“Certainly. I saw, as she approached me, that she moved very gracefully, that she had a beautiful figure, and that she was a little over the middle height. I noticed, when she asked me the way to Mrs. Armadale’s house, that her manner was the manner of a lady, and that the tone of her voice was remarkably soft and winning. Lastly, I remembered afterward that she wore a thick black veil, a black bonnet, a black silk dress, and a red Paisley shawl. I feel all the importance of your possessing some better means of identifying her than I can give you. But unhappily—”
He stopped. Midwinter was leaning eagerly across the table, and Midwinter’s hand was laid suddenly on his arm.
“Is it possible that you know the woman?” asked Mr. Brock, surprised at the sudden change in his manner.
“No.”
“What have I said, then, that has startled you so?”
“Do you remember the woman who threw herself from the river steamer?” asked the other—“the woman who caused that succession of deaths which opened Allan Armadale’s way to the Thorpe Ambrose estate?”
“I remember the description of her in the police report,” answered the rector.
“That woman,” pursued Midwinter, “moved gracefully, and had a beautiful figure. That woman wore a black veil, a black bonnet, a black silk gown, and a red Paisley shawl—” He stopped, released his hold of Mr. Brock’s arm, and abruptly resumed his chair. “Can it be the same?” he said to himself in a whisper. “Is there a fatality that follows men in the dark? And is it following us in that woman’s footsteps?”
If the conjecture was right, the one event in the past which had appeared to be entirely disconnected with the events that had preceded it was, on the contrary, the one missing link which made the chain complete. Mr. Brock’s comfortable common sense instinctively denied that startling conclusion. He looked at Midwinter with a compassionate smile.
“My young friend,” he said, kindly, “have you cleared your mind of all superstition as completely as you think? Is what you have just said worthy of the better resolution at which you arrived last night?”