"He is following us. I hear his step in the undergrowth," whispered Judith, and Storms answered back:
"Give him plenty of time."
When they reached Jessup's cottage, the little building was quite dark, except the faint gleam of a night-lamp in the sick man's room. At the gate they both paused. Judith turned with her face to the moonlight, and offered her lips for the kiss Storms bent lovingly to give her. Then they stood together, hand-in-hand, as if reluctant to part for a minute, and he went away, looking back now and then, as if anxious for her safety, while she stood by the gate watching him.
When the young man was quite gone, Judith opened the gate, without even a click of the latch, and stole like a thief toward the porch, which was so laden with ivy and jasmines that no one could see her when once in its shelter. Still she shrunk back, and dragged the foliage over her, when the gamekeeper came out from his concealment, and walked back and forth before the cottage. At last his steps receded, and, peering through the ivy, Judith saw him move away toward the lake. Then she stole out of the porch, crept with bent form to the gate, and darted in a contrary direction with the speed of a lapwing. Somewhat later, the girl stole through the back yard of the inn, tried her key in the kitchen door, and crept up to her room in the garret, where she carefully put away her outer garments, and went to bed so passionately happy that she lay awake all night with both hands folded over her bosom, and the name of Richard Storms trembling now and then up from her heart.
CHAPTER L.
YOUNG HURST AND LADY ROSE.
IT was a bright day at "Norston's Rest," when the young heir came from his sick-chamber, for the first time, and, leaning on Webb, entered the pretty little parlor in which Lady Rose had made his bouquet the evening he was hurt. She sat waiting for him now, demurely busy with some trifle of richly-tinted embroidery, which, having a dainty taste, she had selected, I dare say, because it gave a touch of rich color to her simple white dress, looped here and there into soft clouds by a broad blue sash, which might have lacked effect but for this artistic device. Perhaps the invalid understood this, for he smiled when the fair patrician just lifted her eyes, as if his coming had been quite unimportant to her, and settled down into one of the loveliest pictures imaginable, working away at her tinted silks with fingers that quivered among them, and eyes that no whiteness of lid or thickness of lash could keep from beaming out their happiness.
There had been a time when this fair girl would have sprung from her seat and met him at the threshold; but now, she bent lower over her work, fearing that he might see how warmly-red her cheek was getting, and wonder at it. Indeed he well might wonder, for what word of love had he ever spoken that should have set her heart to beating so, when she first heard his uncertain step on the stairs?
All at once the young lady remembered that she was acting strangely. Starting up, she gave him her place among the blue cushions of her own favorite couch; then sat down on a low ottoman, and fell to work again.