Lucy accepted the courtesy; and the stranger was half-way down the staircase, when the doctor, stretching out his little neck, exclaimed,—
"Good-evening, sir! I do hope we shall meet again."
"Fear not!" said Mr. Clifford, laughing gayly; "I am too great a traveller to make that hope a matter of impossibility. Take care, madam, —one step more."
The night was calm and tolerably clear, though the moon had not yet risen, as Lucy and her companion passed through the fields, with the servant preceding them at a little distance with the lantern.
After a pause of some length, Clifford said, with a little hesitation,
"Is Miss Brandon related to the celebrated barrister of her name?"
"He is my uncle," said Lucy; "do you know him?"
"Only your uncle?" said Clifford, with vivacity, and evading Lucy's question. "I feared—hem! hem!—that is, I thought he might have been a nearer relation." There was another, but a, shorter pause, when Clifford resumed, in a low voice: "Will Miss Brandon think me very presumptuous if I say that a countenance like hers, once seen, can never be forgotten; and I believe, some years since, I had the honour to see her in London, at the theatre? It was but a momentary and distant glance that I was then enabled to gain; and yet," he added significantly, "it sufficed!"
"I was only once at the theatre while in London, some years ago," said Lucy, a little embarrassed; "and indeed an unpleasant occurrence which happened to my uncle, with whom I was, is sufficient to make me remember it."
"Ha! and what was it?"
"Why, in going out of the play-house his watch was stolen by some dexterous pickpocket."