he 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 any words that I can find to describe, to my
approaching return to the solitude and the despair of my lonely London
home. Thoughts of my kind old mother, and of my sister, who had
rejoiced with her so innocently over my prospects in
Cumberland--thoughts whose long banishment from my heart it was now my
shame and my reproach to realise for the first time--came back to me
with the loving mournfulness of old, neglected friends. My mother and
my sister, what would they feel when I returned to them from my broken
engagement, with the confession of my miserable secret--they who had
parted from me so hopefully on that last happy night in the Hampstead
cottage!

Anne Catherick again! Even the memory of the farewell evening with my
mother and my sister could not return to me now unconnected with that
other memory of the moonlight walk back to London. What did it mean?
Were that woman and I to meet once more? It was possible, at the least.
Did she know that I lived in London? Yes; I had told her so, either
before or after that strange question of hers, when she had asked me so
distrustfully if I knew many men of the rank of Baronet. Either before
or after--my mind was not calm enough, then, to remember which.

A few minutes elapsed before Miss Halcombe dismissed the maid and came
back to me. She, too, looked flurried and unsettled now.

"We have arranged all that is necessary, Mr. Hartright," she said. "We
have understood each other, as friends should, and we may go back at
once to the house. To tell you the truth, I am uneasy about Laura.
She has sent to say she wants to see me directly, and the maid reports
that her mistress is apparently very much agitated by a letter that she
has received this morning--the same letter, no doubt, which I sent on
to the house before we came here."

We retraced our steps together hastily along the shrubbery path.
Although Miss Halcombe had ended all that she thought it necessary to
say on her side, I had not ended all that I wanted to say on mine.
From the moment when I had discovered that the expected visitor at
Limmeridge was Miss Fairlie's future husband, I had felt a bitter
curiosity, a burning envious eagerness, to know who he was. It was
possible that a future opportunity of putting the question might not
easily off