He tarried a little too long. She opened her eyes, and finding a strange face so close to hers, exclaimed at the same moment as she threw out her hands and pushed him away:
“The impudence of you, you ill-bred scamp!”
“But, madam,” said the President, “it was his anxiety for your return to consciousness that caused the consul to be peering into your face.”
“Your explanation is satisfactory, President. But are you not mistaken about me having been unconscious?”
“In a certain sense, madam, you were,” replied the Governor.
“But, you remember, do you not, Mrs. Grange,—Aunty Inez?” asked the child.
Mrs. Grange sprang to her feet. “Have I been living a dream all of my past life, or am I now dreaming?”
“Neither, dear madam,” replied the great scientist, Guillermo Gonzales; “neither, madam. You are simply confused with the remembrances of two lives.”
In an abstracted manner she took the hands of Catalina Martinet in her own, and gazing intently into her face for a moment, said: “It is the same child. The other life is plain to me now. Am I to be punished? I did ill-treat her then; I did. But spare me, spare me!” She pleadingly called out to some invisible person. Turning her face away from the child, she looked straight into the laughing face of Marriet Motuble, who said:
“I thought it would come, Sister Grange. In fact, I knew it would come.”