Then he went home in a more hopeful frame of mind than he had enjoyed for many weeks.
The summer was slipping swiftly away.
Since the arrival of her respite for so long and indefinite a period, it had been deemed proper by the warden to accord to his charge many valuable privileges that she had not enjoyed, nor indeed, in her unconsciousness of her real situation and indifference to all external circumstances, had not missed in her imprisonment.
She was now permitted to walk in the shaded grounds and blooming gardens within the walled inclosure around the prison.
Here, through the influence of fresh air and gentle exercise, her physical health improved very much, though her mental malady remained unmodified.
Here, also, some members of her household from Black Hall, were admitted to see her.
Hitherto Miss Tabby, Raphael, and even little Cromartie had been carefully excluded from her presence, lest the violent emotion of the woman and the youth, or the innocent prattle of the child, should suddenly strike
"The electric chord wherewith we are darkly bound,"
and shock her into a full consciousness of the awful position which her friends were now more than ever anxious to conceal from her knowledge. For they argued, if only this mist of insanity could be kept around her for a little while longer, until the hoped-for pardon should come, then she need never know that she had been the inmate of a prison or stood within the shadow of the scaffold.
It was the opinion of her physician, and the fear of her friends, that her reason would return with the birth of her child; and they prayed that it might not do so until she should be free from the prison.