“You are living in the village, then?” I said.  “It is strange I should not have heard of you, though you have only been here two days.”

“No, no, not in the village.  Three miles away at a farm.  Do you know the farm?  They call it Todd’s Corner.”

I remembered the place perfectly—­we had often passed by it in our drives.  It was one of the oldest farms in the neighbourhood, situated in a solitary, sheltered spot, inland at the junction of two hills.

“They are relations of Mrs. Clements at Todd’s Corner,” she went on, “and they had often asked her to go and see them.  She said she would go, and take me with her, for the quiet and the fresh air.  It was very kind, was it not?  I would have gone anywhere to be quiet, and safe, and out of the way.  But when I heard that Todd’s Corner was near Limmeridge—­oh!  I was so happy I would have walked all the way barefoot to get there, and see the schools and the village and Limmeridge House again.  They are very good people at Todd’s Corner.  I hope I shall stay there a long time.  There is only one thing I don’t like about them, and don’t like about Mrs. Clements——­”

“What is it?”

“They will tease me about dressing all in white—­they say it looks so particular.  How do they know?  Mrs. Fairlie knew best.  Mrs. Fairlie would never have made me wear this ugly blue cloak!  Ah! she was fond of white in her lifetime, and here is white stone about her grave—­and I am making it whiter for her sake.  She often wore white herself, and she always dressed her little daughter in white.  Is Miss Fairlie well and happy?  Does she wear white now, as she used when she was a girl?”

Her voice sank when she put the questions about Miss Fairlie, and she turned her head farther and farther away from me.  I thought I detected, in the alteration of her manner, an uneasy consciousness of the risk she had run in sending the anonymous letter, and I instantly determined so to frame my answer as to surprise her into owning it.

“Miss Fairlie was not very well or very happy this morning,” I said.

She murmured a few words, but they were spoken so confusedly, and in such a low tone, that I could not even guess at what they meant.

“Did you ask me why Miss Fairlie was neither well nor happy this morning?” I continued.

“No,” she said quickly and eagerly—­“oh no, I never asked that.”

“I will tell you without your asking,” I went on.  “Miss Fairlie has received your letter.”

She had been down on her knees for some little time past, carefully removing the last weather-stains left about the inscription while we were speaking together.  The first sentence of the words I had just addressed to her made her pause in her occupation, and turn slowly without rising from her knees, so as to face me.  The second sentence literally petrified her.  The cloth she had been holding dropped from her hands—­her lips fell apart—­all the little colour that there was naturally in her face left it in an instant.