To exhaust this part of the subject before going farther, it may be mentioned that Count Fosco offered every facility to Mr. Kyrle, on that gentleman’s stating that he was sent by Miss Halcombe to collect such particulars as had not yet reached her of Lady Glyde’s decease.  Mr. Kyrle was placed in communication with the medical man, Mr. Goodricke, and with the two servants.  In the absence of any means of ascertaining the exact date of Lady Glyde’s departure from Blackwater Park, the result of the doctor’s and the servants’ evidence, and of the volunteered statements of Count Fosco and his wife, was conclusive to the mind of Mr. Kyrle.  He could only assume that the intensity of Miss Halcombe’s suffering, under the loss of her sister, had misled her judgment in a most deplorable manner, and he wrote her word that the shocking suspicion to which she had alluded in his presence was, in his opinion, destitute of the smallest fragment of foundation in truth.  Thus the investigation by Mr. Gilmore’s partner began and ended.

Meanwhile, Miss Halcombe had returned to Limmeridge House, and had there collected all the additional information which she was able to obtain.

Mr. Fairlie had received his first intimation of his niece’s death from his sister, Madame Fosco, this letter also not containing any exact reference to dates.  He had sanctioned his sister’s proposal that the deceased lady should be laid in her mother’s grave in Limmeridge churchyard.  Count Fosco had accompanied the remains to Cumberland, and had attended the funeral at Limmeridge, which took place on the 30th of July.  It was followed, as a mark of respect, by all the inhabitants of the village and the neighbourhood.  On the next day the inscription (originally drawn out, it was said, by the aunt of the deceased lady, and submitted for approval to her brother, Mr. Fairlie) was engraved on one side of the monument over the tomb.

On the day of the funeral, and for one day after it, Count Fosco had been received as a guest at Limmeridge House, but no interview had taken place between Mr. Fairlie and himself, by the former gentleman’s desire.  They had communicated by writing, and through this medium Count Fosco had made Mr. Fairlie acquainted with the details of his niece’s last illness and death.  The letter presenting this information added no new facts to the facts already known, but one very remarkable paragraph was contained in the postscript.  It referred to Anne Catherick.

The substance of the paragraph in question was as follows—­

It first informed Mr. Fairlie that Anne Catherick (of whom he might hear full particulars from Miss Halcombe when she reached Limmeridge) had been traced and recovered in the neighbourhood of Blackwater Park, and had been for the second time placed under the charge of the medical man from whose custody she had once escaped.