Scarcely was the vow made before the door opened and Margaret and he were face to face. She looked at him for a moment, then held out her hand, smiling her recognition. "Sit down," she said with the quiet graciousness Arthur remembered so well, taking a seat herself at the same time; then suddenly she caught sight of what he brought, for Arthur had the scarf on his arm. Her quietness fled, she rose to her feet, and seizing his arm pointed to it eagerly: "Where did you find it? Whose is it? Why did you bring it here?"
She spoke and fell back on her chair, gasping for breath.
[CHAPTER X.]
ON THE BRINK OF MADNESS.
My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love;
My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim,
And I am all aweary of my life.
Arthur's instinct had not erred. There was something more than the recovery of what she valued that made the sudden reappearance of her scarf a matter of great moment to Mrs. Grey. The facts of the case were these: The voice of many-tongued Rumor had been busy in the village with the wonderful history of the disappearance of the pretty child, whose vivacity and pleasant friendly ways had made her well known in the neighborhood. Through the medium of her laundress and a little girl from the National School, who came in the morning to help Jane, some of these little bits of gossip had made their way to Margaret.
The laundress poured into her ears the tale of how the little one had been met on the sands with a gentleman and a big dog on the afternoon of the day of her disappearance; the little girl chimed in with a true, full, and particular account of every item of the dress and appearance of both. One of these items puzzled Margaret. The girl declared positively that Miss Laura had carried her mamma's scarf upon her arm. Now, Margaret could not but remember that on that ever-memorable day she had worn the scarf herself. She had reason for connecting it with the interview between herself and L'Estrange. Strangely enough, from that very moment she had missed it.
In her first horror at the discovery of Laura's departure the lesser loss had naturally escaped her; when the girl mentioned the scarf, however, she remembered that she had not brought it home with her. But how could Laura have obtained possession of it? Margaret wearied herself with conjectures, but at last she came to this conclusion—she had left it on her seat among the bushes, Laura had gone there with her father anxious to find her, they had seen the scarf, and the little one had picked it up to take it back, for that Laura had willingly left her Margaret never imagined for a moment. Either this or else that the girl had been mistaken altogether. It was thus she had dismissed the subject of the scarf from her mind. It did not afford any clue; it did not alter in the remotest degree the fact of the child being lost to her, of her husband having cruelly and wantonly wronged her. But when the scarf reappeared in this strangely unexpected manner it was like a message from her child, a link by which it might be possible to trace her, and the first revulsion of feeling which its sight occasioned was so great as almost to deprive Margaret of her small remnant of strength.