By some vicarious process, best understood by lovers, I lavished on
little Ernie a thousand terms of endearment, meant only for another, and
by the light of my own happiness he seemed transfigured. He was
identified with the lifting away of a burden more bitter than captivity
itself. They could but kill my body now--my soul was filled with a new
life that nothing could extinguish; and believing in Wentworth, I felt
that I could die happy, let death come when and how it would. I knew now
that in the course of time, whether I lived or died, Wentworth would
know that I was not his niece, and claim Mabel as his own, remembering
my estimate of those who held her in charge. Then would the tide of love
and passion, so long repressed, roll back in its old channel, and he
would leave no stone unturned, no path unexplored, whereby to trace my
fate.
To this, as yet, he held no clew. The sea had seemed to swallow Miriam
Harz, by which name I had been registered in the ship's books and known
to the passengers; nor could it be surmised that the young "mad girl,"
since spoken of, as I had been told, in the papers, as having been
restored to her friends by the accident of meeting the Latona, and
Miriam Monfort, were one and the same person. But if the time should
come when all should be explained, either by my own lips or the
revelations of others, good cause might Basil Bainrothe and his
confederate have to tremble!
Like all cold, patient, deeply-feeling men, there were untold reserves
of power and passion in the nature of Wardour Wentworth which might, for
aught I knew to the contrary, tend naturally to and culminate in
revenge.
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