"I think you may; I think you cannot fail to recognize me, changed and aged though I know I am," answered Robert, with an emotion that bordered upon tears.
"You have been alive all this time—and not dead, as we have deplored you?"
"Yes, all this time; and I never knew until a little while ago that I was looked upon as dead."
"But what became of you, Robert? It was thought, that dreadful night, that you——"
"Threw myself into the Thames," put in Robert, in the slight pause made by Sir Francis. They were all standing together now, Mary a little apart, her hand upon the gate, and the moonlight flickered on them through the branches of the thinning autumn trees. "I was very near doing it," he continued; "nearer than any one, save God, can know. It was a dreadful night to me, one of shame and despair. Knowing myself to be irretrievably ruined, a rogue upon earth——"
"Hold there, sir," cried Reuben, "a rogue you never were."
"I was, Reuben. And you shall all hear how. Mary,"—turning to her—"you shall hear also. A beggar myself, I staked that night at the gaming-table the money I held of yours, Lee, the five hundred pounds you had entrusted to me, staked it, and lost it. I cannot understand how you—but I'll leave that just now. The money gone, I wandered about the streets, a desperate man, and found myself on Westminster Bridge. It was in my heart to leap into the river, to take the blind leap into futurity my uncle had taken before me. I was almost in the very act of doing it, when a passer-by, seeing my perilous position, pulled me back, and asked what I meant by hanging over there. It is to him I owe my life."
"Under God," breathed Mary, remembering her dream.
"Ay," assented Robert, "under God. It proved to be one Joseph Horn, a young man employed at my tailor's, and he recognized me. I made an excuse about the heat of the night, that I was leaning over for a breath of air from the water: and finally Horn left me. But the incident had served to arrest my purpose; to show me my folly and my sin. I am not ashamed to confess that I knelt down, there and then, to ask God to help me, and to save me from myself; and—He did it. I quitted the dangerous spot——"
"Your hat was found in the Thames, and brought back the next day, Mr. Robert," interrupted poor, bewildered, happy Reuben.