“She will know me,” replied Agnes; “I am certain she will know me;”—and the delightful girl spoke with an energy that was baaed upon the confidence of that love which subsisted between them. Maria and her brother both burst into tears; but Agnes’s affection rose above the mood of ordinary grief. The confidence that her beloved sister’s tenderness for her would enable her to touch a chord in a heart so utterly her own as Jane’s was, assumed upon this occasion the character of a wild but mournful enthusiasm, that was much more expressive of her attachment than could be the loudest and most vehement sorrow.
“If she could but shed tears,” said her mother, wringing her hands.
“She will,” returned Agnes, “she will. Jane,” she exclaimed, “Jane, don’t you know your own Agnes?—your own Agnes, Jane?”
The family waited in silence for half a minute, but their beloved one smiled on, and gave not the slightest token of recognizing either Agnes’s person or her voice. Sometimes her lips moved, and she appeared to be repeating certain words to herself, but in a voice so low and indistinct that no one could catch them.
Agnes’s enthusiasm abandoned her on seeing that that voice to which her own dearest sister ever sweetly and lovingly responded, fell upon her ear as an idle and unmeaning sound. Her face became deadly pale, and her lip quivered, as she again addressed the unconscious girl. Once more she took her hand in hers, and placing herself before her, put her fingers to her cheek in order to arrest her attention.
“Jane, look upon me; look upon me;—that’s a sweet child,—look upon me. Sure I am Agnes—your own Agnes, who will break her heart if my sweet sister doesn’t speak to her.”
The stricken one raised her head, and looked into her face; but it was, alas! too apparent that she saw her not; for the eye, though smiling, was still vacant. Again her lips moved, and she spoke so as to be understood towards the door through which she had entered.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, in the same low, placid voice, “yes, he is beautiful! Is he not beautiful? Fatal beauty!—fatal beauty! It is a fatal thing—it is a fatal thing!—but he is very, very beautiful!”
“Jane,” said Maria, taking her hand from Agnes’s, “Jane, speak to Maria, dear. Am not I, too, your own Maria? that loves you not less than—my darling, darling child—they do not live that love you better than your own Maria;—in pity, darling, in pity speak to me!”
The only reply was a smile, that rose into the murmuring music of a low laugh; but this soon ceased, her countenance became troubled, and her finely-pencilled brows knit, as if with an inward sense of physical pain. William, her father, her mother, each successively addressed her, but to no purpose. Though a slight change had taken place, they could not succeed in awakening her reason to a perception of the circumstances in which she was placed. They only saw that the unity of her thought, or of the image whose beauty veiled the faculties of her mind was broken, and that some other memory, painful in its nature, had come in to disturb the serenity of her unreal happiness; but this, which ought to have given them hope, only alarmed them the more. The father, while these tender and affecting experiments were tried, sat beside her, his eyes laboring under a weight of deep and indescribable calamity, and turning from her face to the faces of those who attempted to recall her reason, with a mute vehemence of sorrow which called up from the depths of their sister’s misery a feeling of compassion for the old man whom she had so devotedly loved.