She had anticipated this, and took from her pocket a plain gold ring,
kept until that day where no one could find it, and holding it up to
him, said: "Here it is. Do you remember it?"
"Yes, yes," and his lips began to quiver with a grieved, injured
expression. "He could give you diamonds, and I couldn't. That's why
you left me, wasn't it, Sarah--why you wrote that letter which made my
head into two? It's ached so ever since, and I've missed you so much,
Sarah! They put me in a cell where crazy people were--oh! so many--and
they said that I was mad, when I was only wanting you. I'm not mad
now, am I, darling?"
His arm was around her neck, and he drew her down until his lips
touched hers. And Agnes suffered it. She could not return the kiss,
but she did not turn away from his, and she let him caress her hair,
and wind it around his fingers, whispering: "This is like Sarah's, and
you are Sarah, are you not?"
"Yes, I am Sarah," she would answer, while the smile so painful to see
would again break over his face as he told how much he had missed her,
and asked if she had not come to stay till he died.
"There's something wrong," he said; "somebody dead, and seems as if
somebody else wanted to die--as if Maddy died ever since the Lord
Governor went away. Do you know Governor Guy?"
"I am his stepmother," Agnes replied, whereupon Uncle Joseph laughed
so long and loud that Maddy awoke, and, alarmed by the noise, came
down to see what was the matter.
Agnes did not hear her, and as she reached the doorway, she started at
the strange position of the parties--Uncle Joseph still smoothing the
curls which drooped over him, and Agnes saying to him: "You heard his
name was Remington, did you not--James Remington?"
Like a sudden revelation it came upon Maddy, and she turned to leave,
when Agnes, lifting her head, called her to come in. She did so, and
standing upon the opposite side of the bed, she said, questioningly:
"You are Sarah Morris?"
For a moment the eyelids quivered, then the neck arched proudly, as if
it were a thing of which she was not ashamed, and Agnes answered:
"Yes, I was Sarah Agnes Morris; once for three months your
grandmother's hired girl, and afterward adopted by a lady who gave me
what education I possess, together with that taste for high life which
prompted me to jilt your Uncle Joseph when a richer man than he
offered himself to me."