It was agreed that she should look over a stile at the top of her
father's garden, and that he should ride along a bridle-path outside,
to receive her answer. 'Margery,' said the gentleman in conclusion,
'now that you have discovered me under ghastly conditions, are you
going to reveal them, and make me an object for the gossip of the
curious?'

'No, no, sir!' she replied earnestly. 'Why should I do that?'

'You will never tell?'

'Never, never will I tell what has happened here this morning.'

'Neither to your father, nor to your friends, nor to any one?'

'To no one at all,' she said.

'It is sufficient,' he answered. 'You mean what you say, my dear
maiden. Now you want to leave me. Good-bye!'

She descended the hill, walking with some awkwardness; for she felt
the stranger's eyes were upon her till the fog had enveloped her from
his gaze. She took no notice now of the dripping from the trees; she
was lost in thought on other things. Had she saved this handsome,
melancholy, sleepless, foreign gentleman who had had a trouble on his
mind till the letter came? What had he been going to do? Margery
could guess that he had meditated death at his own hand. Strange as
the incident had been in itself; to her it had seemed stranger even
than it was. Contrasting colours heighten each other by being
juxtaposed; it is the same with contrasting lives.