"I wish, madam," he said, "I could see you seated more comfortably. But I wish more that you could see into my heart, what I feel there, and how my pain is infinitely keener than yours, because my love for you, my inexorable passion for you, my determination to win you and make you my own for life, paralysing the efforts of those who would keep us asunder, make the very soul within me shrink to behold you so uneasy, so unhappy, so reluctant to cast upon me one look--even one look--to persuade me that my stratagem was based upon my conviction that I am not indifferent to you, nay, that deep in your spirit your love for me dwells as a jewel in a casket that yourself dare not open, though willing that I should." She continued at one moment smiling her idiot smile, at another moment frowning her madwoman's frown, whilst he spoke. Then looking up she seemed to perceive him for the first time, sprang erect with a wonderful convulsion of terror in her whole form, and a sharp, short, piercing shriek of distress. "Who are you, sir?" she cried, brushing her hair by a fling of both hands from her brow and cheeks. "How durst you intrude upon me? Do you know I am a woman--a lady--a lady--a princess--the Princess Tatters, sir, the daughter of a great and powerful lord who would condemn you to be hanged if he caught you here!" It was sure that neither the spirit nor the inspiration of the genius of the famous Kitty O'Hara was far distant from her child when this sweet and astonishing young creature executed the above feat of dramatic gymnastics and delivered the words just recorded. The bewildered man stared at her as though he was himself bereft of reason. Amazement, confusion, love, pity, horror, doubt were amongst the expressions which ran through his countenance like shadow chasing shadow. "My dearest madam!" he cried. "My sweetest Lucy!" and here he clasped his hands and swayed with passion in his posture of piteous and painful appeal, which rendered him as a figure a really noble piece of flesh and blood, exalted as it was by its peculiar manly beauty of face. "Is it possible that you do not know me? How can I act to undo the dreadful distress my love has brought upon you? Oh, thou fair and everlasting darling of my heart, have those secret sweet feelings with which you regard me no power to influence your moods, to control these strange manifestations, to----" He drew his breath in a gasp and stopped, arrested by her suddenly turning her back upon him and bowing with the exquisite grace of the finished curtsy of those days to what Mr Lawrence guessed was an apparition.