'They weren't with you that day in Nithbank Wood?'
'No.'
'By the way,' she hastily interposed, as if glad of an opening, 'I am pleased to have met you again, and to see you are none the worse of your indiscretion in venturing so far when you weren't feeling fit. You have only one walking-stick now, instead of two; so I argue you are making good progress. Do you know,' she continued, and she gave me a look which set my heart thumping, 'I have, time and again, reproached myself for leaving you as I did. You acknowledged you had attempted too much, and you looked so helpless, so—so'——and she hesitated. 'What is that very expressive Scots word, now? So'——
'Forfaughten,' I hazarded.
'That's it—forfaughten; and you must have felt forfaughten, otherwise the word wouldn't have appealed to you as suitable.'
'Well, I admit now, I was, but at the time I didn't wish you, a lady and a stranger, to know it. Besides, you had already done a good deal for me, which, allow me to repeat, I shall not readily forget.'
I was gradually regaining the confidence I had lost, and felt inclined to say more, and to tell her of my dream and what her presence meant to me; but I restrained myself; and, pointing to the paint-box she carried, I changed the subject by asking her if she was finding much inspiration in our beautiful surroundings.
'Yes—oh yes!' she replied; 'it is a beautiful countryside, and the longer I live in it the more I see in it to admire. A wooded locality, such as this, looks at its best—at least from an artist's standpoint—in the late autumn, when sufficient foliage is shed to allow the gray-purple of the branches to mingle with the yellow and russet of the leaves. I am fortunate in being here at this particular time, and I have made quite a number of sketches, which I may work up later. But I am not really an artist. I am only a humble amateur, though I may to an extent have the eye of an artist—to appreciate all the beautiful sights, you know, and that, after all, is something. But I must be going. Good-afternoon; and I'm glad that you are getting on so nicely.—Good-bye, Bang.—Good-bye, Jip;' and she gave them a parting pat, and with a smile on her face which I long remembered, she walked slowly away.
It is a very slender hair to make a tether with, but somehow the fact of her remembering the dogs by name is a consoling thought, and a source of peculiar satisfaction to me.