“I do not think that I wondered to see you,” he answered slowly.—Fastidious as he was in his garb and every exterior detail that concerned him, it was all as nothing, Ellinor had learned to know, compared to his mental fastidiousness. A silent man he was, but when he spoke no words could serve him but such as could clothe the truth to the most exquisite nicety. Could anyone have been more ill equipped for the battle of life? “I was standing on the tower,” he went on, “watching the withdrawal of the stars and the rise of another day. It is not often that I look to the earth. When the stars go, then, you see, the world is blank to me. But this morning, I know not why, when the skies grew faint I did look upon the earth and found it very fair. And so I stood and watched and saw the colours grow. Then you came forth into the midst of them; and somehow I thought it was as if you were part of the beauty of it all—part of the dawn; as if you were something that the earth and I myself had unconsciously been waiting for to complete the whole. Thus you see, Ellinor, it did not enter into my mind to ask why you had come. I sought you,” he smiled as he spoke, “also, indeed, I know not why.” As Ellinor listened her white eyelids had fallen over her eyes, lower and lower, till the long lashes, black at the base, upturned and tipped with gold at their ends, cast shadows on her cheek. Her breast heaved with the quickening of her breath. But at the last word she looked up at him, and her eyes were sad. “Ah, cousin, will you ever know?” It was almost a cry; it had a ring of hidden bitterness in it. Then, after a slight pause, she resumed her snipping and became once more, as she had announced, practical. “Well, now you shall be told why I am here. And first, please understand that I combine with my duties of housekeeper to the lord of Bindon, those of ’prentice or familiar to the alchemist—simpler—sorcerer; in short, to Master Simon, my father. Now, as you know,” she pursued, assuming a mock orating tone, “my said father spends now all his days and most of his night in extracting divers salts, distilling essences, elixirs, what not—remedies for which the village folk flock to him with enthusiasm, and which being, praise Heaven, harmless enough, are applied to their ills with varying success but entire satisfaction to themselves. These remedies are mostly grown in this garden.” She began to move down the path which led from bed to bed and which no foot but that of the simpler himself, of the dumb boy Barnaby, or her own having hitherto trod, was so narrow and encroached upon by the wild luxuriance of the herbs and shrubs that she was fain to walk in front of him and to speak over her shoulder. And even then, beneath their feet, many a broken and crushed simple gave forth its spicy ghost.