The resolution I had made over night was stronger by the morning. When I met Martelli I told him there would be no use in sitting down to work.

"I foresaw this," he replied. "Perhaps it will be better to defer your studies until you are out of this mysterious complication," smiling.

"It will hardly be optional," I said. "My mind is too active in a very different direction from books to make me profit from reading. The labour would only be mechanical."

"I wish, Sir, you would direct me to employ the interval in some way useful to yourself. I shall be eating the bread of idleness—a food I have little relish for."

"You will be doing nothing of the sort," I answered; "your society gives me pleasure, and besides, we may take a holiday now and then, may we not? We have done very well. In the time you have been here, you have advanced me further than I could have done alone in twelve months."

He bowed, thanking me for my assurance, and expressed his gratitude for the unfailing politeness and liberal hospitality he had enjoyed during his residence.

He had recovered from his surprise or shock of the preceding night. Yet there was upon his manners and in his expression a shadow whose presence I could mark, though whose meaning I could not read. The subtle alteration would have been inappreciable to one who had watched him less closely than I, and who had been less often in his company. There was a light now in his eye which had not been there before. His energy, the swift gesture, the sharp vanishing smile, the quick contraction of the brow, were moderated, sobered, by a stealthy composure. I attributed the change, vague and slight as it was, to the fright he had received. "This hint of unfamiliar repose," I said to myself, "may be the effect of repressed irritability, excited by his last night's involuntary confession of weakness or cowardice."

I had a part to play, however, which gave my thoughts full employment.

I left Martelli and strolled about the grounds until lunch-time. I then returned, despatched a light meal, took my hat, and left the house. Elmore Cottage was not above five minutes' walk from my house by the road. I could have wished it ten times the distance. I approached it timorously, and gazed bashfully under the concealment of the hedge. It was an exquisitely clean little place: the walls white, the windows burnished and draped with snowy muslin. The lower windows were veiled with flowers. I hoped its mistress would not see me enter. I rather prayed that she might be in the garden. I pushed open the gate with a quick hand and gained the door. My thin and doubtful appeal with the knocker was promptly answered by a young woman, tidy, grave, and comely.

I asked for Mrs. Fraser. I was answered that she was out.

"She will not be out to me," said I, "if you will say that I am come to speak with her on a matter of great consequence to herself."

The servant eyed me shrewdly, though not disrespectfully. "But Mrs. Fraser is out, Sir," said she.

"Mrs. Fraser is not out," I exclaimed in a steady voice. "Come, allow me to walk in. Must I repeat that I have come to see Mrs. Fraser on very important business?"

She was too well-trained to keep me on the doorstep or even in the passage, though I daresay she would have preferred that I remained in the road whilst she went to hold a council with her mistress. She slightly smiled as she said, "What name, Sir?"

"Never mind my name," I replied. "Simply say a gentleman has called to see her."

She left the room. The apartment into which she had conducted me was close, though the windows were open. The furniture was old, but tasteful enough. A piano stood in a corner, and on a chair was a pile of music. I thought of my bouquet as my eye rested on some flowers in a vase on the table. On either side the mirror, over the chimney-piece, was a pencil drawing, skilfully done, representing, the one on the left, a calm at sea, an iceberg on the horizon, an albatross suspended over the wreck of a vessel, whose broken masts, trailing ropes and vacant decks were full of the poetry of desolation: the one on the right, a woman seated at a table, with her face buried in her hands, a crucifix before her. I drew near, and read at the corner of each drawing the word "Geraldine."

A longer interval than what I had anticipated elapsed before Mrs. Fraser presented herself. I was eyeing a little gilt dial with some degree of impatience, when I heard a sound behind me. I turned rapidly.

Mrs. Fraser stood at the table, her black eyes fixed on me with a look half of alarm, half of embarrassment. Their startled beauty was smiting. Her yellow hair was combed high, but silken threads strayed over her brow and behind her ears. Her lips were compressed.

I rose and made her a bow.

"Pray be seated," she said in a low voice. "My servant tells me you have called on a matter of business."

"Not exactly business," I answered. "But first, you must allow me to introduce myself to you as Mr. Thorburn, your neighbour."

She regarded me earnestly. I paused: another moment's silence would have embarrassed me, so I said hardily:

"I shall wholly depend on your kindness not to make me feel more painfully the trying position in which I have placed myself. The intrusion," continued I, nervousness making my apology elaborate, "will only seem all the more unwarrantable when I tell you that I am fully aware of your love of solitude and your aversion to intruders. But"——

She interrupted me, turning her back to the window, the better to see me, and not to be seen:

"You sent me a bouquet the other day?"

