She saw the figure, outside, glide hurriedly away by the side of the wall.

‘Lily—­Lily, darling; no, don’t go—­I did not expect you;’ and Gertrude stopped suddenly, and then as suddenly said—­

‘You are very welcome, Lily;’ and she drew the window down, and there was another pause before she said—­’Had not we better go up to the drawing-room, and—­and—­Lily darling, you’re very welcome.  Are you better?’

And she took little Lily’s hand, and kissed her.

Little Lilias all this time had said nothing, so entirely was she disconcerted.  And her heart beat fast with a kind of fear:  and she felt Gertrude’s cold hand tremble she fancied in hers.

‘Yes, darling, the drawing-room, certainly,’ answered Lily.  And the two young ladies went up stairs holding hands, and without exchanging another word.

’Aunt Becky has gone some distance to see a sick pensioner; I don’t expect her return before an hour.’

’Yes—­I know—­and she came, dear Gertrude, to see me; and I should not have come, but that she asked me, and—­and——­’

She stopped, for she was speaking apologetically, like an intruder, and she was shocked to feel what a chasm on a sudden separated them, and oppressed with the consciousness that their old mutual girlish confidence was dead and gone; and the incident of the evening, and Gertrude’s changed aspect, and their changed relations, seemed a dreadful dream.

Gertrude looked so pale and wretchedly, and Lily saw her eyes, wild and clouded, once or twice steal toward her with a glance of such dark alarm and enquiry, that she was totally unable to keep up the semblance of their old merry gossiping talk, and felt that Gertrude read in her face the amazement and fear which possessed her.

’Lily, darling, let us sit near the window, far away from the candles, and look out; I hate the light.’

‘With all my heart,’ said Lily.  And two paler faces than theirs, that night, did not look out on the moonlight prospect.

‘I hate the light, Lily,’ repeated Gertrude, not looking at her companion, but directly out through the bow-window upon the dark outline of the lawn and river bank, and the high grounds on the other side.  ’I hate the light—­yes, I hate the light, because my thoughts are darkness—­yes, my thoughts are darkness.  No human being knows me; and I feel like a person who is haunted.  Tell me what you saw when you came into the parlour just now.’

‘Gertrude, dear, I ought not to have come in so suddenly.’

’Yes, ’twas but right—­’twas but kind in you, Lily—­right and kind—­to treat me like the open-hearted and intimate friend that, Heaven knows, I was to you, Lily, all my life.  I think—­at least, I think—­till lately—­but you were always franker than I—­and truer.  You’ve walked in the light, Lily, and that’s the way to peace.  I turned aside, and walked in mystery; and it seems to me I am treading now the valley of the shadow of death.  Waking and talking, I am, nevertheless, in the solitude and darkness of the grave.  And what did you see, Lily—­I know you’ll tell me truly—­when you came into the parlour, as I stood by the window?’