To resume. On returning to his hotel after taking leave of Rosny, Morton found a note awaiting him, directed in a female hand. He opened it, and read the signature,--Ellen Ashland,--the name of a lady whom he had well known in Boston, and who, just before he had sailed for Europe, had been married to an eminent lawyer of his acquaintance. She wrote that she had seen an account of his escape from prison, and arrival in New York, in the morning paper,--expressed an earnest wish to see him, and invited him to visit her at the New York Hotel, where she was spending a few days with her husband.
As the time named was almost come, Morton called a coach, and drove up town. His friend received him with a peculiar warmth and earnestness of manner. Morton had known her as a person of marked character and strong but strictly governed emotions, not always permitting the expression of a feeling to keep pace with the feeling itself. He greatly liked and esteemed her, and her presence disarmed him, in a great degree, of his usual reserve.
Her husband had been absent all day in Brooklyn, and would not return till late in the evening.
"It is five years since I have spoken to a lady," said Morton, as he seated himself at the tea table.
As he was not scrupulous to wear a mask before her, she quickly discovered the depressed condition of his mind; and on her charging him with being very much out of spirits, he admitted that he was so.
"One would think," she observed, "that after the sufferings that you have passed, you would have come home in a different mood of mind."
"You seem in no great haste to see your friends and relations in Boston."
"Yes; I have heard from them. I met an acquaintance yesterday."
"You have heard, then----" And she bent her eyes upon his face, with a look searching but full of kindness, as if studying his thoughts.
"Five years," she continued, "is a long time. Great changes may have taken place."
"Changes _have_ taken place," said Morton.
"You have lost none of your intimate friends, as far as I know them; but some have left Boston, and some are married."
Morton did not look up; but an undefined expression passed across his face, like the shadow of a black cloud. When, a moment after, he raised his eyes, he saw those of Mrs. Ashland fixed upon him with the same earnest gaze as before. Such scrutiny from another would have been intolerable to him; but in her it gave him no uneasiness.