Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by day fonder of her
_protege_, until at length she got, as the saying goes, "over head and
ears." Nay, was she not, in the long nights, busy working a pair of red
slippers for the object of her new affections, and were not these so
very suitable to one who, like Hercules, was reduced almost to the
distaff, and who, unlike that woman-tamed hero, did not need them to be
applied anywhere but to the feet?
In the midst of all this secluded domesticity, there was all that
comfort which is said to come from stolen waters. Then was there not the
prospect of the proscription being taken off, and the two would be made
happy? Even in the meantime they made small escapades into free space.
When the moon was just so far up as not to be a tell-tale, Templeton
would, either with or without Annie, step out into the garden with these
very red slippers on his feet. That bower by the loch, too, was
favourable to the fondlings of a secret love; nor was it sometimes less
to the prisoner a refuge from the eeriness which comes of _ennui_--if it
is not the same thing--under the pressure of which strange feeling he
would creep out at times when Annie could not be with him; nay,
sometimes when the family had gone to bed.
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