"Do you like it, Polly?" I asked. She never answered, but gazed long, and at last a darkness went trembling through her sensitive eye, as she said, "Put me down." So I put her down, saying to myself: "The child feels it too."
All these things do I now think over, adding, "He had his faults, yet scarce ever was a finer nature; liberal, suave, impressible." My reflections closed in an audibly pronounced word, "Graham!"
"Graham!" echoed a sudden voice at the bedside. "Do you want Graham?"
I looked. The plot was but thickening; the wonder but culminating. If it was strange to see that well-remembered pictured form on the wall, still stranger was it to turn and behold the equally well-remembered living form opposite--a woman, a lady, most real and substantial, tall, well-attired, wearing widow's silk, and such a cap as best became her matron and motherly braids of hair. Hers, too, was a good face; too marked, perhaps, now for beauty, but not for sense or character. She was little changed; something sterner, something more robust--but she was my godmother: still the distinct vision of Mrs. Bretton.
I kept quiet, yet internally I was much agitated: my pulse fluttered, and the blood left my cheek, which turned cold.
"Madam, where am I?" I inquired.
"In a very safe asylum; well protected for the present; make your mind quite easy till you get a little better; you look ill this morning."
"I am so entirely bewildered, I do not know whether I can trust my senses at all, or whether they are misleading me in every particular: but you speak English, do you not, madam?"
"I should think you might hear that: it would puzzle me to hold a long discourse in French."
"You do not come from England?"
"I am lately arrived thence. Have you been long in this country? You seem to know my son?"
"Do, I, madam? Perhaps I do. Your son--the picture there?"
"That is his portrait as a youth. While looking at it, you pronounced his name."
"Graham Bretton?"
She nodded.
"I speak to Mrs. Bretton, formerly of Bretton, ----shire?"
"Quite right; and you, I am told, are an English teacher in a foreign school here: my son recognised you as such."
"How was I found, madam, and by whom?"
"My son shall tell you that by-and-by," said she; "but at present you are too confused and weak for conversation: try to eat some breakfast, and then sleep."
Notwithstanding all I had undergone--the bodily fatigue, the perturbation of spirits, the exposure to weather--it seemed that I was better: the fever, the real malady which had oppressed my frame, was abating; for, whereas during the last nine days I had taken no solid food, and suffered from continual thirst, this morning, on breakfast being offered, I experienced a craving for nourishment: an inward faintness which caused me eagerly to taste the tea this lady offered, and to eat the morsel of dry toast she allowed in accompaniment. It was only a morsel, but it sufficed; keeping up my strength till some two or three hours afterwards, when the bonne brought me a little cup of broth and a biscuit.