‘Who says he is dead?’ she cried. ‘Don’t I see him every moonlight night when I can come here? They shut me up mostly, lock all their doors, and keep me prisoner. Cruel—cruel—cruel. But he is standing under the window all the same, whenever the moon shines. He is there, waiting for me to open my window, like Romeo. Yes, that’s what he said, “like Romeo.”’
Then with an entire change of tone, a change to deepest tenderness, mingled with a remorseful fear, she went on, as if speaking to her lover.
‘Love, it was very wrong of us to break our promise. I fear that harm will come of it. My mind is full of fear.’
After this came a long silence. She went back to the window, knelt upon the broad wooden seat laid her head upon the sill, and remained motionless, speechless.
Maurice fancied she was weeping.
This continued for nearly an hour; then with a sudden movement—all her movements were sudden—she started up and looked about the room, as if in quest of something.
Maurice had left his extinguished candle on the dressing-table, with a box of matches in the candlestick. Quick as thought, Muriel seized the box, struck a match, and lighted the candle, and then hurried from the room.
The watcher sprang from the bed where he had been lying hidden by the shadow of the curtains, and followed that retiring figure, full of apprehension.
A confirmed lunatic rushing about an old timber house with a lighted candle was not the safest of people, and Maurice held himself responsible for any harm that might happen in consequence of Muriel’s liberty.
When he emerged from his room the corridor was empty, but the gleam of the candle in the distance guided his hurried steps. At the end of the corridor there was a winding stair—a stair which he had never ascended—but which he understood to lead to certain disused garrets in the roof.