“Loves me!” I cried, starting up and supporting myself upon one elbow. “No, I think you must be mistaken. She regards me more as a brother than a lover, and she has, I think, learnt ever since the first day we met in such romantic conditions, to regard me in the light of a protector.
“No,” I added, shaking my head, “there are certain barriers that must prevent her loving me—the difference of our ages, of position and all that.”
“Ah! There you are entirely mistaken,” said the widow, quite frankly. “I happen to know that the very reason why her father left his secret to you was in order that you might profit by its knowledge as he had done, and because he foresaw the direction of Mabel’s affections.”
“How do you know this, Mrs Percival?” I demanded, half inclined to doubt her.
“Because Mr Blair, before making his will, took me into his confidence and asked me frankly whether his daughter had ever mentioned you in such a manner as to cause me to suspect. I told him the truth of course, just as I have now told you. Mabel loves you—loves you very dearly.”
“Then for the legacy left me by poor Blair, I am, in a great measure, indebted to you?” I remarked, adding a word of thanks and pondering deeply over the revelation she had just made.
“I only did what was my duty to you both,” was her response. “She loves you, as I say, and therefore, by a little persuasion you could, I feel convinced, induce her to tell us the truth concerning this man Dawson. She has fled, it is true, but more in fear of what you may think of her when her secret is out, than of the man himself. Recollect,” she added, “Mabel is passionately fond of you, she has confessed it to me many times, but for some extraordinary reason which remains a mystery, she is endeavouring to repress her affection. She fears, I think, that on your part there is only friendship—that you are too confirmed a bachelor to regard her with any thoughts of affection.”
“Oh, Mrs Percival!” I cried, with a sudden outpouring, “I tell you, I confess to you that I have loved Mabel all along—I love her now, fondly, passionately, with all that fierce ardour that comes to a man only once in his lifetime. She has misjudged me. It is I who have been foolishly at fault, for I have been blind, I have never read her heart’s secret.”
“Then she must know this at once,” was the elderly woman’s sympathetic answer. “We must discover her, at all costs, and tell her. There must be a reunion, and she on her part, must confess to you. I know too well how deeply she loves you,” she added, “I know how she admires you and how, in the secrecy of her room, she has time after time wept long and bitterly because she believed you were cold and blind to the burning passion of her true pure heart.”
But how? The whereabouts of my well-beloved were unknown. She had disappeared completely, in order, it seemed, to escape some terrible revelation which she knew must be made sooner or later.