"Would you not have remembered me?" asked Maria, a little unfairly, perhaps.
"Anywhere--instantly!" replied Henry, eagerly; "but you are very little changed, comparatively. This gash upon my cheek, those large whiskers, and this tanned skin, I thought, would have concealed me fully."
Maria shook her head, and he went on to ask if she had recognised him directly.
"No," she answered, "but very soon. Your height and figure being so much changed, together with the other circumstances you have mentioned, as well as the conviction that you had been long dead, blinded me at first; but after a few words, you looked at me as you sometimes used to do when we were boy and girl; and then a sudden feeling--for I cannot call it anything else--came over me, that it must be Henry. For a little time I dared not look at you again; but when I told you of Lord Milford's death, and you stood gazing on the ground, with the eyelids drooping over the eyes, I became quite sure, and trembled so that I could hardly support myself."
They were pleasant words to the ear of Henry Hayley--they were indeed very sweet. To any man, and under almost any circumstances, they might well be so; for the deep interest of a beautiful and amiable being like that could surely never be a matter of indifference, and such emotions as those words betrayed could not exist without a deep interest. But in Henry they excited very peculiar feelings. In long, homeless wanderings--in strange turns of fate and struggles with the world--in sorrows and reverses, in prosperity and distress--he had still asked himself, "Do those loved so dearly still remember me with affection? or do they hate and contemn me? or have they forgotten me, as amongst the dead?" Amongst those he thought of, when he put such questions to his own heart, certainly Maria Monkton had ever been prominent.
As I have shown, when he fled from England, though not yet sixteen, he was much more manly in thought and feeling than most boys of his age. He had loved Maria almost as a brother might love: he had thought her the most beautiful as well as the most amiable of creatures, it is true; and perhaps he might have gone on only loving her with brotherly love, if he had never been separated from her. When, however, in after years he had suffered his mind to rest upon the past--when he had asked himself, "Does Maria remember me still?" and when he had wondered what she was like then--there had mingled with such thoughts tenderer and more imaginative feelings. He had thought, "Perhaps, if I had remained and all gone well, Maria might have become my wife;" and then the beautiful eyes that he remembered, and the sweet smile, and the many affectionate looks of the past would return to the sight, almost as distinct and clear as if her face were still before him. He knew not--when to save a father he abandoned his country, and encountered danger, sorrow, and despair--how much he really loved the girl who now sat beside him again; but he had discovered it afterwards; and now, how sweet--how very sweet it was to find that her bosom could thrill with such emotions on his account.
He gazed on her face while she spoke; but when she paused, he bent down his eyes again, and let the mind plunge into a sea of memories.
Maria suffered him to think for a few minutes, believing that his mind was busy with the circumstances of his present situation and future fate.
She had none of that grasping vanity which makes many a woman believe that each male companion must be thinking only of her. She had never asked herself one question as to what might have been Henry's feelings to her, or hers to him, had he remained in England. She had only thought of him during his long absence as the dear companion of her childhood and her early youth--as one excellent, amiable, and noble, who by some strange, mysterious fate, which she did not try to scan, had been destined to sorrow, undeserved disgrace, and early death. A whole crowd of tender regrets, it is true, had gathered round his memory, like flowers showered upon a tomb; and it is likewise true that the character of Henry Hayley, as she had conceived it and decorated it with her own fancies, had served her as a touchstone to try that of other men; but still she never fancied that she had loved him otherwise than merely as a brother.
She let him think, then, for a short time; but at length she said--