She thanked me in an agitated voice, and with a hurried manner, in language which was well chosen, but seemed perfectly natural to her. I now perceived that she was older than her slender figure at first suggested. She seemed to be about five-and-twenty years of age, with a softly feminine and purely English face, long, tremulous eyelashes, and a perfect nose and chin. She was almost beautiful; but with an air of sadness in her charming little features, which, when her alarm subsided, was too apparent to fail to interest me. "If you will not deem me intrusive," said I, lifting my hat again, and drawing back respectfully one pace, "I shall be most happy to escort you home." "I thank you, sir." "It is almost dark now, and your friends may be anxious about you." "Friends?" she repeated, inquiringly, in a strange voice, while a cough of a most consumptive sound seemed to rack her slender form. "Or permit me to escort you to where you were going. It was in this direction luckily, or I could only have taken my horse over the stile by a flying leap." "But, sir——" she began, and paused. "Consider, that fellow may be within ear-shot, and he may return again." "True, sir. I do thank you very much. There was a time when I was not wont to be so unprotected; but I am so loth—" "To incommode me; is it not so?" "Yes, sir." "Oh, do not say so. I am from the barracks at Maidstone, though in mufti, as you see, and trust you will permit me to be your escort. My time at present is completely at your disposal." "I live about half-a-mile on this side of the village; and if you will be so very kind——" "I shall have much pleasure," I replied, with a respectful bow; and leading my horse by the bridle, I walked onward by her side. She conversed with me easily and gracefully on many subjects—of the oddness of her being abroad at such an hour alone; but in the country folks thought nothing of it. She had been visiting a sick fisherman’s wife, or child, or something, at Herne Bay, and been detained; the roads were not unsafe thereabouts in general; but she must be careful for the future. Then we remarked, of course, the beauty of the evening, the romance of the scenery along the coast, and its associations, by Herne Bay, the Reculvers, and Birchington; and my fair companion seemed well read, for she knew all about the old kings of Kent, and, pointing seaward, showed me that, where now the ocean rolled, there stood in other times a goodly Saxon town, with something about a king named Ethelbert, whose palace was close by the Reculvers; and so, chatting away pleasantly in a tone of voice that was very alluring, for there was a musical chord in it, we proceeded along the highway, until she suddenly paused at the iron gate of a pretty little rustic cottage that stood within a garden plot, back some fifty paces or so from the highway.