For example, Count Fosco, an enormously fat man, presents himself as courteous and as a great admirer of Miss Halcombe. This device enhances certain aspects of the story. Just the same, the story is not difficult to follow, in part because author Collins has given each character a unique voice. The narration switches between different voices, almost, at times, as if the characters are giving testimony in court. Most print editions run about seven hundred pages. Before he leaves for Central America, he believes he’s being followed. He employs many of the methods later literary detectives would use to solve mysteries: interviewing often reluctant witnesses and searching through old documents to build a legal case.
When Walter met the unfortunate woman in white, he little imagined uncovering secrets of false and hidden identities, violent nationalist Italian secret societies, or witnessing those he loves being deceived, drugged, and hidden away, never mind fortunes and lives lost. Oh, the trials and tribulations that lie ahead for Walter and Laura! More than once, all hope seems lost. Laura looks forward to the wedding trip, not only for sightseeing but as means of family reconciliation. She’s married to an Italian, Count Fosco.
Laura marries and goes abroad with Sir Percy to Italy, where they meet up with her estranged aunt, the sister of her father and Frederick Fairlie. Walter leaves, though he stays in touch with Marian until he takes a punishing job in Honduras. Before she marries, she receives an anonymous letter warning her about her affianced, Sir Percy Glyde. No reason for her father wanting that promise is ever given. Laura made a deathbed promise to her father, and she’s going to keep it. Yeah, he’s an old geezer, but he’s also a baronet. Marian catches on-she is the bright one, after all-and tells Walter to leave for both Laura’s sake and his own. Walter is mindful of their relative standings in society. Laura and Walter fall in love, though they never express it. She’s also ugly and poor, therefore destined to be an old maid. Walter is struck by a resemblance she bears to the woman in white. The house is owned by wealthy, whiny, hypochondriac Frederick Fairlie, the brother of Laura’s deceased father.
He debates with himself whether he did the right thing but continues to his lodgings in London and later to his job in Limmeridge House in Cumberland as a drawing teacher to one Laura Fairlie and her half-sister, Marian Halcombe. They’re concerned because she escaped from an insane asylum. Farther down the road, he overhears police asking about the woman he helped. Hartright sees she’s agitated and walks with her to where she can get a cab to her friend’s house. On his way to London before taking a job referred to him by an excitable Italian acquaintance, Walter Hartright comes across a distraught woman dressed all in white, late at night on a lonely road.
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