On this I opened the door. She was clothed in a dressing-gown, and recoiled a step on my opening the door, and, after peering for a few moments, she exclaimed, ‘I did not recognise your voice.’
‘I have had a wonderful dream,’ I said.
She took me by the hand, turned me to the light, looked in my face, and shrieked, ‘Child, you have your memory!’
‘Yes, it has all come back to me!’ I exclaimed, and casting my arms round her neck I bent my head upon her shoulder and broke into an uncontrollable fit of weeping that lasted I know not how long, for as often as I sought to lift my head I wept afresh.
At length I grew somewhat composed, and then Mrs. Lee exclaimed: ‘It is five o’clock. I will dress myself, and return and hear what you have to tell me. Meanwhile, do you dress yourself. Day will be breaking shortly. Strange!’ she said. ‘I seemed to hear in your footsteps what was passing in your mind, and felt that something wonderful was happening to you.’
She left me, and I made haste to dress myself. My trembling hands worked mechanically; my mind was distracted; so extreme was the agitation of my spirits, that anyone secretly viewing me must have supposed me mad to see how I would start and then pause, then laugh, then fling down whatever I might be holding that I might bury my face in my hands and rock myself, then laugh again and take a number of turns about the room with delirious steps, as though I were some fever-maddened patient who had sprung from her bed in the absence of her attendant.
Before I had completely attired myself Mrs. Lee entered the room. I could see by her countenance she had composed her mind that she might receive with as little emotion as possible whatever I had to tell her. She lighted another candle, viewed me for a moment, and then said, ‘Now, Agnes, be calm. Sit down and tell me of your dream, and what you can recollect of yourself.’
‘Let me hold your hand, dear friend,’ said I, ‘whilst I sit and tell you what has happened to me. The pressure of your hand will keep me calm,’ and, sitting at her side and holding her hand, I related my dream to her.
She endeavoured to listen tranquilly, but an expression of awe grew in her face as I proceeded, and when I described how I beheld her sainted daughter Alice robed in white, with my baby girl on one arm and holding my little boy by the hand, the three clothed in a mystical light, an expression of rapturous joy entered her face. She dropped my hand to raise hers on high, and lifting up her eyes, cried out, ‘Oh, my Alice! my Alice! Though I know now that you are in heaven, yet also do I feel, my blessed one, that you are near us. Oh, come to me with my beloved Edith, that I may behold you both, and know that you are happy and awaiting me!——’
We sat eagerly and earnestly talking; for now all the mysteries of my past could be solved. Why it was that I was without a wedding-ring, how it came about that I was drifting in the wide ocean in a little open boat, why it was that I had been moved by indescribable, dark, subtle emotions when I heard a baby cry, and when the gipsy told me that I was a married woman, and with preternatural effort of guessing informed me that I had left a husband and two children behind me: these things and how much more were now to be explained.