"Then your stores speak, my good woman," answered Chartley; "for I heard a voice which I know right well talking to you."
"Go away, go away," replied the woman, who, in the dark passage where Chartley stood, could not see his dress, or judge of his station. "Go away, or I will call in the men to make you."
"All the men in the neighbourhood would not make me," answered Chartley aloud. "At least, not till I see that lady. Tell her it is Lord Chartley. If she bids me go, I will."
The words had scarcely passed his lips, when the door through which the woman had just passed was thrown open, light suddenly streamed into the passage, and Iola herself ran out, exclaiming: "Chartley, is that you? Nay, nay, you are rash indeed. You should not have come."
"But, now I have come, you will not bid me go," said Chartley, taking her hand, and kissing it. He put some restraint upon himself to keep his lips from hers.
"I cannot bid you go at once," answered Iola, bending her eyes down, with the colour rising in her cheek; "but you must go soon, and not return again, unless I send."
"This is hard," answered Chartley; "but still, I shall not feel it so much now I know where you are, and can hover round the neighbourhood, like a dove over its nest, watching the treasure of its love."
"Nay, Chartley, you are no dove," answered Iola, with a smile. "Open that other door, Catherine, and watch well from the windows that no one approaches. Come in hither, Chartley," she continued, as the woman opened the door of a room opposite to that from which she had come. "Here is my little hall. No grand reception room, yet sweet and pleasant."
A floor of dried and hard beaten clay, a low roof with all the rafters shown, walls covered with mere whitewash, an unpolished oaken table, and seats of wood, did not make the room seem less bright and sweet to Chartley when Iola was there. She herself was dressed as a mere cottage girl, and doubtless, when the mantle and hood, then worn in the middle and lower ranks of life, were added, an unobserving eye might hardly have recognized her; but she did not look less lovely to the eyes of him who sat beside her.
They were sweet, sweet moments which those two passed together; and, perchance, it were hardly fair to tell all that they said and did. Iola owned that it was sweet to see him once again, after so long a separation and so much anxiety and care; but yet she told him earnestly that he must not come again.