I've allers wanted to tell you I
liked that stone; but she isn't dead--she has come back to me!"
Now, although the return of the drowned child had been an idea often in
his mind of late, that he had merely toyed with it as a beautiful fancy
was proved by the fact that no sooner did the mother express the same
thought than Caius recognised that she was mad.
"She has come back to me!" The poor mother spoke in tones of exquisite
happiness. "She is grown a big girl; she has curls on her head, and she
wears a marriage-ring. Who is she married to?"
Caius could not answer.
The mother looked at him with curious steadfastness.
"I thought perhaps she was married to you," she said.
Surely the woman had seen what he had seen in the sea; but, question her
as he would, Caius could gain nothing more from her--no hint of time or
place, or any fact that at all added to his enlightenment. She only grew
frightened at his questions, and begged him in moving terms not to tell
Day that she had spoken to him--not to tell the people in the village
that her daughter had come back, or they would put her again in the
asylum. Truly, this last appeared to Cains a not unlikely consequence,
but it was not his business to bring it about. It was not for him, who
shared her delusion, to condemn her.
After that, Caius knew that either he was mad or what he had seen he had
seen, let the explanation be what it might--and he ceased to care much
about the explanation.
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