They were standing in the full moonlight, and Mr. Richard was gazing with his usual melancholy into her face. “No, it has not been happy,” he answered very slowly, and with an apparent effort, “until now.” Then he stood for a short time in silence, and Chris, utterly thrown off her balance by new and strange feelings, did not notice, or did not mind, that he held her hand in his own with a warm pressure which said more than his words had done. Chris roused herself by an effort from the trance of pleasant feeling into which the first words she had ever heard him utter had thrown her. “You are here by yourself!” she exclaimed. “I thought Stelfox was with you!” Mr. Richard seemed to find it even more painful than she had done to break by speech the spell which the happiness of the meeting had cast upon him. His first answer was a heavy sigh. Then he said, gently, with the same strange appearance of speaking with difficulty, as if the exercise of speech were an unaccustomed thing which made him shy and nervous: “He is not far off. He did not want me to come out here to-night. But I begged that the day might not pass for me without one sight of you.” He uttered these words in such a low voice, and so indistinctly, that Chris had some difficulty in understanding him. Perceiving this he became so painfully nervous, that in repeating the words he was more indistinct than ever. He had scarcely finished saying them for the second time when Stelfox came with his usual noiseless footsteps round the angle of the house. He started on seeing the young lady, and, without uttering a word, made a sign to his charge which Chris understood to be an imperious command to return to the east wing. Mr. Richard was as submissive as a lamb. Taking the young lady’s hand for one moment in his, he pressed it for a moment in his own, and whispering in a very low voice, “Good-bye,” disappeared rapidly towards his rooms, returning by the north side of the house. As soon as he was out of sight, his attendant shook his head gravely. “It’s a great risk we’re all of us running, through my letting the young gentleman out, as I’ve done the last few days,” he said, in a warning voice; “but he’s begged so hard and he’s behaved so well that I’ve done it to keep him quiet for one thing, for fear he’d get out without my leave, instead of with it.” Here was her opportunity. In a voice which was one of earnest entreaty, Chris said: “Why should he not be let out? He is not mad, you know he is not mad, Stelfox. You would never dare to let a man who was really insane go about as he has done the last few days. Why should you ever have been afraid to let him out? And why have you changed your mind now?” Stelfox looked rather alarmed by the young lady’s vehemence. He gave a glance round and made a gesture of warning, as if afraid they might be overheard; but Chris went on in a reckless tone: