Did Anne remain entirely under your care from that time?"

"Not quite entirely, sir. Mrs. Catherick had her whims and fancies
about it at times, and used now and then to lay claim to the child, as
if she wanted to spite me for bringing it up. But these fits of hers
never lasted for long. Poor little Anne was always returned to me, and
was always glad to get back--though she led but a gloomy life in my
house, having no playmates, like other children, to brighten her up.
Our longest separation was when her mother took her to Limmeridge.
Just at that time I lost my husband, and I felt it was as well, in that
miserable affliction, that Anne should not be in the house. She was
between ten and eleven years old then, slow at her lessons, poor soul,
and not so cheerful as other children--but as pretty a little girl to
look at as you would wish to see. I waited at home till her mother
brought her back, and then I made the offer to take her with me to
London--the truth being, sir, that I could not find it in my heart to
stop at Old Welmingham after my husband's death, the place was so
changed and so dismal to me."

"And did Mrs. Catherick consent to your proposal?"

"No, sir. She came back from the north harder and bitterer than ever.
Folks did say that she had been obliged to ask Sir Percival's leave to
go, to begin with; and that she only went to nurse her dying sister at
Limmeridge because the poor woman was reported to have saved money--the
truth being that she hardly left enough to bury her. These things may
have soured Mrs. Catherick likely enough, but however that may be, she
wouldn't hear of my taking the child away. She seemed to like
distressing us both by parting us. All I could do was to give Anne my
direction, and to tell her privately, if she was ever in trouble, to
come to me. But years passed before she was free to come. I never saw
her again, poor soul, till the night she escaped from the mad-house."

"You know, Mrs. Clements, why Sir Percival Glyde shut her up?"

"I only know what Anne herself told me, sir. The poor thing used to
ramble and wander about it sadly. She said her mother had got some
secret of Sir Percival's to keep, and had let it out to her long after
I left Hampshire--and when Sir Percival found she knew it, he shut her
up. But she never could say what it was when I asked her. All she
could tell me was, that her mother might be the ruin and destruction of
Sir Percival if she chos