Laura drew me to the nearest seat, an ottoman in the middle of the room.  “Look!” she said, “look here!”—­and pointed to the bosom of her dress.

I saw, for the first time, that the lost brooch was pinned in its place again.  There was something real in the sight of it, something real in the touching of it afterwards, which seemed to steady the whirl and confusion in my thoughts, and to help me to compose myself.

“Where did you find your brooch?” The first words I could say to her were the words which put that trivial question at that important moment.

“She found it, Marian.”

“Where?”

“On the floor of the boat-house.  Oh, how shall I begin—­how shall I tell you about it!  She talked to me so strangely—­she looked so fearfully ill—­she left me so suddenly!”

Her voice rose as the tumult of her recollections pressed upon her mind.  The inveterate distrust which weighs, night and day, on my spirits in this house, instantly roused me to warn her—­just as the sight of the brooch had roused me to question her, the moment before.

“Speak low,” I said.  “The window is open, and the garden path runs beneath it.  Begin at the beginning, Laura.  Tell me, word for word, what passed between that woman and you.”

“Shall I close the window?”

“No, only speak low—­only remember that Anne Catherick is a dangerous subject under your husband’s roof.  Where did you first see her?”

“At the boat-house, Marian.  I went out, as you know, to find my brooch, and I walked along the path through the plantation, looking down on the ground carefully at every step.  In that way I got on, after a long time, to the boat-house, and as soon as I was inside it, I went on my knees to hunt over the floor.  I was still searching with my back to the doorway, when I heard a soft, strange voice behind me say, ‘Miss Fairlie.’”

“Miss Fairlie!”

“Yes, my old name—­the dear, familiar name that I thought I had parted from for ever.  I started up—­not frightened, the voice was too kind and gentle to frighten anybody—­but very much surprised.  There, looking at me from the doorway, stood a woman, whose face I never remembered to have seen before—­”

“How was she dressed?”

“She had a neat, pretty white gown on, and over it a poor worn thin dark shawl.  Her bonnet was of brown straw, as poor and worn as the shawl.  I was struck by the difference between her gown and the rest of her dress, and she saw that I noticed it.  ’Don’t look at my bonnet and shawl,’ she said, speaking in a quick, breathless, sudden way; ’if I mustn’t wear white, I don’t care what I wear.  Look at my gown as much as you please—­I’m not ashamed of that.’  Very strange, was it not?  Before I could say anything to soothe her, she held out one of her hands, and I saw my brooch in it.  I was so pleased and so grateful, that I went quite close to her to