"Lucia?—Lucia St. Just!" answered he, in a low abstracted voice, as if trying to recollect.
"Lucia Vavasour!—your Lucia!"
Elsley slowly raised himself upon his elbow, and looked into her face with a sad inquiring gaze.
"Elsley—darling Elsley!—don't you know me?"
"Yes, very well indeed; better than you know me. I am not Vavasour at all. My name is Briggs—John Briggs, the apothecary's son, come home to Whitbury to die."
She did not hear, or did not care for those last words.
"Elsley! I am your wife!—your own wife!—who never loved any one but you—never, never, never!"
"Yes, my wife, at least!—Curse them, that they cannot deny!" said he, in the same abstracted voice.
"Oh God! is he mad?" thought she. "Elsley, speak to me!—I am your
Lucia—your love—"
And she tore off her bonnet, and threw herself beside him on the bed, and clasped him in her arms, murmuring,—"Your wife! who never loved any one but you!"