was conscious of a bustle in the house beneath, with the
bearing of heavy burdens up the creaking stair, and the harsh voice of my
landlady, loud in welcome and protestations of joy. From time to time,
amid the whirl of words, I could hear a gentle and softly modulated
voice, which struck pleasantly upon my ear after the long weeks during
which I had listened only to the rude dialect of the dalesmen. For an
hour I could hear the dialogue beneath--the high voice and the low, with
clatter of cup and clink of spoon, until at last a light, quick step
passed my study door, and I knew that my new fellow lodger had sought her
room.

On the morning after this incident I was up betimes, as is my wont; but I
was surprised, on glancing from my window, to see that our new inmate was
earlier still. She was walking down the narrow pathway, which zigzags
over the fell--a tall woman, slender, her head sunk upon her breast, her
arms filled with a bristle of wild flowers, which she had gathered in her
morning rambles. The white and pink of her dress, and the touch of deep
red ribbon in her broad drooping hat, formed a pleasant dash of colour
against the dun-tinted landscape. She was some distance off when I first
set eyes upon her, yet I knew that this wandering woman could be none
other than our arrival of last night, for there was a grace and
refinement in her bearing which marked her from the dwellers of the
fells. Even as I watched, she passed swiftly and lightly down the
pathway, and turning through the wicket gate, at the further end of our
cottage garden, she seated herself upon the green bank which faced my
window, and strewing her flowers in front of her, set herself to arrange
them.

As she sat there, with the rising sun at her back, and the glow of the
morning spreading like an aureole around her stately and well-poised
head, I could see that she was a woman of extraordinary personal beauty.
Her face was Spanish rather than English in its type--oval, olive, with
black, sparkling eyes, and a sweetly sensitive mouth. From under the
broad straw hat two thick coils of blue-black hair curved down on either
side of her graceful, queenly neck. I was surprised, as I watched her,
to see that her shoes and skirt bore witness to a journey rather than to
a mere morning ramble. Her light dress was stained, wet and bedraggled;
while her boots were thick with the yellow soil of the fells. Her face,
too, wore a weary expression, a