"Louis," returned she, "you do indeed leave me to an awful task! I cannot regard one you appear to love so much, with a common compassion. Trust me, and tell me who he is?"
"I dare not.—On his life, short as it may be, I dare not," repeated her cousin. "Too soon it may be revealed, and then you will respect my reasons. And, for his knowledge of where he is; only in the case of his naming me, with the anguish that is now wringing my heart for him,—only, in that case, say, his last friend was Louis de Montemar!"
"Your emotions are terrible!" cried Cornelia, clinging to her cousin's arm; "What do you leave me to suppose, by such inscrutable mystery? Oh, Louis, except when speaking of your father, I never saw you shaken thus!"
"On your bosom's peace, my sweet Cornelia!" replied he, "inquire no further. Should he be no more, preserve the sacred remains till I return. They at least, shall sleep with my ancestors.—There is no enmity in the grave."
The morning after that of Louis's departure for Harwich, the Duke awoke to a perfect perception of his state, his wounds, and his danger. He remembered every event which had brought him into that perilous condition. His secret missions from the Kings of Spain and of France, to examine into the aptness of the public mind in Scotland, and in the border counties of England, to receive a foreign army, headed by the exiled prince. To do this unsuspected, and to avoid the forfeiture of his head, should he be found in England after his attainder, he disguised himself as a German merchant at Hamburgh, where he engaged two resolute men of the country to be his servants. They served the seeming trader with sufficient fidelity during his Scottish progress. He came southward; and now he had to recall what terminated his first day's journey. He recollected being thrown from his restive horse in the storm and darkness of Wansbeck Fells; also, that the accident dislocated his shoulder; and that his two servants, by his own orders, had taken him into the hovel, whose sudden discovery in the lightning, had frightened his horse.—In attempting to set the dislocated limb, which he had also directed them to do, their awkwardness occasioned him so much pain, that he fainted under the unsuccessful operation. When he recovered from his swoon, which he did with an extraordinary sickness at the heart; he put his hand to his side, where the peculiar sensation was, and found it weltering in his blood. It was not needful for him to find no voice return an answer to his immediate call upon his servants. The previous silence, uninterrupted by any thing but the raging storm without, confirmed his suspicion that the villains had given him his death wound; and were fled with the booty. He, however, thrust the linen of his shirt into the wound; and lay half dead with pain and exhaustion, till all was lost in insensibility. He knew nothing from that hour, until he now opened his eyes from a refreshing sleep. He saw himself on a comfortable bed, instead of the wretched litter on which he had believed himself left to perish! He was then in the hands of some benevolent person!—But how brought, or where resident, he could not guess.
At this moment of conjecture Cornelia heard him move, and gently put aside the curtain. Her eyes met the surprised fixture of his.—But it was no longer with the glare of fever, with the wild flashes of delirium; the light of recovered reason was there, and the inquiring gaze of gratitude. If she had thought his face perfect in manly beauty, while it was insensible, or only moved by a distempered spirit; what were her impressions, when his intelligent mind was restored to all its powers, and it shone out in those eyes, and in that countenance?
Even her self-controuled spirit, trembled before the resistless influence; and with a failing voice, she answered his respectful demand of where he was.
"You are under the roof of a gentleman who is my kinsman, and who has left you under my care."
Wharton considered for a moment.—"his name, noble lady?"
"Your present critical state," replied she, "does not permit me to answer you that question."