura's affairs. Knowing,
and desiring to know, nothing of those
affairs; and doubting whether he would approve,
as a man of business, of my conduct in relation
to my wife's life-interest in the legacy left to
to Madame Fosco, I begged Mr. Kyrle to
excuse me if I abstained from discussing the
subject. It was connected, as I could truly tell
him, with those sorrows and troubles of the
past, which we never referred to among
ourselves, and which we instinctively shrank from
discussing with others.

My last labour, as the evening approached,
was to obtain "The Narrative of the
Tombstone," by taking a copy of the false inscription
on the grave, before it was erased.

The day came—the day when Laura once
more entered the familiar breakfast-room at
Limmeridge House. All the persons assembled
rose from their seats as Marian and I led her
in. A perceptible shock of surprise, an audible
murmur of interest, ran through them, at the
sight of her face. Mr. Fairlie was present (by
my express stipulation), with Mr. Kyrle by his
side. His valet stood behind him with a
smelling-bottle ready in one hand, and a white
handkerchief, saturated with eau-de-Cologne, in the
other.

I opened the proceedings by publicly appealing
to Mr. Fairlie to say whether I appeared
there with his authority and under his express
sanction. He extended an arm, on either side,
to Mr. Kyrle and to his valet; was by them
assisted to stand on his legs; and then expressed
himself in these terms: "Allow me to present
Mr. Hartright. I am as great an invalid as
ever; and he is so very obliging as to speak for
me. The subject is dreadfully embarrassing.
Please hear him—and don't make a noise!"
With those words, he slowly sank back again
into the chair, and took refuge in his scented
pocket-handkerchief.

My disclosure of the conspiracy followed—
after I had offered my preliminary explanation,
first of all, in the fewest and the plainest
words. I was there present (I informed my
hearers) to declare first, that my wife, then
sitting by me, was the daughter of the late Mr.
Philip Fairlie; secondly, to prove, by positive
facts, that the funeral which they had attended
in Limmeridge churchyard, was the funeral of
another woman; thirdly, to give them a plain
account of how it had all happened. Without
further preface, I at once read the narrative of
the conspiracy, describing it in clear outline, and
dwelling only upon the pecuniary motive for it,
in order to avoid complicating my statement by
unnecessary reference to Sir Percival's secret.
This done, I reminded my audience of the date of