The moment he saw her, Morrison's feelings were not, indeed, changed, because it was with those very feelings that he had to struggle, in doing what he believed to be a duty to himself--but all those feeling revived in full force, at the sight of her he loved so much, and he advanced at once immediately toward her, for no eloquence that Charles Tyrrell could have used at that moment, would have been half so efficacious in pleading the cause of Hannah Longly, as the young lawyer's own heart. He held out his hand to her, and Hannah, with many a deep blush, put hers in his.
"What is this mistake, Hannah," he said, "which has deceived both your father and me, and made me very unhappy?"
"My father is undeceived now," said Hannah, "and so would you, too, if you had listened to me."
Hannah Longly seemed to feel that she had regained her power, and perhaps, there was a little inclination in her heart to use it, in order to punish her lover, even for doubting her. But her heart had been chastened by adversity; and though she might have triumphed a little in former days, under such circumstances, she now checked even the inclination to do so, and determined to be happy herself, in the reconciliation which she was sure would take place, and to make him so, too, as far as she could.
Morrison, however, felt that he was in some degree, put upon his trial, and of course, began his defence.
"I was told, Hannah," he said, "and told even by your father, that you had gone out secretly and alone, to meet one of the most profligate and worthless of men, a man who degraded the character of an officer in the navy, to become a spy as well as an informer, to betray the very person of whose hospitality he partook, and whom you well knew, at the time you saw him, dared not set his foot within your father's doors--that you went out to meet him, I say."
"But, why did I go out to meet him?" demanded Hannah, eagerly; "did they tell you that? No, Everard, because even at that time, my father would not hear me; even when I did send him word, he would not believe me till he heard it from the man's own mouth. But the reason I did go was because he wrote to me, to say, that there was only one means of saving my father from being utterly ruined by what he called extents from the Exchequer, which I had often heard my father too speak of with apprehension. He said that there was only one means to save him, and that if I would come out to meet him at the place he mentioned, he would tell me what that means was. I was foolish to believe him, I acknowledge; but I saw by what had taken place on the very day I got his note, by poor William Hailes, and all the rest, being dragged away to prison, how much power he had to do harm when he liked it; and I did go to meet him, I acknowledge: but when he told me that the only means to save my father, was to go with him to Guernsey, to be married to him there"--she looked steadily in the young lawyer's face for a moment, and then added--"when he told me this, I thought of Everard Morrison; and I refused to go, let the consequences to me and mine be what they would--I may have been foolish, Everard, I know I have been silly and weak in many things, but in this, at least, I do not think I was in the wrong."