“My other friends?”
“Surely you know?”
“Oh, you mean the American Minister.”
“And the two American ladies who went with him to your prison.”
“Two ladies! I saw no ladies. I never heard of them. The American Minister came; but he might have been too late. It is to your father—to you—I am indebted for my deliverance. I wish, Miss Vernon, you could understand how truly grateful I feel to you. I shall never be able to show it!”
Maynard spoke with a fervour he was unable to control.
It was not checked by any thought of the two ladies who had accompanied the American Minister to his Parisian prison. He had his surmises as to who they were; and there was a time when it would have gratified him. Now he was only glad to think that their friendly intent had been anticipated!
Standing in that wood, beside a bright creature worthy of being one of its nymphs, he was more contented to believe that she had been the preserver of his life—as he of hers.
It would have turned his contentment to supreme happiness could he have believed her gratitude resembled his own—in kind.
Her soft young heart—how he yearned to read to probe it to its profoundest depths!