In the evening of the day that they were married, Rose Wilding came home with them.
Augusta had managed to dress her into the outward semblance of her old self. And in everything but the subject of Augusta she seemed reasonable. That subject they did not press upon her. And when she wondered why her little daughter had not come to bring her, they merely said that Augusta would be waiting for her at home.
Augusta had made absolutely no changes in the house, trusting that the presence in its own place of every remembered thing would awaken in her mother the sense of security and home. And for a little time, as she watched her mother walking slowly about her own room, touching a curtain here, a pillow there, as had been always her busy way, the girl felt sure that it was going to have just that effect.
But she observed that her mother soon became restless. She kept glancing over her shoulder and sidewise at Augusta who sat in her own little low chair which from childhood had been her favorite seat, just below the big red post of her mother's bed. She was remembering now how it used to be the greatest glory of her day to sit and watch with adoring eyes the combing out of her mother great waves of wonderful dark brown hair. It was snow white now, but still abundant and strangely beautiful.
"Mamma," she said suddenly, "let me take your hair down and run it through my fingers. Remember, you used to say it always took away a headache."
Rose Wilding looked suspiciously over her shoulder. What was running in the poor disordered mind it is hard to say. But when she turned she spoke kindly and quietly.
"Don't you think it's time you were going back, child? Wont they be missing you—there?"
Poor Augusta's heart turned sick with failure. She threw herself down kneeling at her mother's feet, begging and crying:
"Mamma, mamma darling can't you remember! Try to remember. I'm your Augusta! Your little daughter! Augusta! Augusta!" she cried hysterically, trying in pitiful futility to pierce the cloud of her mother's mind by sheer loudness.
But Rose Wilding only smiled with a gentle patience, and lifted her up, petting her.