zled for a
minute, then flushed up, and appeared to understand. Her little hand
clasped mine suddenly. She kissed it, Philip, and said (oh, so
earnestly!), "I will always wear white as long as I live. It will help
me to remember you, ma'am, and to think that I am pleasing you still,
when I go away and see you no more." This is only one specimen of the
quaint things she says so prettily. Poor little soul! She shall have a
stock of white frocks, made with good deep tucks, to let out for her as
she grows----'"

Miss Halcombe paused, and looked at me across the piano.

"Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the high-road seem young?" she
asked. "Young enough to be two- or three-and-twenty?"

"Yes, Miss Halcombe, as young as that."

"And she was strangely dressed, from head to foot, all in white?"

"All in white."

While the answer was passing my lips Miss Fairlie glided into view on
the terrace for the third time. Instead of proceeding on her walk, she
stopped, with her back turned towards us, and, leaning on the
balustrade of the terrace, looked down into the garden beyond. My eyes
fixed upon the white gleam of her muslin gown and head-dress in the
moonlight, and a sensation, for which I can find no name--a sensation
that quickened my pulse, and raised a fluttering at my heart--began to
steal over me.

"All in white?" Miss Halcombe repeated. "The most important sentences
in the letter, Mr. Hartright, are those at the end, which I will read
to you immediately. But I can't help dwelling a little upon the
coincidence of the white costume of the woman you met, and the white
frocks which produced that strange answer from my mother's little
scholar. The doctor may have been wrong when he discovered the child's
defects of intellect, and predicted that she would 'grow out of them.'
She may never have grown out of them, and the old grateful fancy about
dressing in white, which was a serious feeling to the girl, may be a
serious feeling to the woman still."

I said a few words in answer--I hardly know what. All my attention was
concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie's muslin dress.

"Listen to the last sentences of the letter," said Miss Halcombe. "I
think they will surprise you."

As she raised the letter to the light of the candle, Miss Fairlie
turned from the balustrade, looked doubtfully up and down the terrace,
advanced a step towards the glass doors, and then stopped, facing us.

Meanwhile M