“Oh! Elsie, Elsie, will you not speak to me?”
The tall woman turned at this, came a pace back, and looked at the old lady with her great, mournful eyes, silent as before.
“Elsie, Elsie! It is your mother. Speak to me!”
Insanity is sometimes very cruel. How steadily those great eyes looked upon the quivering anguish of that beautiful old face! How coldly the woman turned away, and walked into the shadows of her old home, holy with so many memories, all lost in the darkness that had settled on her brain!
Then the old woman sent forth a cry of anguish, and reaching out her arms, fell weeping upon her husband’s bosom.
“She does not know me. Oh! John, John, I thought she would have known me!”
The old man, himself trembling with fatigue and agitation, bent down and kissed the forehead of his wife. But he had no words of comfort to offer. It was a terrible thing for an only child to walk thus stonily by the yearning heart of a mother. The poor old man wept over his wife; it was all he could do.
But as his fond arms relaxed, a beautiful comforter appeared, breaking through the mist that grief had cast over those aged eyes like some shadowy angel. Those two withered hands were softly clasped, and a sweet, tranquillizing voice murmured,—
“Do not be troubled; she is so much better, she must know you at last. Have patience, only have a little patience!”
“I will have patience. Oh! is that a new thing to me, poor bereaved mother that I am?” answered the old lady, shedding less bitter tears. “But who are you that speak so confidently, and so well?”