'Mr. Fishwick!' she cried; her voice breaking between tears and laughter. 'Mr. Fishwick!' And she stretched out her hands, and found his, and shook and held them in her joy.
The lawyer heard and felt; but, newly roused from sleep, unable to see her, unable to understand how she came to be by his side in the post-chaise, he shrank from her. He was dumbfounded. His mind ran on ghosts and voices; and he was not to be satisfied until he had stopped the carriage, and with trembling fingers brought a lamp, that he might see her with his eyes. That done, the little attorney fairly wept for joy.
'That I should be the one to find you!' he cried. 'That I should be the one to bring you back! Even now I can hardly believe that you are here! Where have you been, child? Lord bless us, we have seen strange things!'
'It was Mr. Dunborough!' she cried with indignation.
'I know, I know,' he said. 'He is behind with Sir George Soane. Sir George and I followed you. We met him, and Sir George compelled him to accompany us.'
'Compelled him?' she said.
'Ay, with a pistol to his head,' the lawyer answered; and chuckled and leapt in his seat--for he had re-entered the carriage--at the remembrance. 'Oh, Lord, I declare I have lived a year in the last two days. And to think that I should be the one to bring you back!' he repeated. 'To bring you back! But there, what happened to you? I know that they set you down in the road. We learned that at Bristol this afternoon from the villains who carried you off.'
She told him how they had found. Mr. Pomeroy's house, and taken shelter there, and--
'You have been there until now?' he said in amazement. 'At a gentleman's house? But did you not think, child, that we should be anxious? Were there no horses? No servants? Didn't you think of sending word to Marlborough?'
'He was a villain,' she answered, shuddering. Brave as she was, Mr. Pomeroy had succeeded in frightening her. 'He would not let me go. And if Mr. Thomasson had not stolen the key of the room and released me, and brought me to the gate to-night, and put me in with you--'