“Sure ’nough,” returned Dinah. “Whar can she be, when she was so fierce to have you come? Reckon she’s up in the best charmber she’s been fixin’ up for somethin’, she wouldn’t tell what.”
“I’ll go and see,” said Frederic, starting in quest of the little girl, who, as Dinah had conjectured, was in the front chamber—the one prepared with so much care for Marian.
She had been sitting by the window when she heard the sound of wheels coming up the avenue.—Then the joyful cry of “Marster’s comin’,” came to her quick ear, and, starting up, she bent her head to listen for another voice—a voice she had not heard for many a weary month. But she listened in vain, for Marian was not there. Gradually she became convinced of the fact, and, laying her face on the window sill, she was weeping bitterly when Frederic came in. Pausing for a moment in the door, he glanced around first at the well-remembered chair, then at the books upon the table, then at the flowers, and then he knew why all this had been done.
“I would that it might have been so,” he thought, and going to the weeping Alice he lifted up her head and pushing her hair from her forehead, whispered to her softly, “Darling, was it for Marian you gathered all these flowers?”
“Yes, Frederic, for Marian,” and Alice sobbed aloud.
Taking her in his lap, Frederic replied, “Did you think I would bring her home?”
“Yes, I thought you had found her, and I was so glad. What made you write me that?”
“Alice I did find her,” returned Frederic; “I have seen her, I have talked with her. Marian is alive.”
At these words, so decidedly spoken, the blind eyes flashed up into Frederic’s face eagerly, wistfully, as if they fain would burst their vail of darkness and see if he told her truly.
“Is it true? Oh, Frederic, you are not deceiving me? I can’t bear any more disappointment,” and Alice’s face and lips were as white as ashes, as she proceeded further to question Frederic, who told her of the blue-eyed girl who, just as he was treading the brink of the river of death, had come to him and called him back to life by her kind acts and words of love.