I could not trust myself to answer, but she knew how to interpret my silence aright.
"Yes," she said, "you are my trusty squire, my faithful George. If I were to say to you: watch this terrace tonight until the break of day, you would do it, would you not?"
"Yes," I answered.
She looked in my face and smiled. "How sweet it is--how sweet to know that there is one creature upon earth that is true to us!"
She gave me her hand; my own trembled as I took it.
"But I do not ask anything of the kind," she said; "only this one thing, that you will not go away except by your own determination, and not without my permission. You promise? That is so kind of you! And now go; good-night!"
She lightly pressed my hand before letting it go, and then re-entered her room. As I turned away I heard the casement close.
I stood under one of the great trees of the park and looked back towards the house. The moon had risen above the trees, and the great mass of buildings stood out in bolder relief against the dark background; a faint light occasionally appeared and vanished in one of the windows of the upper story. The light from Constance's window came towards me with that magic lustre which shines upon us once in our lives, and only once.
The lawn before me lay in deep shadow; but just as the first rays of the moon began to illuminate it, I thought I perceived a figure, which, coming from the other side, was slowly approaching Constance's window. In this there was nothing to excite suspicion, for it might be one of the laborers; but it is the duty of a faithful squire to make sure in any case; so without a moment's hesitation I started across the lawn to meet the figure. Unluckily I stepped upon a dry twig and it snapped. The figure stopped instantly, and began to retreat with swift, stealthy steps. He had but little start of me, but the thick coppice which closed in the lawn on that side, and was the limit of the park, was so near that he reached it a few moments before me. I distinctly heard some one pushing through the branches, but with my utmost exertions I could not reach him. I began to think that my ear had led me in a wrong direction, when suddenly a loud crashing and clattering close at hand proved that I was on the right track. The man was evidently clambering over the rotten paling which fenced in the park on this side. Now I knew he could not escape me. On the other side lay a wide open space, and I had never yet met the man whom I could not overtake in a fair race. But at the instant that I reached the paling, I heard a horse's feet, and looking up saw a rider galloping across the open in the clear moonlight. The horse was evidently one of great power and speed. At each stride he cleared such a stretch of ground, that in less than half a minute horse and rider were lost to sight; for a brief space I still heard the sound of the hoofs, and then that also ceased. The whole adventure passed in so little time, that I might have fancied I had dreamed it all, but for the evidence of my heart beating violently with excitement and the exertion of the chase, and the smarting of my hands, which were torn by the thorns and briers.
Who could the audacious intruder be? Certainly not an ordinary thief; doubtless some one who had been attracted by the light from Constance's window, and not to-night for the first time; it was plain that he had often followed that path in the dark.