So Mrs. Hoover, the kind-hearted matron, came herself to bring Kathleen home to her aunt, for she wanted to explain to the old lady the young girl's strange fancy that she was not Daisy Lynn at all, but Kathleen Carew, a beautiful young Boston heiress, who had been mysteriously murdered in the vicinity of the asylum, and of whom the poor lunatic had chanced to hear in her wanderings.
So Kathleen came into her new home an utter stranger, but was received as belonging to it. The servants were new, and the old lady was blind. She could not see the face of her niece, and she attributed the strange tone of her voice to her illness. She passed her long, delicate fingers carefully over Kathleen's face, and exclaimed in surprise at its delicacy of outline.
Kathleen overwhelmed Mrs. Hoover with kisses and thanks, and called her her benefactress for securing her release from the asylum.
"I should have died or gone mad in reality if I had been kept there much longer; but now I shall go away from here and find my friends," she said, hopefully.
Mrs. Hoover looked very much alarmed at this declaration.
"My dear, if I had thought you would run away, I would not have brought you here," she exclaimed, uneasily.
"But, dear madame, I have no claim on this old lady here, and I must think of my poor father, who has returned from Europe ere this, I know, and is mourning me as dead," obstinately answered the pale young girl, whose heart throbbed wildly at the thought of returning to her home and friends.
The good old matron seized the wasted little white hand of the girl, and patted it tenderly in hers, as she said, remonstratingly:
"Now, listen to me, Daisy, dear: If you run away from home your aunt will have you followed and brought back to the asylum, and you know you would not like that, would you?"
"I would rather die," sobbed the poor girl, trembling like an aspen leaf.