'Yes, every day--all day long sometimes when the sun is warm.'

'Then I will come here to see you.'

'You must keep it a secret, then,' said the old man, with a crafty look.
'If you don't they will shut me up in the house, perhaps. They don't
like me to see people, for fear I should talk. I have heard Steadman say
so. Yet what should I talk about, heaven help me? Steadman says my
memory is quite gone, and that I am childish and harmless--childish and
harmless. I have heard him say that. You'll come again, won't you, and
you'll keep it a secret?'

Mary deliberated for a few minutes.

'I don't like secrets,' she said, 'there is generally something
dishonourable in them. But this would be an innocent secret, wouldn't
it? Well, I'll come to see you somehow, poor old man; and if Steadman
sees me here I will make everything right with him.'

'He mustn't see you here,' said the old man. 'If he does he will shut me
up in my own rooms again, as he did once, years and years ago.'

'But you have not been here long, have you?' Mary asked, wonderingly.

'A hundred years, at least. That's what it seems to me sometimes. And
yet there are times when it seems only a dream. Be sure you come again
to-morrow.'

'Yes, I promise you to come; good-night.'