“Why did you not leave me where I suppose I fell? You had done enough to injure me by discovering my weakness, without rudely breaking my trance, and, after that, taking advantage of the consequences to bring me here.” Now I found words. “Lady Alice, how could I leave you lying in the moonlight? Before the sun rose, the terrible moon might have distorted your beautiful face.” “Be silent, sir. What have you to do with my face?” “And the wind, Lady Alice, was blowing through the corridor windows, keen and cold, as if it were sister-spirit of the keen and cold moonlight. How could I leave you?” “You could have called assistance.” “I knew not whom I should rouse, if any one. And forgive me, Lady Alice, if I erred in thinking you would rather command the silence of a gentleman to whom an evil accident had revealed your secret, than be exposed to the domestics whom a call for help might have gathered round us.” She half raised herself again, in anger. “A secret with you, sir!” “But, besides, Lady Alice,” I cried, springing to my feet, in distress, “I heard the horse with the clanking shoe, and I caught you up in terror and fled with you, almost before I knew what I did. And I hear it now—I hear it now!” The angry glow faded from her face, and the paleness grew almost ghastly with dismay. “Do you hear it!” she said, throwing back the coverings I had laid over her, and rising from the couch. “I do not.” She stood listening, with wide distended eyes, as if _they_ were the gates by which such sounds could enter. “I do not hear it,” she said, after a pause; “it must be gone now.” Then, turning towards me, she laid her hand on my arm, and looked at me. Her black hair, disordered and entangled, wandered all over her white robe down to her knees. Her face was paler than ever, and she fixed her dark eyes on mine, so wide open that I could see the white all round the unusually large iris. “Did you hear it? No one ever heard it before but me. I must forgive you—you could not help it. I will trust you too. Help me to my room.” Without a word of reply, I took my plaid and wrapped it about her; prevailed upon her to put on a pair of slippers which I had never worn; and, opening the doors, led her out of the room, aided by the light of my bedroom candle. “How is this? Why do you take me this way! I do not know this part of the house in the least.” “This is the way I brought you in, Lady Alice; and I can promise to find your way no farther than to the spot where I found you. Indeed, I shall have some difficulty even in that, for I groped my way there for the first time this night or morning—whichever it may be.” “It is past midnight, but not morning yet,” she replied; “I always know by my sensations. But there is another way from your room, of course?” “There is; but we should have to pass the housekeeper’s door, and she sleeps but lightly.”