The woman in white

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Woman in White Author: Wilkie Collins Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #583] Release Date: July, 1996 Last updated: September 29, 2014 Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN IN WHITE *** The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins CONTENTS First Epoch THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT THE STORY CONTINUED BY VINCENT GILMORE THE STORY CONTINUED BY MARIAN HALCOMBE Second Epoch THE STORY CONTINUED BY MARIAN HALCOMBE THE STORY CONTINUED BY FREDERICK FAIRLIE, ESQ THE STORY CONTINUED BY ELIZA MICHELSON THE STORY CONTINUED IN SEVERAL NARRATIVES THE NARRATIVE OF HESTER PINHORN THE NARRATIVE OF THE DOCTOR THE NARRATIVE OF JANE GOULD THE NARRATIVE OF THE TOMBSTONE THE NARRATIVE OF WALTER HARTRIGHT Third Epoch THE STORY CONTINUED BY WALTER HARTRIGHT THE STORY CONTINUED BY MRS CATHERICK THE STORY CONTINUED BY WALTER HARTRIGHT THE STORY CONTINUED BY ISIDOR, OTTAVIO, BALDASSARE FOSCO THE STORY CONCLUDED BY WALTER HARTRIGHT THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT (of Clement's Inn, Teacher of Drawing) This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events which fill these pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of Justice But the Law is still, in certain inevitable cases, the pre-engaged servant of the long purse; and the story is left to be told, for the first time, in this place As the Judge might once have heard it, so the Reader shall hear it now No circumstance of importance, from the beginning to the end of the disclosure, shall be related on hearsay evidence When the writer of these introductory lines (Walter Hartright by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the incidents to be recorded, he will describe them in his own person When his experience fails, he will retire from the position of narrator; and his task will be continued, from the point at which he has left it off, by other persons who can speak to the circumstances under notice from their own knowledge, just as clearly and positively as he has spoken before them Thus, the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness—with the same object, in both cases, to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect; and to trace the course of one complete series of events, by making the persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word Let Walter Hartright, teacher of drawing, aged twenty-eight years, be heard first II It was the last day of July The long hot summer was drawing to a close; and we, the weary pilgrims of the London pavement, were beginning to think of the cloud-shadows on the corn-fields, and the autumn breezes on the sea-shore For my own poor part, the fading summer left me out of health, out of spirits, and, if the truth must be told, out of money as well During the past year I had not managed my professional resources as carefully as usual; and my extravagance now limited me to the prospect of spending the autumn economically between my mother's cottage at Hampstead and my own chambers in town The evening, I remember, was still and cloudy; the London air was at its heaviest; the distant hum of the street-traffic was at its faintest; the small pulse of the life within me, and the great heart of the city around me, seemed to be sinking in unison, languidly and more languidly, with the sinking sun I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs It was one of the two evenings in every week which I was accustomed to spend with my mother and my sister So I turned my steps northward in the direction of Hampstead Events which I have yet to relate make it necessary to mention in this place that my father had been dead some years at the period of which I am now writing; and that my sister Sarah and I were the sole survivors of a family of five children My father was a drawing-master before me His exertions had made him highly successful in his profession; and his affectionate anxiety to provide for the future of those who were dependent on his labours had impelled him, from the time of his marriage, to devote to the insuring of his life a much larger portion of his income than most men consider it necessary to set aside for that purpose Thanks to his admirable prudence and self-denial my mother and sister were left, after his death, as independent of the world as they had been during his lifetime I succeeded to his connection, and had every reason to feel grateful for the prospect that awaited me at my starting in life The quiet twilight was still trembling on the topmost ridges of the heath; and the view of London below me had sunk into a black gulf in the shadow of the cloudy night, when I stood before the gate of my mother's cottage I had hardly rung the bell before the house door was opened violently; my worthy Italian friend, Professor Pesca, appeared in the servant's place; and darted out joyously to receive me, with a shrill foreign parody on an English cheer On his own account, and, I must be allowed to add, on mine also, the Professor merits the honour of a formal introduction Accident has made him the starting-point of the strange family story which it is the purpose of these pages to unfold I had first become acquainted with my Italian friend by meeting him at certain great houses where he taught his own language and I taught drawing All I then knew of the history of his life was, that he had