“Oh, Brignal Banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green; I’d rather rove with Edmund there Than reign our English Queen!” “How strange his name should be Edmund, too!” So musing, she went out. She did not trouble to put on a hat, and she took off her tiresome spectacles and put them in her pocket, for it had grown so dark that, even if anyone were to meet her going out of the inn door, he would not be able to see her face with any degree of clearness. But when she got into the hall, she changed her mind capriciously and went into the garden instead of the Park. As she passed the window of his room, she noticed that the white linen blind was not drawn down, and the lighted lamp inside showed the table with its queer, old-fashioned, rose-embroidered cloth, all littered with the paraphernalia of an artist’s work, and the artist himself intently bending over a sepia sketch lying in front of him. He had evidently forgotten her very existence! No wonder! A plain woman with smoked spectacles and a bald forehead. So she characterized herself. That was all she had allowed him to see of her. She stood there for a very long time, watching him, her hand raised to her face ready to veil it in case he should look up. She had no scruples, for if he had objected to being looked at, he would have pulled down the blind. Every now and then, a ripe pear, ruined by the insidious wasp that preyed on it secretly, fell heavily down on the sodden earth under the window, and startled her, but he never raised his head. She ceased to expect him to do so, and stood at ease, listening to the various puzzling night sounds and quite unconscious of the flight of time. Queer noises came from the great, mysterious demesne on the other side of the house--that excess of rank foliage in which it seemed that every known variety of animal might find a home; it was so “whick,” in local parlance, so full of all the forms of sylvan life, crawling, creeping, rustling in among the long grasses and twisted boughs all through the summer night. Presently, the short, sharp bark of a fox, that came from the covert, did penetrate to his ears through the thickness of the pane; he looked up, seemed to stare at her, and she fled. CHAPTER IV A maid deposited a can of hot water, and knocked at Mrs. Elles’ door next morning, as the latter had desired her to do over night. Thinking, perhaps, of her faithful Jane, she sleepily called out “Come in!” from force of habit.