Merely to view his friend's inheritance
seemed a paltry reason. Perhaps he was a journalist, or a writer of
guide-books. But she soon dismissed the matter, to ask herself a more
personal question. Was it possible that he knew her? Had he found out
her name after the New York episode, and come at last to seek her? She
could not honestly believe this, though her heart leapt at the thought.
That affair had taken place four long years before. Of course, he had
forgotten it. It could have made no more than a passing impression upon
him. Had it been otherwise, would he not have claimed her at once as an
old acquaintance?
Yes, it was plain that her first conviction must be correct. He did not
know her. The whole incident had passed completely from his memory,
crowded out, no doubt, and that speedily, by more absorbing interests.
She had flashed across his life, attaining to no more importance than a
bird upon the wing. He had saved her life at a frightful risk, and then
forgotten her very existence. She had always realised it must be so,
but, strangely, she had never resented it. In spite of it, with a
woman's queer, inexplicable faithfulness, she yet loved her hero, yet
cherished closely, fondly, the memory that she doubted not had faded
utterly from his mind.
She went to the village church with Froggy on the following day, though
fully alive to the risk she ran of being pointed out to the ignorant as
Lady Priscilla from the Abbey.
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