“Just Heaven! is it you that I have saved from that? Oh! if I had not come!” burst from him in a startled, almost anguished cry.
His voice shook like an old man’s with horror, his face, as the moonlight struck it, was ashen in its hue, and for the moment he was more completely unnerved than the girl whom he had rescued from such imminent danger. Her hands lay white and limp in her lap.
He gathered them up in his strong clasp, and pressed his lips again and again upon them, while his breast heaved with the fierce, frightened throbbings of his heart.
Ah! only Heaven knew the horrible yet rapturous sensations of that moment, when he discovered that she whom he had just saved from a terrible death, was none other than Brownie Douglas whom he had sought so long sorrowing!
“Yes, it is I whom you have saved, Mr. Dredmond; but for you I should now be lying crushed, and bruised, and dead at the bottom of yonder stream,” was the low reply, in those sweet tones, which he would have recognized at the ends of the earth.
“I little thought to find you here. I learned something of your trouble, and I have searched everywhere for you in London, Miss Douglas, for the last two months, and it was with reluctance that I relinquished my quest long enough to obey a summons hither,” he said, when he began to recover himself a little.
He did not stop to think that she might deem it singular that he, almost a stranger, should be searching so earnestly for her.
“How strange,” he went on, “that I should have come hither to save you from even worse than what I feared might have happened to you? It was dreadful for you to be there, and my brain grows dizzy with the thought of what must have been if I had not come! Did you know of that perilous shelf? Has no one told you?”
“No, Mr. Dredmond, I only came to Dunforth Castle to-day. I was sad and lonely to-night, and being freed from my duties, I came out for a stroll in the moonlight. I saw this hill, and heard the dashing of the stream, and thinking a delightful view might be obtained from the top, I clambered up. It was like being suddenly awakened from a beautiful dream, when you seized and bore me from the place.”
Adrian shuddered.