"But what is the use of all this?--Do you not know me? Do you pretend to have forgotten me? I am Anne Mellent. Henry! Henry! did you think you could hide yourself from me or her?"
And she held out her hand to him, warmly.
Henry Hayley took it and pressed it in his own, saying--
"I cannot and will not attempt to deceive you, dear Lady Anne; but yet I must beg you to keep my secret faithfully, for some time at least, till I have resolved upon my course."
"Be sure of that, Henry," replied Lady Anne, thoughtfully: "your course must be well thought of, but I will be one of the council, as well as Maria--nay, more," she added, with a sparkling look: "as she has had one long conference with you, all alone, I will have one also. It shall be this very night, too, in my own house here. There--do not look surprised, Maria. You know my reputation is not made of very brittle materials, or it would have been broken to pieces long ago. Yours is a very different sort of thing; you have spoiled it by over tenderness, like a child, and made it so delicate that it will not bear rough handling. I was resolved that mine should be more robust, and therefore set out with accustoming it to everything. I do believe that half the mad-headed things I have done in life were merely performed to establish a character for doing anything I pleased. They could but say that Anne Mellent was mad--and I took care not to go the length that is shut-up-able."
What were Maria Monkton's sensations it would be hardly fair to inquire. She had often talked with Lady Anne of Henry Hayley, and had often heard her express the same feelings towards him which were now so openly displayed; but perhaps she had listened with more pleasure, while they both thought him dead, than she did now. I do not say that she was in love with him. That would be a very serious assertion, not to be made without proof. The little prince of gods and men does not always wing his way in a direct course, and, if he was at all busy with fair Maria's heart, she was quite ignorant of the fact. She had thought all her life a good deal about Henry Hayley, it is true; she had liked him better, remembered him with fonder regard, than any one whom she had ever known; she had pitied him, wept for him; and within the last hour she had felt more and stronger emotions on his account than she had ever felt for any one on earth. But still all this might be without love. The sensations the most decidedly like that passion which she experienced were certainly those which Lady Anne Mellent's affectionate greeting and frank, unfearing invitation called up in her bosom. She felt inclined to think her friend odder than ever--to wish that she was not quite so odd. But Maria was a frank and generous character; and although she could not banish some of woman's weaknesses entirely, yet whenever she found them out she felt ashamed of them, and tried to repress them.
"Why should I be vexed with her conduct just now?" she asked herself; "is she not always the same? and are not all her eccentricities amiable?"
Whether Lady Anne perceived what was passing in her friend's bosom, from the varied expressions which flitted over her countenance, or whether she only suspected it from the intuitive knowledge which almost every woman has of woman's heart, I cannot tell; but after an instant's pause she went on, with a slight toss of her head, saying--
"After all, you know, Maria, at the worst, they could but say I was in love with him, and he with me; and, besides knowing ourselves that it is no such thing, we could soon prove to them that there was not a word of truth in it. So now, Henry, you will come to the Lodge, will you not--after dinner I mean--about nine o'clock?"
"I had intended to return to London to-night," replied Henry, hesitating.