My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a chair. The astonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor, drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had been toasting before the fire.
Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in the ashes, and passed them gently over her face, her neck, her wrists and ankles. She drew forward and tangled her hair before the kitchen glass. Then she rolled up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped her right hand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it out to me.
"Remember," I said gravely, taking it in both of mine and pressing it, "if ever you are in need of a friend, you know to whom to apply. Marion Dalrymple, Rufford, will always find me."
I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting her know who I was. But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for her. Perhaps she had lived beyond the pale too long.
"You have indeed been a friend to me," she said. "God bless you, you good Samaritan! May the world go well with you! Good-night, and thank you, and good-bye. If you'll give me the stable key, I'll let myself in. It's a pity you should come out; its raining again. And I'll leave the stable locked when I go. And the key will be in the lavender bush at the door. Good-bye again."
I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so tired that I made no attempt to work. I had, of course, stolen out before six to retrieve the stable key from the lavender bush, and hang it on its accustomed nail. I looked into the stable first. My guest had departed.
I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity. But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early in the afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, my landlord, Mr. Ledbury, met me. He looked excited, an open telegram in his hand.
"Have you heard about the escaped convict?" he said. "She has been taken. She was traced to Bronsal Heath yesterday, and run to earth this morning at Framlingham."
He turned and walked with me. He was too much taken up with the news to notice how I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush and turn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexation to me that a chance word or allusion should bring the colour to my cheek.