'A poor carpenter can have a kind heart; and I do not know whether that is not the most blessed thing on earth! Did you ever hear me repeat the name of Olivia?'
'Yes; when you were light-headed, I heard the name many a time and often. And the nurse said you raved of nobody else. But we could none of us find out who she was. Though, I must say, I have often enough wished to ask: but that I did not think it became me to seem to be at all prying.'
'That is the lady you have been in company with to-night. It is she whom you have helped me to save. I was sufficiently indebted to you before: but what am I then at present?'
'Well, that to be sure is accidental enough! I could not have thought it! How oddly things do fall out! But I am glad of it with all my heart!'
'I could not see much of her, to be sure; though I looked with all the eyes I had: but I thought somehow she seemed as fine a young creature as I had ever beheld since the hour I was born; which the mildness of her voice did but make the more likely. I thought to myself, I never in my days heard any living soul so sweet-spoken. So that I must say things have fallen out very strangely.
'I always said to my Sally, there must be something between you and the gentlewoman the name of which was on your tongue's end so often, while you were down in the fever; and I am glad to the heart that you have happened on her again so unexpectedly: though I can see no good reason, now you have found her, why you should be in such a hurry to get away.'
The unaffected participation of Clarke in all my joys and sorrows, the questions which his feelings impelled him to put, and the fidelity of his nature, as well as the impulse which passion gave me to disburthen my mind, were all of them inducements to speak; and I informed him of many of those particulars which have already been recited.
The more intimately he became acquainted with my history, the more powerfully he seemed imbued with my hopes and fears; and the better satisfied I was with the confidence I had reposed in him. I am unable to paint the honest indignation of his feelings and phraseology at the injustice which he as well as I supposed had been done me, the depression of his countenance when I dwelt on the despair and wretchedness which the almost impossibility of my obtaining Olivia inspired, and the animation with which he seemed as it were to set his shoulders to the wheel, when my returning fervor led me to the opposite extreme, and gave me confidence in my own powers and the strenuous exertions on which I was resolved.
The conversation continued long after we retired to rest; so that our sleep was short: for we were up again very early, before it was light, and continued our journey to London; where we arrived a little after nine in the morning.
I immediately proceeded to the lodging of Miss Wilmot; whom I found where I had left her, and who was truly rejoiced to see me. Clarke had never been in London: I therefore took him with me, gave a proper account of him to Miss Wilmot, and we all breakfasted together, while Mary waited; whose features as well as her words sufficiently testified the unexpected pleasure of the meeting, and who artlessly related the apprehensions of herself and my few friends, at not hearing from me.