“Oh, Madam Mina, I knew that the friend of that poor lily girl must be good, but I had yet to learn⁠—” He finished his speech with a courtly bow. I asked him what it was that he wanted to see me about, so he at once began:⁠—

“I have read your letters to Miss Lucy. Forgive me, but I had to begin to inquire somewhere, and there was none to ask. I know that you were with her at Whitby. She sometimes kept a diary⁠—you need not look surprised, Madam Mina; it was begun after you had left, and was in imitation of you⁠—and in that diary she traces by inference certain things to a sleepwalking in which she puts down that you saved her. In great perplexity then I come to you, and ask you out of your so much kindness to tell me all of it that you can remember.”