This was like fire to tow. Without waiting to question my own motives or to ask whether it would be for my happiness or misery to see her again, I called at the Penrhyn mansion and inquired for Miss Meredith.
To my great relief and consequent delight she consented to receive me, and I presently found myself seated in a choice little reception-room awaiting her coming. Only then did I begin to realise my own temerity. With what words should I accost her? How open conversation without suggesting griefs I was burning to make her forget? I had no time to decide. She was at the door and in the room before my mind could frame the simplest greeting; and, once brought face to face with her, I forgot everything but herself and the irresistible charm which her presence exerted over me.
She had been weeping, and I could not but see that the sight of my face recalled scenes suggestive of the deepest suffering. In my dismay I found my tongue and attempted some conventional expressions of good-will. These she no sooner heard than she cut me short by an irrepressible exclamation.
"Pray,—" she entreated. "You have been with me during a time of too much misery for such formalities as these to pass between us." Then, before I could protest, "What is wanted of me now? I know you desire explanations of some kind; everybody does who approaches me; even my best friends. Yet I unburdened myself of everything I knew that first night."
I may have looked hurt. I certainly felt so; but she did not notice this result of her abrupt attack; she was too full of the feverish anxiety roused by the subject she had herself introduced.
"But you are a just man and a good one," she went on. "I do not need to be told so; I see it in your face. You will be honest with me, and will at least acquaint me with the motive underlying any questions you may put. Others deceive me, and lead me into confidences they afterwards turn against me or against those I have reason to be true to, though I was the first to betray them."
Her cheek, so pale at her entrance, was burning red now, and she spoke quickly, almost disconnectedly. I saw that she needed rallying, and smiled.
"Now it is you who are pressing the subject you abhor. I have not asked you anything; I shall not. I have not come here to satisfy either my curiosity or the demands of the law. I am here to inquire after your health and to renew my offer of service. May I be excused for my interest in yourself? It is involuntary on my part and so sincere that your uncle, were he living, could not object to it."
Soothed by my voice as much as by my words, she sat down and endeavoured to open conversation. But there was a constraint in her manner which convinced me that she was labouring under a too vivid remembrance of the scene where we had last met.
"What a position is mine!" burst at last from her lips. "I have three natural protectors, yet I do not know of an arm on which I can place my hand with implicit confidence. This is my reason for being in this house; and why I hail with eagerness, too great eagerness, perhaps, the prospect of a friend."