"As you think—as you think. You cannot be too cautious, my young friend, in making assertions of that character."
"Cautious, sir? Am I to believe the evidence of my own eyes, or am I not?"
"Not always," said Sir Richard Blunt, calmly. "But I pray you go on with your narrative."
"I will. The principal object of the voyage failed entirely; but by pure accident I got possession of a String of Pearls, of very great value indeed, which, provided I could get home in safety, would value in Europe quite a sufficient sum to enable us to live in comfort. But the dangers of the deep assailed us. We were wrecked; and fully believing that I should not survive, I handed the pearls to a stronger comrade, and begged him to take them to her whom I had loved, to tell herself my fate, and to bid her not weep for me, since I had died happy in the thought that I had achieved something for her; and so, my friend and I parted. I was preserved and got on board a merchant vessel bound for England, where I arrived absolutely penniless. But I had a heart full of hope and joy; for if I could but find my poor girl faithful to me, I felt that we might yet be happy, whether my comrade had lived to bring to her the pearls or not."
"And you found her?"
"You shall hear, sir. I walked from Southampton to London, subsisting on the road as best I could. Sometimes I met with kind treatment at farm-houses, and sometimes with quite the reverse, until at length I reached London tolerably exhausted, as you may suppose, and in anything but a good plight."
"Well, but you found your girl all right, I suppose?"
"No. I walked up the Strand; and as some of our happiest interviews had taken place in the Temple Gardens, I could not resist turning aside for a moment to look at the old familiar spot, when what do you think was the sight that met my eyes?"
"I really can't say."
"I will tell you, sir. I saw her whom I loved—the young and beautiful girl for whom I had gone through so much—the being upon whose faith and constancy I would at any time have staked my life—the, as I thought, most innocent, guileless creature upon the face of the earth—"