“Do you mean that no one mentioned me?”
“We saw no one. Our life has been one of complete unbroken solitude.”
“Well, but your letters; people surely wrote about me?”
“No,” said she in some awkwardness, for she felt as though there was something offensive in this oblivion, and was eager to lay it to the charge of their isolation.
“Remember what I have told you about our mode of life.”
“You read the newspapers, though! You might have come upon my name in them!”
“We read none. We ceased to take them. We gave ourselves up to the little cares and occupations of our home, and we really grew to forget that there was a world outside us.”
Had she been a shrewd reader of expression, she could not fail to have noticed the intense relief her words gave him. He looked like one who hears the blessed words Not Guilty! after hours of dread anxiety for his fate. “And am I to believe,” asked he, in a voice tremulous with joy, “that from the hour I said farewell, to this day, that I have been to you as one dead and buried and forgotten?”
“I don’t think we forgot you; but we rigidly observed our pledge to you, and never spoke of you.”
“What is there on earth so precious as the trustfulness of true friendship?” burst he in, with a marked enthusiasm. “I have had what the world calls great successes, and I swear to you I’d give them all, and all their rewards twice told, for this proof of affection; and the dear girls, and Florence—how is she?”