She dropped into her seat, as if conscience-stricken, gazed fixedly in his face, then stooped and pressed her lips on his inanimate brow; started again, looked about the room with a half guilty glance, bowed her head on his pillow, and wept bitterly.
——
CHAPTER III.
The Recognition.
They had been friends in youth.
Byron.
The evening had advanced far into night before the effects of the potion he had swallowed passed away, and left the mind of Jasper clear, and his pulse regular and steady. When he awoke from his long stupor, and turned his eyes around him, it seemed as if he had dreamed of what he saw before him; for the inanimate objects of the room, nay, the very faces which met his eye, had something in them that was not altogether unfamiliar, yet for his life he could not have recalled when, or if ever he had seen them before.
The old dark-wainscoted walls of the irregular, many-recessed apartment, adorned with a few watercolor drawings, and specimens of needle-work, the huge black and gold Indian cabinet in one corner, the tall clock-stand of some foreign wood in another, the slab above the yawning hearth covered with tropical shells and rare foreign curiosities, the quaint and grotesque chairs and tables, with strangely contorted legs and arms, and wild satyr-like faces grinning from their bosses, the very bed on which he lay, with its carved head-board, and groined canopy of oak, and dark green damask curtains, were all things which he felt he must have seen, though where and how he knew not.
So was the face of the slight fair-haired girl who sat a little way removed from his bed’s head, by a small round work-table, on which stood a waxen taper, bending over some one of those light tasks of embroidery or knitting which women love, and are wont to dignify by the name of work.
On her he fixed his eyes long and wistfully, gazing at her, as he would have done at a fair picture, without any desire to address her, or to do aught that should induce her to move from the graceful attitude in which she sat, giving no sign of life save in the twinkling of her long, downcast eyelashes, in the calm rise and fall of her gentle bosom, and the quick motion of her busy fingers.