So the weary months went on, and when Kathleen, after her first wild ravings against her fate, had given up at last to a sort of sullen despair, something happened in her favor.
The matron, startled and alarmed by the appearance of the young girl, felt her heart stirred to pity, and wrote to her friends:
"Miss Lynn is no longer a raving maniac, as at first. She has become silent and melancholy, and looks so worn and ill that I fear she is slowly dying of a broken heart. I think you ought to take her home again, and see what home associations will do toward prolonging her life. She will never be troublesome or violent again; the physician assures me of that. Indeed, the state she has fallen into is one that often precedes speedy death, and the poor child ought to have home comforts and petting, now that she is so very near the end."
The matron, who had always pitied and admired the beautiful, unhappy young girl, watched over her tenderly while she waited for the answer to come to this merciful letter. She was startled at the delicacy of the young girl's form, that had been so graceful and rounded when she first came, and the pallor of her face and hands. The great Oriental dark eyes had become wild and startled, like those of a haunted fawn, and her voice when she spoke was low and tremulous, and had the sound of tears in its music.
When the matron gazed at this sweet and lovely young girl she marveled that any man's heart could have been cold and harsh enough to turn against such charms and leave that young heart to die of despair, or madden with its cruel wrongs.
"She is beautiful and refined enough for a king's bride," the matron said, with an angry thought of the monster in man's likeness who had brought the young girl to this pass.
She waited eagerly for a letter to come from Miss Watts, the girl's aunt, hoping and praying that she would take her away, and not leave her to die at the asylum.
Tears came into her kind old eyes as she thought of herself robing this beautiful form for the grave, and folding those waxen white hands on the weary breast for the last long sleep.
She did not tell Kathleen she had written to her aunt to take her away, because she feared the effect of a disappointment. She waited silently, and at last the letter came. Miss Watts was an old woman—a soured old maid, who had not much patience with love and lovers, and who had been much disgusted with her niece for losing her senses over a man's perfidy. She was blind, and her pretty niece had been eyes and hands to her before her trouble. Now she had to depend on servants entirely, and she was crosser than ever. She grumbled very much at the idea of her niece's return.
"A nice place this will be—me blind and Daisy insane," she grumbled; but the thought of the young girl's fading so fast in the asylum touched her, and she had her maid to write that the girl might come home if they were quite, quite sure she was harmless and would not make any trouble.