"But--I don't understand!"
She threw out her arms with a gesture which was eloquent of the confusion--and worse--with which his sudden apparition had filled her.
"No? what don't you understand? It all seems to me clear enough; but, perhaps, you always were a trifle dull."
"I don't understand how you've found me! how it is that you are here!"
"Oh, that's it, is it? Now I begin to catch on. That's the simplest part of the lot. You--the wife of my bosom, the partner of my joys and sorrows--particularly of my sorrows--you never wrote me a line; you never took the slightest interest in my hard fate. For all you cared I might have died. I don't like to think that you really didn't care, but that's what it looked like." He grinned, as if he had said something humorous. "But I had a friend--a true friend--one. That friend met me this morning, where my wife ought to have met me, at the prison gates. From that friend I learned of the surprising things which had happened to you; how you had come into a fortune--a fortune beyond the dreams of avarice. It seems strange that, under the circumstances, you weren't outside the prison, with a coach and four, waiting to bear me away in triumph to your gilded bowers. Ah-h!" He emitted a sound which might have been meant for a sigh. "But I bore up--with the aid of the first bottle of champagne I'd tasted since I saw you last--the gift of my one true friend. So, as you hadn't come to me, I came to you. You might have bungled up the dates or something; there's never any telling. I knew you'd be glad to see me--your loving husband, dear. My late arrival is due to no fault of mine; it's that beastly railway. I couldn't make out which was the proper station for this little shanty of yours! and it seems I took a ticket for the wrong one. Found myself stranded in a God-forsaken hole; no conveyance to be got; no more trains until tomorrow. So I started to walk the distance. They told me it was about five miles. About five miles! I'd like to make 'em cover it as five against the clock; they'd learn! When I'd gone about ten I met an idiot who told me there was a short cut, and set me on it. Short cut! If there's a longer cut anywhere I shouldn't care to strike it. Directly I'd seen the back of him it came on pitch dark; and there was I, in a pathless wilderness, with no more idea of where I was going than the man in the moon. For the last two hours I've been forcing my way through what seemed to me to be a virgin forest. I've had a time! But now I've found you, by what looks very like a miracle; and all's well that ends well. So give us a kiss, like a good girl, and say you're glad to see me. Come and salute your husband."
"You're not my husband!"
"Not--I say! Don't go and throw away your character like that. As my wife, it's precious to me, if it isn't to you."
"What do you suppose you're going to do now?"
"Now?--Do you mean this minute? Well, I did dream of a tender meeting; you know the kind of thing. As a loving wife you ought to, but, perhaps, you'd like to put that off till a little later. Now I suppose we're going up together to the little home of which I've heard, and have come so far to see; and there--well, there we'll have the tender meeting."
"I advise you not to set foot upon my ground!"