For an instant there was a startled look of fear in her eyes; but that passed, and she regarded him at first with a kind of smiling wonder, and thereafter with a contented satisfaction, as though his presence was familiar. Nay, she turned her attention altogether toward him now, and addressed him—not in any heart-broken way, but cheerfully, and as if he had been listening to her all along. It was clear that she did not in the least know who he was.
"There now, lass," said he, "knowest thou that Quiney and I have ridden all the way from London to see thee? and thou must lie still and rest, and get well again, ere we can carry thee out into the garden."
She was looking at him with those strangely brilliant eyes.
"But not into the garden," she said, in a vacant kind of way. "That is all gone away now—gone away. 'Twas long ago—when poor Judith used to go into the garden—and right fair and beautiful it was—ay, and her father would praise her hair and the color of it—until he grew angry, and drove her away far from him then—and then—she wandered down to the river—and always Susan's song was in her mind—or the other one, that was near as sad as that, about the western wind, was it not? How went it now?—
"'Western wind, when will you blow?'
Nay, I cannot recall it—'tis gone out of my head, grandam, and there is only fire there—and fire—and fire—
"'Western wind, when will you blow?'
it went—and then about the rain next, what was it?—
"'So weary falls the rain!'
Ay, ay, that was it now—I remember Susan singing it—