“Oh Frederic—” and forgetful of everything, Marian sprang to her feet. “Oh, Frederic, is it true? Did you cry for me?”
At the sound of his own name the sick man looked bewildered, while reason seemed struggling again to assert its rights, and penetrate the misty fog by which it was enveloped. Very earnestly he looked at the young girl, who returned his gaze with one in which was concentrated all the yearning love and tenderness, she had cherished for him so long.
“Are you Marian?” he asked, and in an instant the excited girl wound her arms around his neck, and laying her cheek against his own, replied:
“Yes, Frederic yes. Don’t you know me, your poor lost Marian?”
Very caressingly he passed his hand over her short silken curls—pushed them back from her forehead—examined them more closely, and then whispered mournfully,
“No, you are not Marian. This is not her hair. But I like you,” he continued, as he felt her tears drop on his face; “and I wish you to stay with me, and when the pain comes back charm it away with your soft hands. They are little hands,” and he took them between his own, “but not so small as Marian’s were when I held one in my hand and promised I would love her. It seemed like some tiny rose leaf, and I could have crushed it easily, but I did not; I only crushed her heart, and she fled from me forever, for ’twas a lie I told her,” and his voice sunk to a lower tone. “I didn’t love her then—I don’t know as I love her now, for Isabel is so beautiful. Did you ever see Isabel, girl?”
“Oh, Frederic,” groaned Marian, and wresting her hands from his grasp, she tottered to a chair, while he looked after her wistfully.
“Will she go away?” he said to Mrs. Burt. “Will she leave me alone, when she knows Alice is not here nor Isabel? I wish Isabel would come, don’t you?”
There was another moan of anguish, and, rolling his bright eyes in the direction of the arm-chair, the poor man whispered:
“Hark! that’s the sound I heard the night Marian went away! I thought then ’twas the wind, but I knew afterwards that it was she, when her soul parted with her body, and it’s followed me ever since. There is not a spot at Redstone Hall that is not haunted with that cry. I’ve heard it at midnight, at noonday—in the storm and in the rushing river—where we thought she was buried. All but Alice—she knew she wasn’t, and she sent me here to look. She don’t like Isabel, and is afraid I’ll marry her. Maybe I shall, sometime! Who knows?”