ay as
well tell you, that Mistress Alice walked back from the Kirk-Truagh
along with me, just now, and entered the house at the same time with
myself."

"Why did you not tell me so before?" said Julian, starting up;
"where--where is she?"

"You had better ask why I tell you so _now_, Master Julian," said Dame
Deborah; "for, I promise you, it is against her express commands; and
I would not have told you, had you not looked so pitiful;--but as for
seeing you, that she will not--and she is in her own bedroom, with a
good oak door shut and bolted upon her--that is one comfort.--And so, as
for any breach of trust on my part--I promise you the little saucy minx
gives it no less name--it is quite impossible."

"Do not say so, Deborah--only go--only try--tell her to hear me--tell
her I have a hundred excuses for disobeying her commands--tell her I
have no doubt to get over all obstacles at Martindale Castle."

"Nay, I tell you it is all in vain," replied the Dame. "When I saw your
cap and rod lying in the hall, I did but say, 'There he is again,' and
she ran up the stairs like a young deer; and I heard key turned, and
bolt shot, ere I could say a single word to stop her--I marvel you heard
her not."

"It was because I am, as I ever was, an owl--a dreaming fool, who let
all those golden minutes pass, which my luckless life holds out to me
so rarely.--Well--tell her I go--go for ever--go where she will hear no
more of me--where no one shall hear more of me!"

"Oh, the Father!" said the dame, "hear how he talks!--What will become
of Sir Geoffrey, and your mother, and of me, and of the Countess, if you
were to go so far as you talk of? And what would become of poor Alice
too? for I will be sworn she likes you better than she says, and I know
she used to sit and look the way that you used to come up the stream,
and now and then ask me if the morning were good for fishing. And all
the while you were on the continent, as they call it, she scarcely
smiled once, unless it was when she got two beautiful long letters about
foreign parts."

"Friendship, Dame Deborah--only friendship--cold and calm remembrance
of one who, by your kind permission, stole in on your solitude now
and then, with news from the living world without--Once, indeed, I
thought--but it is all over--farewell."

So saying, he covered his face with one hand, and extended the other,
in the act of bidding adieu to Dame Debbitch, whose kind heart became
unable to