was hastily agreed between them that Miss Halcombe should return
early the next morning and wait out of sight among the trees--always,
however, keeping near the quiet spot of ground under the north wall.
The nurse could fix no time for her appearance, caution requiring that
she should wait and be guided by circumstances. On that understanding
they separated.

Miss Halcombe was at her place, with the promised letter and the
promised bank-notes, before ten the next morning. She waited more than
an hour and a half. At the end of that time the nurse came quickly
round the corner of the wall holding Lady Glyde by the arm. The moment
they met Miss Halcombe put the bank-notes and the letter into her hand,
and the sisters were united again.

The nurse had dressed Lady Glyde, with excellent forethought, in a
bonnet, veil, and shawl of her own. Miss Halcombe only detained her to
suggest a means of turning the pursuit in a false direction, when the
escape was discovered at the Asylum. She was to go back to the house,
to mention in the hearing of the other nurses that Anne Catherick had
been inquiring latterly about the distance from London to Hampshire, to
wait till the last moment, before discovery was inevitable, and then to
give the alarm that Anne was missing. The supposed inquiries about
Hampshire, when communicated to the owner of the Asylum, would lead him
to imagine that his patient had returned to Blackwater Park, under the
influence of the delusion which made her persist in asserting herself
to be Lady Glyde, and the first pursuit would, in all probability, be
turned in that direction.

The nurse consented to follow these suggestions, the more readily as
they offered her the means of securing herself against any worse
consequences than the loss of her place, by remaining in the Asylum,
and so maintaining the appearance of innocence, at least. She at once
returned to the house, and Miss Halcombe lost no time in taking her
sister back with her to London. They caught the afternoon train to
Carlisle the same afternoon, and arrived at Limmeridge, without
accident or difficulty of any kind, that night.

During the latter part of their journey they were alone in the
carriage, and Miss Halcombe was able to collect such remembrances of
the past as her sister's confused and weakened memory was able to
recall. The terrible story of the conspiracy so obtained was presented
in fragments, sadly incoherent in themselves, a