More, her finger on her lips. "She, too, thinks me a spy," I
muttered, in the bitterness of my heart, and hid my face upon
the pillow. But who can describe my delight when I heard her
well-remembered accents murmur beside me, "Oh no, believe me, indeed
I do not!" I looked up. She was covered with blushes--I felt them
reflected on my own cheek--there was a conscious pause. "Then you do
believe that I am what I have told you?" I said at last. "O yes! but
indeed you must forgive the error," she replied; and readily did I
admit its justifiableness, when she went on to tell me that a friend
had ridden a long journey to warn them against a person bearing my
name, and answering to my appearance--an apostate from their own
cause, and a noted spy, who, upon some vague information of their
retreat, had set out with the intention of discovering and betraying
them; and that their friend (in whom I at once recognised the priest I
had seen her father conduct from the house) had left them but a few
minutes before I arrived.

It was now my turn to apologise and explain. She listened, with many
pleas of palliation for the indignities I had endured, to my account
of my business in Ireland, and the circumstances which had led me to
Glen----; but when I came to account for my appearance at Moyabel,
her confusion satisfied me that the motive was already known. I felt
suddenly conscious of having been dreaming about her; and I knew that
a fevered man's dream is his nurse's perquisite: dissimulation, after
what I knew and suspected to have passed, would have been as
impossible as repugnant. So then and there, among that mellow sunset
in the sick chamber, I confessed to her how my whole thoughts had been
haunted by her image, since the time when her father had hurried her
from the scene of our meeting; how I could not rest while any scheme,
how wild soever, promised me even a chance of again beholding her; how
this had induced me to snatch at the first opportunity of discovering
her, and had brought on that disastrous adventure which had ended in
my wound; but that I still endured another, which I feared would prove
incurable, if I might not live upon the hope (and I took her hand) of
gaining her to be my heart's physician constantly.

Footsteps suddenly sounded in the passage. I released her hand, and
she hid her confusion, in a hasty escape through a side-door, just
before her father made his appearance at that of the hall. He advanced
wit