While I searched among the gold for some other token, a strange stupor crept over me, and I fell exhausted on the floor, folding my arms over the bronze box and its contents.
I slept heavily for hours, so heavily that all the sweet noises of morning failed to arouse me. This suspension of consciousness probably saved me from a brain fever, or perhaps utter frenzy. It seems that I had locked myself in, and all day Maria, unconscious of my return, had not thought of looking for me till Turner came home, for a moment, to inquire after us. He found Jupiter still saddled, wandering around the wilderness, hungry and forlorn enough. This excited his fears, and, directly, the faithful old man was knocking at my chamber door. The noise was not enough to arouse me, and receiving no answer he grew desperate, and forcing an entrance, found me prone upon the carpet with my arms around the bronze coffer, my soiled garments lying in torn masses around me, and my pale features gleaming out from beneath the scarlet kerchief, with which I had confined the riding-hat to my head.
The stillness of death itself was not more profound than the sleep into which I had fallen; but at last the gushes of fresh air they let in upon me, aromatic vinegars, and the desperate shake that Turner gave me in his terror, had their effect. I stood up, stiffened in every limb and in a sort of trance; for all consciousness was locked like ice in my bosom.
Slowly, and with many pangs, the remembrance of what had happened came back to me. The bronze coffer at my feet—the sight of my garments, brought back a consciousness of all that I had learned and suffered during the night. I took up the coffer and placed it, reverently, on a table. Turner and Maria watched me, with anxious curiosity. The box was a singular one, and covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics, into which the red soil of the bank had introduced itself. I took no heed of Turner’s astonishment; but, self-centred and stern, asked him if Lord Clare—I did not call him father—still lived.
“Yes,” answered the old man, and all his features commenced to quiver, “he lives—he has asked for you again and again. Where have you been, Zana?”
I did not reply. The stern duty that lay upon me hardened all my senses; the old man’s right to question me passed for nothing. I asked what time it was, as if he had not spoken.
It was four in the afternoon. Lord Clare had inquired for me so often, that Turner determined, spite of Lady Catherine’s prohibition, to bring me to his presence.
“Go,” said the old man, gently—“go change that dress, and drive, if it is possible, that deathly white from your cheek; there is no resemblance now between you and her; that icy face will disappoint him. Look like yourself, Zana—like her!”
I went at his bidding and changed my dress, and braided my hair with fingers as stiff and, it seemed to me, as nerveless as iron. The pallor did not leave my cheek; the blood flowed still and icily in my veins; all the sweet impulses of humanity seemed dead within me. I remembered a scarlet ribbon which lay in the box, with a piece of gold attached. The journal had given me its history. The gold was my father’s first gift to his gipsy wife. I remembered well finding the ribbon in his vest, and carrying it away with a sharp infantile struggle, full of glee and baby triumph. He allowed me to keep it. Yet it was her dearest maiden ornament—the earliest sacrifice that she had made to him. The event was impressed on my mind, because it brought forth the first angry word that I ever remember from my mother. On seeing me come forward, holding up the ribbon, and shouting as it floated behind me, I remember well the quick flash of her eyes, the eager bound which she made toward me, and the clutch of her hand as she wrested away my treasure.
My father laughed lightly at the struggle, but she bore the ribbon away, and did not appear again for hours.