Anna Wetherell—Emery Staines

Anna Wetherell and Emery Staines are bound together by a night before his disappearance, a promise of half a fortune, and Anna’s certainty that his love is mutual. Their relationship remains unresolved: Staines vanishes before either can make an explicit declaration, while an unsigned deed witnessed by Crosbie Wells offers Anna a possible claim to £2,000 but cannot establish that the promised gift was completed.

A connection viewed from the outside

Before Anna’s own account of her feelings emerges, others try to infer what Staines meant to her. Aubert Gascoigne recalls that she held Staines in high esteem and suspects she cared for him. Yet, as Walter Moody recognizes, her possible involvement in the disputed gold depends on what she knew about the fortune sewn into her dresses and its connection to Alistair Lauderback’s blackmail. The uncertainty about her knowledge becomes an uncertainty about the relationship: affection may be present, but its extent and its entanglement with money are not immediately clear to the people investigating the case.

The dresses carry a history that complicates any simple account of Staines’s generosity. Lydia Wells had sewn about £4,000 in gold into five gowns, which Anna wore over time. Ah Quee later removed the gold from four of them, retorted it into squares, and stamped those squares with the name of the Aurora mine. He believed the gold was connected to Dick Mannering’s fraud and intended its profit to be banked against a claim purchased by Staines. This chain of concealment makes the fortune difficult to assign: gold associated with Anna’s clothing, Ah Quee’s labour, and the Aurora claim eventually appears in a deed as money Staines intends to give her. That the document says so does not settle the history or ownership of the gold.

The night and the missing declaration

Anna’s understanding of Staines’s love rests on their conversation on the night he disappeared. She remembers them discussing unrequited love, and recalls Staines rejecting the idea that love could be one-sided: to him, love required free giving and free acceptance, with two lovers forming equal halves of a whole. The principle matters to Anna because she interprets it as more than a general sentiment. She says that Staines loves her and repeats the claim, even though he never made a formal avowal or vows to her.

The distinction between what was said and what Anna believes it meant is central to their relationship. She describes seeing herself through Staines’s imagined eyes and treats his thoughts of her as constant. When Devlin asks whether Staines declared his love, she acknowledges that he did not; when he points out that she did not declare hers either, she explains that she never had another chance. His disappearance ends the conversation before either can make their feelings explicit. Anna’s confidence is therefore not supported by a completed exchange of vows, but by her reading of the conversation and of the meaning she gives it.

For Devlin, that confidence is painful to witness. He interprets Anna’s belief that Staines loves her, and her sense that she receives messages from him, as a consoling fantasy formed in the face of poverty and limited prospects. He assumes Staines is dead. His judgment is an interpretation, not proof of Staines’s death or of Anna’s error; the story leaves the status of the missing man uncertain. Their unequal perspectives sharpen the relationship’s unresolved quality: Anna experiences love as present, while Devlin sees a hope that may have no living recipient.

The deed and its limits

A separate piece of evidence gives Anna’s hope a material form. The deed, dated 11 October 1865, states that Staines is to give Anna £2,000, with Crosbie Wells witnessing the arrangement. The sum is exactly half of the £4,000 fortune later found in Wells’s cottage. When Shepard sees the charred document, he recognizes how valuable it could be to Anna if it were valid, and reasons that Wells may have been holding Staines’s money. But the deed bears no signature from Staines. Devlin insists that this omission makes it invalid; the paper records an intention, not a completed transfer.

Devlin has kept the document concealed in his Bible after finding it in Wells’s cottage. He says he withheld it because he feared that telling Anna would raise hopes of wealth and opportunity before Staines could be found. His decision leaves her unaware of a potential claim while the missing man’s fate remains unknown. He plans to show Staines the deed if he is recovered and let him decide whether to sign; if Staines is found dead, Devlin intends to destroy it. His stated compassion thus preserves the possibility of Staines’s choice, but also makes Devlin the gatekeeper of information that could change Anna’s life.

When Devlin finally gives Anna the charred deed, she first struggles to read it. She is nearly illiterate, but recognizes the words and works through them; once she understands, she grasps the implication that Staines meant to give her exactly half the fortune. Devlin qualifies her conclusion: the document suggests an intention to give her £2,000, but Staines never signed it. Anna asks what would follow if he had signed, and Devlin answers that nothing can be done until Staines is found. The paper strengthens her belief in their bond while simultaneously exposing how little can be legally or practically secured from it.

Love, money, and uncertainty

The relationship’s emotional and financial strands never quite coincide. Anna remembers a shared idea of love as freely chosen and equal, but their conversation stops short of a declaration. The deed gives a precise sum and names a witness, yet lacks the signature needed to validate the gift. Meanwhile, the gold’s route through the gowns, Ah Quee’s extraction, and Wells’s cottage prevents the fortune from functioning as uncomplicated proof of Staines’s generosity. Each apparent confirmation arrives with a limit: affection is inferred rather than vowed, and inheritance is promised rather than legally established.

The narrative also keeps Anna’s belief distinct from what other characters can verify. Gascoigne suspects her affection; Moody weighs what she knew about the gowns; Devlin sees her conviction as fantasy and assumes Staines is dead. Anna herself remains certain that Staines loves her, despite acknowledging the absence of vows and the fact that she never had another chance to speak. The relationship therefore ends this portion of the story not with a settled union or a settled repudiation, but with a missing man, an unsigned promise, and Anna’s steadfast interpretation of the last conversation they shared.