She had not noticed my approach, for I wore house-shoes, which made no noise.
She was looking at the stars as if their ceaseless splendour might be symbolic of an inevitable dawn of happiness somewhere. They could not have been completely reassuring, for she was weeping, and as I stood and watched, a convulsive sob broke from her. The picture of the forlorn little dependent, a frail white figure in the patch of light, with the gloomy towers and battlements of Hammerton looming round her, affected me strangely. I leant forward over the low wall and murmured her name.
“Esther!”
She started and looked round, drawing back quickly as she saw me clearly defined in the moonlight.
“You must not cry. It breaks my heart.”
At the moment I fully believed what I said.
Her eyes, full of tears, were turned upon me, and, with a strange look of fear, which haunts me to this hour, she said:
“I thought I should never see you again.”
“You were going away?”
She saw that she had betrayed her intention, and tried to excuse herself.