"Quite," replied Barecolt; "he aided me last night to get speech with you in the block-house; and would not have cared if it had put his neck in a noose."
"Enough--enough!" said the earl; "it had well nigh been an unlucky business for all; but that matters not. The man showed his devotion, and therefore we may trust him; and now, fair lady, so long, and so anxiously sought, I can scarcely believe my eyes to find you here upon the coast of Yorkshire. But, doubtless, you do not know me; let me say that I am an old friend of Lord Walton."
"Oh! yes, sir," replied Arrah Neil; "I remember you well. You were at Bishop's Merton that terrible night before the fire. You passed me as I sat by the well watching for Lord Walton's return, to tell him what they plotted against him; and you asked your way, and spoke kindly to me. Oh I remember you well; but I wonder you remember me, for I am much changed."
"You are, indeed," replied the earl, "not only in dress but in speech. I could hardly at that time wring a word from you, though I was anxious to know if I could give you aid or help."
"I was at that time in deep grief," replied Arrah Neil, "and that with me is always silent; but, besides, I had one of my cloudy fits upon me--those cloudy fits that are now gone for ever."
"Indeed!" said the earl; "what has happened to dissipate them?"
"Memory," replied Arrah Neil. "At that time all the past was covered with darkness, previous to that period at which I arrived at Bishop's Merton; but still, in the darkness it seemed as if I saw figures moving about, different from those that surrounded me, and as if I heard tongues speaking that had ceased to sound upon my ear. And so longingly, so earnestly, used I to look upon that cloud over the past--so completely used it to withdraw my thoughts from the present--so anxious used I try to see those figures, and to hear those voices more distinctly, that I do not wonder people thought me mad. I thought myself so at times."
"But still," rejoined Lord Beverley, "how has all this been removed?"
"Because the cloud is gone," replied Arrah Neil, with a smile that made her fair face look angelic--"because to remember one scene, one hour, one person, connected with the past, woke up memory as if she had been sleeping; and daily and hourly since she has been bringing up before me the pictures of other days, till all is growing clear and bright."
"I can understand all that," said the earl, with interest; "but I would fain hear how it happened, that memory had for so long failed you at a particular point."