"Sarah, dear child! can this be you?"
"What I am now, Aunt Sarah. May I come in and stay with you a little while?"
"Stay with me, poor darling! As long as you like, and welcome! Come right in; you don't look fit to stand!"
She was not; for, now that the necessity for exertion was removed, she was faint and trembling. Aunt Sarah helped her upstairs to the room she had occupied at her former visit, undressed her, and put her to bed. Sarah submitted like a child, too much exhausted to resist being made an invalid of, or to offer any explanation of her singular apparition. She had not slept an hour at a time for many nights; yet when she had drunk a cup of tea, and tried to eat a bit of toast her aunt prepared and brought up to her, she fell into a profound slumber, which lasted until long after sunrise on the following morning. Unclosing her eyes then, they rested upon the dear face, shaded by the widow's cap, that watched at her bedside. A shadowy phantom of a smile flitted over her features at the recognition.
"It was not a dream, then?" she said languidly. "But I have dreamed of you often, of late—every night in which I have had any sleep. Aunt Sarah, I must tell you why I came to you!"
"Not now, dear," Aunt Sarah hastened to say, seeing the wild stare and the cloud return to her countenance. "Wait until you are stronger. I will bring up your breakfast, and when you have eaten it, you may try to dress, if you like. There will be time enough for your story, by-and-by. Charley is in a great fidget to see you."
Sarah submitted to the delay; but it was plain that she was not satisfied with it, and that her mind would be easier when once the tale was told. Aunt Sarah hindered her no longer a time than sufficed for her to take the much needed refreshment, to bathe and dress, and to see and exchange a few sentences with Charley, who supported her down to the sitting-room. There, resting among the pillows of the lounge, Aunt Sarah beside her, with the ubiquitous knitting-work in hand, lest too close observation should confuse her niece, the stricken one unfolded the whole of her sad history.
No more affecting proof could have been given of her prostrated mind and will than this unreserved recital. The secret she had sold conscience and liberty to preserve, she communicated now without a blush. Here—where she had formed the intimacy that had shadowed so darkly her after days—she detailed every step of the wrong course to which this weakness was a key; went over all—the stormy parting with her husband; her conviction of the mutual peril she and Philip were tempting in their daily communion; her resolve of self-destruction—as circumstantially as if she were relating the biography of another.
Aunt Sarah, horrified and pitiful by turns, struggled with indifferent success to maintain equal composure, and against growing doubts of the narrator's sanity. It was a striking and instructive contrast: the world-weary woman returning for consolation and advice to the simple-minded matron, to whom the artificial existence she now heard depicted—its gilded vices and giddy round of vanities; its trials and temptations—were a wonderful, a monstrous tale, as foreign to her sphere of principles and feelings as if they had transpired in another world. But when Sarah came to speak of her child, her manner changed, her voice was hoarse and uneven, and over the careworn visage there went such alterations of fierceness and heart-breaking sorrow that the listening mother, upon whose soul the shadow of her own children's graves still lay long and dark, could hear no more in silence.
"My poor girl!" she cried, falling on her knees, and throwing her arms around the reclining figure. "Dear child! Our Father in heaven pity and comfort you! There is no help in man for such trouble as yours!"