“Perhaps—if liberty, like most earthly blessings, has not come too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“For enjoyment—for use—for everything. My friends believe me dead; my place in the life of the world is filled up; my very name is by this time forgotten. I am as one shipwrecked on the great ocean, and cast upon a foreign shore.”
“Are you—are you going away soon?” I said, almost in a whisper.
“Yes,” he said, “I go to-morrow.”
“And you will—never—come back again?” I faltered.
“Heaven forbid!” he said quickly. Then, remembering how that answer would grieve me, he added; “but I will never forget thee, petite. Never, while I live.”
“But—but if I never see you any more”....
Monsieur Maurice drew my head to his shoulder, and kissed my wet eyes.
“Tush! that cannot, shall not be,” he said, caressingly. “Some day, perhaps, I may win back that old home by the sea of which I have so often told thee, little one; and then thou shalt come and visit me.”