Was it fate, good fortune, or 'Cupid, king of gods and men,' that had led him so kindly, so fortunately, to blunder at Harwich, and get on board the wrong boat, which eventually proved the right one for him?
With his sense of exultation there was mingled a prayerful emotion of great thankfulness that Alison had escaped amid the horror of the catastrophe, and that she was, as Llanyard asserted, well.
To see her, to have speech with her, to carry her off, now that he could lay wealth at her feet, were the next things to achieve, and to that end it would never do to put up at the same hotel—that mentioned by Gaskins, the groom; and, truth to tell, he would have had some difficulty in doing that. So he selected another—the Hôtel du Parc—the name of which he gave the driver of the voiture in which he was conveyed. Oh, how lightly and happily beat his heart as he went!—past buildings and streets, all demolished now or being so for the construction of those vast new docks, which will be the boast of Antwerp, and by the Rue Reynders, to the open and spacious Place Verte, where the graceful statue of Rubens in cavalier costume stands, and the north side of which is almost entirely formed by the towering masses of the glorious cathedral.
She was living—thank heaven!—living and well! was his incessant thought. He had no longer her loss—her death—to sorrow for; but he had her deliverance to achieve. To wait a year—no! there was no need for that now; and he felt as if she were his already.
But they had all been some time in Antwerp; what if Cadbury's influence and her father's authority had prevailed, and—but—no! He thrust that idea aside, and entered the dining-room of the Hôtel du Parc, while the waiter settled with the driver and took charge of his luggage.
'What accommodation did monsieur want?'
'Only a bed-room.'
'For to-night only?'
'No—for some days, weeks perhaps.'
'Monsieur had come to see the churches, the galleries, the Musée Plantin, and all that?'