The Story Continued by Marian Halcombe

what to do. ‘Ah!’ she said, ‘your mother would have let me pin on the brooch.’ There was something in her voice and her look, as well as in her mentioning my mother in that reproachful manner, which made me ashamed of my distrust. I took her hand with the brooch in it, and put it up gently on the bosom of my dress. ‘You knew my mother?’ I said. ‘Was it very long ago? have I ever seen you before?’ Her hands were busy fastening the brooch: she stopped and pressed them against my breast. ‘You don’t remember a fine spring day at Limmeridge,’ she said, ‘and your mother walking down the path that led to the school, with a little girl on each side of her? I have had nothing else to think of since, and I remember it. You were one of the little girls, and I was the other. Pretty, clever Miss Fairlie, and poor dazed Anne Catherick were nearer to each other then than they are now!’ ” “Did you remember her, Laura, when she told you her name?” “Yes, I remembered your asking me about Anne Catherick at Limmeridge, and your saying that she had once been considered like me.” “What reminded you of that, Laura?” “ She reminded me. While I was looking at her, while she was very close to me, it came over my mind suddenly that we were like each other! Her face was pale and thin and weary⁠—but the sight of it startled me, as if it had been the sight of my own face in the glass after a long illness. The discovery⁠—I don’t know why⁠—gave me such a shock, that I was perfectly incapable of speaking to her for the moment.”