"Tell me all about it," said Jack. "Hold hard a minute, till I get something to drink. Now, fire away."
"Well," said Leonard, still pacing up and down, and seeming scarcely conscious of Jack's presence, "I was walking in the park. You know the place, that quiet walk under the beeches. I was thinking of you and your love affairs, when I saw, sitting under a tree, a figure that I knew at once. For a moment I could not move, and scarcely think; then I wondered how I should get to speak to her; but presently, when I had pulled myself together, I saw that she had dropped her handkerchief, and I went and picked it up and took it to her."
Leonard Dagle evidently did not hear him.
"Well, she started when I approached her, and merely thanked me with a bow, but I was determined not to let her go this time, and I said, 'Pardon me, but we have met before.' 'Where?' said she. 'In a railway carriage,' I said, and she looked at me, and trembled. 'I remember,' she said, and I swear I saw her shudder. 'Since then,' I said, 'I have sought you far and near.' 'Why should you do that?' she asked."
"A very natural question," interjected Jack.
"Then I told her. I told her that from that hour I had been unable to rid my mind of her face, that it had haunted me; that I had followed her and learned her address; and that though I had lost her I had sought her all over London."
"At first she was," said Leonard, "very angry, but something in my voice or my face--Heaven knows I was earnest enough! convinced her that I meant no harm, and she listened."
"Well," said Jack, interested and excited.
"Well," said Leonard, "we sat talking for an hour, perhaps more, and she has promised to meet me again; at least she admitted that she walked in the park every afternoon. I tried to get her address, but she told me plainly that she would not give it to me."
"And is that all you learned?" asked Jack, with something like good-natured contempt.
"No!" replied Leonard. "I learned that she had been injured--oh, not in the way you think--and that she had some purpose to effect--some wrong to right."
"And of course you offered to help her?" said Jack.
"I offered to help her; I laid my services, my whole time and strength, at her disposal; I went so far as to beseech her to tell me what this purpose, this wrong was; but she would not tell me, and so we parted. But we are to meet again. She is much changed; paler and thinner than when I saw her in the railway carriage, but still more beautiful in my eyes than any other woman in the world."