‘Uncle Luke! don’t you know me?’
Uncle Luke stood and scratched his head, smiling, more amicably than ever, the smile of honest stupefaction. Before he could utter a word, which, indeed, he was in no hurry to do, the strange woman had flung her arms around his neck, and, sobbing and crying, was kissing him upon the cheek.
‘Uncle Luke! it is I—Madeline!’
The little man staggered as if under a blow, and went quite pale.
‘Madlin!’ he cried. ‘Not little Madlin as I brung to London! Why, lor’, so it be!’
And at a loss for any other means of expressing his utter bewilderment and delight, he grinned from ear to ear.
Very pretty it was, as well as pitiful, to see Madeline (whom we shall call by her assumed name no longer) lead the little man to the garden seat, sit by his side, hold his hand, and look fondly in his eyes, as she questioned him, lifting his rough hand to kiss it from time to time. The weight of years, the burden of sorrow, had rolled away from her in a moment, and she was a child again, while the heaven that ‘bends above us in our infancy’ was opening over her—bright, tranquil, peaceful, and divine.
Meantime, poor Uncle Luke seemed too stupefied to understand completely what was taking place. He sat blushing and grinning, scarcely able to recognise, in the beautiful, full-grown woman fondling him, the little Madlin of his remembrance; and indeed that remembrance was sadly clouded, like the rest of his feeble mind, by the mists of years. When she told him how diligently and how often she had sought to trace him, when she questioned him as to the reasons which had prevented him from seeking her out, he had little or no reply to give. She gathered, however, that he had been for years in the service of a distant kinsman, who was a head gardener on the estate.
It was destined to be a day of strange surprises. As Madeline sat by Uncle Luke, her face wet with happy tears, two gentlemen approached along the garden wall behind her. Adèle saw them first, and was about to utter a delighted cry, when the younger of the two placed his finger to his lips to enjoin silence. Thus it happened that, before Madeline knew or suspected the truth, she saw her husband standing before her, gazing upon her with wistful, wondering eyes; and before she could stir or speak she beheld him kneeling beside her, sobbing wildly, touching her with his outstretched hand.
‘Madeline! My darling!’