"Oh, mother, mother!" cried Juliet, breaking down utterly and crying aloud. "I have been so wicked, so wicked! I do not deserve your forgiveness. But oh, say you will get well now! Oh, promise me you will get well now!"
"Of course, darling," murmured the faint, far-away voice. "But don't cry, Juliet; I cannot bear to hear you cry."
The nurse attempted to draw the weeping girl from the bedside, but her mother's weak fingers had fastened upon hers. "Don't leave me, Juliet," she gasped out. "Stay with me, now you have come."
"Yes, yes," murmured Juliet, and she clasped the dear hand closer and pressed her lips to it, struggling to keep back her sobs.
A look of content stole over Mrs. Tracy's face. Her eyelids drooped. The nurse darkened the window again, and in a few moments the patient was peacefully sleeping with her hand clasped in Juliet's.
Juliet knelt there, fearing to move, lest she should break her mother's slumber, till her limbs grew stiff and her constrained position became agonising. Then the nurse gently drew her mother's hand away, and Juliet saw that the sleep was too profound to be disturbed by so slight a movement. The repose which exhausted body and excited brain so sorely needed had come at last. There was now good hope of recovery.
And Mrs. Tracy did recover. As Dr. Gardner had foreseen, the return of Juliet, the sight of her face, the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, were the best medicine her mother could have. The improvement which set in with her coming was steadily maintained.
Yet Mrs. Tracy's recovery was slow, and several weeks passed ere she could quit her bedroom. During that period, Juliet scarcely left her side. Again and again, her mother would urge her to go out; but Juliet was content to take the fresh air in the little garden at the back of the house, and seldom went beyond the gate. She felt that she could never do enough to show her love to the mother who had received her again so lovingly, and not only forgiven her gross ingratitude, but put it utterly from her, as a thing to be consigned to everlasting oblivion.
Juliet could not so dismiss it. The more she was made to feel her mother's love, the more she hated herself for what she had done. In her bitter repentance and self-loathing, she would have felt it a relief if her mother had upbraided her, or in any way caused her to suffer for her wrong-doing.
"You ought to hate me, mother," she would say sometimes.