I then told her everything that had happened to me; but when I opened the travelling-bag, which I had kept at my side, and took from it the two little locks of hair and showed them to her, I broke down, and could not speak again for a long time for weeping.
‘Well,’ said she, when my sobs had ceased, ‘your adventure has certainly been an extraordinary one. To think of neither your husband nor your sister knowing you! Surely that can only be accounted for by their conviction that you are dead? Your white hair, and the structural change of the shape of your nose, and the change in the shape of your right brow, coupled with other changes which they might be able to point out, have, of course, created a new face for you—a face such as friends, people whom you may have known for a few years but met at intervals only, would not recognise; but that the alteration should be so complete that your own sister and husband——no, it is because they believe you dead.’
‘The light was dim when my husband saw me,’ said I.
‘Ay, but your sister? She saw you when you were brought in from the street in daylight. No; I am sure that nothing could have saved you from recognition but their belief that you are dead—a belief that is now a habit of mind with them, not to be disturbed by the apparition of a white-haired woman, who, to be sure, looks some years older than the mere passage of three years only could have made her.’
She then asked me what I meant to do, and I replied that the sight of my sister had hardened my resolution to leave her in undisturbed possession of her home and her peace of mind.
‘But your children, dear?’
‘I am in God’s hands,’ I cried. ‘I have left it to Him to bring them to me in His own good time.’
She looked at me, shook her head, and fell into a fit of musing.
I was so exhausted, however, that I was unable to maintain a conversation even on this subject of my children—a subject which so wholly occupied my heart that I could think of nothing else. I went to bed, and scarcely was my head upon the pillow when I fell asleep, and slept without moving the whole night through, without the disturbance of the least dream that I can remember. In fact, nature could support the burthen I had imposed upon her no longer; I had, in truth, scarcely closed my eyes for above a few hours from the time of the restoration of my memory, and this night I lay as one that had died. Next morning, when I awoke, I found my limbs so stiff that I was unable to rise, and I kept my bed all that day. Mrs. Lee came and sat by my side, and we talked long and gravely upon the subject of my future—what was best to be done; whether I had a right to divorce myself from my husband and remain as dead to him out of a sentimental tenderness for my sister, whose claims were not those of a mother’s, as mine were; whose claims were not those even of a wife’s, as mine were—because it would be all the same whether I was living or dead: she could not be my husband’s wife; the law did not suffer a man to marry the sister of his dead wife. In this way Mrs. Lee reasoned; and, after asking me some questions about my sister—as to her habits, tastes, appearance, and so forth—she said:
‘Why will you not let me write to her, gently break the news of your being alive, ask her to come and see us here, and bring your children with her; then the three of us can talk the matter over? Her sensations on hearing the news of your being alive will soon pass; you will find that she will agree in my views and consent to come and live with me, taking your place, often seeing you and the children—for, of course, dear Agnes, you will be a regular visitor. I can imagine no other way of your regaining possession of your children. Whilst you have been away I have thought and thought, and I cannot imagine what Mr. ——’ (naming the clergyman), ‘will be able to suggest beyond what we ourselves are quite capable of conceiving—namely, that, in order to obtain your children, you must make your existence known to your husband and sister. Since, therefore, that is certain, the rest is inevitable. I mean that your sister, on hearing that you are alive, must at once quit your husband.’