* * * * *
I cannot say how wonderfully the whole aspect of the world was changed to me, as I set out in a little hired coach I used sometimes, with my two men, half an hour later, for my old lodgings in Covent Garden where, she said, she had come that evening. It was a very short letter; but it was very sweet to me. She said only that she could wait no more; that she knew how ill things must be going with me, and that she must see with her own eyes that I was not dead altogether. I had striven in my letters to her to make as light as I could of my troubles; but I suppose that her woman's wit and her love had pierced my poor disguises. At least here she was.
* * * * *
She was standing, all ready to greet me, in that old parlour of mine where I had first met her six years ago; and she was more beautiful now, a thousand times, in my eyes, than even then. The candles were lighted all round the walls, and the curtains across the windows; and her maid was not there. She had already changed her riding dress, and was in her evening gown with her string of little pearls. As I close my eyes now I can see her still, as if she stood before me. Her lips were a little parted, and her flushed cheeks and her bright eyes made all the room heaven for me. I had not seen her for six months.
"Well, Cousin Roger," she said—no more.
* * * * *
Presently, even before supper came in, she had begun her questioning.
"Cousin Roger," she said—(we two were by the fire, she on a couch and I in a great chair)—"Cousin Roger, you have treated me shamefully. You have told me nothing, except that you were in trouble; and that I could have guessed for myself. I am come to town for three days—no more: my father for a long time forbade me even to do that. If he were not gone to Stortford for the horse-fair I should not be here now."
"He does not know you are come to town!" I cried.
She shook her head, like a child, and her eyes twinkled with merriment.