Rushing up to her, I told her who I was, and, as we were literally surrounded in a moment, added such apologies for the merrymaking in which she found us indulging as my wit suggested and the occasion seemed to demand. Then I allowed her to speak.
Instantly she was the mistress of the house. Old-fashioned as her dress was and changed as her figure must have been, she had that imposing bearing which great misfortune, nobly borne, gives to some natures, and feeling the eyes of many of her old friends upon her, she graciously smiled and said that she was delighted to receive so public a welcome. Then she took me by the hand.
"Do not worry, child," she said, "I have a daughter about your age, which in itself would make me lenient toward one so young and pretty. Where is your husband, dear? He has served me well in my absence, and I should like to shake hands with him before I withdraw with my daughter, to a hotel for the night."
I looked up; he was standing in the open doorway leading into the drawing-room. He had recovered a semblance of composure, but the hand fingering the inner pocket, where he kept his keys, showed in what a tumult of surprise and doubt he had been thrown by this unaccountable appearance of his prisoner in the open hall; and if to other eyes he showed no more than the natural confusion of the moment, to me he had the look of a secretly desperate man, alive to his danger, and only holding himself in check in order to measure it.
At the mention she made of his name, he came mechanically forward, and, taking her proffered hand, bowed over it. "Welcome," he murmured, in strained tones; then, startled by the pressure of her fingers in his, he glanced doubtfully up while she said:
"We will have no talk to-night, my faithful and careful friend, but to-morrow you may come and see me at the ---- Hotel. You will find that my return will not lessen your manifest happiness."
Then, as he began to tremble, she laid her hand on his arm, and I heard her smilingly whisper: "You have too pretty a wife for me not to wish my return to be a benefaction to her." And, with a smile to the crowd and an admonition to those about her not to let the bride suffer from this interruption, she disappeared through the great front door on the arm of the man who for five years had held her prisoner in her own house. I went back into the drawing-room, and the five minutes which elapsed between that moment and that of his return were the most awful of my life. When he came back I had aged ten years, yet all that time I was laughing and talking.