"Thank God, it is over," he said fervently.
"I do thank God, first, that I am alive, and, then, that it was one of our own household that saved me. But this coming back from death, it is full of pain, to which the last agony seems but little. The scene around that old tree haunts me yet."
"And me," said Harrington, thoughtfully.
"You all looked so strange and wild, I could not comprehend the identity of any one. Even Ben Benson appeared like an angel luminous from Heaven, and that cedar a pillar of holy flame, around which he ministered."
"You did not know any of us, then?" inquired Harrington, eagerly.
"I did not know myself, for I, too, seemed like an angel, bound to love everything around me, as heavenly spirits do."
"Then you remembered nothing?" questioned Harrington, bending his earnest eyes upon her with a power that would have won the truth from a statue.
She did not blush; her eyes looked quietly and truthfully into his, and a pang both of joy and regret came to his heart, as he regarded the innocence of that look.
"It was, after all, a pleasant hallucination," said Mabel, "for even the governess, whom I do not much like, seemed transformed into a seraph, as she bent over me. As for Ben Benson, he was really sublime."
"Thank God!" answered Harrington, but the exclamation was followed by a deep sigh, as if the anxiety preying upon him had been changed, not entirely removed. Still there was a relief and freedom in his manner, as he drew a chair up to the window, and fell into his old habit of talk.