It was not possible for Mrs. Seymour to keep perfectly quiet with regard to the cause of Magdalen’s sudden journey to Cincinnati, especially as Alice herself talked and wondered so much about it. Little by little it came out, until Alice had heard the entire story, which made her for a time almost as crazy as Laura herself. A few lines from Guy written hurriedly in the cars, on his way to Schodick, told her at last that what she hoped was true, and then in the solitude of her room she knelt, and amid tears of joy and choking sobs paid her vows of praise and thanksgiving, and asked that she might be made worthy of the priceless gift so suddenly bestowed upon her. The next day a telegram from her father apprised her that he would be home that night “with Magdalen, your sister;” and Alice kissed the words “your sister,” and repeating them softly to herself went dancing about the house, now explaining to the astonished servants, and again trying to convey some definite idea to the darkened mind of her mother. But Laura’s only answer was, “Baby is in the cradle. I see her if you do not.”
She was, however, pleased that Magdalen was coming home, and asked to be made “tidy and nice, so that Magda would be glad.”
Once, as Alice was buttoning the clean wrapper and arranging the crimson shawl, which gave a soft tint to the sallow, faded face, the poor creature’s lip quivered a little as she said, “Am I really nice, and will Arthur kiss me, think you? I wish he would. It might make me better. Your talk of Cincinnati has brought queer things back to me, and sometimes I can almost get hold of how it was, then it goes again. I wish Arthur would kiss me.”
“I hope he will. I think he will,” Alice said, her own kisses falling in showers upon the wasted face of the invalid, who seemed more rational than she had for many weeks.
As the day wore on and the hour approached for the travellers to arrive, Alice grew very restless and impatient, and would not for an instant leave the window where she watched anxiously for the carriage.
“They are coming; they are here,” she cried at last, and running into the hall she was the first to welcome Magdalen, whose face was drenched with tears, and whose heart throbbed with an entirely new sensation of happiness as she felt Alice’s kisses upon her lips and the tight clasp of her arms about her neck.
Aunt Penelope came next, and though her greeting was more in accordance with perfect propriety, there was much genuine affection and kindness in it, and Magdalen knew that she believed in her and accepted her as a niece. Mr. Grey was nowhere to be seen. He had stood an instant and looked on when Alice and Magdalen first met, then he vanished from sight, and Alice found him half an hour later in her mother’s room, whither he had gone at once. Perhaps the recovery of his daughter had brought back something of his olden love for Laura, or there were really better impulses at work within, for his first thought was for his wife, and when, as he came in, she asked if “She did not look nice,” he stooped and kissed her as he had not done in years; and the poor creature, who had known so much suffering, clung to him, and laying her aching head upon his bosom, sobbed and wept like a child, saying to herself, “he did, he did—kiss me,—he did—”
“Laura,” Mr. Grey said, softly, when she had grown a little calm, “try to understand me, won’t you? The lost baby is found. It is Magdalen, too, whom a kind man took care of. We have seen Mrs. Storms in Cynthiana; you remember her?”
Laura remembered Mrs. Storms, and for a few moments the fixed expression of her eyes and the drawn look about her forehead and mouth showed that reason was making a tremendous effort to grasp and retain what she heard. But it had been dethroned too long to penetrate the darkness now, and when she spoke, it was to assert that “baby was in the cradle over there; Magdalen was too big to be her baby.” Hopeless and disheartened, Mr. Grey desisted in his attempts to make her understand, but stayed by her till Alice came to say that dinner waited.
It was thought best that Magdalen should not see Laura until the next morning, when it was hoped that she might convey some definite idea to her mind. They were to meet alone, and after breakfast Magdalen repaired to the sick-room, and entering unannounced, was received by her mother with outstretched arms and a cry of joy.