“Don’t plead. Don’t attempt to persuade me, mother. You must always dress like a gentlewoman. That hair and cap are frightful. Remember how much he thinks of these things.”
The old people remained silent. This was a phase of madness that they had never witnessed before. Catharine, too, was puzzled. Elsie seemed struggling with some old remembrance, or rather to have cast herself back into a far-off scene of action, forgetting everything else; and the young woman could only look on, waiting for opportunity to act.
Elsie spoke again.
“But while I am scolding you, mamma, I had forgotten to look at myself, in this robe so disordered, and my hair all down. What will he think of me?”
As she spoke, Elsie moved toward a small mirror, set into the door of a cabinet, with which she seemed familiar.
“Why, how is this?” she cried, with astonishment, as the reflection of her figure came back from the glass; and holding out her long hair at arm’s length, she allowed the gray tresses to drop slowly from her figure, repeating the question sharply, “what is this? whose hair is this?”
No one answered her, and she stood gazing upon herself in wild amazement, turning her dark eyes upon her parents with a stern, questioning air, as if they had transfigured her.
“I cannot make it out,” she said at last, dropping her arms sadly downward; “I cannot make it out.”
“It is remembrance. It is a return of sanity!” whispered Catharine. “Her recollection of what she has been, her forgetfulness of me—it is a hopeful sign.”
The old people began to tremble. Their withered hands clung together, shaking like autumn-leaves; low murmurs broke from their lips, but no words were uttered. They listened in breathless suspense for the next sentence that might fall from those troubled lips.