"Yes—yes," gasped Mattie.
She had not recovered her astonishment when the visitor had left the shop; "hope for Sidney"—"going away!"—"keep him strong!"—was all this a dream?
"Mattie," called Sidney from the parlour, and our heroine rushed in at once and found our hero walking up and down the room with a freer step than she had witnessed in him since his blindness.
"Mattie," he said in an agitated voice, "he tells me that there is a chance of the light coming back to me—a chance that entails danger, but which is surely worth the risk. Think of the daylight streaming in upon my darkened senses, and my waking up once more to life!"
"I am so glad!—I am so very glad!" cried Mattie; adding the instant afterwards, "but the—the danger? What is that?"
"A danger of death, or of my going mad, he left it doubtful which—I don't care which—I can risk all for the one chance ahead of me. I will keep strong, praying for the brightness of the new life."
"Yes!" was the mournful response. In that brightness, one figure might at least grow dim—in the darkness he had learned to love her, he said! But he was not thinking of love then, or of her whose love he had sought;—a new hope was bewildering him, and he could not escape it.
"Keep him strong and hopeful," had been the caution given Mattie; there was no need for it. He was hopeful—far too hopeful—of the sunshine; he thought nothing of the danger, or of a world a hundred times worse than that of his benighted one—and he was strong in faith. He could talk of nothing else, and Mattie made no effort to distract his mind away from it. It was natural enough that he should forget her for awhile; the time had not come for her to answer him, or to judge him; he had said that his mind was made up, and that she possessed his love—surely they were earnest words enough, to keep her hopeful in her turn?
And if the change in Sidney did result in Sidney's cure, she would rejoice in it with all her heart—as his father would have rejoiced, had he lived and known the troubles of his boy.
The next day, Maurice Hinchford arrived in his father's carriage to take Sidney away. Sidney was equipped for departure, and had been waiting for his cousin the last two hours—agitating his mind with a hundred reasons for the delay.