The moment I had finished breakfast he was by my side.  “You wish to speak to me? now?” he asked in a low tone.

“Yes; now,” I answered, breathlessly, and without raising my eyes from the ground.

“Where shall we go?  Outside?  It is a bright day, and we shall be freer there from interruption.”

I assented; and then looking up at him appealingly, “Will you fetch my things for me?  I cannot go up to that room again.”

He seemed to understand me, nodded, and was gone.  A few minutes later we left the house, and made our way in silence towards a grassy spot on the side of the ravine where we had already indulged in more than one friendly talk.

As we went, the Dead Stone came for a moment into view.  I seized Alan’s arm in an almost convulsive grip.  “Tell me,” I whispered,—­ “you refused to tell me yesterday, but you must now,—­who is buried beneath that rock?”

There was now neither timidity nor embarrassment in my tone.  The horrors of that house had become part of my life for ever, and their secrets were mine by right.  Alan, after a moment’s pause, a questioning glance at my face, tacitly accepted the position.

“I told you the truth,” he replied, “when I said that I did not know; but I can tell you the popular tradition on the subject, if you like.  They say that Margaret Mervyn, the woman who murdered her husband, is buried there, and that Dame Alice had the rock placed over her grave,—­whether to save it from insult or to mark it out for opprobrium, I never heard.  The poor people about here do not care to go near the place after dark, and among the older ones there are still some, I believe, who spit at the suicide’s grave as they pass.”

“Poor woman, poor woman!” I exclaimed, in a burst of uncontrollable compassion.

“Why should you pity her?” demanded he with sudden sternness; “she was a suicide and a murderess too.  It would be better for the public conscience, I believe, if such were still hung in chains, or buried at the cross-roads with a stake through their bodies.”

“Hush, Alan, hush!” I cried hysterically, as I clung to him; “don’t speak harshly of her:  you do not know, you cannot tell, how terribly she was tempted.  How can you?”

He looked down at me in bewildered surprise.  “How can I?” he repeated.  “You speak as if you could.  What do you mean?”

“Don’t ask me,” I answered, turning towards him my face,—­white, quivering, tear-stained.  “Don’t ask me.  Not now.  You must answer my questions first, and after that I will tell you.  But I cannot talk of it now.  Not yet.”

We had reached the place we were in search of as I spoke.  There, where the spreading roots of a great beech-tree formed a natural resting place upon the steep side of the ravine, I took my seat, and Alan stretched himself upon the grass beside me.  Then looking up at me—­“I do not know what questions you would ask,” he said, quietly; “but I will answer them, whatever they may be.”