"You!" he somewhat contemptuously exclaimed.
"I will steel my nerves and heart to it. I have been striving to do so for the last half hour. Better for me to hold communion with it than any one else, save you. You know why, Richard."
"Tush!" he exclaimed. "Do nothing. You'd faint by the way."
"It is necessary for the honour and safety of--of--this house," she urged, not caring to speak more pointedly, "that no stranger should hear what it wants. I will go now. If I wait until to-morrow my courage may fail. I go, Richard, whether with you or alone. You are not afraid?"
For answer, Richard rose, and they left the room. In passing through the hall, Mary Anne threw on her woollen shawl and garden-bonnet, just as she had thrown them on the night of Hunter's murder; and they started.
Not a word was spoken by either until they reached the corner of the churchyard. The high, thickset hedge, facing them as they advanced, prevented their seeing into it, but they would soon come in front, where the shrubs grew low behind the iron railings. Miss Thornycroft stopped.
"You stay here, Richard. I will go on alone."
"No," he began, but she peremptorily interrupted him.
"I will have it so. If I am to go on with this, I will be alone. You can keep me within sight." And Richard acquiesced, despising himself for his cowardice, but unable to overcome it. He could not--no, he could not face the man whose life he had taken.
Mary Anne Thornycroft opened the gate and went in. In his place (he seemed to have specially appropriated to himself) behind old Marley's tomb, stood Robert Hunter. How she contrived to advance--contrived to face him and keep her senses, Mary Anne Thornycroft could never afterwards understand.