By the
time I had arrived at the end of the road I had become completely
absorbed in my own fanciful visions of Limmeridge House, of Mr.
Fairlie, and of the two ladies whose practice in the art of water-
colour painting I was so soon to superintend.
I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where four
roads met--the road to Hampstead, along which I had returned, the
road to Finchley, the road to West End, and the road back to
London. I had mechanically turned in this latter direction, and
was strolling along the lonely high-road--idly wondering, I
remember, what the Cumberland young ladies would look like--when,
in one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a
stop by the touch of a hand laid lightly and suddenly on my
shoulder from behind me.
I turned on the instant, with my fingers tightening round the
handle of my stick.
There, in the middle of the broad bright high-road--there, as if
it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the
heaven--stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to
foot in white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine,
her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.
I was far too seriously startled by the suddenness with which this
extraordinary apparition stood before me, in the dead of night and
in that lonely place, to ask what she wanted.
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