once held a situation in the University of Padua; that he had left Italy for political reasons (the nature of which he uniformly declined to mention to any one); and that he had been for many years respectably established in London as a teacher of languages Without being actually a dwarf—for he was perfectly well proportioned from head to foot—Pesca was, I think, the smallest human being I ever saw out of a show-room Remarkable anywhere, by his personal appearance, he was still further distinguished among the rank and file of mankind by the harmless eccentricity of his character The ruling idea of his life appeared to be, that he was bound to show his gratitude to the country which had afforded him an asylum and a means of subsistence by doing his utmost to turn himself into an Englishman Not content with paying the nation in general the compliment of invariably carrying an umbrella, and invariably wearing gaiters and a white hat, the Professor further aspired to become an Englishman in his habits and amusements, as well as in his personal appearance Finding us distinguished, as a nation, by our love of athletic exercises, the little man, in the innocence of his heart, devoted himself impromptu to all our English sports and pastimes whenever he had the opportunity of joining them; firmly persuaded that he could adopt our national amusements of the field by an effort of will precisely as he had adopted our national gaiters and our national white hat I had seen him risk his limbs blindly at a fox-hunt and in a cricket-field; and soon afterwards I saw him risk his life, just as blindly, in the sea at Brighton We had met there accidentally, and were bathing together If we had been engaged in any exercise peculiar to my own nation I should, of course, have looked after Pesca carefully; but as foreigners are generally quite as well able to take care of themselves in the water as Englishmen, it never occurred to me that the art of swimming might merely add one more to the list of manly exercises which the Professor believed that he could learn impromptu Soon after we had both struck out from shore, I stopped, finding my friend did not gain on me, and turned round to look for him To my horror and amazement, I saw nothing between me and the beach but two little white arms which struggled for an instant above the surface of the water, and then disappeared from view When I dived for him, the poor little man was lying quietly coiled up at the bottom, in a hollow of shingle, looking by many degrees smaller than I had ever seen him look before During the few minutes that elapsed while I was taking him in, the air revived him, and he ascended the steps of the machine with my assistance With the partial recovery of his animation came the return of his wonderful delusion on the subject of swimming As soon as his chattering teeth would let him speak, he smiled vacantly, and said he thought it must have been the Cramp When he had thoroughly recovered himself, and had joined me on the beach, his warm Southern nature broke through all artificial English restraints in a moment He overwhelmed me with the wildest expressions of affection— exclaimed passionately, in his exaggerated Italian way, that he would hold his life henceforth at my disposal—and declared that he should never be happy again until he had found an opportunity of proving his gratitude by rendering me some service which I might remember, on my side, to the end of my days I did my best to stop the torrent of his tears and protestations by persisting in treating the whole adventure as a good subject for a joke; and succeeded at last, as I imagined, in lessening Pesca's overwhelming sense of obligation to me Little did I think then—little did I think afterwards when our pleasant holiday had drawn to an end—that the opportunity of serving me for which my grateful companion so ardently longed was soon to come; that he was eagerly to seize it on the instant; and that by so doing he was to turn the whole current of my existence into a new channel, and to alter me to myself almost past recognition Yet so it was If I had not dived for Professor Pesca when he lay under water on his shingle bed, I should in all human probability never have been connected with the story which these pages will relate—I should never, perhaps, have heard even the name of the woman who has lived in all my thoughts, who has possessed herself of all my energies, who has become the one guiding influence that now directs the purpose of my life III Pesca's face and manner, on the evening when we confronted each other at my mother's gate, were more than sufficient to inform me that something extraordinary had happened It was quite useless, however, to ask him for an immediate explanation I could only conjecture, while he was dragging me in by both hands, that (knowing my habits) he had come to the cottage to make sure of meeting me that night, and that he had some news to tell of an unusually agreeable kind We both bounced into the parlour in a highly abrupt and undignified manner My mother sat by the open window laughing and fanning herself Pesca was one of her especial favourites and his wildest eccentricities were always pardonable in her eyes Poor dear soul! from the first moment when she found out that the little Professor was deeply and gratefully attached to her son, she opened her heart to him unreservedly, and took all his puzzling foreign peculiarities for granted, without