This with a peculiar smile. ‘It’s no use; there’s too many eyes a-watching. I tried it myself once, slap off the Embankment, but I was fished out like a wet rag. Don’t you be such a fool! You’re a lady, and you had best go home.’ Without replying, the lady began to move rapidly away. Seized by a peculiar impulse, the outcast cried after her--‘Come back--take your things--it’s a shame for me to have them. Take them back.’ ‘No; keep them. Good-bye. May I kiss you?’ ‘If you like,’ was the stupefied reply. The lips of the two women met, their breaths mingled for a moment. Then, while the one stood petrified, staring in utter astonishment, the other flitted rapidly and silently away. CHAPTER I.--A DANCING LESSON UNDER DIFFICULTIES. Twelve years before the occurrence of the incident described in my prologue, a curious group was assembled in a quiet corner of Grayfleet Churchyard. Gray fleet is a damp, aguish, lonely, desolate village, on the verge of the great Essex marshes; and its old church, like a skull with two empty, lifeless eyes, gazes with two dreary windows right down on the marshes, towards that low-lying mist where they mingle with the sea. The group of which I have spoken consisted of some six girls and one little boy. The girls were of divers ages, from six to sixteen, and all were more or less smartly dressed in holiday clothes, for it was a Good Friday. They stood in a ring round a flat tombstone, grey with age, and green with slime of moss. On this tombstone a fair little girl of eight, with dishevelled hair and flushed cheeks, was practising the first steps of a dance. Her instructress was the eldest of the party, a pale, red-haired wench of sixteen, who watched her with keenly critical eyes, and at times stepped forward, took her place on the tombstone, and showed her how to use her feet. First position--heel and toe--cut and shuffle. ‘Lookee here, Mawther!’ cried one of the girls to a passer by. ‘Come and see Polly Lowther teaching Mark Peartree’s girl to dance.’ Another girl came running into the churchyard, and joined the group. ‘That’s the style!’ exclaimed Polly Lowther, as the red-haired girl was called. ‘You’ll soon learn, if you only try. Look at me, Madlin. Watch my feet.’ First position--heel and toe--cut and shuffle. The girls clapped their hands enthusiastically, and the little boy, who was sitting astride on a green grave, grinned approval. Fired by the applause bestowed on her teacher, the little fair girl--‘Madlin,’ as the others called her--began wildly practising the steps. First position--heel and toe--cut and shuffle. Suddenly there was a rush, a cry. The troop of girls scattered on every side and disappeared: the little boy cried and ran. Only ‘Madlin’ remained, so absorbed for the time being in her dancing that for a moment she did not notice that she was left alone, and that a tall figure in black, with white neckcloth, stood frowning at her.