varied: a pale, quiet, resigned look of intense suffering, that
irresistibly attracted me,--not with love, but with a sense of
infinite compassion for one so young yet so hopelessly unhappy. The
companion wore something of the same look: quiet melancholy,
hopeless, yet resigned. I asked my landlord who they were. He said
they were called Clarke, and wished to be considered as mother and
daughter; but that, for his part, he did not believe that to be their
right name, or that there was any such relationship between them.
They had been in the neighbourhood of Harrogate for some time,
lodging in a remote farm-house. The people there would tell nothing
about them; saying that they paid handsomely, and never did any harm;
so why should they be speaking of any strange things that might
happen? That, as the landlord shrewdly observed, showed there was
something out of the common way he had heard that the elderly woman
was a cousin of the farmer's where they lodged, and so the regard
existing between relations might help to keep them quiet.

"What did he think, then, was the reason for their extreme
seclusion?" asked I.

"Nay, he could not tell,--not he. He had heard that the young lady,
for all as quiet as she seemed, played strange pranks at times." He
shook his head when I asked him for more particulars, and refused to
give them, which made me doubt if he knew any, for he was in general
a talkative and communicative man. In default of other interests,
after my uncle left, I set myself to watch these two people. I
hovered about their walks drawn towards them with a strange
fascination, which was not diminished by their evident annoyance at
so frequently meeting me. One day, I had the sudden good fortune to
be at hand when they were alarmed by the attack of a bull, which, in