Francis Carver’s assault on Anna Wetherell and the resulting miscarriage are disclosed retrospectively rather than shown directly. Anna identifies Carver as the father of the child she lost; Edgar Clinch independently names him as the man responsible for the violence. Their accounts turn a private loss into a revelation about Carver’s abuse and its consequences for Anna, while also changing how those around her understand the danger she faces.

Pregnancy and the possibility of a family

When Clinch realized that Anna was expecting another man’s child, he considered making his feelings known and offering marriage. He imagined adopting the baby and caring for it as his own, allowing the two of them to form a family. These plans remained only possibilities, but they establish the future he briefly envisioned before the pregnancy ended.

Anna’s disclosure

In speaking with Aubert Gascoigne, Anna says that the child was taken from her by its own father and identifies that father as Carver. The disclosure breaks with her usual reserve: the narration describes her as watchful and receptive, rarely speaking about herself. Afterward she sits beside a dress laid out on the table and strokes its fabric while Gascoigne looks away. The scene places the loss alongside the gold Anna is focused on, but does not provide a direct account of the assault itself.

Clinch’s account and its consequences

Clinch later tells Gascoigne that Carver beat Anna and that the child was Carver’s. His outburst connects the assault to another danger: Clinch says that Carver supplied the resin Anna had taken, and Gascoigne recognizes that this was the opium by which Anna had nearly perished. Clinch then tells his valet to turn Joseph Pritchard away if Pritchard calls while he is absent. The assault is thus recalled not as an isolated injury but as part of a wider pattern of threats surrounding Anna.

Narrative significance

The event reaches the reader through disclosures made after the loss, not through a dramatized scene of violence. Anna’s account gives the child’s father a name; Clinch’s separate account confirms Carver’s responsibility and brings the opium supply into the same chain of harm. The contrast between Clinch’s earlier hope of adopting Anna’s child and the later confirmation of its loss marks how abruptly the imagined possibility of a family gives way to grief and alarm.