Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/89

 82 when they are young, and young when they are old. His eyes were dark and piercing, his teeth white and regular, and his hair long, black, and glossy. It was a handsome and striking, yet not a pleasing face; but when he spoke, then was the charm. His voice was deep, rich, and musical, and with something in its tone that almost fascinated Mary, even in the few words he replied to her expression of thanks. He begged to be allowed to attend her home. She, with the natural timidity of a young girl, would have declined, but she was afraid of appearing ungrateful; and, besides sho was still so feeble from her fall, that she really stood in need of assistance; so she consented. The stranger accompanied her to within a short distance of the house, but she could not prevail upon him to enter, and receive her mother's thanks for saving her life. And as he took his leave, he said:

"You have professed much gratitude for the service I have fortunately been able to render you; suffer me to ask one favour in return. Promise me that you will not let any one, not even your mother, know what has occurred this evening. I do not ask that you should conceal the accident which has befallen you, but that you should be silent as to my having saved you—that you should not even mention your having seen me. Do you promise?"

A promise of this kind was naturally most repugnant to Mary’s feelings, both of gratitude to her preserver and of truthful candour to her mother; but the stranger seemed so earnestly bent upon it, that she could not but give her word, and with this understanding they parted.

Days and weeks elapsed before Mary again left the house. The chill and shock she had sustained resulted in a severe illness, and for some time she was confined to her bed, seriously, if not dangerously, unwell. In accordance with her promise, she never spoke of the stranger; but all through her feverish days and restless nights he was ever in her mind. She thought of him when awake, and in her few short snatches of broken sleep he filled her dreams. Perhaps the very secrecy which she preserved concerning him only fixed him more immovably in her mind; and the mystery which there seemed to be about him, and the promise he had exacted from her, worked upon her imagination. Mary was not by any means a "sentimental" girl, and she was not at all in love with the stranger—but she was grateful, imaginative, and seventeen.

An incident, too, that occurred one night during this illness, greatly strengthened her interest in him. Her mother had left the room to fetch some cooling drink, and Mary, with the irrepressible restlessness of fever, got out of bed, walked to the window, and looked out. The moon was shining, not brightly, for thick fleecy clouds covered its disc and dimmed its lustre, but there was sufficient light to enable her to distinguish objects pretty clearly, and there. No, it could not be her fancy, it was no delusion of fever—there stood the stranger, just outside the low hedge that surrounded their garden, with his dark eyes intently watching her window. She returned to her bed, but not to sleep. Her mother marked her quickened pulse and heightened flush; and, fearing an increase of the malady, sat all night at her side; but, happily, her fears were not confirmed, and Mary slowly but surely recovered.

After the lapse of three or four weeks, she was again able to leave the house. At first she was always accompanied in her walks by her