Is there anything wrong in that? I
hope not. Surely nothing can be wrong that I do for Mrs.
Fairlie's sake?"
The old grateful sense of her benefactress's kindness was
evidently the ruling idea still in the poor creature's mind--the
narrow mind which had but too plainly opened to no other lasting
impression since that first impression of her younger and happier
days. I saw that my best chance of winning her confidence lay in
encouraging her to proceed with the artless employment which she
had come into the burial-ground to pursue. She resumed it at
once, on my telling her she might do so, touching the hard marble
as tenderly as if it had been a sentient thing, and whispering the
words of the inscription to herself, over and over again, as if
the lost days of her girlhood had returned and she was patiently
learning her lesson once more at Mrs. Fairlie's knees.
"Should you wonder very much," I said, preparing the way as
cautiously as I could for the questions that were to come, "if I
owned that it is a satisfaction to me, as well as a surprise, to
see you here? I felt very uneasy about you after you left me in
the cab."
She looked up quickly and suspiciously.
"Uneasy," she repeated.
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