Victoria turned in despair toward the bed. “Perhaps I can get a lucid answer from this person,” she thought.
The mulatto approached the bed with a candle. As its rays fell upon the upturned face of the sleeper, Victoria started back with a cry of horror, snatched the candle from the man and placed it close to the sleeper’s face.
“Roger!” she gasped. “Oh, my God! What do I see? Roger’s living face, yet surrounded by snow-white hair? Am I going mad?” She reeled, and the mulatto caught the candle as it fell from her hand. Although everything seemed turning to darkness around her, Victoria did not faint. She felt a tightening grip at her heart, as if some one was slowly squeezing it between their hands. Her eyes could not leave the face of that old man lying upon the pillow. “Who was he?” Not Roger, of course. How silly of her to imagine so for even one moment. Had she not seen Roger’s body placed in the ground with her own eyes? Had she not insisted upon gazing at the horribly disfigured body of her beloved, although the sight had been one which she should never forget? Ah, no, this was not Roger. “Whoever he might be he was not her first beloved.”
As she reasoned she felt calmer. “This was Roger’s father without a doubt. That was why the resemblance was so startling.” Then she remembered that Roger’s father had been of swarthier skin, like Andrew, with a dark, forbidding face, handsome, yet repelling. Mary had often told Victoria how like to his father Andrew was, and their pictures hanging side by side in the gallery demonstrated the fact. Again the cold perspiration gathered upon her body. She must discover this mystery or she should go mad. She turned to the mulatto who was stolidly regarding her. “What is this man’s name? Can you tell me?”
He bowed his head.
“Is it—is it—” Victoria steadied herself by grasping his arm—“Roger?”
The man smiled and nodded. Victoria thought she must have died and then returned to life, such a rush of emotion swept over her, such a flood of darkness, and then the light again. Ah, if she could only die, but she must ask one more question. Only one more. The answer to that would either confirm or deny her suspicions. With an imploring look on her white drawn face, as if she were begging him to say “No,” she asked: “Is he blind?”
Again the man bowed his head, and with a cry which disturbed the sleeper, she threw herself upon the bed, and clasped him in her arms. This was her Roger alive, she knew not how, or by what means he had been restored to life, but it was surely he, the husband of her youth, the man whom she had loved so tenderly, and whose loss she still deeply mourned. Forgetting the wondering child by her side who was now beginning to cry; forgetting the wretched man below who had called her wife for so many years; forgetting everything but the sightless lover of her youth, she laid her cheek against that of the white-haired man, and called him by all the fond endearing names which once had made sweet music for his ears.
“Roger, my best beloved, my own husband, it is your Victoria who speaks to you; your sweet wife. Awaken, and unravel all this mystery. Do you not hear? Speak to me, call me your darling. Say anything, anything.”
Her voice ended in a sob. She kissed his eyelids, his white hair, while the blessed tears fell unrestrainedly from her eyes. How good it seemed to be able to weep. He had evidently awakened, for his eyelids were now open, and a puzzled expression was on his face.