“Not quite entirely, sir.  Mrs. Catherick had her whims and fancies about it at times, and used now and then to lay claim to the child, as if she wanted to spite me for bringing it up.  But these fits of hers never lasted for long.  Poor little Anne was always returned to me, and was always glad to get back—­though she led but a gloomy life in my house, having no playmates, like other children, to brighten her up.  Our longest separation was when her mother took her to Limmeridge.  Just at that time I lost my husband, and I felt it was as well, in that miserable affliction, that Anne should not be in the house.  She was between ten and eleven years old then, slow at her lessons, poor soul, and not so cheerful as other children—­but as pretty a little girl to look at as you would wish to see.  I waited at home till her mother brought her back, and then I made the offer to take her with me to London—­the truth being, sir, that I could not find it in my heart to stop at Old Welmingham after my husband’s death, the place was so changed and so dismal to me.”

“And did Mrs. Catherick consent to your proposal?”

“No, sir.  She came back from the north harder and bitterer than ever.  Folks did say that she had been obliged to ask Sir Percival’s leave to go, to begin with; and that she only went to nurse her dying sister at Limmeridge because the poor woman was reported to have saved money—­the truth being that she hardly left enough to bury her.  These things may have soured Mrs. Catherick likely enough, but however that may be, she wouldn’t hear of my taking the child away.  She seemed to like distressing us both by parting us.  All I could do was to give Anne my direction, and to tell her privately, if she was ever in trouble, to come to me.  But years passed before she was free to come.  I never saw her again, poor soul, till the night she escaped from the mad-house.”

“You know, Mrs. Clements, why Sir Percival Glyde shut her up?”

“I only know what Anne herself told me, sir.  The poor thing used to ramble and wander about it sadly.  She said her mother had got some secret of Sir Percival’s to keep, and had let it out to her long after I left Hampshire—­and when Sir Percival found she knew it, he shut her up.  But she never could say what it was when I asked her.  All she could tell me was, that her mother might be the ruin and destruction of Sir Percival if she chose.  Mrs. Catherick may have let out just as much as that, and no more.  I’m next to certain I should have heard the whole truth from Anne, if she had really known it as she pretended to do, and as she very likely fancied she did, poor soul.”

This idea had more than once occurred to my own mind.  I had already told Marian that I doubted whether Laura was really on the point of making any important discovery when she and Anne Catherick were disturbed by Count Fosco at the boat-house.  It was perfectly in character with Anne’s mental affliction that she should assume an absolute knowledge of the secret on no better grounds than vague suspicion, derived from hints which her mother had incautiously let drop in her presence.  Sir Percival’s guilty distrust would, in that case, infallibly inspire him with the false idea that Anne knew all from her mother, just as it had afterwards fixed in his mind the equally false suspicion that his wife knew all from Anne.