“It is a lonely place. I, too, shall be glad to rejoin my friends. I expect someone will come to me to-morrow, and the physician thinks that by the end of another week, I may also be able to get away. Oh, must you go?” the invalid concluded, regretfully, as Virgie arose to leave.
“Yes, my carriage will come for us in half an hour,” she replied, glancing at her watch. “I am glad to leave you so comfortable, and I trust nothing will occur to retard your full recovery—that your visit to this country may not be spoiled by this accident.”
Lady Linton looked up astonished, as these cold, measured words fell upon her ears.
Virgie had not meant to speak so frigidly, but her ladyship’s reference to her “friends” made her surmise instantly that she was speaking of her brother and his family, whom she believed she had seen at Niagara, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could control herself at all.
“Surely you are not going to leave me thus?” said the sick woman, reproachfully, “without even allowing me to clasp your hand; you, who have done so much for me, who have twice saved my life. Come here and let me kiss you good-by—let me tell you that I shall never cease to think of you with gratitude and love. Why, you have never yet told me your name! You must not go without telling me who you are, so that I can inform my brother and friends who was my deliverer from a dreadful death—who was my kind nurse during my critical illness.”
Virgie was as pale as a marble statue now; she could bear no more, and she resolved that she would tell her the truth. She should tell her brother, any anyone else she chose, who had saved her, if she wished to do so.
“Run away, Virgie, and help Mina to get ready,” she said to her daughter, “and I will come presently;” then, as the child obeyed, she turned back, and stood tall and straight before the woman who had wronged her.
“Lady Linton,” she began, in low, intense tones that smote her like a whip, and made her shiver with dread at what might follow, “it is true, I suppose, that I saved your life at the time of the disaster: it is true, also, that I have tried to make you comfortable during your illness; but I have not done it to win your gratitude or to oppress you with any sense of obligation. I did it, first, from a sense of duty, as I would have performed the same service for any stranger in trouble; and, second, because I would not allow myself to turn coldly from you in the hour of danger and distress, because of a feeling of enmity toward you——”
“Enmity?” interrupted her listener, with pale lips, and putting out her hand as if to ward off a blow.
“Yes, enmity, for my heart was full of it when you told me who you were. If I had listened to the evil that surged through my brain on that dreadful night, if I had yielded to a spirit of revenge for past injuries, I should have turned my back upon you when you called upon me to save you, telling myself that you deserved no better fate. But I believe I am a Christian, a disciple of One who commanded us to ‘love our enemies, to do good to those who despitefully use us,’ and I wished to conquer that enmity, to subdue myself, to return good for evil; and that is why I tried to save you then, and afterward served you as tenderly as I would have served my own mother.”