The road in which the chestnut avenue stood is but little frequented. Carts and private carriages drive along it, but few people use it merely for walking. It is traversed by those who live at Batheaston and Bathford and beyond, and such persons when they pass, whether coming into or going from Bath, are long in returning. There are also very few houses; the few there are for the most part stand back. All these points I had reckoned upon, knowing the neighbourhood thoroughly; and I state them that you may understand how it was that so conspicuous a figure as I made in my black dress and thick black veil should have haunted that road of the chestnut avenue for nearly a whole day without apparently receiving any further attention than now and again a stare from a passer-by.
I had eaten nothing since my breakfast, and that meal had been slender enough; but I felt no hunger; though I had sat but little I was not conscious of any feeling of exhaustion. The craving for a sight of my children dominated all physical sensations.
It was drawing on to the hour of four; I was slowly making my way up the hill in the direction of my house, and I was within a hundred yards of it when a little boy ran through the gateway on to the path, and was immediately followed by a lady.
The little boy was my child. I should instantly have known him had I beheld him amongst a thousand children. His face was the same sweet face that I had left behind me three long years before; grown, indeed, but the eyes, the expression, were the same, the beautiful golden hair but a little darker in hue. He was tall for his years, and looked a noble, manly little fellow. He was dressed in the costume of a sailor, and when he ran from out the gateway he sprang with graceful agility across the side-walk into the road, pointing to a hedge that was opposite, and looking back as he cried: ‘Mother, mother, I saw a wabbit jump out of that ditch.’
The lady was my sister. She was dressed in black, but was without a veil; her hat of black velvet with a black feather suited her beauty. She looked younger, sweeter than I remembered her; her complexion was of an exquisite delicacy faintly touched with bloom, and her golden-brown hair sparkled in the sunlight under the black velvet of her hat.
My boy came running towards me, leaving my sister at some distance; then when he was close he stopped, child-like, to stare up at the strange veiled figure. I looked down into his upward-gazing face: I could have cried aloud out of the passion of the impulse that possessed me to lift him, to clasp him to my heart, to devour him with kisses. Then, all on a sudden, his own little figure, and the figure of my sister who was now nearing us, swept round, and I fell, with a roaring in my ears that was followed by blackness and insensibility.
* * * * *
I opened my eyes and slowly turned them about. It was strange that the first idea which came to my awakening senses was that I was on board the French vessel, that in a few moments Alphonse would appear, that he would hold a mirror to me into which I would look and behold a face which I had never before seen. I closed my eyes and heard myself sighing deeply; then opening my eyes again I slightly raised my head and surveyed the place in which I was lying.
It was a room, and as my eyes roamed over the various objects which formed the furniture of that room, I found everything I beheld familiar to my recollection, and still I could not tell myself where I was. I rested upon a sofa; there was a lamp with a deep green shade upon it in the centre of the dining-table: a small fire was burning in the grate, and I perceived the figure of a woman seated in an arm-chair beside the fire. She turned her head and directed her eyes at me; then, observing that I had returned to consciousness, she arose and came across to the sofa.
When she was close to me I saw that she was the nurse whom we had taken with us to Piertown, and by this time having my senses fully, and every sense being rendered keen by dread of detection, I raised my hand to my head, meaning to pull down my veil, but found that my hat and veil, as well as my jacket, had been removed. The nurse’s name, as I have said, was Barclay; she looked at me earnestly, but without the least expression of recognition in her face, and said: