Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her.  True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was sinister and repellant.  He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to her for consolation had touched Mary’s heart, and she had become reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic physiognomy.  Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to respect as well as to pity?

For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman’s vehement entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her grandmother.  She was silent, but the image of the old man haunted her at all times and seasons.  She saw him even in her dreams—­those happy dreams of the girl who loves and is beloved, and before whom the pathway of the future smiles like a vision of Paradise.  She heard him calling to her with a piteous cry of distress, and on waking from this troubled dream she fancied that he must be dying, and that this sound in her dreams was one of those ghostly warnings which give notice of death.  She was so unhappy about him, altogether so distressed at being compelled to break her word, that she could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling upon him, not even after she had poured out all her trouble to John Hammond in a long letter, in which her garden adventures and her little skirmish with Steadman were graphically described.

To her intense discomforture Hammond replied that he thoroughly approved of Steadman’s conduct in the matter.  However agreeable Mary’s society might be to the lunatic, Mary’s life was far too precious to be put within the possibility of peril by any such tete-a-tetes.  If the person was the same old man whom Hammond had seen on the Fell, he was a most sinister-looking creature, of whom any evil act might be fairly anticipated.  In a word Mr. Hammond took Steadman’s view of the matter, and entreated his dearest Mary to be careful, and not to allow her warm heart to place her in circumstances of peril.

This was most disappointing to Mary, who expected her lover to agree with her upon every point; and if he had been at Fellside the difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel.  But as she had a few hours’ leisure for reflection before the post went out, she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond Dunmail Raise.  So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch of reproach at Jack’s want of compassion for a poor old man who had such strong claims upon everybody’s pity.

The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts, and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr. Steadman’s plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be circumvented.