pursue. She resumed it at once, on my telling her she might do so, touching the hard marble as tenderly as if it had been a sentient thing, and whispering the words of the inscription to herself, over and over again, as if the lost days of her girlhood had returned and she was patiently learning her lesson once more at Mrs Fairlie's knees.

`Should you wonder very much,' I said, preparing the way as cautiously as I could for the questions that were to come, `if I owned that it is a satisfaction to me, as well as a surprise, to see you here? I felt very uneasy about you after you left me in the cab.'

She looked up quickly and suspiciously.

`Uneasy,' she repeated. `Why?'

`A strange thing happened after we parted that night. Two men overtook me in a chaise. They did not see where I was standing, but they stopped near me, and spoke to a policeman on the other side of the way.'

She instantly suspended her employment. The hand holding the damp cloth with which she had been cleaning the inscription dropped to her side. The other hand grasped the marble cross at the head of the grave. Her face turned towards me slowly, with the blank look of terror set rigidly on it once more. I went on at all hazards -- it was too late now to draw back.

`The two men spoke to the policeman,' I said, `and asked him if he had seen you. He had not seen you; and then one of the men spoke again, and said you had escaped from his Asylum.'

She sprang to her feet as if my last words had set the pursuers on her track.

`Stop! and hear the end,' I cried. `Stop! and you shall know how I befriended you. A word from me would have told the men which way you had gone -- and I never spoke that word. I helped your escape -- I made it safe and certain. Think, try to think. Try to understand what I tell you.'

My manner seemed to influence her more than my words. She made an effort to grasp the new idea. Her hands shifted the damp cloth hesitatingly from one to the other, exactly as they had shifted the little travelling-bag on the night when I first saw her. Slowly the purpose of my words seemed to force its way through the confusion and agitation of her mind. Slowly her features relaxed, and her eyes looked at me with their expression gaining in curiosity what it was fast losing in fear.

`You don't think I ought to be back in the Asylum, do you?' she said.

`Certainly not. I am glad you escaped from it -- I am glad I helped you.'

`Yes, yes, you did help me indeed; you helped me at the hard part,' she went on a little vacantly. `It was easy to escape, or l should not have got away. They never suspected me as they suspected the others. I was so quiet, and so obedient, and so easily frightened. The finding London was the hard part, and there you helped me. Did I thank you at the time? I thank you now very kindly.'

`Was the Asylum far from where you met me? Come! show that you believe me to be your friend, and tell me where it was.'

She mentioned the place -- a private Asylum, as its situation informed me; a private Asylum not very far from the spot where I had seen her -- and then, with evident suspicion of the use to which I might put her answer, anxiously repeated her former inquiry, `You don't think I ought to be taken back, do you?'

`Once again, I am glad you escaped -- I am glad you prospered well after you left me,' I answered. `You said you had a friend in London to go to. rid you find the friend?'