blue veil. A bewildered half-recognition came to Mrs. Vincent’s mind as this blue veil waved in her face in the wind from the open door; but excitement and anxiety had deprived her of speech: she could ask no questions. “Here is the physician,” said Dr. Rider, with a kindred excitement in his voice. He went into the room before her, leading the girl, behind whom there followed slowly a confused and disturbed woman, whose face Mrs. Vincent felt she had seen before. The mother, half jealous in her wonder, pressed in after the doctor to guard her Susan even from experiments of healing. “Doctor, doctor, who is it?” she said. But Dr. Rider held up his hand imperatively to silence her. The room was imperfectly lighted with candles burning dimly, and a faint glow of firelight. “Susan!” cried the eager child’s voice, with a weary echo of longing and disappointment. “Susan!—take me to Susan; she is not here.” Then Dr. Rider led her round to the bedside, closely followed by the widow, and, lifting a candle, threw its light fully upon the stranger. “Is it Susan?” said the girl. “Will she not speak to me?—is she dead? Susan, oh Susan, Susan!” It was an outcry of childish impatience and despair, rising louder than any voice had risen in that room for many a day. Then she burst forth into tears and sobs. “Susan!—she will not speak to me, she will not look at me!” cried the stranger, drawing her arm out of the doctor’s hold, and clasping her hands together. There was a slight movement in the bed; not the restless tossing with which her nurse was familiar, but a trembling shiver came over that dying frame. The sound had reached to the dull ears of the patient. She lifted her heavy eyelids, and looked round with half-awakened eyes. “Call her again, again!” said the doctor, in an intense whisper, which seemed to thrill through the room. The girl, who was engaged with a much more engrossing interest of her own, took no notice of the doctor. She knew nothing about Susan’s danger—she was bent on gaining succour for herself. “Susan! tell her to look at me—at me! Susan! I care for nobody but you!” said the lovely helpless creature, with strange half-articulate cries, pressing closer to the bed. “You are to take care of me.” Mrs. Vincent pressed forward with pangs of anxiety, of terror, of hope, and of a mother’s tender jealousy through all, as these strange entreaties filled the room. She too cried aloud, as she perceived the awakening in that pallid face, the faint movement as if to raise herself up, which indicated a conscious effort on the part of Susan. The clouds were breaking on that obscured and hopeless firmament. The light, which trembled in the doctor’s hand, caught a gleam of understanding and life in Susan’s eyes, as her mother flew to raise her up, obeying the suggestion of that unhoped-for movement. “Susan! you said you would take care of me!” cried the young stranger, throwing herself upon the bedside and grasping at the weak arm which once had protected her. The touch of her hands awoke the slumbering soul. Slowly the light grew in Susan’s eyes. She who had not moved for days except in the restless tossings of languor, lifted those white feeble arms to put them round the appealing child. Then Susan struggled up, faint, yet inspired, unconscious of her mother’s help that enabled her to do so, and confronted the strange people in her room, whom she had seen for weeks past, but did not know, with living eyes. “Nobody shall touch her—we will protect each other,” said the voice that had grown strange even to her mother’s ears. Mrs. Vincent could hardly be restrained from breaking in with a thousand caresses and outcries of joy and thankfulness. But Dr. Rider quieted the poor mother with a touch of his hand. “Let them alone,” he said, with that authority which no one in a sickroom can resist. Mrs. Vincent kept back with unspeakable pangs in her heart, and watched the waking up of that paralysed life which, alike in its loss and its recovery, had been swept apart from her into another world. Without any help from her mother, without even recognising her mother or distinguishing her from the strangers round, Susan’s soul awoke. She raised herself more and more among those pillows where a little while ago she lay so passively—she opened her eyes fully and looked round upon the man by her bedside, and the other indistinct figures in the room, with a look of resistance and conscious strength. “We will protect each other,” said Susan, slowly, “nobody shall harm her—we will keep each other safe.” Then, after another interval, other instincts awoke in the reviving soul. She cast a wistful look from one to another, always drawing her faint white arm round the girl who clung to her and found security in her clasp. “Hush, hush! there are women here,” she said in a whisper, and with a tone of strange confusion, light breaking through the darkness. Then there followed a long pause. Dr. Rider stood by the bedside holding up his candle, attracting the wandering wistful glances of his patient, who ceased to look at him with defiance as her eyes again and again returned to the face, of which, often as it had bent over her, she had no knowledge. All over the unknown room wandered those strange looks, interrogating everything with a wistfulness beyond words. What was this strange unfamiliar world into which, after her trance of suffering, Susan had awakened? She did not know where she was, nor who the people were who surrounded her. But the recollection of deadly peril was not more distinct upon her confused mind than was the sentiment of safety, of love, and watchfulness which somehow abode in this strange dim room, in the little undecipherable circle of
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