“Agnes!”

My God, he called me by name!  My blood became like ice.  Shaking from head to foot I covered my eyes with my hands, and would have run in, but the whistling wind brought the cry again: 

“Agnes!  Let me speak with you.”

Quick as the words were uttered the dark figure mounted the stone steps, only the little iron railing of the balcony dividing us.

I knew then who it was.

“Will you open the door, or shall I?” said a voice which I remembered too well.

I saw no alternative, without disturbing the neighborhood and betraying myself; so, like a criminal, I stepped softly to the hall and unlocked the door.  He came in with a light, free step, and seated himself upon a couch with the ease of an old friend and accomplished gentleman.  It was Richard Bristed!

I will not detail what passed at this interview.  But I fell again under his fascination; his magnetic presence lulled my faculties, and, alas, I must relate that this nocturnal intrusion was followed quickly by others!

He assumed his old ascendancy over me.  The past became like an unpleasant dream in my mind, dimly remembered, but never distinctly recalled.

Occasionally, however, a sharp doubt obtruded itself, and roused me for an instant.  One evening I ventured to ask: 

“Richard, why are your visits so brief, and made only in the night?”

“Why?” he repeated, as if startled by the suddenness of the question, then adding carelessly:  “Because you always have that deuced old fellow, Monsieur Pilot, running here.  I am not very jealous, yet it would torment me to meet one who dares raise his thoughts to my Agnes.  He wants to marry you.  Do dismiss him!”

This conjecture proved true, and I was obliged to give a cold rebuff to the man who had befriended me.  It is possible Richard Bristed did not care to be recognized by his brother’s agent, but I did not think of this at that time.

CHAPTER XI.

After this affair happened Richard visited me more openly, and my pupils, when by chance they met him, were charmed with the stranger.  He was only known as “Mr. Richard.”  “Call me that, Agnes, I hate the name of Bristed.  Introduce me to your friends as Mr. Richard,” he said, and I had done so.

About this time he explained satisfactorily, to my credulous mind, the cause of his sudden retreat from Bristed Hall, and gave me reason to believe that the statements his brother had made concerning him were untrue and evil in design.

“My brother, as you have surely discovered, Agnes, is a cold, proud man, and as I was not his equal in wealth or position he selected an heiress, both old and disagreeable, whom he designed me to marry.  Your youth and beauty he intended to appropriate to himself.  I feared if I made him acquainted with my purpose to unite myself to you he would frustrate all my wishes, and when I discovered that he knew of my plans, I determined to forestall him by making you my wife that very night.  I intended to have gone through the form of marriage, which the next day could have been legalized, for I feared the influence of his wealth and position upon your unsophisticated mind.