Yes, I remembered Miss Ives! The years which had passed over her head had left only their spring-time behind. I took her by the hand, I made her sit down, and I sat down by her side. I could not speak; my eyes were full of tears; I gazed at her in silence through those tears; I felt how deeply I had loved her by what I was now experiencing. At last I was able to say, in my turn:
"And you, madam, do you remember me?"
She raised her eyes, which till then she had kept lowered, and for sole reply gave me a smiling and melancholy glance, like a long remembrance. Her hand still lay between mine. Charlotte said to me:
"I am in mourning for my mother; my father has been dead many years. These are my children."
At these words, she drew away her hand and sank back into her chair, covering her eyes with her handkerchief. Soon she resumed:
"My lord, I am now speaking to you in the language which I practised with you at Bungay. I am ashamed: excuse me. My children are the sons of Admiral Sutton[194], whom I married three years after your departure from England. But I am not sufficiently self-possessed to-day to tell you the details. Permit me to come again."
I asked her for her address, and gave her my arm to take her to her carriage. She trembled, and I pressed her hand to my heart.
I called on Lady Sutton the next day; I found her alone. Then there began between us a long series of those "Do you remember?" questions which cause a whole life-time to revive. At each "Do you remember?" we looked at one another; we sought to discover in each other's faces those traces of time which so cruelly mark the distance from the starting-point and the length of the road traversed. I said to Charlotte:
"How did your mother tell you?"