The servant gave an odd look, whose significance West was unable to divine, as she led the way to her young mistress's drawing-room.
West entered timidly, for he doubted the delicacy of such a proceeding, though his heart was almost bursting with desire of expansion under the shock just received. A beautiful and proud-looking girl of nineteen or twenty years rose to meet him. Her large blue eyes, which bore traces of many and recent tears, worked strangely upon his feelings, already sufficiently excited.
"I came," he said, in his deep musical voice, "to repay a noble service. Will you permit me to share a grief for the loss of one to whom I owe my life—yes, more than my life!" West paused, and strove vainly to master the emotion which checked his utterance.
"My father rendered you a service?" said the young lady, eagerly, regarding with involuntary interest the noble countenance of Bernard, which, though it still bore traces of great suffering, was no longer wild and haggard, as at his interview with the money-lender.
"A most unexpected and generous service," replied West, who, softening down the first portion of the scene we have described, proceeded to recount to the fair orphan the narrative of the great crisis in his destiny.
"I knew it was so!" cried the young lady, almost hysterically affected; "I knew he was not so grasping—so hard-hearted, as they said—as he himself pretended. I knew he had a generous heart beneath all his seeming avarice! Oh, you are not the only one doubtless whom he has thus served!"
West did not discourage the illusion. Nay, the enthusiasm of the charming woman before him was contagious. "Thanks to your father's disinterested liberality," he resumed, "I am now in comparatively prosperous circumstances. I came not merely to discharge a debt; believe me, it is no common gratitude I feel! Doubtless you inherit all your father's wealth—doubtless it is but little service I can ever hope to render you. Yet I venture to entreat you never to forget that you possess one friend of absolute devotion, ready at all times to sacrifice himself in every way to your wishes and to your happiness."
West paused abruptly, for the singular expression of the young lady's features filled him with astonishment.
"You do not know, then—" she began.
"Know what?"