Suddenly from out of the dark a hand settled on my arm.  I looked up and could just see the whiteness of a face.  Before I could speak, a voice said brokenly, in a half-whisper:—­

“Will you save me, Mr Walton?  But you’re trembling; you are ill; you ought not to have come to me.  I will get you something.”

And she moved to go, but I held her.  All my trembling was gone in a moment.  Her words, so careful of me even in her deep misery, went to my heart and gave me strength.  The suppressed feelings of many months rushed to my lips.  What I said I do not know, but I know that I told her I loved her.  And I know that she did not draw her hand from mine when I said so.

But ere I ceased came a revulsion of feeling.

“Forgive me,” I said, “I am selfishness itself to speak to you thus now, to take advantage of your misery to make you listen to mine.  But, at least, it will make you sure that if all I am, all I have will save you—­”

“But I am saved already,” she interposed, “if you love me—­for I love you.”

And for some moments there were no words to speak.  I stood holding her hand, conscious only of God and her.  At last I said: 

“There is no time now but for action.  Nor do I see anything but to go with me at once.  Will you come home to my sister?  Or I will take you wherever you please.”

“I will go with you anywhere you think best.  Only take me away.”

“Put on your bonnet, then, and a warm cloak, and we will settle all about it as we go.”

She had scarcely left the room when Mrs Oldcastle came to the door.

“No lights here!” she said.  “Sarah, bring candles, and tell Captain Everard, when he will join us, to come to the octagon room.  Where can that little Judy be?  The child gets more and more troublesome, I do think.  I must take her in hand.”

I had been in great perplexity how to let her know that I was there; for to announce yourself to a lady by a voice out of the darkness of her boudoir, or to wait for candles to discover you where she thought she was quite alone—­neither is a pleasant way of presenting yourself to her consciousness.  But I was helped out of the beginning into the middle of my difficulties, once more by that blessed little Judy.  I did not know she was in the room till I heard her voice.  Nor do I yet know how much she had heard of the conversation between her aunt and myself; for although I sometimes see her look roguish even now that she is a middle-aged woman with many children, when anything is said which might be supposed to have a possible reference to that night, I have never cared to ask her.

“Here I” am, grannie,” said her voice.  “But I won’t be taken in hand by you or any one else.  I tell you that.  So mind.  And Mr Walton is here, too, and Aunt Ethelwyn is going out with him for a long walk.”

“What do you mean, you silly child ?”

“I mean what I say,” and “Miss Judy speaks the truth,” fell together from her lips and mine.