At last my patience was rewarded.  The light disappeared from the parlour and reappeared a moment after in the room above.  I was pretty well informed for the enterprise that lay before me.  I knew the lair of the dragon—­that which was just illuminated.  I knew the bower of my Rosamond, and how excellently it was placed on the ground-level, round the flank of the cottage and out of earshot of her formidable aunt.  Nothing was left but to apply my knowledge.  I was then at the bottom of the garden, whether I had gone (Heaven save the mark!) for warmth, that I might walk to and fro unheard and keep myself from perishing.  The night had fallen still, the wind ceased; the noise of the rain had much lightened, if it had not stopped, and was succeeded by the dripping of the garden trees.  In the midst of this lull, and as I was already drawing near to the cottage, I was startled by the sound of a window-sash screaming in its channels; and a step or two beyond I became aware of a gush of light upon the darkness.  It fell from Flora’s window, which she had flung open on the night, and where she now sat, roseate and pensive, in the shine of two candles falling from behind, her tresses deeply embowering and shading her; the suspended comb still in one hand, the other idly clinging to the iron stanchions with which the window was barred.

Keeping to the turf, and favoured by the darkness of the night and the patter of the rain which was now returning, though without wind, I approached until I could almost have touched her.  It seemed a grossness of which I was incapable to break up her reverie by speech.  I stood and drank her in with my eyes; how the light made a glory in her hair, and (what I have always thought the most ravishing thing in nature) how the planes ran into each other, and were distinguished, and how the hues blended and varied, and were shaded off, between the cheek and neck.  At first I was abashed:  she wore her beauty like an immediate halo of refinement; she discouraged me like an angel, or what I suspect to be the next most discouraging, a modern lady.  But as I continued to gaze, hope and life returned to me; I forgot my timidity, I forgot the sickening pack of wet clothes with which I stood burdened, I tingled with new blood.

Still unconscious of my presence, still gazing before her upon the illuminated image of the window, the straight shadows of the bars, the glinting of pebbles on the path, and the impenetrable night on the garden and the hills beyond it, she heaved a deep breath that struck upon my heart like an appeal.

‘Why does Miss Gilchrist sigh?’ I whispered.  ’Does she recall absent friends?’

She turned her head swiftly in my direction; it was the only sign of surprise she deigned to make.  At the same time I stepped into the light and bowed profoundly.

‘You!’ she said.  ‘Here?’

‘Yes, I am here,’ I replied.  ’I have come very far, it may be a hundred and fifty leagues, to see you.  I have waited all this night in your garden.  Will Miss Gilchrist not offer her hand—­to a friend in trouble?’