All the woman flushed up in Marian’s face as I spoke.

“Begin with the Count,” she whispered eagerly.  “For my sake, begin with the Count.”

“We must begin, for Laura’s sake, where there is the best chance of success,” I replied.

The colour faded from her face again, and she shook her head sadly.

“Yes,” she said, “you are right—­it was mean and miserable of me to say that.  I try to be patient, Walter, and succeed better now than I did in happier times.  But I have a little of my old temper still left, and it will get the better of me when I think of the Count!”

“His turn will come,” I said.  “But, remember, there is no weak place in his life that we know of yet.”  I waited a little to let her recover her self-possession, and then spoke the decisive words—­

“Marian!  There is a weak place we both know of in Sir Percival’s life——­”

“You mean the Secret!”

“Yes:  the Secret.  It is our only sure hold on him.  I can force him from his position of security, I can drag him and his villainy into the face of day, by no other means.  Whatever the Count may have done, Sir Percival has consented to the conspiracy against Laura from another motive besides the motive of gain.  You heard him tell the Count that he believed his wife knew enough to ruin him?  You heard him say that he was a lost man if the secret of Anne Catherick was known?”

“Yes! yes!  I did.”

“Well, Marian, when our other resources have failed us, I mean to know the Secret.  My old superstition clings to me, even yet.  I say again the woman in white is a living influence in our three lives.  The End is appointed—­the End is drawing us on—­and Anne Catherick, dead in her grave, points the way to it still!”

V

The story of my first inquiries in Hampshire is soon told.

My early departure from London enabled me to reach Mr. Dawson’s house in the forenoon.  Our interview, so far as the object of my visit was concerned, led to no satisfactory result.

Mr. Dawson’s books certainly showed when he had resumed his attendance on Miss Halcombe at Blackwater Park, but it was not possible to calculate back from this date with any exactness, without such help from Mrs. Michelson as I knew she was unable to afford.  She could not say from memory (who, in similar cases, ever can?) how many days had elapsed between the renewal of the doctor’s attendance on his patient and the previous departure of Lady Glyde.  She was almost certain of having mentioned the circumstance of the departure to Miss Halcombe, on the day after it happened—­but then she was no more able to fix the date of the day on which this disclosure took place, than to fix the date of the day before, when Lady Glyde had left for London.  Neither could she calculate, with any nearer approach to exactness, the time that had passed from the departure of her mistress, to the period when the undated letter from Madame Fosco arrived.  Lastly, as if to complete the series of difficulties, the doctor himself, having been ill at the time, had omitted to make his usual entry of the day of the week and month when the gardener from Blackwater Park had called on him to deliver Mrs. Michelson’s message.