“You’re speaking of the Irish labourers, whom you’ve seen doing the hard work. Captain Maynard—that’s his name, Sabby—is a gentleman. Of course that makes the difference.”
“Ob course. A berry great diff’rence. He no like dem nohow. But Missy Blanche, wonda wha he now am! ’Trange we no mo’ hear ob him! You tink he gone back to de ’Meriky States?”
The question touched a chord in the bosom of the young girl that thrilled unpleasantly. It was the same that for more than twelve months she had been putting to herself, in daily repetitions. She could no more answer it than the mulatto.
“I’m sure I cannot tell, Sabby.”
She said this with an air of calmness which her quick-witted attendant knew to be unreal.
“Berry trange he no come to meet you fadda in de big house at Seven Oak. Me see de gubnor gib um de ’dress on one ob dem card. Me hear your fadder say he muss come, and hear de young genlum make promise. Wonda wha for he no keep it?”
Blanche wondered too, though without declaring it. Many an hour had she spent conjecturing the cause of his failing to keep that promise. She would have been glad to see him again; to thank him once more, and in less hurried fashion, for that act of gallantly, which, it might be, was the saving of her life.
She had been told then that he intended to take part in some of the revolutions. But she knew that all these were over; and he could not be now engaged in them. He must have stayed in England or Ireland. Or had he returned to the United States? In any case, why had he not come down to Sevenoaks, Kent? It was but an hour’s ride from London!
Perhaps in the midst of his exalted associations—military and political—he had forgotten the simple child he had plucked from peril? It might be but one of the ordinary incidents of his adventurous life, and was scarce retained in his memory?
But she remembered it; with a deep sense of indebtedness—a romantic gratitude, that grew stronger as she became more capable of appreciating the disinterestedness of the act.