"Oh, Marian, I have such things to tell you!
Come away--we may be interrupted here--come at once into my room."
With those eager words she caught me by the hand, and led me
through the library, to the end room on the ground floor, which
had been fitted up for her own especial use. No third person,
except her maid, could have any excuse for surprising us here.
She pushed me in before her, locked the door, and drew the chintz
curtains that hung over the inside.
The strange, stunned feeling which had taken possession of me
still remained. But a growing conviction that the complications
which had long threatened to gather about her, and to gather about
me, had suddenly closed fast round us both, was now beginning to
penetrate my mind. I could not express it in words--I could
hardly even realise it dimly in my own thoughts. "Anne
Catherick!" I whispered to myself, with useless, helpless
reiteration--"Anne Catherick!"
Laura drew me to the nearest seat, an ottoman in the middle of the
room. "Look!" she said, "look here!"--and pointed to the bosom of
her dress.
I saw, for the first time, that the lost brooch was pinned in its
place again. There was something real in the sight of it,
something real in the touching of it afterwards, which seemed to
steady the whirl and confusion in my thoughts, and to help me to
compose myself.
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