so much as attempting to understand any one of them matters were settled, Mr Kyrle endeavoured to turn the conversation next to Laura's affairs Knowing, and desiring to know nothing of those affairs, and doubting whether he would approve, as a man of business, of my conduct in relation to my wife's life-interest in the legacy left to Madame Fosco, I begged Mr Kyrle to excuse me if I abstained from discussing the subject It was connected, as I could truly tell him, with those sorrows and troubles of the past which we never referred to among ourselves, and which we instinctively shrank from discussing with others My last labour, as the evening approached, was to obtain "The Narrative of the Tombstone," by taking a copy of the false inscription on the grave before it was erased The day came—the day when Laura once more entered the familiar breakfast-room at Limmeridge House All the persons assembled rose from their seats as Marian and I led her in A perceptible shock of surprise, an audible murmur of interest ran through them, at the sight of her face Mr Fairlie was present (by my express stipulation), with Mr Kyrle by his side His valet stood behind him with a smelling-bottle ready in one hand, and a white handkerchief, saturated with eau-de-Cologne, in the other I opened the proceedings by publicly appealing to Mr Fairlie to say whether I appeared there with his authority and under his express sanction He extended an arm, on either side, to Mr Kyrle and to his valet—was by them assisted to stand on his legs, and then expressed himself in these terms: "Allow me to present Mr Hartright I am as great an invalid as ever, and he is so very obliging as to speak for me The subject is dreadfully embarrassing Please hear him, and don't make a noise!" With those words he slowly sank back again into the chair, and took refuge in his scented pocket-handkerchief The disclosure of the conspiracy followed, after I had offered my preliminary explanation, first of all, in the fewest and the plainest words I was there present (I informed my hearers) to declare, first, that my wife, then sitting by me, was the daughter of the late Mr Philip Fairlie; secondly, to prove by positive facts, that the funeral which they had attended in Limmeridge churchyard was the funeral of another woman; thirdly, to give them a plain account of how it had all happened Without further preface, I at once read the narrative of the conspiracy, describing it in clear outline, and dwelling only upon the pecuniary motive for it, in order to avoid complicating my statement by unnecessary reference to Sir Percival's secret This done, I reminded my audience of the date on the inscription in the churchyard (the 25th), and confirmed its correctness by producing the certificate of death I then read them Sir Percival's letter of the 25th, announcing his wife's intended journey from Hampshire to London on the 26th I next showed that she had taken that journey, by the personal testimony of the driver of the fly, and I proved that she had performed it on the appointed day, by the order-book at the livery stables Marian then added her own statement of the meeting between Laura and herself at the mad-house, and of her sister's escape After which I closed the proceedings by informing the persons present of Sir Percival's death and of my marriage Mr Kyrle rose when I resumed my seat, and declared, as the legal adviser of the family, that my case was proved by the plainest evidence he had ever heard in his life As he spoke those words, I put my arm round Laura, and raised her so that she was plainly visible to every one in the room "Are you all of the same opinion?" I asked, advancing towards them a few steps, and pointing to my wife The effect of the question was electrical Far down at the lower end of the room one of the oldest tenants on the estate started to his feet, and led the rest with him in an instant I see the man now, with his honest brown face and his iron-grey hair, mounted on the window-seat, waving his heavy riding-whip over his head, and leading the cheers "There she is, alive and hearty—God bless her! Gi' it tongue, lads! Gi' it tongue!" The shout that answered him, reiterated again and again, was the sweetest music I ever heard The labourers in the village and the boys from the school, assembled on the lawn, caught up the cheering and echoed it back on us The farmers' wives clustered round Laura, and struggled which should be first to shake hands with her, and to implore her, with the tears pouring over their own cheeks, to bear up bravely and not to cry She was so completely overwhelmed, that I was obliged to take her from them, and carry her to the door There I gave her into Marian's care—Marian, who had never failed us yet, whose courageous self-control did not fail us now Left by myself at the door, I invited all the persons present (after thanking them in Laura's name and mine) to follow me to the churchyard, and see the false inscription struck off the tombstone with their own eyes They all left the house, and all joined the throng of villagers collected round the grave, where the statuary's man was waiting for us In a breathless silence, the first sharp stroke of the steel sounded on the marble Not a voice was heard —not a soul moved, till those three words, "Laura, Lady Glyde," had vanished from sight Then there was a great heave of relief among the crowd, as if they felt that the last fetters of the conspiracy had