"I ventured to take the liberty."

"You must have thought my rejection rude. It was meant to be rude. How, Sir, knowing my aversion to intruders, could you have taken that liberty? Did you think it would lead to an introduction?"

Her language gave me confidence. Had she sweetly thanked me for my attention or apologised for her rudeness, she would, I think, have confounded me too much for my wits. But this tone of hers brought her down to my level. I could meet her on equal ground.

"I sent you that bouquet," I answered, "because I judged by your love of gardening that you were fond of flowers. The action was not designed as a rudeness. It was a mere neighbourly act"——

She seemed too impatient to hear me out.

"How can I believe you? People never act without design."

"I have explained my design," I said, repressing a smile with difficulty.

Her eyes were incensed. Their beauty made them almost unreal.

"You are still standing!" she exclaimed. "I beg that you will be seated. Pray do not mind me. I am of an excitable temperament, and when I converse it is difficult for me to keep still."

She left the window, went to the end of the room, and gazed at me thence, like some beautiful savage, untamed, startled, exquisitely unconventional.

I borrowed her tone; she was free-spoken; she would like free-speaking.

"My apology—if apology it were—does not contain the whole truth. But your goodness will not allow you to think me so great a culprit as I appear. I had met you once; your appearance piqued me; I desired to make your acquaintance and have tried an experiment which I beseech you not to render ignominious."

"Piqued, Sir! How were you piqued?"

"Piqued is not the word. But I dare not substitute the right expression. I will not be so rude as to utilise the privilege your own candour confers."

She came over and stood opposite me.

"You say, Mr. Thorburn, you have met me. That is impossible."

"If I prevaricated before, I am truthful now."

"I have not been out of this house for a month. Oh! I suppose you saw me from your grounds."

"The thick hedge and the trees that divide us would prevent that."

"You may have found the means of looking over?"

I smiled.

"No, indeed. Great as my curiosity may have been, my politeness, I am sure, is vigorous enough to keep it well disciplined."

"Curiosity! what should there be in me to excite curiosity?"

"Curiosity is the daughter of admiration."

"I am a widow," she continued vehemently. "I lead a sequestered life. I visit nowhere. I receive no visits. Is it because I am a Roman Catholic that you are curious?"

"Do you take me for a missionary, Mrs. Fraser? I assure you I was ignorant of your faith. Of your habits I know only from the information of my housekeeper. A fellow-feeling makes us kind. I, too, am a recluse, loving solitude as well as yourself."

"Impossible!" she exclaimed impetuously, "or you would not have called here."

I could have told her that I loved beauty more than solitude. But I held my tongue.

"Where did you meet me?" she asked.

"I met you in the fields outside our respective grounds."

"Never!" she cried. "Never have I passed the gate that leads into those fields."

There was something singular in her vehemence. But it made her beauty more remarkable by the life it imparted to it.

"But this has been told me before," she continued rapidly. "Yes, I remember. Your housekeeper asked my servant if I were not in the habit of taking midnight rambles. Oh, how can you justify the rudeness of such questions?"

"They were asked unknown to myself. Be sure, I should never have sanctioned them, if I had questions to ask, I should be bold, and interrogate you, not your domestic."

"Questions to ask! What are you to me that you should question me?"

"Nothing. I am to you no more than your servant is to me. But you are something to me. Is it possible, do you think, that I could look upon your face without interest?"

"How should I know—why should I care?" she replied, her nostrils dilated, her lips curved, her eyes radiant with the light of anger qualified by surprise—of resentment tempered by curiosity. "You say you met me—you are long in telling your story."

"It was one moonlight night. I walked to the fields, and had seated myself, when I saw you pacing the walk by the hedge. Twice you went the length of it—then disappeared."

She seated herself in a chair facing mine, leaned her chin upon her small white hand, and gazed at me with a look of earnestness that was embarrassing in its intensity. The pressure upon her chin made her speak through her teeth as she said,

"You must have dreamed this?"

"Indeed I did not. But I own I dreamt of you before. I dreamt that you looked upon me in a vision. I saw your eyes. They were not more wonderful in that vision than they are in life. Your face was paler than it is now."

She did not alter her position.

