e until nigh summer, and then returned to his
business in London; leaving me perfectly well, although not completely
strong. I was to follow him in a fortnight; when, as he said, 'we would
look over letters, and talk about several things.' I knew what this
little speech alluded to, and shrank from the train of thought it
suggested, which was so intimately connected with my first feelings of
illness. However, I had a fortnight more to roam on those invigorating
Yorkshire moors.

In those days, there was one large, rambling inn at Harrogate, close to
the Medicinal Spring; but it was already becoming too small for the
accommodation of the influx of visitors, and many lodged round about,
in the farm-houses of the district. It was so early in the season, that
I had the inn pretty much to myself; and, indeed, felt rather like a
visitor in a private house, so intimate had the landlord and landlady
become with me during my long illness. She would chide me for being out
so late on the moors, or for having been too long without food, quite
in a motherly way; while he consulted me about vintages and wines, and
taught me many a Yorkshire wrinkle about horses. In my walks I met
other strangers from time to time. Even before my uncle had left me, I
had noticed, with half-torpid curiosity, a young lady of very striking
appearance, who went about always accompanied by an elderly companion,
hardly a gentlewoman, but with something in her look that prepossessed
me in her favour. The younger lady always put her veil down when any
one approached; so it had been only once or twice, when I had come upon
her at a sudden turn in the path, that I had even had a glimpse of her
face. I am not sure if it was beautiful, though in after-life I grew to
think it so. But it was at this time over-shadowed by a sadness that
never varied: a pale, quiet, resigned look of intense suffering, that
irresistibly attracted me, not with love, but with a sense of infinite
compassion for one so young yet so hopelessly unhappy. The companion
wore something of the same look: quiet, melancholy, hopeless, yet
resigned. I asked my landlord who they were. He said they were called
Clarke, and wished to be considered as mother and daughter; but that,
for his part, he did not believe that to be their right name, or that
there was any such relationship between them. They had been in the
neighbourhood of Harrogate for some time, lodging in a remote
farm-house. The people ther