been struck off Laura herself, and the assembly slowly withdrew It was late in the day before the whole inscription was erased One line only was afterwards engraved in its place: "Anne Catherick, July 25th, 1850." I returned to Limmeridge House early enough in the evening to take leave of Mr Kyrle He and his clerk, and the driver of the fly, went back to London by the night train On their departure an insolent message was delivered to me from Mr Fairlie—who had been carried from the room in a shattered condition, when the first outbreak of cheering answered my appeal to the tenantry The message conveyed to us "Mr Fairlie's best congratulations," and requested to know whether "we contemplated stopping in the house." I sent back word that the only object for which we had entered his doors was accomplished—that I contemplated stopping in no man's house but my own—and that Mr Fairlie need not entertain the slightest apprehension of ever seeing us or hearing from us again We went back to our friends at the farm to rest that night, and the next morning—escorted to the station, with the heartiest enthusiasm and good will, by the whole village and by all the farmers in the neighbourhood—we returned to London As our view of the Cumberland hills faded in the distance, I thought of the first disheartening circumstances under which the long struggle that was now past and over had been pursued It was strange to look back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of assistance had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me to act for myself If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what would have been the result? The gain (on Mr Kyrle's own showing) would have been more than doubtful—the loss, judging by the plain test of events as they had really happened, certain The law would never have obtained me my interview with Mrs Catherick The law would never have made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count II Two more events remain to be added to the chain before it reaches fairly from the outset of the story to the close While our new sense of freedom from the long oppression of the past was still strange to us, I was sent for by the friend who had given me my first employment in wood engraving, to receive from him a fresh testimony of his regard for my welfare He had been commissioned by his employers to go to Paris, and to examine for them a fresh discovery in the practical application of his Art, the merits of which they were anxious to ascertain His own engagements had not allowed him leisure time to undertake the errand, and he had most kindly suggested that it should be transferred to me I could have no hesitation in thankfully accepting the offer, for if I acquitted myself of my commission as I hoped I should, the result would be a permanent engagement on the illustrated newspaper, to which I was now only occasionally attached I received my instructions and packed up for the journey the next day On leaving Laura once more (under what changed circumstances!) in her sister's care, a serious consideration recurred to me, which had more than once crossed my wife's mind, as well as my own, already—I mean the consideration of Marian's future Had we any right to let our selfish affection accept the devotion of all that generous life? Was it not our duty, our best expression of gratitude, to forget ourselves, and to think only of her? I tried to say this when we were alone for a moment, before I went away She took my hand, and silenced me at the first words "After all that we three have suffered together," she said "there can be no parting between us till the last parting of all My heart and my happiness, Walter, are with Laura and you Wait a little till there are children's voices at your fireside I will teach them to speak for me in their language, and the first lesson they say to their father and mother shall be—We can't spare our aunt!" My journey to Paris was not undertaken alone At the eleventh hour Pesca decided that he would accompany me He had not recovered his customary cheerfulness since the night at the Opera, and he determined to try what a week's holiday would do to raise his spirits I performed the errand entrusted to me, and drew out the necessary report, on the fourth day from our arrival in Paris The fifth day I arranged to devote to sight-seeing and amusements in Pesca's company Our hotel had been too full to accommodate us both on the same floor My room was on the second story, and Pesca's was above me, on the third On the morning of the fifth day I went upstairs to see if the Professor was ready to go out Just before I reached the landing I saw his door opened from the inside—a long, delicate, nervous hand (not my friend's hand certainly) held it ajar At the same time I heard Pesca's voice saying eagerly, in low tones, and in his own language—"I remember the name, but I don't know the man You saw at the Opera he was so changed that I could not recognise him I will forward the report—I can do no more." "No more need be done," answered the second voice The door opened wide, and the light-haired man with the scar on his cheek—the man I had seen following Count Fosco's cab a week before—came out He bowed as I drew aside to let him pass—his face was fearfully pale—and he held fast by the banisters as he descended the stairs I pushed open the door and entered Pesca's room He was crouched up, in the strangest manner, in a corner of the