“Oh, Mildred, yes, it is she. Oh, Mildred, where shall we go, where can I hide myself? there’s nowhere safe.”
“Now you’re just drivin’ yourself distracted, you be. What for need ye fear her? She’s crazy, I’ll not deny, but she’s blind too, and she can’t follow ye here, if she was so minded. Why she couldn’t cross the stile, nor follow ye through a spinnie. But see, ye’ve nout but yer dressin’ gown over yer night clothes, and yer bare feet. Odd’s I’ll not go wi’ ye—ye’ll come back, and if ye must come abroad, ye’ll get yer cloaks and your shoon.”
“No, no, no, Mildred, I’ll go as I am,” cried the terrified lady, at the same time hurrying onward to the yard door.
“Well,” said the old woman following, “wilful lass will ha’ her way, but ye’ll clap this ower your shouthers.”
And she placed her own shawl on them, and together they passed into the lonely woodlands that, spreading upward from the glen of Carwell, embower the deep ravine that flanks the side of the Grange, and widening and deepening, enter the kindred shadows of the glen.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A MESSENGER.
Alice had not gone far when she was seized with a great shivering—the mediate process by which from high hysterical tension, nature brings down the nerves again to their accustomed tone.
The air was soft and still, and the faint gray of morning was already changing the darkness into its peculiar twilight.
“Ye’ll be better presently, dear,” said the old woman, with unaccustomed kindness. “There, there, ye’ll be nothing the worse when a’s done, and ye’ll have a cup o’ tea when ye come back.”
Under the great old trees near the ivied wall which screens the court is a stone bench, and on this old Mildred was constrained to place her.