The miniature still lay on the table. He drew it towards him and gazed on it fixedly:—
"Mine for a space, and now—gone—vanished like a dream. You were a meteor between earth and sky, with a light that flickered and blazed and darkened, but a warmth constant and unchanged. Of all who admired the brightness of that erratic star, how few could know what gladness it shed around it, what desolation it has left behind!"
He gazed on the picture till his eyes grew dim; then sat for a few moments, listless and abstracted; then rose, with an effort, and bent his mind to the task before him.
CHAPTER XLVII.
| O that a man might know The end of this day's business ere it come.—Julius Cæsar. |
The diligence rolled into Genoa. Wentworth was in the coupé, and on the top sat Morton, as his servant. They had made the journey without interruption.
Morton reported himself to the American consul, and told his story. The wrath and astonishment of that official were great; but they were as nothing to the patriotic fury of three New York dry goods importers, who, mingling pleasure with business, were just arrived from Paris. Nothing was talked of but an immediate bombardment of Trieste, and a probable assault of Vienna.
Escaping as soon as he could from this demonstration, Morton bade his fervid countrymen good morning, and went out with Wentworth, who introduced him to his banker. He learned from the consul that a merchant brig was in port, nearly ready to sail for home, and gladly took passage in her.
And now at last he was safe; and safety should have brought with it a lightening of the spirits, a sense of relief. In fact, however, it brought little or nothing of the kind. The human mind, happily, cannot well hold more than one crowning evil at a time. One black thought, firmly lodged, will commonly keep the rest at bay. The fear of famine and a prison had left him no leisure to plague himself with less imminent mischiefs; but now, this fear being ousted, a new devil leaped into its empty seat. At the first moment when he could find himself alone, he wrote to Edith Leslie, telling her how he had been imprisoned, how, for almost five wretched years, her image had been his constant friend, how he had escaped, and how he was hastening homeward to claim the fulfilment of her word. He hinted nothing of his conviction that Vinal had been instrumental to his detention. He began divided between hope and fear, but as he wrote, a foreboding grew upon him that she was no longer living, or, at least, no longer living for him. The letter, despatched post haste, would reach home a full fortnight before his own arrival.