the proceedings
of its inmates, to be privately watched.

Nothing doubtful was discovered. The same result attended the next
investigations, which were secretly instituted on the subject of Mrs.
Rubelle. She had arrived in London about six months before with her
husband. They had come from Lyons, and they had taken a house in the
neighbourhood of Leicester Square, to be fitted up as a boarding-house
for foreigners, who were expected to visit England in large numbers to
see the Exhibition of 1851. Nothing was known against husband or wife
in the neighbourhood. They were quiet people, and they had paid their
way honestly up to the present time. The final inquiries related to
Sir Percival Glyde. He was settled in Paris, and living there quietly
in a small circle of English and French friends.

Foiled at all points, but still not able to rest, Miss Halcombe next
determined to visit the Asylum in which she then supposed Anne
Catherick to be for the second time confined. She had felt a strong
curiosity about the woman in former days, and she was now doubly
interested--first, in ascertaining whether the report of Anne
Catherick's attempted personation of Lady Glyde was true, and secondly
(if it proved to be true), in discovering for herself what the poor
creature's real motives were for attempting the deceit.

Although Count Fosco's letter to Mr. Fairlie did not mention the
address of the Asylum, that important omission cast no difficulties in
Miss Halcombe's way. When Mr. Hartright had met Anne Catherick at
Limmeridge, she had informed him of the locality in which the house was
situated, and Miss Halcombe had noted down the direction in her diary,
with all the other particulars of the interview exactly as she heard
them from Mr. Hartright's own lips. Accordingly she looked back at the
entry and extracted the address--furnished herself with the Count's
letter to Mr. Fairlie as a species of credential which might be useful
to her, and started by herself for the Asylum on the eleventh of
October.

She passed the night of the eleventh in London. It had been her
intention to sleep at the house inhabited by Lady Glyde's old
governess, but Mrs. Vesey's agitation at the sight of her lost pupil's
nearest and dearest friend was so distressing that Miss Halcombe
considerately refrained from remaining in her presence, and removed to
a respectable boarding-house in the neighbourhood, recommended by Mrs.
Vesey's married sister