this time, before she was aware of me. The whole woman
seemed to yield at my touch. Her hand lay unresistingly in mine; her
charming figure came by soft gradations nearer and nearer to me; her
head almost touched my shoulder. She murmured in faint accents, broken
by sighs, "Don't take advantage of me. I am so friendless; I am so
completely in your power." Before I could answer, before I could move,
her hand closed on mine; her head sunk on my shoulder: she burst into
tears.

Any man, not an inbred and inborn villain, would have respected her at
that moment. I put her hand on my arm and led her away gently past the
ruined chapel, and down the slope of the hill.

"This lonely place is frightening you," I said. "Let us walk a little,
and you will soon be yourself again."

She smiled through her tears like a child.

"Yes," she said, eagerly. "But not that way." I had accidentally taken
the direction which led away from the city; she begged me to turn toward
the houses and the streets. We walked back toward Edinburgh. She eyed
me, as we went on in the moonlight, with innocent, wondering looks.
"What an unaccountable influence you have over me!" she exclaimed.

"Did you ever see me, did you ever hear my name, before we met that
evening at the river?"

"Never."

"And I never heard _your_ name, and never saw _you_ before. Strange!
very strange! Ah! I remember somebody--only an old woman, sir--who might
once have explained it. Where shall I find the like of her now?"

She sighed bitterly. The lost friend or relative had evidently been dear
to her. "A relation of yours?" I inquired--more to keep her talking than
because I felt any interest in any member of her family but herself.

We were again on the brink of discovery. And again it was decreed that
we were to advance no further.

"Don't ask me about my relations!" she broke out. "I daren't think of
the dead and gone, in the trouble that is trying me now. If I speak of
the old times at home, I shall only burst out crying again, and distress
you. Talk of something else, sir--talk of something else."

The mystery of the apparition in the summer-house was not cleared up
yet. I took my opportunity of approaching the subject.

"You spoke a little while since of dreaming of me," I began. "Tell me
your dream."

"I hardly know whether it was a dream or whether it was something else,"
she answered. "I call it a dream for want of a better word."

"Did it happen at nigh