This he had sense enough to do; but for a moment or two the room swam round him, and he grasped the back of a chair.
Would she know him?
That thought swept like a galvanic shock through him, and made his blood tingle.
It brought hope with it and fear; a wild paradoxical emotion of yearning love and the blighting sense of the sorrow and dishonour recognition would involve.
“I have to thank you very much, Mr. Hampden, for your attention to my little girl,” she said in a low sweet voice—how remembered!
“Her society gives me great happiness,” he replied, with the faintest tremor in his tone.
It might have been that sign of agitation which made her look at him suddenly.
His gaze sank. But he felt her eyes upon his face, and the eager, restless scrutiny that filled them.
But if ever a memory of something infinitely beloved to her had been renewed by his reply, it melted upon her conviction of the death of him whom Holdsworth’s voice had recalled to her, as snow upon water.
Could it have been otherwise?