It was a melancholy contrast—he in the full flush of his noble manhood, gathering the diminutive creature, like a lost lamb, in his arms—he, tall and commanding, she bleached by solitude and grief.
Something of this he felt, for a paternal tenderness caused the tears to gush to his eyes, and he kissed her brow reverently, saying:
“How I have searched for thee, my birdie! my fair child! I have been haunted by the fairies, and goaded well-nigh to madness; but thou art here—yet not thou. Oh, Hope! Hope!”
She listened intent and breathless; she forgot all else, all but the tones of the dear voice, the music of her life; but, hearing these last words, she cried:
“Why did you go over the vast waters, John Bonyton? I knew it would be so. I knew, if we parted, we could never be the same again. The same cloud returns not to the sky; the same blossom blooms not twice; human faces wear not twice the same look; and, alas! alas! the heart of to-day is not that of to-morrow.”
Her eyes had been fixed on the face of her lover, but as she went on, they were raised upward from his loving eyes—upward from his noble brow, and gazed away into the far-off and unknown, with a weird, wistful earnestness, as we have seen a child’s eyes fixed as the spirit found its way to the crystal gates of Paradise.
The sagamore seemed to listen when her voice had ceased; but at length he said softly:
“Say on, Hope; do not stop. Years are annihilated, and we are children once more, gathering pebbles on the beach and blossoms in the woods!”
“Let me go, John Bonyton!” cried Hope, convulsively, at these words.
“No, never again! We will live the old life—the life of which we dreamed years ago, Hope.”