Elsie smiled. Some vague association seemed breaking through her mind.
“To-morrow you shall go down there, darling; father and I will go anywhere with you.”
“Anywhere?” said Elsie, with a fierce look. “Then take me to him.”
The old lady recoiled, and looked wistfully at her husband.
“Take me to him, I say!” almost shrieked the daughter, gazing angrily from her father to her mother.
“No, no,” said Catharine, quietly, “that is for me. They must show you nothing but the brook, the birds, and these beautiful trees. I must do the rest. Come.”
As if spellbound, the insane woman arose and followed the young girl.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE CLOSED LIBRARY.
Whence came the young woman who made her advent in the last chapter? So fair, so gentle in her manners, and yet with an authority of character that made itself respected,—how came she to know the aged couple, whose home was hereafter to be her own?
They knew that she had been the inmate of an Insane Asylum; for there she had learned to love and protect their only child, who was all the dearer to them because of her infirmity. They knew that she had entered this institution, under the care of as good and true a woman as ever lived, from a keen desire to find some place where her daily bread could be earned in seclusion, mingled with a gentle wish to benefit humanity in some way.