O my old friend, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last.... What, my young lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last.... You are all welcome.—Hamlet.
HOWEVER varying, indefinite, and objectless the thoughts of Daireen Gerald may have been—and they certainly were—during the earlier days of the voyage, they were undoubtedly fixed and steadfast during the last week. She knew that she could not hear anything of her father until she would arrive at the Cape, and so she had allowed herself to be buoyed up by the hopeful conversation of the major and Mrs. Crawford, who seemed to think of her meeting with her father as a matter of certainty, and by the various little excitements of every day. But now when she knew that upon what the next few days would bring forth all the happiness of her future life depended, what thought—what prayer but one, could she have?
She was certainly not good company during these final days. Mr. Harwood never got a word from her. Mr. Glaston did not make the attempt, though he attributed her silence to remorse at having neglected his artistic instructions. Major Crawford's gallantries received no smiling recognition from her; and Mrs. Crawford's most motherly pieces of pathos went by unheeded so far as Daireen was concerned.
What on earth was the matter, Mrs. Crawford thought; could it be possible that her worst fears were realised? she asked herself; and she made a vow that even if Mr. Harwood had spoken a single word on the subject of affection to Daireen, he should forfeit her own friendship for ever.
“My dear Daireen,” she said, two days after leaving St. Helena, “you know I love you as a daughter, and I have come to feel for you as a mother might. I know something is the matter—what is it? you may confide in me; indeed you may.”
“How good you are!” said the child of this adoption; “how very good! You know all that is the matter, though you have in your kindness prevented me from feeling it hitherto.”
“Good gracious, Daireen, you frighten me! No one can have been speaking to you surely, while I am your guardian——”
“You know what a wretched doubt there is in my mind now that I know a few days will tell me all that can be told—you know the terrible question that comes to me every day—every hour—shall I see him?—shall he be—alive?”
Even the young men, with no touches of motherly pathos about them, had appreciated the girl's feelings in those days more readily than Mrs. Crawford.
“My poor dear little thing,” she now said, fondling her in a way whose soothing effect the combined efforts of all the young men could never have approached. “Don't let the doubt enter your mind for an instant—it positively must not. Your father is as well as I am to-day, I can assure you. Can you disbelieve me? I know him a great deal better than you do; and I know the Cape climate better than you do. Nonsense, my dear, no one ever dies at the Cape—at least not when they go there to recover. Now make your mind easy for the next three days.”