sofa He seemed to shrink from me when I approached him "Am I disturbing you?" I asked "I did not know you had a friend with you till I saw him come out." "No friend," said Pesca eagerly "I see him to-day for the first time and the last." "I am afraid he has brought you bad news?" "Horrible news, Walter! Let us go back to London—I don't want to stop here —I am sorry I ever came The misfortunes of my youth are very hard upon me," he said, turning his face to the wall, "very hard upon me in my later time I try to forget them—and they will not forget me!" "We can't return, I am afraid, before the afternoon," I replied "Would you like to come out with me in the meantime?" "No, my friend, I will wait here But let us go back to-day—pray let us go back." I left him with the assurance that he should leave Paris that afternoon We had arranged the evening before to ascend the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with Victor Hugo's noble romance for our guide There was nothing in the French capital that I was more anxious to see, and I departed by myself for the church Approaching Notre Dame by the river-side, I passed on my way the terrible dead-house of Paris—the Morgue A great crowd clamoured and heaved round the door There was evidently something inside which excited the popular curiosity, and fed the popular appetite for horror I should have walked on to the church if the conversation of two men and a woman on the outskirts of the crowd had not caught my ear They had just come out from seeing the sight in the Morgue, and the account they were giving of the dead body to their neighbours described it as the corpse of a man—a man of immense size, with a strange mark on his left arm The moment those words reached me I stopped and took my place with the crowd going in Some dim foreshadowing of the truth had crossed my mind when I heard Pesca's voice through the open door, and when I saw the stranger's face as he passed me on the stairs of the hotel Now the truth itself was revealed to me—revealed in the chance words that had just reached my ears Other vengeance than mine had followed that fated man from the theatre to his own door—from his own door to his refuge in Paris Other vengeance than mine had called him to the day of reckoning, and had exacted from him the penalty of his life The moment when I had pointed him out to Pesca at the theatre in the hearing of that stranger by our side, who was looking for him too—was the moment that sealed his doom I remembered the struggle in my own heart, when he and I stood face to face—the struggle before I could let him escape me—and shuddered as I recalled it Slowly, inch by inch, I pressed in with the crowd, moving nearer and nearer to the great glass screen that parts the dead from the living at the Morgue— nearer and nearer, till I was close behind the front row of spectators, and could look in There he lay, unowned, unknown, exposed to the flippant curiosity of a French mob! There was the dreadful end of that long life of degraded ability and heartless crime! Hushed in the sublime repose of death, the broad, firm, massive face and head fronted us so grandly that the chattering Frenchwomen about me lifted their hands in admiration, and cried in shrill chorus, "Ah, what a handsome man!" The wound that had killed him had been struck with a knife or dagger exactly over his heart No other traces of violence appeared about the body except on the left arm, and there, exactly in the place where I had seen the brand on Pesca's arm, were two deep cuts in the shape of the letter T, which entirely obliterated the mark of the Brotherhood His clothes, hung above him, showed that he had been himself conscious of his danger—they were clothes that had disguised him as a French artisan For a few moments, but not for longer, I forced myself to see these things through the glass screen I can write of them at no greater length, for I saw no more The few facts in connection with his death which I subsequently ascertained (partly from Pesca and partly from other sources), may be stated here before the subject is dismissed from these pages His body was taken out of the Seine in the disguise which I have described, nothing being found on him which revealed his name, his rank, or his place of abode The hand that struck him was never traced, and the circumstances under which he was killed were never discovered I leave others to draw their own conclusions in reference to the secret of the assassination as I have drawn mine When I have intimated that the foreigner with the scar was a member of the Brotherhood (admitted in Italy after Pesca's departure from his native country), and when I have further added that the two cuts, in the form of a T, on the left arm of the dead man, signified the Italian word "Traditore," and showed that justice had been done by the Brotherhood on a traitor, I have contributed all that I know towards elucidating the mystery of Count Fosco's death The body was identified the day after I had seen it by means of an anonymous letter addressed to his wife He was buried by Madame Fosco in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise Fresh funeral wreaths continue to this day to be hung on the ornamental bronze railings round the tomb by the Countess's own hand She lives in the strictest retirement at Versailles Not long since she published a biography of her deceased husband The work throws no light whatever on the name that was really