Martha-Mary gently shook her head, and the tranquil look she fixed upon her uncle, protested against his supposition.
"Is it possible that five years have thus changed my Christine! My heart recognises you, my child, not my eyes! They have compelled you to great austerities, severe privations?"
"No."
"A cruel bondage has weighed heavily upon you?
"No."
"You have been ill then?"
"No."
"Your poor heart has suffered too much, and has broken. You have shed many tears?"
"I remember them no longer."
"Christine, Christine, do you live? or has the shade of Annunciata risen from the grave? Oh my child! in seeing, you, I seem to see her corpse, extended on the bed of death!"