‘Don’t let me frighten you away. You are quite welcome to walk here.’
It was the voice of Lord Ilfracombe.
She would have known it amidst the assembled multitudes of earth, and the sound of it made her forget everything but himself. She forgot that he must suppose her to be dead. She forgot that he had voluntarily given her up, that he was a married man—everything but that he was there, and she loved him. At the sound of her lover’s voice, as potent as the trump at the last day to rouse her slumbering soul, Nell turned sharply round, and cried in a tone of ecstasy,—
‘Vernie! Oh, my Vernie!’ and flew towards him.
She was the only person in the world who had ever called him by that name. Lord Ilfracombe’s father had died before he could remember, and ever since his babyhood he had been addressed, as is usual, by his title only. Even his doting mother and proud sisters had called him nothing else. To everybody, he had been Ilfracombe, and Ilfracombe alone. But when he became intimate with Nell, and took her about occasionally with him to Paris or Rome, it became necessary to use a little discretion, and he had entered their names on the travellers’ books and passports as Mr and Mrs Vernon, which was his Christian name. So she had come to call him ‘Vernie’ as a pet name, and he had let her do it, because it was just as well she should not be shouting ‘Ilfracombe’ after him wherever they went. But the circumstance had identified her with the name, and when she cried ‘Vernie! Oh, my Vernie!’ in response to his words, Lord Ilfracombe stood still—petrified, as though he had encountered a voice from heaven.
‘Who is it? What do you want?’ he answered, trembling.
But Nell left him in no doubt. She came flying to his breast, and threw her arms round him, and pressed her warm mouth on his, and displayed all the passion she had been wont to do when he returned to her after an absence from home.
‘Vernie, my darling, my own darling!’ she reiterated, gasping for breath, ‘Oh, I did not know you were here—I did not know you were here! My God, I shall die with joy!’
‘Nell!’ he uttered in an awed tone, ‘Nell, is this really you?’
‘Yes, yes, it is I. Who else should it be? Who has ever loved you as your poor Nell?’ and she embraced him anew.