a better time.’  ’What is it you have to tell me?’ I asked.  ’The Secret that your cruel husband is afraid of,’ she answered.  ’I once threatened him with the Secret, and frightened him.  You shall threaten him with the Secret, and frighten him too.’  Her face darkened, and a hard, angry stare fixed itself in her eyes.  She began waving her hand at me in a vacant, unmeaning manner.  ‘My mother knows the Secret,’ she said.  ’My mother has wasted under the Secret half her lifetime.  One day, when I was grown up, she said something to me.  And the next day your husband——­’”

“Yes! yes!  Go on.  What did she tell you about your husband?”

“She stopped again, Marian, at that point——­”

“And said no more?”

“And listened eagerly.  ‘Hush!’ she whispered, still waving her hand at me.  ‘Hush!’ She moved aside out of the doorway, moved slowly and stealthily, step by step, till I lost her past the edge of the boat-house.”

“Surely you followed her?”

“Yes, my anxiety made me bold enough to rise and follow her.  Just as I reached the entrance, she appeared again suddenly, round the side of the boat-house.  ‘The Secret,’ I whispered to her—­’wait and tell me the Secret!’ She caught hold of my arm, and looked at me with wild frightened eyes.  ‘Not now,’ she said, ’we are not alone—­we are watched.  Come here to-morrow at this time—­by yourself—­mind—­by yourself.’  She pushed me roughly into the boat-house again, and I saw her no more.”

“Oh, Laura, Laura, another chance lost!  If I had only been near you she should not have escaped us.  On which side did you lose sight of her?”

“On the left side, where the ground sinks and the wood is thickest.”

“Did you run out again? did you call after her?”

“How could I?  I was too terrified to move or speak.”

“But when you did move—­when you came out?”

“I ran back here, to tell you what had happened.”

“Did you see any one, or hear any one, in the plantation?”

“No, it seemed to be all still and quiet when I passed through it.”

I waited for a moment to consider.  Was this third person, supposed to have been secretly present at the interview, a reality, or the creature of Anne Catherick’s excited fancy?  It was impossible to determine.  The one thing certain was, that we had failed again on the very brink of discovery—­failed utterly and irretrievably, unless Anne Catherick kept her appointment at the boat-house for the next day.

“Are you quite sure you have told me everything that passed?  Every word that was said?” I inquired.

“I think so,” she answered.  “My powers of memory, Marian, are not like yours.  But I was so strongly impressed, so deeply interested, that nothing of any importance can possibly have escaped me.”

“My dear Laura, the merest trifles are of importance where Anne Catherick is concerned.  Think again.  Did no chance reference escape her as to the place in which she is living at the present time?”