The Story Continued by Marian Halcombe, in Extracts from Her Diary

hesitate about Sir Percival, in the face of the plainest proofs. I hesitate even in speaking to Laura. On this very morning I doubted, with my hand on the door, whether I should ask her the questions I had come to put, or not. When I went into her room I found her walking up and down in great impatience. She looked flushed and excited, and she came forward at once, and spoke to me before I could open my lips. “I wanted you,” she said. “Come and sit down on the sofa with me. Marian! I can bear this no longer⁠—I must and will end it.” There was too much colour in her cheeks, too much energy in her manner, too much firmness in her voice. The little book of Hartright’s drawings⁠—the fatal book that she will dream over whenever she is alone⁠—was in one of her hands. I began by gently and firmly taking it from her, and putting it out of sight on a side-table. “Tell me quietly, my darling, what you wish to do,” I said. “Has Mr. Gilmore been advising you?” She shook her head. “No, not in what I am thinking of now. He was very kind and good to me, Marian, and I am ashamed to say I distressed him by crying. I am miserably helpless⁠—I can’t control myself. For my own sake, and for all our sakes, I must have courage enough to end it.” “Do you mean courage enough to claim your release?” I asked. “No,” she said simply. “Courage, dear, to tell the truth.”