“Were he changed, no matter how—­were be a beggar upon the roads, I should love him—­always!” said she, speaking in that soft, caressing voice which only the best of women possess.

“Yes, I had guessed as much,” said I, and found myself sighing.

“A year is a long, long time, and we were to have been married this month, but my father quarrelled with him and forbade him the house, so poor Perry went back to London.  Then we heard he was ruined, and I almost died with grief—­you see, his very poverty only made me love him the more.  Yesterday—­that man—­”

“Sir Harry Mortimer?” said I.

“Yes (he was a friend of whom I had often heard Perry speak); and he told me that my Perry lay at Tonbridge, dying, and begging to see me before the end.  He offered to escort me to him, assuring me that I could reach home again long before dusk.  My father, who I knew would never permit me to go, was absent, and so—­I ran away.  Sir Harry had a carriage waiting, but, almost as soon as the door was closed upon us, and we had started, I began to be afraid of him and—­and—­”

“Sir Harry, as I said before, is an unpleasant animal,” I nodded.

“Thank Heaven,” she pursued, “we had not gone very far before the chaise broke down!  And—­the rest you know.”

The footpath we had been following now led over a stile into a narrow lane or byway.  Very soon we came to a high stone wall wherein was set a small wicket.  Through this she led me, and we entered a broad park where was an avenue of fine old trees, beyond which I saw the gables of a house, for the stars had long since paled to the dawn, and there was a glory in the east.

“Your father will be rejoiced to have you safe back again,” said I.

“Yes,” she nodded, “but he will be very angry.”  And, hereupon, she stopped and began to pull, and twist, and pat her shining hair with dexterous white fingers, talking thus the while: 

“My mother died at my birth, and since then father has worshipped her memory, and his face always grows wonderfully gentle when he looks upon her portrait.  They say I’m greatly like her—­though she was a famous beauty in her day.  And, indeed, I think there must be some truth in it, for, no matter how I may put him out, my father can never be very angry when my hair is dressed so.”

With the word, she turned, and truly, I thought the face peeping out from its clustered curls even more lovely and bewitching than before.

“I very much doubt if any man could,” said I.

As we approached the house, I saw that the smooth gravel was much cut up as though by the coming and going of many wheels and horses, and also that one of the windows still shone with a bright light, and it was towards this window that my companion led me.  In a while, having climbed the terrace steps, I noticed that this was one of those French windows opening to the ground.  Now, looking through into the room