“I hoped that I had passed away forever,” she murmured.
“Not yet, not yet,” said the stranger, in a voice of tender yet mournful sweetness, which had in it an unfathomable depth of meaning. “We must wait on here, dear friend, till it be His will to call us.”
“And who are you?” asked Beatrice, after a long and anxious look at the face of the speaker.
“My name is Edith Brandon,” said the other, gently.
“Brandon!—Edith Brandon!” cried Beatrice, with a vehemence which contrasted strangely with the scarce-audible words with which she had just spoken.
The stranger smiled with the same melancholy sweetness which she had shown before.
“Yes,” said she; “but do not agitate yourself, dearest.”
“And have you nursed me?”
“Partly. But you are in the house of one who is like an angel in her loving care of you.”
“But you—you?” persisted Beatrice; “you did not perish, then, as they said?”