Page:The Mystery of the Sea.djvu/268

254 For several seconds she stood, and then with a sigh said in a voice of self-reproach:

"And I did not know you!" The way she spoke the words "I" "you" was luminous! Had I not already known her heart, she would in that moment have stood self-revealed.

We were manifestly two thoroughly practical people, for even in the rapture of our meeting—to me it was no less than rapture to come from so grim an aperture in the secret cavern passage—we had our wits about us. I think she was really the first to come to a sense of our surroundings; for just as I was opening my mouth to speak she held up a warning finger.

"Hush! Some one may come; though I think there is no one near. Wait dear, whilst I look!" she seemed to flit noiselessly out of the doorway and I saw her vanish amongst the trees. In a few minutes she returned carrying carefully a wicker basket. As she opened it she said:

"Some one might suspect something if they saw you in that state." She took from the basket a little bowl of water, soap, towel and a clothes-brush. Whilst I washed my face and hands she was brushing me down. A very short time completed a rough toilet. Then she poured the water carefully into a crack in the wall, and putting the things together with my lamp, back in the basket, she said:

"Come now! Let us get to the Castle before any one finds us. They will think that I have met you in the wood." We went as unobtrusively as we could to the Castle; and entered, I think, unobserved. I had a thorough clean up before I let any one see me; our secret was too precious to risk discovery by suspicion. When I had seen Mrs. Jack, Marjory took me to her boudoir in the top of the castle, and there, whilst she sat