I had fully ten minutes to inspect the details of a pretty little drawing-room, one of those little female temples where scattered drawings and books and music, and, above all, the delicious odor of fresh flowers, all harmonize together, and set you a-thinking how easily life could glide by with such appliances were they only set in motion by the touch of the enchantress herself. The door opened at last, but it was the maid; she came to say that Mrs. Keats was very poorly that day, and Miss Herbert could not leave her at that moment; and if it were not perfectly convenient to the gentleman to wait, she begged to know when it would suit him to call again?
“As for me,” said I, “I have come to Malta solely on this matter; pray say that I will wait as long as she wishes. I am completely at her orders.”
I strolled out after this through one of the windows that opened on the lawn, and, gaining the seaside, I sat down upon a rock to bide her coming. I might have sat about half an hour thus, when I heard a rapid step approaching, and I had just time to arise when Miss Herbert stood before me. She started back, and grew pale, very pale, as she recognized me, and for fully a minute there we both stood, unable to speak a word.
“Am I to understand, sir,” said she, at last, “that you are the bearer of this letter?” And she held it open towards me.
“Yes,” said I, with a great effort at collectedness. “I have much to ask your forgiveness for. It is fully a year since I was charged to place that in your hands, but one mischance after another has befallen me; not to own that in my own purposeless mode of life I have had no enemy worse than my fate.”
“I have heard something of your fondness for adventure,” said she, with a strange smile that blended a sort of pity with a gentle irony. “After we parted company at Schaffhausen, I believe you travelled for some time on foot? We heard, at least, that you took a fancy to explore a mode of life few persons have penetrated, or, at least, few of your rank and condition.”
“May I ask, what do you believe that rank and condition to be, Miss Herbert?” asked I, firmly.
She blushed deeply at this; perhaps I was too abrupt in the way I spoke, and I hastened to add,—
“When I offered to be the bearer of the letter you have just read, I was moved by another wish than merely to render you some service. I wanted to tell you, once for all, that if I lived for a while in a fiction land of my own invention, with day-dreams and fancies, and hopes and ambitions all unreal, I have come to pay the due penalty of my deceit, and confess that nothing can be more humble than I am in birth, station, or fortune,—my father an apothecary, my name Potts, my means a very few pounds in the world; and yet, with all that avowal, I feel prouder now that I have made it, than ever I did in the false assumption of some condition I had no claim to.”
She held out her hand to me with such a significant air of approval, and smiled so good-naturedly, that I could not help pressing it to my lips, and kissing it rapturously.