While I went pacing softly about, to occupy myself, a soft, small rain began to fall; but this did not affect me in any way. It was rather soothing than disagreeable. I went down to the side of the loch, where the pale light on the water was touched by innumerable droppings of the rain; then up again, round and round the house, not caring where I went. At this hour I had always avoided the Lady’s Walk, I can scarcely tell why. To-night, in my strange familiarity with everything, and carelessness of all but one subject, I suddenly turned into it with a caprice I could not account for, perhaps with an understood wish for company, for somebody who might understand my thoughts. The mystic footsteps gave me a sort of pleasure. Whether it was habit, or some new sense of human fellowship which Charlotte’s impassioned words had caused, I can scarcely tell; but the excitement with which I had always hitherto regarded the mysterious watcher here was altogether gone out of my mind. I felt a profound and tender pity for her rising in me instead. Was it possible that a spirit could be “over-anxious,” as Charlotte said, endeavouring vainly, and yet not undutifully, to take God’s supreme guardianship out of His hands? The thought was new to me. To think that a good and blessed creature could so err, could mistake so humanly and persevere so patiently, though never able to remedy the evils, seemed somehow more possible than that a guardian from heaven could watch and watch for generations with so little result. This gave me a great compassion for the lonely watcher thus rebelling in a heavenly way of love against the law of nature that separated her from visible life. My old idea that it might be Charlotte herself in an unconscious shadow-shape, whose protecting, motherly love made these efforts unawares, glided gratefully into the feeling that it was an earlier Charlotte, her very kin and prototype, who could not even now let God manage her race without her aid. While I was thus thinking, I was startled once more by the same sigh which I had heard with Charlotte. Yes, yes, it might be the wind. I had no time to bandy explanations with myself. It was a soft, long sigh, such as draws the very breath out of an over-laden bosom. I turned half round, it was so near to me, and there, by my side, so close that I could have touched her, stood the Lady whom I had imagined so often--the same figure which I had met in the London streets and in the woods of Ellermore. I suppose I stepped back, with a little thrill of the old sensations, for she seemed to put out a hand in the pale gloom, and began to speak softly, quickly, as if there was scarcely time enough for what she had to say. “I am going away like the rest,” she said. “None of them have ever bid me go before; but it was true--it was true. I have never done any good--just frightened them, or pleased them. It is in better hands--it is in better hands.”