close behind me.
I was on the dark side of the road, in the thick shadow of some garden
trees, when I stopped to look round. On the opposite and lighter side
of the way, a short distance below me, a policeman was strolling along
in the direction of the Regent's Park.
The carriage passed me--an open chaise driven by two men.
"Stop!" cried one. "There's a policeman. Let's ask him."
The horse was instantly pulled up, a few yards beyond the dark place
where I stood.
"Policeman!" cried the first speaker. "Have you seen a woman pass this
way?"
"What sort of woman, sir?"
"A woman in a lavender-coloured gown----"
"No, no," interposed the second man. "The clothes we gave her were
found on her bed. She must have gone away in the clothes she wore when
she came to us. In white, policeman. A woman in white."
"I haven't seen her, sir."
"If you or any of your men meet with the woman, stop her, and send her
in careful keeping to that address. I'll pay all expenses, and a fair
reward into the bargain."
The policeman looked at the card that was handed down to him.
"Why are we to stop her, sir? What has she done?"
"Done! She has escaped from my Asylum. Don't forget; a woman in white.
Drive on."
V
"She has escaped from my Asylum!"
I cannot say with truth that the terrible inference which those words
suggested flashed upon me like a new revelation. Some of the strange
questions put to me by the woman in white, after my ill-considered
promise to leave her free to act as she pleased, had suggested the
conclusion either that she was naturally flighty and unsettled, or that
some recent shock of terror had disturbed the balance of her faculties.
But the idea of absolute insanity which we all associate with the very
name of an Asylum, had, I can honestly declare, never occurred to me,
in connection with her. I had seen nothing, in her language or her
actions, to justify it at the time; and even with the new light thrown
on her by the words which the stranger had addressed to the policeman,
I could see nothing to justify it now.
What had I done? Assisted the victim of the most horrible of all false
imprisonments to escape; or cast loose on the wide world of London an
unfortunate creature, whose actions it was my duty, and every man's
duty, mercifully to control? I turned sick at heart when the question
occurred to me, and when I felt self-reproachfully that it was asked
too late.
In the d
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