“At length, one evening after I had gone to my own room, utterly worn out with my mother’s excitement and misery, a sudden thought came into my head. ‘Why not gratify her, why not enable her to see the man she so blindly worships?’ Then it flashed across my mind how easily the thing could be done! I had but to assume my mother’s nun’s dress and hood, and no ordinary observer could have told it was not my mother herself. She in my dress would easily be permitted to pass the portress’s lodge, and once outside the convent walls Isola would be at hand with further disguises, if necessary, and means of facilitating the journey to England.
“I felt, as you may imagine, I was incurring heavy responsibility in acting thus. But what was to be done? I had no one to advise me. I knew that you ought to be communicated with, and it was simply an impossibility for me to leave my mother in the state she was in. Once I had hinted at the advisability of my going back to consult with you as to what ought to be done, but she became perfectly frantic at the bare thought of such a thing, and throwing herself at my feet, had implored me ‘not to quench the last ray of light in her life.’
“Isola entered heart and soul into my plan. ‘I will go with her,’ she exclaimed. ‘She is too much of a child to be trusted by herself in the world. Where she wanders thither will I go, where she dies there will I die, and there will I be buried.’ I gladly consented to this, as Isola had already once made the journey to England, and would know all the details of the route. My mother, too, was so bright and quick, and her remembrance of the English you taught her so perfect, that I had scarcely any fear of difficulties arising on the road. My one and only anxiety was how would she conduct herself in her interview with you. Would she act quietly and with discretion, or would she cause some open scandal and disgrace to you and to your family? I did my best to prevent this by exacting from her a solemn promise that she would not go down to Harleyford, but remain in London at the hotel where Isola stayed, write to you from there, and there wait your reply. My heart misgave me when she made me this promise. Yet, I thought to myself, after all it doesn’t much matter what she says or does in England. The truth will have to be made known to the world, and the rightful wife acknowledged. ‘Ah! it was a weary, bitter time,’ ” and here Amy broke down utterly. “My brain aches now when I think of it, and a pain comes into my heart which, I think, will be there till my dying day.”
“Poor child!” said Mr. Warden, tenderly smoothing the masses of dark hair which clustered upon Amy’s white forehead, as she laid her head wearily on his shoulder. “My poor little girl, you have been too much tried. You were too young to bear so heavy a load of responsibility and sorrow. For an old worn-out heart like mine a little suffering, more or less, cannot make much difference, but for you, in your bright, fresh girlhood, it was hard indeed to bear up against such a complication of mistakes and wrongdoing.”
“Yes,” said Amy, wearily, going on with her story, “it was very hard and very miserable, and after my mother had started, I nearly broke down altogether.
“Our plan succeeded beyond our hopes even. In the evening twilight, in the dress in which I left my home, my mother passed out of the Convent gates, with Isola, on the pretext of visiting some old friends on the other side of Le Puy. You, my father, had you seen her then, might have mistaken her for your own daughter, so complete was the resemblance in face, form, and figure. Perhaps she looked a little paler, a little thinner, and a few years older (certainly not more) than I did six months ago, but it would have needed younger and keener eyes than those of the old nuns to have discovered this. And I, in my mother’s dress and hood, had not the slightest fear of detection. I had become so accustomed to the daily routine of the convent, that I knew to the least iota every one of my mother’s religious duties. Latterly, too, she had been so weak and ill she had been allowed to remain very much in her own room. I had acquired, or rather reacquired, the singing intonation peculiar to the Cevenol peasant, and knowing our voices were so nearly one pitch and tone, had no fear of discovery on this point. I drew the hood a little more closely over my face; I was perhaps a little less sociable and friendly with the sisters, and thus for
