h 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
consequence of a public assertion of her existence 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 downstairs, 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 a