Carver attacks Anna, followed by the termination of her pregnancy

Francis Carver’s assault on Anna Wetherell, followed by the termination of her pregnancy, becomes a turning point in the story of concealment and belated loyalty around Crosbie Wells. The episode is disclosed in fragments: Anna lives with the memory of the earlier attack, tries to protect Wells when Carver questions her, and later names Carver as the father of her child, although she does so to shield Wells. The pregnancy’s loss brings the concealed relationships into sharper focus and prompts Emery Staines to make a promise of shared wealth.

Background and the return of the assault

Anna remembers an assault in the boudoir of the House of Many Wishes in Dunedin on the night of 12 May. The memory remains distressing in daily life; knowing that her tacit collusion helped an innocent man escape does not ease it. The narrative presents this memory as incomplete and shifting rather than as a settled account. Anna’s mind has been clouded, in succession, by smoke, violence, and laudanum administered by Dr. Gillies before the procedure that ended her pregnancy. That fractured recollection shapes how the episode becomes known: its facts emerge through later encounters and answers, not through a single, uninterrupted telling.

Anna’s attempt to protect Crosbie Wells belongs to this same pattern of delayed response. She regards her earlier conduct as a betrayal and her later silence as an effort to make amends. The distinction matters: her help does not erase what came before, but it shows her acting differently when Carver returns to the question of Wells’s whereabouts. Her account of the past is uncertain, while the immediate choice to withhold Wells’s location is clear.

The roadside encounter

While riding inland along the road from Kaniere, Carver recognizes Anna at the roadside. She is unsteady, flushed, and smiling when he approaches. She tells him that Wells escaped and that she helped him. Carver immediately demands to know where Wells is, then presses her about whether he is nearby or in Otago or Canterbury. The questions turn Anna’s disclosure into a confrontation over Wells’s safety.

When Anna tries to run, Carver catches her and pulls her back. A gunshot sounds nearby, and Carver turns toward it as his horse shies. The interruption breaks off the encounter without resolving where Wells is. Its abruptness also sets Anna’s precarious act of concealment beside the threat of renewed violence: she has revealed that she helped Wells, but refuses to direct Carver to him. The scene supplies no further identification of the person who fired the shot, so the sound functions as the interruption of the pursuit rather than an explanation of it.

The procedure and Anna’s disclosure

After the procedure, Anna wakes with Benjamin Löwenthal beside her, holding a cloth and a jar of laudanum; Edgar Clinch is also present. Löwenthal asks her to explain what happened and identify the man responsible. Anna names Carver, but her attention falters as she speaks. Asked again, she says that Carver was the father. The narrative’s framing makes clear that this is a falsehood intended to protect Wells, not a reliable identification of the child’s father.

The disclosure therefore carries two kinds of information at once. It identifies Carver as the assailant, while also showing Anna continuing to protect Wells at a moment when her own account is fragmentary. The statement is not presented as a full, composed testimony: Anna has only just awakened, and her focus comes and goes. Her words nevertheless become a consequential act of concealment, extending the loyalty she had already shown by withholding Wells’s whereabouts.

Staines learns of the loss

Benjamin Löwenthal tells Emery Staines about Anna’s assault. Staines immediately saddles a horse and rides toward the Arahura Valley. His distress is visible in his set jaw and tear-pricked eyes, although the account notes that he does not admit or articulate its true cause during the journey. In his haste he leaves both his wallet and hat at the stables and nearly collides with Harald Nilssen, who is leaving a hardware store with a paper sack.

At Wells’s cottage, Staines arrives doubled over. He tells Wells that the baby is gone, and Wells brings him inside and listens to the account. They drink through a bottle of brandy together. Once it is empty, Staines declares his intention to give Anna half of his fortune and share it with her; he says that the wealth is hidden in the ground and that he will dig it up. His promise converts news of the loss into a prospective obligation. The concealed fortune, previously a secret, is now described as something Staines means to share with Anna.

Consequences and narrative significance

The episode links three forms of disclosure: Anna’s admission that she helped Wells escape, her false naming of Carver as the father, and Staines’s revelation that he holds a buried fortune intended in part for Anna. Each disclosure is partial. Anna does not tell Carver where Wells is; her recovering mind offers only a broken account; and Staines tells Wells about the wealth without yet retrieving it. The plot advances through information withheld as much as through information spoken.

The loss also changes the stakes of Anna and Staines’s connection. Staines responds not with an account of legal or financial arrangements but with a promise to share what he has hidden. At the same time, the scene does not show the promise being fulfilled: the gold remains underground, and the account ends with his intention to recover it. The narrative places that uncompleted pledge beside Anna’s exhausted testimony, making both the child’s loss and the future of the fortune consequential without resolving either into a simple restoration.