Morton left the room; but his words had brought no relief to the wretched Vinal. Speyer had shown him his letter, and told him the artifice by which he had kept it, and palmed off a counterfeit on Morton. He felt himself at the mercy of a miscreant as rapacious, fierce, and pitiless, as a wolverene dropping on its prey.
CHAPTER LXIV.
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Ah, would my friendship with thee Might drown the memory of all patterns past!—Suckling. |
Some few days after, riding, as usual, in the afternoon, Morton saw on the road before him a lady on horseback, riding in the same direction. At a glance, he recognized the air and figure of Fanny Euston. This remnant, at least, of her former spirit remained to her,—she did not hesitate to ride unattended. Morton checked his horse, reflected for a little, then touched him with the spur, and in a moment was at her side. After they had conversed for a while, she said,—
"I have heard a great deal of your imprisonment from others, but nothing from yourself. Will you not let me hear your story from your own lips?"
"It was a long and dull history to live through, and will be a short and dull one to tell."
"I have never been able to hear clearly why you were arrested at all."
"It was a simple matter. The Austrian government is like a tyrant and a coward, frightened at shadows. I had one or two acquaintances at Vienna who had been implicated, though I did not know it, in plots against the government. I, being an American, was imagined to be, as a matter of course, a democrat, and in league with them. It needed very little more; and they shut me up, as they have done many an innocent man before me."
"Looking back at your imprisonment, it must seem to you a broad, dark chasm in your life."