Reasoning on these assumptions, and always bearing in mind the one certain fact to guide me, that Mrs. Catherick was in possession of the Secret, I easily understood that it was Sir Percival’s interest to keep her at Welmingham, because her character in that place was certain to isolate her from all communication with female neighbours, and to allow her no opportunities of talking incautiously in moments of free intercourse with inquisitive bosom friends.  But what was the mystery to be concealed?  Not Sir Percival’s infamous connection with Mrs. Catherick’s disgrace, for the neighbours were the very people who knew of it—­not the suspicion that he was Anne’s father, for Welmingham was the place in which that suspicion must inevitably exist.  If I accepted the guilty appearances described to me as unreservedly as others had accepted them, if I drew from them the same superficial conclusion which Mr. Catherick and all his neighbours had drawn, where was the suggestion, in all that I had heard, of a dangerous secret between Sir Percival and Mrs. Catherick, which had been kept hidden from that time to this?

And yet, in those stolen meetings, in those familiar whisperings between the clerk’s wife and “the gentleman in mourning,” the clue to discovery existed beyond a doubt.

Was it possible that appearances in this case had pointed one way while the truth lay all the while unsuspected in another direction?  Could Mrs. Catherick’s assertion, that she was the victim of a dreadful mistake, by any possibility be true?  Or, assuming it to be false, could the conclusion which associated Sir Percival with her guilt have been founded in some inconceivable error?  Had Sir Percival, by any chance, courted the suspicion that was wrong for the sake of diverting from himself some other suspicion that was right?  Here—­if I could find it—­here was the approach to the Secret, hidden deep under the surface of the apparently unpromising story which I had just heard.

My next questions were now directed to the one object of ascertaining whether Mr. Catherick had or had not arrived truly at the conviction of his wife’s misconduct.  The answers I received from Mrs. Clements left me in no doubt whatever on that point.  Mrs. Catherick had, on the clearest evidence, compromised her reputation, while a single woman, with some person unknown, and had married to save her character.  It had been positively ascertained, by calculations of time and place into which I need not enter particularly, that the daughter who bore her husband’s name was not her husband’s child.

The next object of inquiry, whether it was equally certain that Sir Percival must have been the father of Anne, was beset by far greater difficulties.  I was in no position to try the probabilities on one side or on the other in this instance by any better test than the test of personal resemblance.

“I suppose you often saw Sir Percival when he was in your village?” I said.