"You are looking at me; and you are thinking
of something," she said, with her strange,
breathless rapidity of utterance. "What is
it?"

"Nothing extraordinary," I answered. " I
was only wondering how you came here."

"I came with a friend who is very good to
me. I have only been here two days."

"And you found your way to this place,
yesterday?"

"How do you know that?"

"I only guessed it."

She turned from me, and knelt down before
the inscription once more.

"Where should I go, if not here?" she said.
"The friend who was better than a mother to
me, is the only friend I have to visit at
Limmeridge. Oh, it makes my heart ache to see a
stain on her tomb! It ought to be kept white
as snow, for her sake. I was tempted to begin
cleaning it yesterday; and I can't help coming
back to go on with it to-day. Is there anything
wrong in that? I hope not. Surely nothing
can be wrong that I do for Mrs. Fairlie's sake?"

The old grateful sense of her benefactress's
kindness was evidently the ruling idea still in
the poor creature's mind—the narrow mind
which had but too plainly opened to no other
lasting 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; 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 I 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. Did you find the friend?"

"Yes. It was very late; but there was a girl
up at needlework in the house, and she helped
me to rouse Mrs. Clements. Mrs. Clements is
my friend. A good, kind woman, but not like
Mrs. Fairlie. Ah, no, nobody is like Mrs.
Fairlie!"

"Is Mrs. Clements an old friend of yours?
Have you known her a long time?"

"Yes; she was a neighbour of ours once, at
home, in Hampshire; and liked me, and took
care of me when I was a little girl. Years ago,
when she went away from us, she wrote down
in my prayer-book for me, where she was going
to live in London, and she said, ' If you are ever
in trouble, Anne, come to me. I have no husband
alive to say me nay, and no children to look
after; and I will take care of you.' Kind words,
were they not? I suppose I remember them
because they were kind. It's little enough I
remember besides—little enough, little enough!"