Not a word more was said, on either side, as we walked back to the
house. Miss Halcombe hastened immediately to her sister's room,
and I withdrew to my studio to set in order all of Mr. Fairlie's
drawings that I had not yet mounted and restored before I resigned
them to the care of other hands. Thoughts that I had hitherto
restrained, thoughts that made my position harder than ever to
endure, crowded on me now that I was alone.

She was engaged to be married, and her future husband was Sir
Percival Glyde. A man of the rank of Baronet, and the owner of
property in Hampshire.

There were hundreds of baronets in England, and dozens of
landowners in Hampshire. Judging by the ordinary rules of
evidence, I had not the shadow of a reason, thus far, for
connecting Sir Percival Glyde with the suspicious words of inquiry
that had been spoken to me by the woman in white. And yet, I did
connect him with them. Was it because he had now become
associated in my mind with Miss Fairlie, Miss Fairlie being, in
her turn, associated with Anne Catherick, since the night when I
had discovered the ominous likeness between them? Had the events
of the morning so unnerved me already that I was at the mercy of
any delusion which common chances and common coincidences might
suggest to my imagination? Impossible to say. I could only feel
that what had passed between Miss Halcombe and myself, on our way
from the summer-house, had affected me very strangely. The
foreboding of some undiscoverable danger lying hid from us all in
the darkness of the future was strong on me. The doubt whether I
was not linked already to a chain of events which even my