Foul Play [147]
"Nothing, nothing. Kiss me again. Well, love, you had better find this guardian angel of yours, that I may take him by the hand and give him a father's blessing, and make him some little return by carrying him home to England along with my darling."
"I'll call him, papa. Where can he be gone, I wonder?"
She ran out to the terrace, and called:
"Mr. Hazel! Mr. Hazel! I don't see him; but he can't be far off. Mr. Hazel!"
Then she came back and made her father sit down; and she sat at his knee beaming with delight.
"Ah, papa," said he, "it was you who loved me best in England. It was you that came to look for me."
"No," said he, "there are others there that love you as well in their way. Poor Wardlaw! on his sickbed for you, cut down like a flower the moment he heard you were lost in the _Proserpine._ Ah, and I have broken faith."
"That is a story," said Helen; "you couldn't."
"For a moment, I mean; I promised the dear old man--he furnished the ship, the men, and the money to find you. He says you are as much his daughter as mine."
"Well, but what did you promise him?" said Helen, blushing and interrupting hastily, for she could not bear the turn matters were taking.
"Oh, only to give you the second kiss from Arthur. Come, better late than never." She knelt before him and put out her forehead instead of her lips. "There," said the general, "that kiss is from Arthur Wardlaw, your intended. Why, who the deuce is this?"
A young man was standing wonder-struck at the entrance, and had heard the general's last words; they went through him like a knife. General Rolleston stared at him.
Helen uttered an ejaculation of pleasure, and said, "This is my dear father, and he wants to thank you--"
"I don't understand this," said the general. "I thought you told me there was nobody on the island but you and your guardian angel. Did you count this poor fellow for nobody? Why, he did you a good turn once."
"Oh, papa!" said Helen, reproachfully.
"Why, this is my guardian angel. This is Mr. Hazel."
The general looked from one to another in amazement, then he said to Helen,
"This your Mr. Hazel?"
"Yes, papa."
"Why, you don't mean to tell me you don't know this man?"
"Know him, papa! why, of course I know Mr. Hazel; know him and revere him, beyond all the world, except you."
The general lost patience. "Are you out of your senses?" said he; "this man here is no Hazel. Why, this is James Seaton--our gardener--a ticket-of-leave man."
CHAPTER LI.
AT this fearful insult Helen drew back from her father with a cry of dismay, and then moved toward Hazel with her hands extended, as if to guard him from another blow, and at the same time deprecate his resentment. But then she saw his dejected attitude; and she stood confounded, looking from one to the other.
"I knew him in a moment by his beard," said the general coolly.
"Ah!" cried Helen, and stood transfixed. She glared at Hazel and his beard with dilating eyes, and began to tremble.
Then she crept back to her father and held him tight; but still looked over her shoulder at Hazel with dilating eyes and paling cheek.
As for Hazel, his deportment all this time went far toward convicting him; he leaned against the side of the cave and hung his head in silence, and his face was ashy pale. When General Rolleston saw his deep distress, and the sudden terror and repugnance the revelation seemed to create in his daughter's mind, he felt sorry he had gone so far, and said: "Well, well; it is not for me to judge you harshly; for you have laid me under a deep obligation. And, after all, I can see good reasons why you should conceal your name from other people. But you ought to have told my daughter the truth."
Helen interrupted him; or, rather, she seemed unconscious he was speaking. She had never for an instant taken her eye off the culprit. And now she spoke to him.
"Who, and what are you, sir?"
"My name is Robert Penfold."
"Penfold! Seaton!" cried Helen. "Alias upon alias!" And she turned to her father in despair. Then