He bent down and whispered a name in my ear, at which the color left my cheek, the light my eye, almost the life my pulses. "Will you come?" I bent my head without a word, and followed him out of the hall, down the terrace, through the winding paths of the shrubbery, across the garden; hurrying on to suit his fierce pace, but chilled to the heart with a terror that was no longer nameless. CHAPTER XXXII. "O man! while in thy early years, How prodigal of time! Misspending all thy precious hours, Thy glorious, youthful prime! Alternate follies take the sway; Licentious passions burn; Which tenfold force give Nature's law, That man was made to mourn." BURNS. The spot to which my companion led me was a ruined summerhouse, not a stone's throw from the outer garden hedge. It was a lonely place in a sort of hollow, a low, dense orchard stretched dark on one side, while a little knoll, crowned with copse, rose between it and all view of the house and grounds on the other, and a little stream fell murmuring down from rock to rock through the ravine. Why it was so deserted and dilapidated, I had never exactly known; but from something Stephen had said, when I had questioned him about it, I had conjectured that it was associated with the shame and fall of her whose memory was even yet so painful, and that ruin and decay were welcome to hide the place from all eyes. The night wind was moaning wildly down the little hollow; the ghastly moonlight flickered fitfully through the broken roof and moldering arches; the moss-grown, slimy stones rocked beneath my tread; steadying myself by one of the posts of the ruined doorway, I stood still and waited for my companion to speak. He had sunk down on a seat, but in a moment, raising his head, he loosed the hood of his domino, and, as it fell back, rose and turned his face toward me. With a faint cry, I put out my hands and started back. In the haggard, bloodless face, the wild and troubled eye of the man before me, I could hardly recognize a feature of Victor Viennet's handsome face. "No need to start away and put out your white hands to keep me off," he said, with a laugh that made my blood run cold. "No need to press your pale lips together to keep back that cry of horror! I have risked my life--aye--sold it, rather--for this interview, and yet I would not lay my guilty grasp upon the hand you have promised to me, I would not touch the distantest fold of your white dress! There is no need to droop, and flutter, and clasp your hands, and pray me to be calm--don't turn your eyes on me with such a look as that! You try to say you love me yet; wait till I tell you, wait till you know all, before you say you love me!" "You need not tell me, Victor," I faltered, "I guessed it from the first."