She walked to the window and looked out. Day had fully dawned, and the busy hum of the awakening city came to her ear with no unpleasing sound. No velvety lawn, no garden gay with flowers, no nodding trees or softly wooded hills met her view; instead, bare roofs and domes and spires; but beyond these lay the great lake, its waters rippling in the morning breeze. And even as she gazed, far away to the east where sea and sky seemed to meet, a long line of rose color showed itself, deepened rapidly to crimson, brightened into gold; rays of light shot upward, quickly followed by the sun, “rejoicing as a strong man to run a race,” and sending his bright beams over the wide expanse of waters till each wavelet’s edge was tipped with burnished gold.
Floy leaned against the window-frame, hands clasped and eyes drinking in eagerly all the glory and beauty of the scene, loneliness, bereavement, all earthly ills forgotten for the moment.
“Ah,” she sighed half aloud, “if Espy were here! if he could but transfer this to canvas!”
Then all the grief and anguish of their estrangement, all the sorrow and loss that preceded and mingled with it, came rushing back upon her with well-nigh overwhelming force, and her slight, willowy form bent like a reed before the blast.
She sank upon her knees, her head resting upon the window-seat, her hands tightly clasped above an almost breaking heart.
A burst of wild weeping, tears falling like rain, bitter choking sobs following thick and fast upon each other, then a great calm; an effort at first feeble, but growing stronger by degrees, to roll the burden too heavy for her upon One able and willing to bear it, a soothing, comforting remembrance of His promise never to leave nor forsake, and anon the glad thought that she whose love was only second to His might yet be found.
“She may be near, very near me even now,” whispered the girl to herself, “in this city, this street, but a few doors away; it may be for that I have been sent here. Oh, what a thought! what joy if we should meet! But would we recognize each other? Mother, oh, mother! should I know your face if I saw it?”
She rose, tottered to the glass over the bureau, and earnestly scanned her own features. With a half-smile she noted their worn and haggard look. Grief, care, and fatigue seemed to have done the work of years.
“It is well,” she said. “I think I know now how she looks—my own poor, weary, heart-broken mother!”
Mrs. Kemper had told Floy that, allowing for difference in age, health, and circumstances, she was in face and form almost the exact counterpart of her own mother, and this was not the first time that the girl had earnestly studied her own face, trying to anticipate the changes to be wrought in it by the wear and tear of the next eighteen or twenty years, that thus she might be ready to know at a glance that other one she so longed to look upon.