Finding him so serious, so sympathetic, and so interested, put this remarkable girl on her mettle. She began to think very hard, and show that intense power of attention she had always in reserve for great occasions.
"Then you must not touch me nor speak to me," said she. "The past is such a mist."
He obeyed, and left off binding her wrist; and now he literally hung upon her words.
Then she took one step away from him; her bright eyes veiled themselves, and seemed to see nothing external, but looked into the recesses of the brain. Her forehead, her hand, her very body, thought, and we must try, though it is almost hopeless, to convey some faint idea of her manner and her words.
"They floated down the river to the sea."
"And the kind voice beside me said, 'Darling!' Papa never calls me 'darling.'"
"Yes, yes," whispered Hope, almost panting.
"'Darling, we must go with them to some other land, for we are poor.'" She paused and thought hard. "Poor we must have been; very poor. I can see that now that I am rich." She paused and thought hard. "But all was peace and love. There were two of us, yet we seemed one."
Then in a moment Mary left the past, her eyes resigned the film of thought, and shone with the lustre of her great heart, and she burst at once into that simple eloquence which no hearer of hers from John Baker to William Hope ever resisted. "Ah! sweet memories, treasures of the past, why are you so dim and wavering, and this hard world so clear and glaring it seems cut out of stone? Oh, if I had a fairy's wand, I'd say, 'Vanish fine house and servants--vanish wealth and luxury and strife; and you come back to me, sweet hours of peace--and poverty--and love.'"
Her arms were stretched out with a grace and ardor that could embellish even eloquence, when a choking sob struck her ear. She turned her head swiftly, and there was William Hope, his hands working, his face convulsed, and the tears running down his cheeks like the very rain.
It was no wonder. Think of it! The child he adored, yet had parted with to save her from dire poverty, remembered that sad condition to ask for it back again, because of his love that made it sweet to her after all these years of comfort. And of late he had been jealous, and saw, or thought, he had no great place in her heart, and never should have.