'Should you?' cried she in a softened tone; 'should you, Harleigh, be sorry if any evil befel me?'
'But why,' he asked, 'has Tomlinson given me this misinformation?'
'And why, Mr Harleigh, because Tomlinson told you that a stranger was here, should you conclude it could be no other than your black fugitive?'
Again Harleigh turned to the traveller, and fixed his eyes upon her face: the patch, the bandage, the large cap, had hitherto completely hidden its general form; and the beautiful outline he now saw, with so entire a contrast of complexion to what he remembered, again checked, or rather dissolved his rising surmizes.
Elinor begged him to be seated, and to quiet his perturbed spirit.
He took a chair, but, in passing by the young woman, her sex, her beauty, her modest air, gave him a sensation that repelled his using it, and he leant upon its back, looking expressively at Elinor; but Elinor either marked not the hint, or mocked it. 'So you have really,' she said, 'taken the pains to go to that eternal inn again, to enquire after this maimed and defaced Dulcinea? What in the world can have inspired you with such an interest for this wandering Creole?
''Tis not her face does love create,
For there no graces revel.'—
The bell of Mrs Maple now ringing, Elinor made a sign to the Incognita not to avow herself, and flew down stairs to caution Tomlinson to silence.
The chair which Harleigh had rejected for himself, he then offered to the fair unknown. She declined it, but in a voice that made him start, and wish to hear her speak again. His offer then became a request, and she thanked him in a tone that vibrated certainty upon his ears, that it could be no other than the voice of his fellow-voyager.
He now looked at her with an earnest gaze, that seemed nearly to draw his eyes from their sockets. The embarrassment that he occasioned her brought him to his recollection, and, apologising for his behaviour, he added; 'A person—a lady—who accompanied us, not long since, from abroad, had a voice so exactly resembling yours—that I find it rather impossible than difficult not to believe that I hear the same. Permit me to ask—have you any very near relation returned lately from France?'