"Mr. Lawrence! How wonderful!"
He took her hand in both his, and held it for a moment or two before he sat down beside her.
"Yes, it is wonderful to meet you in such a spot after our long separation. I started immediately the trial was over. I had made all my preparations beforehand, and vowed that nothing should keep me a day."
"We only received the papers with the result of the trial yesterday."
"I came over in the ship that brought the mails. Had I known your address I should probably have been here before them. But I had to wait in New York, to learn from your bankers where you were." Then he leaned forward and looked yet more intently into her face. "You knew that I should come—and come at once, did you not?"
"I—thought you would—if you could—but, of course, I couldn't feel sure." Then she added, with that burst of sunshine in her face, and that rare naturalness which belonged to her, "But, oh, how glad I am! How wonderful it is to see you here, after all these months—here, in this lovely spot, when I have been thinking of you in London fogs! Oh! that horrid trial! How thankful you must be it is over!"
"Yes—not that I had, latterly, any anxiety as to the result. From the moment I knew Eagles was alive I knew I was safe. If Eagles had not turned up, some good-natured people might still have doubted me."
She looked at him with her quickly-flashing eye, and the color mounted again to her cheek.
"No one who knew you—who really knew you—could ever have doubted, though the trial had gone against you over and over again!"
"I like to hear you say that. You can't repeat it too often; it is worth all the fortunes—all the triumphs in the world to me; it means my whole happiness in life. You have never doubted, through my silence, that I loved you better than anything in the world? You understood how it was that I kept silent till I could face your brother, your aunt, every one, without the suspicion of a stain upon my name?"