‘And your name is Agnes—your true name is Agnes?—and my darling in heaven gave you that name!’ cried Mrs. Lee.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and she was one of twins, and I am one of twins, and who will say that there was not a magnetism in that to draw us together?’
I turned my head and found the dawn had broken. The heavens were flooded with a delicate pale green, against which the trees stood black, as though sketched in ink. But even as I gazed the pink and silver haze of the rising sun smote the green and swept it like a veil off the face of the tender dewy blue of the early autumn morn.
‘Oh, thank God, the day has come!’ said I. ‘I will go presently, before breakfast, to the railway station, and find out at what hour I can reach Bath.’
‘To-day?’ cried Mrs. Lee.
‘To-day,’ I echoed.
‘You will not go to Bath to-day with my consent, Agnes,’ said Mrs. Lee; ‘and I will tell you why. You have been absent from your home for three years. What may have happened in that time? How do you know that your husband and children are still living at Bath? It is a long journey from Newcastle to Bath, and when you arrive there you may find that your husband has broken up his home and gone away, no one might be able to tell you where, for you must consider as beyond all question that your husband and sister have long ago supposed you dead. They may have left England for all you know. How can you tell but that they may be residing abroad? The newspaper paragraphs stating your case were very plentifully published: that you know; and that they provoked no attention, signifies to my mind that your husband and family are either abroad, or that——’ She paused.
‘What?’ I cried.
‘Ah, you may well ask what!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is three years ago, remember, since you left your husband, and he has never received a syllable of news about you since. Suppose him to be still living at Bath with your sister and children: would not your going to the house be too fearful a trial for you, and too frightful a shock for them?—why, it is by suddenness of joy, by shocks of emotion of this sort that hearts are broken. You must not dream of going to Bath to-day, Agnes.’
‘It is not likely that John has left Bath,’ said I, ‘he is in practice there as a solicitor. He will not have broken up his home; I am sure of that.’