his own or on the secret history of his life—it is almost entirely devoted to the praise of his domestic virtues, the assertion of his rare abilities, and the enumeration of the honours conferred on him The circumstances attending his death are very briefly noticed, and are summed up on the last page in this sentence—"His life was one long assertion of the rights of the aristocracy and the sacred principles of Order, and he died a martyr to his cause." III The summer and autumn passed after my return from Paris, and brought no changes with them which need be noticed here We lived so simply and quietly that the income which I was now steadily earning sufficed for all our wants In the February of the new year our first child was born—a son My mother and sister and Mrs Vesey were our guests at the little christening party, and Mrs Clements was present to assist my wife on the same occasion Marian was our boy's godmother, and Pesca and Mr Gilmore (the latter acting by proxy) were his godfathers I may add here that when Mr Gilmore returned to us a year later he assisted the design of these pages, at my request, by writing the Narrative which appears early in the story under his name, and which, though first in order of precedence, was thus, in order of time, the last that I received The only event in our lives which now remains to be recorded, occurred when our little Walter was six months old At that time I was sent to Ireland to make sketches for certain forthcoming illustrations in the newspaper to which I was attached I was away for nearly a fortnight, corresponding regularly with my wife and Marian, except during the last three days of my absence, when my movements were too uncertain to enable me to receive letters I performed the latter part of my journey back at night, and when I reached home in the morning, to my utter astonishment there was no one to receive me Laura and Marian and the child had left the house on the day before my return A note from my wife, which was given to me by the servant, only increased my surprise, by informing me that they had gone to Limmeridge House Marian had prohibited any attempt at written explanations—I was entreated to follow them the moment I came back—complete enlightenment awaited me on my arrival in Cumberland—and I was forbidden to feel the slightest anxiety in the meantime There the note ended It was still early enough to catch the morning train I reached Limmeridge House the same afternoon My wife and Marian were both upstairs They had established themselves (by way of completing my amazement) in the little room which had been once assigned to me for a studio, when I was employed on Mr Fairlie's drawings On the very chair which I used to occupy when I was at work Marian was sitting now, with the child industriously sucking his coral upon her lap—while Laura was standing by the well-remembered drawing-table which I had so often used, with the little album that I had filled for her in past times open under her hand "What in the name of heaven has brought you here?" I asked "Does Mr Fairlie know——?" Marian suspended the question on my lips by telling me that Mr Fairlie was dead He had been struck by paralysis, and had never rallied after the shock Mr Kyrle had informed them of his death, and had advised them to proceed immediately to Limmeridge House Some dim perception of a great change dawned on my mind Laura spoke before I had quite realised it She stole close to me to enjoy the surprise which was still expressed in my face "My darling Walter," she said, "must we really account for our boldness in coming here? I am afraid, love, I can only explain it by breaking through our rule, and referring to the past." "There is not the least necessity for doing anything of the kind," said Marian "We can be just as explicit, and much more interesting, by referring to the future." She rose and held up the child kicking and crowing in her arms "Do you know who this is, Walter?" she asked, with bright tears of happiness gathering in her eyes "Even my bewilderment has its limits," I replied "I think I can still answer for knowing my own child." "Child!" she exclaimed, with all her easy gaiety of old times "Do you talk in that familiar manner of one of the landed gentry of England? Are you aware, when I present this illustrious baby to your notice, in whose presence you stand? Evidently not! Let me make two eminent personages known to one another: Mr Walter Hartright—the Heir of Limmeridge." So she spoke In writing those last words, I have written all The pen falters in my hand The long, happy labour of many months is over Marian was the good angel of our lives—let Marian end our Story End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN IN WHITE *** ***** This file should be named 583-h.htm or 583-h.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/5/8/583/ Updated editions will replace the previous one the old editions will be renamed Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the 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Wilkie Collins CONTENTS First Epoch THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT THE STORY CONTINUED BY VINCENT GILMORE THE STORY CONTINUED BY MARIAN HALCOMBE... People, I do assure you, who would have opened their eyes in astonishment, if they had seen Charles the Fifth pick up Titian's brush for him Do you mind putting this tray of coins back in the cabinet, and giving me the next one to it? In