“Where do you suppose she is?” was Jessie’s next question, but if Agnes knew, she did not answer, except by reminding her little daughter that it was past her bed-time.
The next morning Agnes’s eyes were very red, as if she had been wakeful the entire night, while her white face fully warranted the headache she professed to have.
“Jessie,” she said, as they sat together at their breakfast, “I am going to Honedale to-day to see Maddy, and shall leave you here, as I do not care to have us both absent.”
Jessie demurred a little at first, but finally yielded, wondering what had prompted this visit to the cottage. Maddy wondered so, too, as from the window she saw Agnes instead of Jessie alighting from the carriage, and was conscious of a thrill of gratification that Agnes should have come to see her. But Agnes’s business was with the sick man, poor Uncle Joseph, who was sleeping when she came, and so did not hear her voice as in the tidy kitchen she talked to Maddy, appearing extremely agitated, and casting her eyes rapidly from one part of the room to another, resting now upon the tinware hanging on the wall, and now upon the gourd swimming in the water-pail which stood in the old-fashioned sink, with the wooden spout, directly over the pile of stones covering the drain. These things were familiar to the proud woman; she had seen them before, and the sight of them brought to her a most remorseful regret for the past, while her heart ached cruelly as she wished she had never crossed that threshold, or, crossing it, had never brought ruin to one of its inmates. Agnes was changed in various ways. All hope of the doctor had long since been given up, and as Jessie grew older the mother nature was stronger within her, subduing her selfishness, and making her far more gentle and considerate for others than she had been before. To Maddy she was exceedingly kind, and never more so in manner than now, when they sat talking together in the humble kitchen at the cottage.
“You look tired and sick,” she said. “Your cares have been too much for you. Let me sit by your uncle till he wakes, and you go up to bed.”
Very gladly Maddy accepted the offered relief, and utterly worn out with her constant vigils, she was soon sleeping soundly in her own room, while Flora, in the little back room of the house, was busy with her ironing. Thus there was no one to see Agnes as she went slowly into the sick-room where Uncle Joseph lay, his thin face upturned to the light, and his lips occasionally moving as he muttered in his sleep. There was a strange contrast between that wasted imbecile and that proud, queenly woman, but she could remember a time when the superiority was all upon his side, a time when in her childish estimation he was the embodiment of every manly beauty, and the knowledge that he loved her, his sister’s little hired girl, filled her with pride and vanity. A great change had come to them both, since those days, and Agnes, as she watched him and smothered the cry of pain which rose to her lips at sight of him, felt that for the fearful change in him she was answerable. Intellectual, talented, admired, and sought by all he had been once; he was a mere wreck now, and Agnes’s breath came in short, quick gasps as, glancing furtively round to see that no one was near, she laid her hand upon his forehead, and parting his thin hair, said, pityingly “Poor Joseph.”
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, with eyes and hair like hers?”
“I’m the ‘madam,’ from Aikenside,” Agnes said, quite loud, as Flora passed the door. Then when she was gone she added, softly, “I’m Sarah. Don’t you know me? Sarah Agnes Morris.”
The truth 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 without 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: