It was useless. She snatched her hands from me, and never moved her face from the stone. Seeing the urgent necessity of quieting her at any hazard and by any means, I appealed to the only anxiety that she appeared to feel, in connection with me and with my opinion of her -- the anxiety to convince me of her fitness to be mistress of her own actions.
‘Come, come,' I said gently. ‘Try to compose yourself, or you will make me alter my opinion of you. Don't let me think that the person who put you in the Asylum might have had some excuse --'
The next words died away on my lips. The instant I risked that chance reference to the person who had put her in the Asylum she sprang up on her knees. A most extraordinary and startling change passed over her. Her face, at all ordinary times so touching to look at, in its nervous sensitiveness, weakness, and uncertainty, became suddenly darkened by an expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear, which communicated a wild, unnatural force to every feature. Her eyes dilated in the dim evening light, like the eyes of a wild animal. She caught up the cloth that had fallen at her side, as if it had been a living creature that she could kill, and crushed it in both her hands with such convulsive strength, that the few drops of moisture left in it trickled down on the stone beneath her.
‘Talk of something else,' she said, whispering through her teeth. ‘I shall lose myself if you talk of that.'
Every vestige of the gentler thoughts which had Wed her mind hardly a minute since seemed to be swept from it now. It was evident that the impression left by Mrs Fairlie's kindness was not, as I had supposed, the only strong impression on her memory. With the grateful remembrance of her school-days at Limmeridge, there existed the vindictive remembrance of the wrong inflicted on her by her confinement in the Asylum. Who had done that wrong? Could it really be her mother?
It was hard to give up pursuing the inquiry to that final point, but I forced myself to abandon all idea of continuing it. Seeing her as I saw her now, it would have been cruel to think of anything but the necessity and the humanity of restoring her composure.
‘I will talk of nothing to distress you,' I said soothingly.
‘You want something,' she answered sharply and suspiciously. ‘Don't look at me like that. Speak to me -- tell me what you want.'
‘I only want you to quiet yourself, ad when you are calmer, to think over what I have said.'
‘Said?' She paused -- twisted the cloth in her hands, backwards and forwards, and whispered to herself, ‘What is it he said?' She turned again towards me, and shook her head impatiently, ‘Why don't you help me?' she asked, with angry suddenness.
‘Yes, yes,' I said, ‘I will help you, and you will soon remember. I asked you to see Miss Fairlie tomorrow, and to tell her the truth about the letter.'
‘Ah! Miss Fairlie -- Fairlie -- Fairlie --'
The mere utterance of the loved familiar name seemed to quiet her. Her face softened and grew like itself again.
‘You need have no fear of Miss Fairlie,' I continued, ‘and no fear of getting into trouble through the letter. She knows so much about it already, that you will have no difficult in telling her all. There can be little necessity for concealment where there is hardly anything left to conceal.
You mention no names in the letter; but Miss Fairlie knows that the person you write of is Sir Percival Glyde --'