Knowing, now, that Mr. Philip Fairlie had been at Varneck Hall in the autumn of eighteen hundred and twenty-six , and that Mrs. Catherick had been living there in service at the same time, we knew also⁠—first, that Anne had been born in June, eighteen hundred and twenty-seven ; secondly, that she had always presented an extraordinary personal resemblance to Laura; and, thirdly, that Laura herself was strikingly like her father. Mr. Philip Fairlie had been one of the notoriously handsome men of his time. In disposition entirely unlike his brother Frederick, he was the spoilt darling of society, especially of the women⁠—an easy, lighthearted, impulsive, affectionate man⁠—generous to a fault⁠—constitutionally lax in his principles, and notoriously thoughtless of moral obligations where women were concerned. Such were the facts we knew⁠—such was the character of the man. Surely the plain inference that follows needs no pointing out?