“Not dead? Then there is hope! Oh, Miss Emma, may I just look at her? I’ll be so very quiet, and I loved her so much!”
“Yes. I do not know as you can do any harm by looking at her,” Emma said, and in an instant Gertie was flying up the stairs and along the south hall which led to Edith’s room.
The door was open, and looking in, she saw the white face upon the pillow, framed in masses of golden-brown hair, which the fair hands had torn and matted when the iron fingers were at the throat. She seemed to be dead, and the doctor touched her pulse to see if it still beat, when the lips said faintly:
“Where’s my little girl?”
The last word was prolonged, and to the excited child it sounded like “little Gertie,” and, without stopping to consider the consequences, Gertie darted across the floor to the side of the sick woman, whose lips she kissed, as she said:
“I’m here! I’m here!”
“Go away!” came sternly from the wretched husband, who frowned darkly upon the girl thus audaciously disturbing his dying wife.
And with a frightened face Gertie started to obey him, when the physician interposed and stopped her, saying:
“Speak to her again.”
His practised eye had detected a change in his patient when Gertie first spoke to her, and now, when at his command the silvery voice, so full of love and tender pathos, said, “I am here,—little Gertie. Do you know me, Mrs. Schuyler?” there certainly was a change, but whether from the effect of the powerful medicine given a few moments before as a last experiment, or because of that voice, which rang so clear and birdlike, I cannot tell. I only know something penetrated into the deep darkness, and brought back the senses almost gone forever. There was a fluttering of the eyelids; then they unclosed, and the eyes looked full at Gertie, while the lips whispered, “Stay!” and a hand moved slowly toward the child, who grasped it in her own, and held it fast, while Edith slept for a few moments.