"Mean! Oh, man! man! Georgia Darrell was my sister!"
CHAPTER XXI.
CHARLEY'S CRIME.
"By the strong spirit's discipline,
By the fierce wrong forgiven,
By all that wrings the heart of sin,
Is woman won to heaven."
ith every nerve strained, every feeling wrought to the highest pitch of excitement, Georgia had listened; but at this last moment the overstrung tension gave way, and, for the first time in her life, she fainted.
On the wet grass where she had fallen she still lay when life and memory came back. She raised herself on her elbow and looked wildly around, passed her hand across her forehead, and tried to think. Gradually recollection returned; one by one the broken chains of memory were reunited, and all she had heard came back, flooding her soul with ecstatic joy. Beloved still, no longer a cast-off wife, and her long-lost brother Warren restored!
She remembered him now; she wondered she had not done so at first, for every tone of his voice was familiar. It was the name that had deceived her, and yet he had his mother's name, too—Warren Randall Darrell. She rose up, to find herself stiff and cold, lying on the wet ground, and her dress soaked with the heavy dew. The garden was deserted, the house all dark, and with an overpowering sense of loneliness she found herself locked out.