irst time. But she was too weak
and too agitated to follow her recollections as far back as Aldborough.
She resigned the attempt, and only looked at him. He stopped at the foot
of the sofa and said a few cheering words. She beckoned to him to come
nearer, and offered him her wasted hand. He tenderly took it in his, and
sat down by her. They were both silent. His face told her of the sorrow
and the sympathy which his silence would fain have concealed. She still
held his hand--consciously now--as persistently as she had held it on
the day when he found her. Her eyes closed, after a vain effort to speak
to him, and the tears rolled slowly over her wan white cheeks.

The doctor signed to Kirke to wait and give her time. She recovered a
little and looked at him. "How kind you have been to me!" she murmured.
"And how little I have deserved it!"

"Hush! hush!" he said. "You don't know what a happiness it was to me to
help you."

The sound of his voice seemed to strengthen her, and to give her
courage. She lay looking at him with an eager interest, with a gratitude
which artlessly ignored all the conventional restraints that interpose
between a woman and a man. "Where did you see me," she said, suddenly,
"before you found me here?"

Kirke hesitated. Mr. Merrick came to his assistance.

"I forbid you to say a word about the past to Mr. Kirke," interposed the
doctor; "and I forbid Mr. Kirke to say a word about it to _you._ You are
beginning a new life to-day, and the only recollections I sanction are
recollections five minutes old."

She looked at the doctor and smiled. "I must ask him one question," she
said, and turned back again to Kirke. "Is it true that you had only seen
me once before you came to this house?"

"Quite true!" He made the reply with a sudden change of color which she
instantly detected. Her brightening eyes looked at him more earnestly
than ever, as she put her next question.

"How came you to remember me after only seeing me once?"

His hand unconsciously closed on hers, and pressed it for the first
time. He attempted to answer, and hesitated at the first word. "I have a
good memory," he said at last; and suddenly looked away from her with
a confusion so strangely unlike his customary self-possession of manner
that the doctor and the nurse both noticed it.

Every nerve in her body felt that momentary pressure of his hand, with
the exquisite susceptibility which accompanies the first faltering
adva