When the boy came staggering in with the third shutter, a new thought—a forlorn hope—suggested itself.
"Wait here and mind the shop till I come down, William," she said.
She went up-stairs in her bonnet and shawl, and pushed open the door of Harriet Wesden's room. Empty and unoccupied, as she might have known, and yet which, in defiance of possibilities, she had gone up to explore again. The blind was undrawn, and the faint glimmer of the late dawning was stealing into the room, and scaring the shadows back.
Mattie gave way at the desolation of the place; and flung herself upon her knees at the bed's foot.
"Oh! my darling, God forgive you, and watch over you—oh! my darling, whom I loved more than a sister, and who is for ever—for ever—lost to me!"
"No—NO—Mattie!"
Mattie leaped to her feet, and with a cry scarcely human, rushed towards the speaker in the doorway—the speaker who, white and trembling, opened her arms and received her on her throbbing breast. Harriet Wesden had come back again!