‘There is no good in speculating,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee; ‘did not you say, Miss C——, that you would not know your own name if you were to see it written down?’
‘I fear I should not know it,’ I answered.
‘We must call her Agnes, mother,’ said Miss Lee; ‘and, Agnes, you will call me Alice.’
‘It is an easy name, and sweet to pronounce,’ said I, smiling.
‘But if our friend’s name should not be Agnes, my love,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘Miss C—— is more sensible, and C is certainly the initial of her surname. But since it is your wish, my darling, and if you do not object,’ she added, addressing me with a manner that made me understand that she lived but for her daughter, and that her life was an impassioned indulgence of the beautiful fading flower, ‘I will call you Agnes.’
Her daughter’s face lighted up, but a violent fit of coughing obliged her to conceal it in her handkerchief the next instant. Her mother watched her with an expression of bitter pain, but she had smoothed it before Alice could lift her eyes and see her. There was a brief silence; the fit of coughing had taken away the girl’s breath, and she held her hand to her side, breathing short, with a glassier brightness in her eyes, and a tinge of hectic on her cheeks.
‘I am sure it comforts you to conceal your face,’ said Mrs. Lee, breaking the silence with an effort. ‘The concealment is certainly effectual. I can scarcely distinguish your eyes through the gossamer.’
‘The scar is an unsightly one,’ I exclaimed, and I raised the veil that they might see my forehead.
‘It is not so bad as I had feared,’ said Miss Lee, leaning forward and gazing with a face exquisitely touching and beautiful, with the pure, unaffected heart-sympathy in it. Mrs. Lee gazed in silence, with a look of consternation which she could not immediately hide.
‘It was a terrible wound,’ she murmured; ‘who can doubt that the blow which produced that dreadful wound bereft you of your memory?’