I waited for a moment to consider.
Was this third person, supposed to have been secretly present at the interview, a reality, or the creature of Anne Catherick's excited fancy?
It was impossible to determine.
The one thing certain was, that we had failed again on the very brink of discovery—failed utterly and irretrievably, unless Anne Catherick kept her appointment at the boat-house for the next day.
"Are you quite sure you have told me everything that passed? Every word that was said?" I inquired.
"I think so," she answered.
"My powers of memory, Marian, are not like yours.
But I was so strongly impressed, so deeply interested, that nothing of any importance can possibly have escaped me."
"My dear Laura, the merest trifles are of importance where Anne Catherick is concerned.
Think again.
Did no chance reference escape her as to the place in which she is living at the present time?"
"None that I can remember."
"Did she not mention a companion and friend—a woman named Mrs. Clements?"
"Oh yes! yes!
I forgot that.
She told me Mrs. Clements wanted sadly to go with her to the lake and take care of her, and begged and prayed that she would not venture into this neighbourhood alone."
"Was that all she said about Mrs. Clements?"
"Yes, that was all."
"She told you nothing about the place in which she took refuge after leaving Todd's Corner?"
"Nothing—I am quite sure."
"Nor where she has lived since?
Nor what her illness had been?"
"No, Marian, not a word.
Tell me, pray tell me, what you think about it.
I don't know what to think, or what to do next."
"You must do this, my love: You must carefully keep the appointment at the boat-house to-morrow.
It is impossible to say what interests may not depend on your seeing that woman again.
You shall not be left to yourself a second time.
I will follow you at a safe distance.
Nobody shall see me, but I will keep within hearing of your voice, if anything happens.
Anne Catherick has escaped Walter Hartright, and has escaped you.
Whatever happens, she shall not escape ME."
Laura's eyes read mine attentively.
"You believe," she said, "in this secret that my husband is afraid of?
Suppose, Marian, it should only exist after all in Anne Catherick's fancy?
Suppose she only wanted to see me and to speak to me, for the sake of old remembrances?
Her manner was so strange—I almost doubted her.
Would you trust her in other things?"
"I trust nothing, Laura, but my own observation of your husband's conduct.
I judge Anne Catherick's words by his actions, and I believe there is a secret."
I said no more, and got up to leave the room.
Thoughts were troubling me which I might have told her if we had spoken together longer, and which it might have been dangerous for her to know.
The influence of the terrible dream from which she had awakened me hung darkly and heavily over every fresh impression which the progress of her narrative produced on my mind.
I felt the ominous future coming close, chilling me with an unutterable awe, forcing on me the conviction of an unseen design in the long series of complications which had now fastened round us.
I thought of Hartright—as I saw him in the body when he said farewell; as I saw him in the spirit in my dream—and I too began to doubt now whether we were not advancing blindfold to an appointed and an inevitable end.
Leaving Laura to go upstairs alone, I went out to look about me in the walks near the house.
The circumstances under which Anne Catherick had parted from her had made me secretly anxious to know how Count Fosco was passing the afternoon, and had rendered me secretly distrustful of the results of that solitary journey from which Sir Percival had returned but a few hours since.
After looking for them in every direction and discovering nothing, I returned to the house, and entered the different rooms on the ground floor one after another.
They were all empty.
I came out again into the hall, and went upstairs to return to Laura.