"Yes," said Dr. Jeremy, "and if she were not the rudest girl in the world, my dear, you would not have remained so long in ignorance of her having been here."
Emily forbore to make any comment. Gertrude was silent also; but she burned inwardly, as she always did, at any slights being offered to the gentle Emily.
Gertrude and Dr. Jeremy were always among the earliest morning visitors at the spring. The doctor enjoyed drinking the water at this hour; and, as Gertrude was fond of walking before breakfast, he made it a point that she should accompany him, partake of the beverage of which he was so fond, and afterwards join him in brisk pedestrian exercise till near breakfast time.
On the morning succeeding the evening of which we have been speaking, they had presented themselves at the spring. Gertrude had gratified the doctor, and made a martyr of herself by imbibing a tumblerful of water which she found very unpalatable; and he having quaffed his seventh glass, they had both proceeded some distance on one more walk around the grounds when he suddenly missed his cane, and believing that he had left it at the spring, declared his intention to return and look for it.
Gertrude would have gone back also, but, as there might be some difficulty in recovering it, he insisted upon her continuing her walk in the direction of the circular railway, promising to come round the other way and meet her. She had proceeded some little distance, and was walking thoughtfully along, when, at an abrupt winding in the path, she observed a couple approaching her—a young lady leaning on the arm of a gentleman. A straw hat partly concealed the face of the latter, but in the former she recognised Bella Clinton. It was evident that Bella saw Gertrude, and knew her, but did not mean to acknowledge her acquaintance; for, after the first glance, she kept her eyes obstinately fixed either upon her companion or the ground. This conduct did not disturb Gertrude in the least; Bella could not feel more indifferent about the acquaintance than she did; but being thus saved the necessity of awaiting and returning any salutation from that quarter, she naturally bestows her passing glance upon the gentleman who accompanied Miss Clinton. He looked up at the same instant, fixed his full grey eyes upon her, with that careless look with which one stranger regards another, then, turning as carelessly away, made some slight remark to his companion.
They pass on. They have gone some steps—but Gertrude stands fixed to the spot. She feels a great throbbing at her heart. She knows that look, that voice, as well as if she had seen and heard them yesterday. Could Gertrude forget Willie Sullivan? But he has forgotten her. Shall she run after him and stop him, and catch both his hands in hers, and compel him to see, and know, and speak to her? She started one step forward in the direction he had taken, then suddenly paused and hesitated. A crowd of emotions choked, blinded, suffocated her, and while she wrestled with them, and they with her, he turned the corner and passed out of sight. She covered her face with her hands and leaned against a tree.
It was Willie. There was no doubt of that; but not her Willie—the boy Willie. It was true time had added but little to his height or breadth of figure, for he was a well-grown youth when he went away. But six years of Eastern life, including no small amount of travel, care, exposure, and suffering, had done the work that time would ordinarily have accomplished. The winning attractiveness of the boy had but given place to equal, if not superior, qualities in the man, who was still very handsome, and gifted with that natural grace and ease of deportment which win universal commendation. The broad, open forehead, the lines of mild but firm decision about the mouth, the frank, fearless manner, were as marked as ever, and were alone sufficient to betray his identity to one upon whose memory these and all his other characteristics were indelibly stamped; and Gertrude needed not the sound of his well-known voice, that too fell upon her ear, to proclaim to her beating heart that Willie Sullivan had met her face to face, had passed on, and that she was left alone, unrecognised, unknown, unthought of, and uncared for!
For a time this bitter thought, "He does not know me," was present to her mind; it engrossed her entire imagination, and sent a thrill of surprise and agony through her whole frame. She did not stop to reflect upon the fact that she was but a child when she parted from him, and that the change in her appearance must be immense. The one painful idea, that she was forgotten and lost to the dear friend of her childhood, obliterated every other recollection. Other feelings, too, soon crowded into her mind. Why was Willie here, and with Isabel Clinton leaning on his arm? How came he on this side the ocean? and why had he not immediately sought herself, the earliest and, as she had supposed, almost the only friend, to welcome him back to his native land? Why had he not written and warned her of his coming? How should she account for his strange silence, and the still stranger circumstance of his hurrying at once to the haunts of fashion, without once visiting the city of his birth and the sister of his adoption?
But among all her visions there had been none which approached the reality of this painful experience that had suddenly plunged her into sorrow. Her darkest dreams had never pictured a meeting so chilling; her most fearful forebodings had never prefigured anything so heart-rending as this seemingly annihilation of all the sweet and cherished relations that had subsisted between herself and the long-absent wanderer. No wonder, then, that she forgot the place, the time, everything but her own overwhelming grief; and that, as she stood leaning against the old tree, her chest heaved with sobs too deep for utterance, and great tears trickled from her eyes and between the little taper fingers that vainly sought to hide her disturbed countenance.
She was startled from her position by the sound of a footstep. Hastily starting forward, without looking in the direction from which it came, and throwing her veil so as to hide her face, she wiped away her fast-flowing tears and hastened on, to avoid being observed by any of the numerous strangers who frequented the grounds at this hour.