'Till you were an inmate of the same house! till I saw her strange consternation, when she found me conversing with you; her rising injustice when, with the respect and admiration which you inspired, I mentioned you; her restless vigilance to interrupt whatever communication I attempted to have with you; her sudden fits of profound yet watchful taciturnity, when I saw you in her presence;--' 'I may tell her,' interrupted Juliet, disturbed, 'that you will wait upon her according to her request?' 'When you,' cried he, smiling, 'are her messenger, she must not expect quite so quick, quite so categorical an answer! I must first--' 'On the contrary, her impatience will be insupportable if I do not relieve it immediately.' She would have opened the door, but, preventing her, 'Can you indeed believe,' he cried, with vivacity; 'is it possible you can believe, that, having once caught a ray of light, to illumine and cheer the dread and nearly impervious darkness, that so long and so blackly overclouded all my prospects, I can consent, can endure to be cast again into desolate obscurity?' Juliet, blushing, and conscious of his allusion to her reception of him in the church yard, for which, without naming Sir Lyell Sycamore, she knew not how to account, again protested that she must not be detained. Still, however, half reproachfully, half laughingly, stopping her, 'And is it thus,' he cried, 'that you summon me to Brighthelmstone,--only to mock my obedience, and disdain to hear me?' 'I, Sir?--I, summon you?' 'Nay, see my credentials!' He presented to her the following note, written in an evidently feigned hand: 'If Mr Harleigh will take a ramble to the church-yard upon the Hill, at Brighthelmstone, next Thursday morning, at five o'clock, he will there meet a female fellow-traveller, now in the greatest distress, who solicits his advice and assistance, to extricate her from her present intolerable abode.' Deeply colouring, 'And could Mr Harleigh,' she cried, 'even for a moment believe,--suppose,--'