'Do you think it's a ghost?' cried Camilla, unresisting the retreat, yet walking backwards to keep the form in sight.
'Fie! how can you talk so shocking? all in the dark so, except only for the moon?'
'Your's, my lovely friend!' was now again pronounced in the tenderest accent.
'She's talking to herself!' exclaimed Miss Dennel; 'Lord, how frightful!' and she clung close to Camilla, who, mounting a little hillock of stones, presently perceived that the lady was reading a letter.
Miss Dennel, tranquillised by hearing this, was again content to stop, when their ears were suddenly struck by a piercing shriek.
'O Lord! we shall be murdered!' cried she, screaming still louder herself.
They both ran back some paces down the lane, Camilla determining to send somebody from the inn to inquire what all this meant: but presently, through an opening in the common, they perceived the form in white darting forwards, with an air wild and terrified. Camilla stopt, struck with compassion and curiosity at once; Miss Dennel could not quit her, but after the first glance, hid her face, faintly articulating, 'O, don't let it see us! don't let it see us! I am sure it's nothing natural! I dare say it's somebody walking!'
The next instant, they perceived a man, looking earnestly around, as if to discover who had echoed the scream; the place they occupied was in the shade, and he did not observe them. He soon rushed hastily on, and seized the white garment of the flying figure, which appeared, both by its dress and form, to be an elegant female. She clasped her hands in supplication, cast up her eyes towards heaven, and again shrieked aloud.
Camilla, who possessed that fine internal power of the thinking and feeling mind to adopt courage for terror, where any eminent service may be the result of immediate exertion, was preparing to spring to her relief; while Miss Dennel, in extreme agony holding her, murmured out, 'Let's run away! let's run away! she's going to be murdered!' when they saw the man prostrate himself at the lady's feet, in the humblest subjection.
Camilla stopt her flight; and Miss Dennel, appeased, called out; 'La! his kneeling! how pretty it looks! I dare say it's a lover. How I wish one could hear what he says!'