Chapter 4 - Page 2

mysterious man got a name? Who is 'He'?"

As I said that, there was another knock at the door. Zillah whispered, eagerly, "Don't tell upon me, ma'am! You will see for yourself. I only speak for my young lady's good." She hobbled away, and opened the door--and there was Lucilla, with her smart garden hat on, waiting for me.

We went out by our own door into the garden, and passing through a gate in the wall, entered the village.

After the caution which the nurse had given me, it was impossible to ask any questions, except at the risk of making mischief in our little household, on the first day of my joining it. I kept my eyes wide open, and waited for events. I also committed a blunder at starting--I offered Lucilla my hand to lead her. She burst out laughing.

"My dear Madame Pratolungo! I know my way better than you do. I roam all over the neighborhood, with nothing to help me but this."

She held up a smart ivory walking-cane, with a bright silk tassel attached. With her cane in one hand, and her chemical bottle in the other--and her roguish little hat on the top of her head--she made the quaintest and prettiest picture I had seen for many a long day. "You shall guide me, my dear," I said--and took her arm. We went on down the village.

Nothing in the least like a mysterious figure passed us in the twilight. The few scattered laboring people, whom I had already seen, I saw again--and that was all. Lucilla was silent--suspiciously silent as I thought, after what Zillah had told me. She had, as I fancied, the look of a person who was listening intently. Arrived at the cottage of the rheumatic woman, she stopped and went in, while I waited outside. The affair of the embrocation was soon over. She was out again in a minute--and this time, she took my arm of her own accord.

"Shall we go a little farther?" she said. "It is so nice and cool at this hour of the evening."

Her object in view, whatever it might be, was evidently an object that lay beyond the village. In the solemn, peaceful twilight we followed the lonely windings of the valley along which I had passed in the morning. When we came opposite the little solitary house, which I had already learnt to know as "Browndown," I felt her hand unconsciously tighten on my arm. "Aha!" I said to myself. "Has Browndown anything to do with this?"

"Does the view look very lonely to-night?" she asked, waving her cane over the scene before us.

The true meaning of that question I took to be, "Do you see anybody walking out to-night?" It was not my business to interpret her meaning, before she had thought fit to confide her secret to me. "To my mind, my dear," was all I said, "it is a very beautiful view."

She fell silent again, and absorbed herself in her own thoughts. We