I walked up to her, and entered into conversation about the church and burial-ground.  She was ready enough to talk, and almost the first words she said informed me that her husband filled the two offices of clerk and sexton.  I said a few words next in praise of Mrs. Fairlie’s monument.  The old woman shook her head, and told me I had not seen it at its best.  It was her husband’s business to look after it, but he had been so ailing and weak for months and months past, that he had hardly been able to crawl into church on Sundays to do his duty, and the monument had been neglected in consequence.  He was getting a little better now, and in a week or ten days’ time he hoped to be strong enough to set to work and clean it.

This information—­extracted from a long rambling answer in the broadest Cumberland dialect—­told me all that I most wanted to know.  I gave the poor woman a trifle, and returned at once to Limmeridge House.

The partial cleansing of the monument had evidently been accomplished by a strange hand.  Connecting what I had discovered, thus far, with what I had suspected after hearing the story of the ghost seen at twilight, I wanted nothing more to confirm my resolution to watch Mrs. Fairlie’s grave, in secret, that evening, returning to it at sunset, and waiting within sight of it till the night fell.  The work of cleansing the monument had been left unfinished, and the person by whom it had been begun might return to complete it.

On getting back to the house I informed Miss Halcombe of what I intended to do.  She looked surprised and uneasy while I was explaining my purpose, but she made no positive objection to the execution of it.  She only said, “I hope it may end well.”

Just as she was leaving me again, I stopped her to inquire, as calmly as I could, after Miss Fairlie’s health.  She was in better spirits, and Miss Halcombe hoped she might be induced to take a little walking exercise while the afternoon sun lasted.

I returned to my own room to resume setting the drawings in order.  It was necessary to do this, and doubly necessary to keep my mind employed on anything that would help to distract my attention from myself, and from the hopeless future that lay before me.  From time to time I paused in my work to look out of window and watch the sky as the sun sank nearer and nearer to the horizon.  On one of those occasions I saw a figure on the broad gravel walk under my window.  It was Miss Fairlie.

I had not seen her since the morning, and I had hardly spoken to her then.  Another day at Limmeridge was all that remained to me, and after that day my eyes might never look on her again.  This thought was enough to hold me at the window.  I had sufficient consideration for her to arrange the blind so that she might not see me if she looked up, but I had no strength to resist the temptation of letting my eyes, at least, follow her as far as they could on her walk.