I shuddered at the thought. There was something horrible in the
blind unreasoning distrust of the future which the mere passage of
it through my mind seemed to imply. It was a welcome interruption
to be roused by feeling Anne Catherick's hand laid on my shoulder.
The touch was as stealthy and as sudden as that other touch which
had petrified me from head to foot on the night when we first met.
"You are looking at me, and you are thinking of something," she
said, with her strange breathless rapidity of utterance. "What is
it?"
"Nothing extraordinary," I answered. "I was only wondering how
you came here."
"I came with a friend who is very good to me. I have only been
here two days."
"And you found your way to this place yesterday?"
"How do you know that?"
"I only guessed it."
She turned from me, and knelt down before the inscription once
more.
"Where should I go if not here?" she said. "The friend who was
better than a mother to me is the only friend I have to visit at
Limmeridge. Oh, it makes my heart ache to see a stain on her
tomb! It ought to be kept white as snow, for her sake. I was
tempted to begin cleaning it yesterday, and I can't help coming
back to go on with it to-day.
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