He placed his hand to his brow, and then pressed his fingers over his eyes, as if to recal what had recently passed.
The influence of the restorative administered to him by the colonel was quickly apparent. He withdrew his hand, and gazed about him, but only for a moment.
He rose up: his eye was bright, his carriage firm, and his head erect. His bearing gave him the aspect of another man.
“Colonel Mires,” he exclaimed in a tone of exultation, “your arrival in England, at this juncture, is most opportune—your discovery of me, in this prison, an interposition of Providence. Its consequences to me are of vital importance, and it is impossible to describe the joy, the happiness, it has brought to a man bowed down by a succession of dire misfortunes.”
“Mr. Wilton, I am unprepared to hear such expressions from your lips; believe me, it affords me especial gratification,” rejoined Colonel Mires, casting his eyes craftily upon Flora, to observe what effect her father’s words, in his praise, would have upon her. But she saw not his glance, for she was watching anxiously the features, of Hal Vivian, who was listening to her father with a countenance which appeared to assume a deeper gravity at every succeeding sentence.
And she wondered that he should grow so serious, and seem so sad, because her father spoke in tones of joyfulness.
Had she known that he considered her father’s favour a passport to her own, she might not have marvelled at his sober countenance at all.
Old Wilton proceeded, addressing the colonel.
“The hackneyed aphorism which tells us that ‘the darkest hour is the hour before the dawn,’ is true in my case, Colonel Mires. My dark hour has spent the whole force of its pestilential blackness upon me. I have been utterly shrouded in its gloom. Your coming is as the dawn which will herald my day of sunshine. How wondrous are the workings of Providence! But now I was in extremis; lo! in an instant I bound into new life, and yet in the same old—old world. Oh! Colonel Mires, my heart is too full for utterance. I will take another and a better opportunity to express, not alone what I feel, but to explain to you wherefore your arrival has filled me with delight, and why it will prove to me a benefit so inestimable.”
“Upon my honour, Mr. Wilton, by so doing you will confer a great favour upon me,” returned Colonel Mires, “for at present, I do assure you, your expression of high satisfaction, and your excited manner, form together a problem which I feel quite incapable of working to a successful solution.”