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