own clothes, and don't worry us all any more
about being Lady Glyde. She's dead and buried, and you're alive and
hearty. Do look at your clothes now! There it is, in good marking
ink, and there you will find it on all your old things, which we have
kept in the house--Anne Catherick, as plain as print!" And there it
was, when Miss Halcombe examined the linen her sister wore, on the
night of their arrival at Limmeridge House.

These were the only recollections--all of them uncertain, and some of
them contradictory--which could be extracted from Lady Glyde by careful
questioning on the journey to Cumberland. Miss Halcombe abstained from
pressing her with any inquiries relating to events in the Asylum--her
mind being but too evidently unfit to bear the trial of reverting to
them. It was known, by the voluntary admission of the owner of the
mad-house, that she was received there on the twenty-seventh of July.
From that date until the fifteenth of October (the day of her rescue)
she had been under restraint, her identity with Anne Catherick
systematically asserted, and her sanity, from first to last,
practically denied. Faculties less delicately balanced, constitutions
less tenderly organised, must have suffered under such an ordeal as
this. No man could have gone through it and come out of it unchanged.

Arriving at Limmeridge late on the evening of the fifteenth, Miss
Halcombe wisely resolved not to attempt the assertion of Lady Glyde's
identity until the next day.

The first thing in the morning she went to Mr. Fairlie's room, and
using all possible cautions and preparations beforehand, at last told
him in so many words what had happened. As soon as his first
astonishment and alarm had subsided, he angrily declared that Miss
Halcombe had allowed herself to be duped by Anne Catherick. He
referred her to Count Fosco's letter, and to what she had herself told
him of the personal resemblance between Anne and his deceased niece,
and he positively declined to admit to his presence, even for one
minute only, a madwoman, whom it was an insult and an outrage to have
brought into his house at all.

Miss Halcombe left the room--waited till the first heat of her
indignation had passed away--decided on reflection that Mr. Fairlie
should see his niece in the interests of common humanity before he
closed his doors on her as a stranger--and thereupon, without a word of
previous warning, took Lady Glyde with her to his room.