For a moment I thought of declaring myself to be his old pupil, and the child who had called that dear Comtesse “mother;” but the morbid shame with which I remembered what I then was, stopped me, and I was silent.
“You know, of course, whither she went from this, and what became of her?” asked I, anxiously.
“Yes. I had two letters from her,—at long intervals, though; the last, when about to sail for Halifax—”
“For Halifax!—gone to America?”
“Even so. She said that the Old World had been long unkind to her, and that she would try the New! and then as their only friend in Hamburg was dead—”
“They were at Hamburg!—you did not say that?” said I.
“Yes, to be sure. Monsieur Raper, who was a worthy, good man, and a smart scholar besides, had obtained the place of correspondence clerk in a rich mercantile house in that city, where he lived with credit, till the death of the head of the firm. After that, I believe the house ceased business, or broke up. At all events, Raper was thrown on the world again, and resolved to emigrate. I suppose if Monsieur Geysiger had lived—”
“Geysiger!—is that the name you said?”
“Ay; Adam Geysiger,—the great house of Geysiger, Mersman, and Dorth, of Hamburg, the first merchants of that city.”
Though he continued to talk on, I heard no more; my thoughts become confused, and my head felt turning with the intense effort to collect myself. Geysiger? thought I; the very house where I had been at Hamburg,—where I had overheard the project of a plan against myself! Could it be, that through all my disguise of name and condition, that they knew me? With what increase of terror did this discovery come upon me! If they have, indeed, recognized me, it may be that some scheme is laid against my life. I could not tell how or whence this suspicion came; but, doubtless, some chance word let drop before me in my infancy, and dormant since in my mind, now rushed forth to my recollection with all the power of a fact!