The writing was tremulous and uncertain, but it brought hope to the heart of the brother, who had
never really believed it possible for his sister to be blind. Very
restless he seemed on the day when she was expected; and when, just
as the sun was setting, the carriage drove to the gate, a faint
sickness crept over him, and wheeling his chair to the window of her
room he looked anxiously at her, as with John's assistance, she
alighted from the carriage.
"If she walks alone I shall know she is not very blind," he said,
and with clasped hands he watched her intently as she came slowly
toward the house with Nellie a little in advance.
Nearer and nearer she came--closer and closer the burning forehead
was pressed against the window pane, and hope beat high in Louis'
heart, when suddenly she turned aside--her foot rested on the
withered violets which grew outside the walk, and her hand groped in
the empty air.
"She's blind--she's blind," said Louis, and with a moaning cry he
laid his head upon the broad arm of his chair, sobbing most
bitterly.
Meantime below there was a strange interview between the new mother
and her children, Maude Glendower clasping her namesake in her arms
and weeping over her as she had never wept before but once, and that
when the moonlight shone upon her sitting by a distant grave.
Pushing back the clustering curls, she kissed the open brow and
looked into the soft black eyes with a burning gaze which penetrated
the shadowy darkness and brought a flush to the cheek of the young
girl.
"Maude Remington! Maude Remington!" she said, dwelling long upon the
latter name, "the sight of you affects me painfully; you are so like
one I have lost. I shall love you, Maude Remington, for the sake of
the dead, and you, too, must love me, and call me mother--will you?"
and her lips again touched those of the astonished maiden.
Though fading fast, the light was not yet quenched in Maude's eyes,
and very wistfully she scanned the face of the speaker, while her
hands moved caressingly over each feature, as she said, "I will love
you, beautiful lady, though you can never be to me what my gentle
mother was."
At the sound of that voice Maude Glendower started suddenly, and
turning aside, so her words could not be heard, she murmured sadly,
"Both father and child prefer her to me." Then, recollecting
herself, she offered her hand to the wondering Nellie, saying, "Your
Sister's misfortune must be my excuse for devoting so much time to
her, when you, as my eldest daughter, were entitled to my first
attention."