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loved me, in those old days--this is my security; for whom one has loved,
one cannot betray."
He stepped eagerly toward the door; at that moment it opened, and the
Lady Edith entered. She was very pale, but she walked with a firm step,
and her carriage was full of grace and gentle dignity. Her face was as
sad as before.
Miles sprang forward, with a happy confidence, to meet her, but she
checked him with a hardly perceptible gesture, and he stopped where he
was. She seated herself, and asked him to do likewise. Thus simply did
she take the sense of old comradeship out of him, and transform him into
a stranger and a guest. The surprise of it, the bewildering
unexpectedness of it, made him begin to question, for a moment, if he WAS
the person he was pretending to be, after all. The Lady Edith said--
"Sir, I have come to warn you. The mad cannot be persuaded out of their
delusions, perchance; but doubtless they may be persuaded to avoid
perils. I think this dream of yours hath the seeming of honest truth to
you, and therefore is not criminal--but do not tarry here with it; for
here it is dangerous." She looked steadily into Miles's face a moment,
then added, impressively, "It is the more dangerous for that you ARE much
like what our lost lad must have grown to be if he had lived."
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