“What do you mean?” exclaimed he.
“Cannot you recognize an old friend, notwithstanding all his efforts to cut us?”
“Why—what—surely it can't be—it's not possible—eh?” And by this time he had wheeled me round to the strong light of the window, and then, with a loud burst, he cried out, “Potts, by all that's ragged! Potts himself! Why, old fellow, what could you mean by wanting to escape us?” and he wrung my hand with a cordial shake that at once brought the blood back to my heart, while his sister completed my happiness by saying,—
“If you only knew all the schemes we have planned to catch you, you would certainly not have tried to avoid us.”
I made an effort to say something,—anything, in short,—but not a word would come. If I was overjoyed at the warmth of their greeting, I was no less overwhelmed with shame; and there I stood, looking very pitiably from one to the other, and almost wishing that I might faint outright and so finish my misery.
With a woman's fine tact, Mary Crofton seemed to read the meaning of my suffering, and, whispering one word in her brother's ear, she slipped away and left us alone together.
“Come,” said he, good-naturedly, as he drew his arm inside of mine, and led me up and down the room, “tell me all about it. How have you come here? What are you doing?”
I have not the faintest recollection of what I said. I know that I endeavored to take up my story from the day I had last seen him, but it must have proved a very strange and bungling narrative, from the questions which he was forced occasionally to put, in order to follow me out.
“Well,” said he, at last, “I will own to you that, after your abrupt departure, I was sorely puzzled what to make of you, and I might have remained longer in the same state of doubt, when a chance visit that I made to Dublin led me to Dycer's, and there, by a mere accident, I heard of you,—heard who you were, and where your father lived. I went at once and called upon him, my object being to learn if he had any tidings of you, and where you then were. I found him no better informed than myself. He showed me a few lines you had written on the morning you had left home, stating that you would probably be absent some days, and might be even weeks, but that since that date nothing had been heard of you. He seemed vexed and displeased, but not uneasy or apprehensive about your absence, and the same tone I observed in your college tutor, Dr. Tobin. He said, 'Potts will come back, sir, one of these days, and not a whit wiser than he went. His self-esteem is to his capacity in the reduplicate ratio of the inverse proportion of his ability, and he will be always a fool.' I wrote to various friends of ours travelling about the world, but none had met with you; and at last, when about to come abroad myself, I called again on your father, and found him just re-married.”
“Re-married!”