“I fail to comprehend,” he returned, with his grand air, looking all the better for his paleness.
I said it was not now needful that he should, and that in future he would understand that he was no longer a welcome guest.
“As you please,” he said.
I thought he showed little anxiety to hear at length what was in my mind.
Meanwhile, as we spoke, my father looked vacantly from me to him and from him to me, and at last, his old hospitable instincts coming uppermost, he said, “Thou hast not asked thy cousin to take spirits, Hugh.”
Arthur, smiling sadly, as I thought, said: “Thank you, none for me. Good-day, Cousin Wynne,” and merely bowing to me, he went out, I ceremoniously opening the door.
I had said no more than I intended to say; I was resolutely bent upon telling this man what he seemed to me to be and what I knew of his baseness. To do this it was needful, above all, to find Delaney. After that, whether Darthea married my cousin or not, I meant that she should at last know what I knew. It was fair to her that some one should open her eyes to this man’s character. When away from her, hope, the friend of the absent, was ever with me; but once face to face with Darthea, to think of her as by any possibility mine became impossible. Yet from first to last I was firm in my purpose, for this was the way I was made, and so I am to this day. But whether I had loved her or not, I should have done my best out of mere friendship to set her free from the bonds in which she was held.
I had heard of Delaney as being in the South, but whether he had come out alive from the tussles between Morgan, Marion, and Tarleton, I knew not. On asking Colonel Harrison, the general’s secretary, he told me he thought he could discover his whereabouts. Next day he called to tell me that there was an officer of the name of Delaney at the London Inn, now called “The Flag,” on Front street, and that he had been asking for me. I had missed him by five minutes. He had called with despatches from Major-General Greene.
To my joy this proved to be the man I wanted, nor was it surprising that he should thus luckily appear, since the war was over in the South, and a stream of officers was passing through Philadelphia daily to join the Northern army.
For a moment he did not know me, but was delighted when I named myself.