impression since that first impression of her younger and happier
days. I saw that my best chance of winning her confidence lay in
encouraging her to proceed with the artless employment which she
had come into the burial-ground to 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--