While she is ill Laura is tricked into travelling to London. She collapses with a fever which turns to typhus. Marian eavesdrops on Fosco and Glyde but is caught in the rain. Marian now realizes that Fosco is the true villain and is plotting something more sinister, especially as Anne has reappeared, promising to reveal to Laura a secret which will ruin Glyde. Sir Percival unsuccessfully attempts to bully Laura into signing a document which would allow him to use her marriage settlement of £20,000.

Marian Halcombe is also living at Blackwater and learns that Glyde is in financial difficulties. They are accompanied by Glyde's friend, Count Fosco, who married Laura's aunt, Eleanor Fairlie. Hartright also leaves England, joining an expedition to Honduras.Īfter their honeymoon, Sir Percival and Lady Glyde return the following June to his family estate in Hampshire, Blackwater Park. Laura and Glyde marry in December 1849 and travel to Italy. Anne Catherick, after sending a letter to Laura warning her against Glyde, meets Hartright who is convinced that Glyde was responsible for shutting her in the asylum. Laura, however, has promised her late father that she will marry Sir Percival Glyde, and Marian advises Walter to leave Limmeridge. The simple-minded Anne had lived for a time in Cumberland as a child and was devoted to Laura's mother, who first dressed her in white. Hartright finds that Laura bears an astonishing resemblance to the woman in white, called Anne Catherick. The household comprises Mr Frederick Fairlie, a reclusive valetudinarian Laura Fairlie, his niece and Marian Halcombe, her devoted half-sister. The next day he travels north to Limmeridge House. He helps her on her way but later learns that she has escaped from an asylum. While walking home from Hampstead on his last evening in London, Hartright meets a mysterious woman dressed in white, apparently in deep distress. Walter Hartright, a young drawing-master, has secured a position in Cumberland on the recommendation of his old friend Professor Pesca, a political refugee from Italy. Reported speech with say, ask, tell.(from: Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide © Andrew Gasson 1998, used with permission) Make/let + infinitive Verb + object + infinitive (e.g. Count Fosco with Sir Percival Glyde, will do anything to get their hands on Laura’s money and think up a terrible crime that could destroy her life forever. The story is told through different characters, and soon we find Walter, Marian and Laura caught up in a frightening world of crime, madness and mistaken identity. The Woman in White is the first English ‘sensation novel’ full of mystery and dark secrets.Īfter meeting a strange woman one night in London, Walter Hartright begins to realise that this mysterious woman is connected, in some way, to his new life at Limmeridge House and the woman he loves, Laura Fairlie.

The woman inwhite