d
pass out of my sight for ever. Think of me sometimes as one to whom the
lesson of life was very harshly told, but who heard it with courage; as
one who loved you indeed, but who hated herself so deeply that her love
was hateful to her; as one who sent you away and yet would have longed to
keep you for ever; who had no dearer hope than to forget you, and no
greater fear than to be forgotten.'

She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich voice sounding
softer and farther away; and with the last word she was gone, and I lay
alone in the moonlit chamber. What I might have done had not I lain
bound by my extreme weakness, I know not; but as it was there fell upon
me a great and blank despair. It was not long before there shone in at
the door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern, and Felipe coming, charged me
without a word upon his shoulders, and carried me down to the great gate,
where the cart was waiting. In the moonlight the hills stood out
sharply, as if they were of cardboard; on the glimmering surface of the
plateau, and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkled
in the wind, the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily,
its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern front
above the gate. They were Olalla's windows, and as the cart jolted
onwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till, where the road dipped into a
valley, they were lost to my view forever. Felipe walked in silence
beside the shafts, but from time to time he would cheek the mule and seem
to look back upon me; and at length drew quite near and laid his hand
upon my head. There was such kindness in the touch, and such a
simplicity, as of the brutes, that tears broke from me like the bursting
of an artery.

'Felipe,' I said, 'take me where they will ask no questions.'

He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end, retraced
some part of the way we had gone, and, striking into another path, led me
to the mountain village, which was, as we say in Scotland, the kirkton of
that thinly peopled district. Some broken memories dwell in my mind of
the day breaking over the plain, of the cart stopping, of arms that
helped me down, of a bare room into which I was carried, and of a swoon
that fell upon me like sleep.

The next day and the days following the old priest was often at my side
with his snuff-box and prayer book, and after a while, when I began to
pick up strength, he told me