"'It is all I can give you to show you my appreciation of your goodness.' And not trusting myself to linger longer lest I should take it again from her hand, I went out and walked hastily from the house.
"If you asked me what road I took, or through what streets I passed, or whose eye I encountered in my next hour's walking through the town, I could not tell you. If jeers followed me, I heard them not; if I was the recipient of sympathizing looks and wondering conjectures, they were all lost upon eyes that were blind and ears that were deaf. I did not even feel; and did not realize till night that I had been wandering for hours without my cloak, which I had left in the carriage and forgotten to take again when I went out. The first knowledge I had of my surroundings was when I found an obstruction in my path, and looking up, saw myself in front of my own door, and not two feet from me, Edwin Urquhart."
CHAPTER XII.
EDWIN URQUHART.
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N that moment Mark Feltpaused and cast a glance towardthe Hudson far below us. Then he resumed hisnarrative. |
"I drew back," he said, "and clenched my hands to keep myself from strangling Urquhart. Then I broke into hurried pants, that subsided gradually into words of perplexity and amazement as I met his eye, and realized that it contained nothing but a rude sort of sympathy and good fellowship.
"'How? Why? What do you mean by coming back?' I cried. 'You said you would be gone a week. You swore—'
"A gay laugh interrupted me.
"'And must a man keep every oath he makes, especially when it separates him from a charming betrothed, and a friend who swore that he would make this day his wedding one?'