The touch awoke him, and starting up he stared wildly at her, while some memory of the past seemed to be struggling through the misty clouds, obscuring his mental vision.
“Who are you, lady? Who, with eyes and hair like hers?”
“I’m the `madam’ from Aikenside,” Agnes said, quite loudly, as Flora passed the door. Then when she was gone she added, softly: “I’m Sarah. Don’t you know me? Sarah Agnes Morris.”
It seemed for a moment to burst upon him in its full reality, and to her dying day Agnes would never forget the look upon his face, the smile of perfect happiness breaking through the rain of tears, the love, the tenderness mingled with distrust, which that look betokened as he continued gazing at her, but said to her not a word. Again her hand rested on his forehead, and taking it now in his he held it to the light, laughing insanely at its soft whiteness; then touching the costly diamonds which flashed upon him the rainbow hues, he said: “Where’s that little bit of a ring I bought for you?”
She had anticipated this, and took from her pocket a plain gold ring, kept until that day where no one could find it, and holding it up to him, said: “Here it is. Do you remember it?”
“Yes, yes,” and his lips began to quiver with a grieved, injured expression. “He could give you diamonds, and I couldn’t. That’s why you left me, wasn’t it, Sarah—why you wrote that letter which made my head into two? It’s ached so ever since, and I’ve missed you so much, Sarah! They put me in a cell where crazy people were—oh! so many—and they said that I was mad, when I was only wanting you. I’m not mad now, am I, darling?”
His arm was around her neck, and he drew her down until his lips touched hers. And Agnes suffered it. She could not return the kiss, but she did not turn away from his, and she let him caress her hair, and wind it around his fingers, whispering: “This is like Sarah’s, and you are Sarah, are you not?”
“Yes, I am Sarah,” she would answer, while the smile so painful to see would again break over his face as he told how much he had missed her, and asked if she had not come to stay till he died.
“There’s something wrong,” he said; “somebody dead, and seems as if somebody else wanted to die—as if Maddy died ever since the Lord Governor went away. Do you know Governor Guy?”
“I am his stepmother,” Agnes replied, whereupon Uncle Joseph laughed so long and loud that Maddy awoke, and, alarmed by the noise, came down to see what was the matter.