"A few hours after this dream I saw you. The spirit I had seen in my sleep stood before me in the flesh. This singular realisation of my vision made a deep impression. Its natural consequence was a great eagerness to know you. But how could I intrude? under what pretext could I force myself upon you? Last night I found an excuse—I met you again."

"How strange!" she muttered. She had dropped her forehead upon her hand and her deep eyes shone upon me through their long lashes.

"When I met you last night," I continued, "I was not alone. A companion was with me. You appeared to us as you had appeared to me. He saw you, and if you doubt the truth of what I say, will bear testimony. You stood at the gate; your eyes were fixed and your countenance turned towards us."

A look of distress entered her face.

"I did not know that I still walked in my sleep," she said.

"It is a dangerous habit, Mrs. Fraser."

"I will give directions to my servant. I am grateful to you now for your visit. I see you did not design to do me a rudeness. I should have received you more courteously; but I am not always my own mistress."

"Indeed?" I answered; "your candour is too charming to require excuses. You must believe that such ingenuousness is very refreshing to one who, like myself, has wasted the best part of his days amid sophisticated and conventional society, where truth is never possible because it must always be offensive."

"Don't you find it dull at Elmore Court?"

"No; I spend the greater portion of my time in reading. Besides, I have a companion—a gentleman accomplished enough to be of great use to me in my studies."

"You are a young man," she said, eyeing me intently, "and it is unusual for young men to banish themselves from life and its pleasures, especially if they have money."

"I admire your incredulity," I answered, laughing, "for it gives me an excuse to tell you more of myself than I could otherwise have done. I mean, that a voluntary confession would have smacked rather egotistic."

She left her chair and began to pace up and down the room. I was fascinated by her form, the beautiful curve of her breast, the proportioned waist, her erect stature, and the unconscious grace of her movements. When her face was towards me her eyes were invariably on mine; there was in them an unsmiling sparkle, a grave glow, that gave unreality to their gaze, a spectral beauty to their depths.

"I took Elmore Court," I continued, "not because I was tired of, but because I wanted to enjoy, life."

"You thought that abstinence would create appetite?"

"I wished to learn the art of living; and this, I saw, was only to be accomplished by study, by thought, and by awakening aspirations which should be lofty enough to make their achievement laborious."

"What do you hope to do?"

"Much."

"You will do little. Ah! you think I mean that you have no talent? I have not said so. How should I know your gifts and deficiencies? But life itself is one huge disappointment. The more laborious the effort the more dreadful the failure. Pray don't fancy I think only of books, or art, or science. I know nothing of these things; and they make but a very small portion of life. I have the passions in my mind—love, hope, patience and the like—all these things end in regret."

"Your logic is very dispiriting," said I, watching her with increasing admiration. "It would leave life nerveless, and make death its only aspiration."

"Do you think life ends in death?"

"The life of the flesh, certainly."

"The flesh has nothing to do with life. It is the spirit that lives. My flesh might have been dead last night when you saw me: for I heard and felt nothing. No! it was all as blank to me as my sight when I shut my eyes so;" she closed her eyes like a child would have done. "I might have been dead, and to myself was as dead as ever I shall be when I am in the grave."

I was about to speak, when she suddenly said, "Mr. Thorburn, you are making a long call."

"I must plead you as my excuse," I answered, rising, hardly knowing whether to look grave or smile, so bewildered was I by her manners and conversation: her brusquerie, of which her beauty qualified the rudeness; her severity, tempered by a childishness which made all her moods but new points of view of her charms.

I took my hat: she opened the door.

"I hope, Mrs. Fraser," said I, "that you will not deny me the pleasure of meeting you again?"

"I have not come to Cliffegate for society, Mr. Thorburn."

"Nor I. But a single individual does not make society. Besides, would not my having met you twice under circumstances so uncommon justify my claiming a privilege to which no one else in this place could pretend?"

"What privilege?"

"The privilege of knowing you and meeting you. It was, at least, promised me in a dream. You will not set aside a promise so mysterious?"

"Are you a fatalist? I am. If you are not, you will ridicule my weakness, as you will call it. But much may be forgiven to persons who lead such self-contained lives as I. So, if we are to become friends, our friendship is preordained, and my rebelling against it would be foolish."

"If we are to be friends, I shall become a fatalist. A creed made tempting by such a reward is irresistible. I have your permission to call again?"

"You are your own master."

The reply was sufficient. I extended my hand; she gave me hers. I held it for a moment, and we separated.