Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/524

. 29, 1864.] a certain subdued eagerness in his voice, to which it was rarely pleasant to listen. “I have been hoping for a fair opportunity of introducing myself to Mr. Leigh; on your authority I shall tell him now that the beach is not to be gained save in one of his boats.”

“I will introduce you to papa. I am Mr. Leigh’s daughter,” Theo said, animatedly. And then she blushed a little, and laughed a little, and added, “At least, I will tell him your strait, your name I do not know; but I’ll introduce your difficulty to him, and he will place a boat at your service, I am sure, as soon as ever there is water enough in the creek.”

“Perhaps my name may be familiar to him,” the stranger said, handing Theo a card on which was engraved “Mr. Harold Ffrench.” “We were in Greece together, but as I was but an amateur your father very possibly never heard of me, or if he did, has forgotten me.”

“In Greece with papa!” Theo exclaimed; “did you serve with him 1 did you serve under Lord Cochrane? How could you come to Houghton, and know that papa was here, and not give him the great pleasure of seeing an old comrade at once?”

“I may not lay claim to that distinction, Miss Leigh.” Mr. Ffrench conveyed a most delicate compliment to the daughter by that allusion to the sire. Theo kindled to it, kindled vividly, but that perhaps she would have done to anything else uttered by that voice, and rendered doubly eloquent by those eyes.

“I may not lay claim to that distinction, Miss Leigh. I knew your father, certainly, knew him well, as did every one else who was concerned for the liberty of Greece, and interested in the organisation of her navy; but I was, as I tell you, an amateur, and my very name may have escaped your father’s memory: have you ever heard him mention it?”

“Never; did you know the Maid of Athens and Mr. Black?”

“Wasn’t Black her husband?”

“Yes: did you know them?”

“I did not, but I remember hearing your father’s name .in connection with them. He had them on board his frigate, hadn’t he?”

“Yes,” Theo replied. They were walking up the lane now, but though she was anxious to bring this stranger face to face with her father, she found it very pleasant to be walking and talking with him alone,—walking through the old familiar places which she had known from a child, and talking on that scarcely less familiar theme of which her father never tired.

“Yes, he had them on board the, I forget his ship’s name, and he was god-father to their eldest son; she was fat when papa knew her, a good deal of her beauty was gone; but still, do you know, I think there must have been a touch of romance in knowing her, Byron’s maid of Athens, at all.”

“I think perhaps the romance would have stood a better chance of being unimpaired if he, your father, I mean, hadn’t known her fat, and no longer young; there were many romantic affairs that sprang out of that song, Miss Leigh. Byron was not the only Englishman who fancied some roe-eyed Greek to be his life and soul for a time.”

Then Mr. Ffrench looked down at the bright young girl who walked by his side, glancing up at him occasionally with frank admiring gaze, and as he looked at her his deep blue eyes grew strangely tender, and he thought, “I hope to God her father has not forgotten me.”

Bear this recorded aspiration in mind when that which is to follow is recounted. He did devoutly hope that himself and the story of his life might be once known, even if now partially forgotten things, by the father of this gill who had won upon him already, brief as had been their intercourse, by the undefinable charm of a most profound sympathy. Through all the length of that lane which led from the rush-covered marsh-bank up to the garden-wall where Mr. Leigh still stood, Harold Ffrench hoped it devoutly. When the gate was gained, and Theo Leigh introduced him eagerly to her father, before the latter had time to express astonishment at the sight of his daughter on these friendly terms with a stranger, that hope died out and another sprang into being. For in answer to Theo’s “Papa, this gentleman was looking for a way over to the beach; he is Mr. Ffrench, and he remembers you in Greece,” in answer to this there came no light of recognition into the old officer’s eyes: “I am heartily glad to renew the acquaintance,” he said courteously; “your name and face have escaped my memory. I am getting an old man, you see; walk in, Mr. Ffrench, you are most cordially welcome.”

As Mr. Ffrench took the other’s offered hand, he saw that if ever known he was now entirely forgotten.

readers need not be detained by any details of our voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and thence to Sydney. They shall be transported at once (metaphorically, of course)