The novel’s most sensational scene occurs when Hartright goes to mourn Laura at her grave (which will later be revealed as Anne’s rather than Laura’s). While he is there, he sees two veiled women approaching, who turn out to be Marian and Laura; however, Hartright does not recognize Laura until she lifts her veil, which is when she stands directly over the gravestone inscribed with her death date. In this, the novel’s pivotal scene, the verbal trope of repetition reaches its climax, with Hartright taking on the speech pattern hitherto associated with Anne Catherick:

This passage is saturated with figures of repetition: 1) anaphora, wherein words repeat at the beginnings of phrases; 2) epistrope, wherein words repeat at the ends of phrases; 3) anadiplosis, wherein the first word of a phrase repeats the last word of the previous phrase; and 4) epanalepsis, wherein words repeat after intervening matter. The effect is similar to homiologia in that, after a certain saturation of repetition, meaning is evacuated, rather than reinforced. The passage thus creates its sensational effect by evoking in Hartright’s voice Anne’s verbal tic of repetition over Laura’s gravestone (which is really Anne’s grave) while Hartright sees Laura (without recognizing her).

At the same time, the visual text in Harper’s Weekly evacuates all perspective from Laura’s figure (figs. 10 et 11): she is no longer three-dimensional but flat—that is, depicted by white space with a mere outline. Paradoxically, these visual depictions affirm her association with ghosts at the very moment when she appears in the flesh, alive. Moreover, the verbal text evacuates meaning from the gravestone inscription: if Laura is alive, then the engraved letters are literally and metaphorically hollow.

From this point on, the novel becomes an investigation of these contradictions, a setting to rest of their sensational effects. Now dead, Anne disappears from the temporal present of the narrative, appearing only analeptically. In terms of illustration, the disquieting visual conflation of Anne with Laura disappears as Laura becomes progressively more three-dimensional, acquiring bodily solidity and visual darkness in her depictions (fig. 12). Notably, Hartright never goes to court to seek legal confirmation that Laura is not dead. Instead, he and Marian resort to narrative (telling the story of the conspiracy) and then to visual evidence (showing Laura to the tenants on the estate to prove her identity). What they provide, then, is not legal proof but a multiplication of narratives, one substituted for the other. Only then do they efface the inscription on her gravestone, chiseling out Laura’s name so that only a blank space remains, to be re-engraved later with Anne’s name.