I remembered that it was just one year ago that day, that he had asked her to be his wife, and I trembled to think of what hidden meanings I might be messenger in carrying her this silent token. But I too felt, as George did, that she was drifting farther and farther away from the memories we desired she should regain; and that no physician's knowledge could be so true as love's instinct; and I asked no counsel of any one, but went swiftly to Annie with the leaves in my hand.
"O you darling! How perfectly lovely," she exclaimed with a laugh of delight. "Why these must have come from George's woods. Have you been up there?"
"No, dear," I said, "George brought them for you, this morning."
"Oh, the good darling!" she exclaimed. "Is it decided about his going to India?"
I could not repress a little cry of anguish and terror. A year before, there had been a plan for his going out to India on a mercantile venture, which promised great profit. It had been given up, partly because his mother felt that she could not live without him, partly because he felt that he could not longer live without Annie.
"What is it, dear?" she said, in her softest, most sympathizing voice, with a little flush of alarm on her pale cheek; "what hurt you? are you ill? Oh, my poor Helen, you are all worn out with nursing me. I will nurse you presently."
"Only a little twinge of my old neuralgia, dear," I said faintly; "these autumn winds are setting it at work again."
She looked anxiously at me for a few seconds, and then began to untie the bunch of leaves, and spread out the long vines on the bed.
"Oh, if I only had some moss," she said.
I ran to the green-house and brought her handfuls of beautiful dripping mosses from the rocks in the fernery. She filled a saucer with them, putting the Tiarella leaves all round the rim, and winding the Linnea vines in and out as they grow in the woods. Then she leaned back on her pillows and began breaking the partridge-berry vines into short bits, each with a scarlet berry on it. These she set upright in the moss, changing and rearranging them so often that I wondered what could be her purpose, and leaned forward to see.