"Perchance," she murmured, "he is at this moment also looking at the
clouds from his window, because he cannot sleep for thinking that in two
days he will be beneath her father's roof and will see her loveliness,
and he must needs be contriving within his mind what he will say, if she
do but look as if she might regard him with favour, which I pray she
will."

From the path below, that moment there rose a slight sound, so slight a
one that for a moment she thought she must have been deceived in
believing it had fallen upon her ear. All was still after it for full
two minutes, and had she heard no more she would have surely forgotten
she had heard aught, or would have believed herself but the victim of
fancy. But after the long pause the same sound came again, though this
time it was slighter; yet, despite its slightness, it seemed to her to be
the crushing of the earth and stone beneath a cautious foot. It was a
foot so cautious that it was surely stealthy and scarce dared to advance
at all. And then all was still again. She was for a moment overcome
with fears, not being of a courageous temper, and having heard, but of
late, of a bold gipsy vagabond who, with a companion, had broken into the
lower rooms of a house of the neighbourhood, and being surprised by its
owner, had only been overcome and captured after a desperate fight, in
which shots were exchanged, and one of the hurriedly-awakened servants
killed. So she leaned forward to hearken further, wondering what she
should do to best alarm the house, and, as she bent so, she heard the
sound again and a smothered oath, and with her straining eyes saw that
surely upon the path there stood a dark-draped figure. She rose with
great care to her feet, and stood a moment shaking and clinging to the
window-ledge, while she bethought her of what servants she could wake
first, and how she could reach her father's room. Her poor heart beat in