I won’t live without her, and she can’t live without me; and that is how I come to be at Limmeridge House.  My sister and I are honestly fond of each other; which, you will say, is perfectly unaccountable, under the circumstances, and I quite agree with you—­but so it is.  You must please both of us, Mr. Hartright, or please neither of us:  and, what is still more trying, you will be thrown entirely upon our society.  Mrs. Vesey is an excellent person, who possesses all the cardinal virtues, and counts for nothing; and Mr. Fairlie is too great an invalid to be a companion for anybody.  I don’t know what is the matter with him, and the doctors don’t know what is the matter with him, and he doesn’t know himself what is the matter with him.  We all say it’s on the nerves, and we none of us know what we mean when we say it.  However, I advise you to humour his little peculiarities, when you see him to-day.  Admire his collection of coins, prints, and water-colour drawings, and you will win his heart.  Upon my word, if you can be contented with a quiet country life, I don’t see why you should not get on very well here.  From breakfast to lunch, Mr. Fairlie’s drawings will occupy you.  After lunch, Miss Fairlie and I shoulder our sketch-books, and go out to misrepresent Nature, under your directions.  Drawing is her favourite whim, mind, not mine.  Women can’t draw—­ their minds are too flighty, and their eyes are too inattentive.  No matter—­my sister likes it; so I waste paint and spoil paper, for her sake, as composedly as any woman in England.  As for the evenings, I think we can help you through them.  Miss Fairlie plays delightfully.  For my own poor part, I don’t know one note of music from the other; but I can match you at chess, backgammon, ecarte, and (with the inevitable female drawbacks) even at billiards as well.  What do you think of the programme?  Can you reconcile yourself to our quiet, regular life? or do you mean to be restless, and secretly thirst for change and adventure, in the humdrum atmosphere of Limmeridge House?”

She had run on thus far, in her gracefully bantering way, with no other interruptions on my part than the unimportant replies which politeness required of me.  The turn of the expression, however, in her last question, or rather the one chance word, “adventure,” lightly as it fell from her lips, recalled my thoughts to my meeting with the woman in white, and urged me to discover the connection which the stranger’s own reference to Mrs. Fairlie informed me must once have existed between the nameless fugitive from the Asylum, and the former mistress of Limmeridge House.

“Even if I were the most restless of mankind,” I said, “I should be in no danger of thirsting after adventures for some time to come.  The very night before I arrived at this house, I met with an adventure; and the wonder and excitement of it, I can assure you, Miss Halcombe, will last me for the whole term of my stay in Cumberland, if not for a much longer period.”