Not five years—not twenty years—not a lifetime, maybe, of ordinary sufferings could have so transformed his face but that her love could have pierced the mask.
But the unnatural misery of those ten days in the open boat—the hunger that had wasted, the agonising thirst that had twisted his face out of all likeness to what it had been, the growth of beard and moustache that hid the lower part of the countenance, the gray hair, the bare forehead, the deformed eyebrows, the rugged indent between the brows, the stooped form!—
Here was a transformation that would have defied a mother’s instincts—that would have offered an impenetrable front to perception barbed into keenness by the profoundest love that ever warmed the heart.
And yet, looking at this woman attentively—looking at her gazing at yonder man, cowering, it might almost seem, in the friendly shadow of the wall—there was something in her eyes, something in her face, something in her whole manner, that would have quickened your pulse with a moment of breathless suspense.
In such matters, as in the loss of memory, we must recognise the existence of a deep spiritual insight having no reference to the revelations of the mind. There are convictions which do not satisfy, though cemented by logic and acted on by their possessor with sincere conscience. Against such convictions instincts will surge as waves break upon a shore. Echoes are awakened, but are thought purposeless. And the conviction is still maintained, while the secret truth rolls at its base.
The voice of Holdsworth, but not his face, had set Dolly’s instincts in motion.
But then her conviction that Holdsworth was dead was a permanent one; and under it her instincts subsided into uneasy sleep, though there was a shadow of melancholy on her face when she removed her eyes, which had not been there before Holdsworth spoke.
“I hope Nelly has been good, Mr. Hampden.”
“Very good, indeed.”