I made up my mind to remain as I was till then, but I promised to pass a good deal of my time with Polly.
Yesterday I got a letter from Percy, which Polly forwarded to me from Putney, where he had of course directed it. It was a very long letter, and began by saying how grieved he was to think how much I must have suffered at the news of his supposed death, and that he should be very anxious about my health till he heard from me. He then went on to tell me all his adventures and hairbreadth escapes, and it really seemed as if over and over again he had been saved almost by a miracle. He had, as was supposed, been severely wounded by a rebel ball, and had fallen from his horse; but he had strength enough left to crawl away and conceal himself under some bushes till the rebels had passed, which, occupied as they were in harassing the retreating column, they did without much search. Before their return he had crawled some considerable distance, and again concealed himself till night, he had then made his way to a cottage which he entered and threw himself on the hospitality of the peasants who lived there.
The poor people had been most kind to him and had concealed him there for nearly a month, by which time his wounds, for he had two, had healed; neither of them, fortunately, were very serious, and it was principally from loss of blood that he had fallen from his horse. They had then sent him up the country to a friendly Zemindar who had received him kindly, but had not the power openly to protect him. Here he had stayed ten months, till the arrival of Colonel Heaviside's column had given him an opportunity of rejoining the British forces. This ten months had been one continual danger, and had been passed sometimes in one disguise, sometimes in another, which only his perfect knowledge of Hindostanee had enabled him to carry through.
He wrote word that he was now quite well and strong again, and that he hoped to be in England in a year at the farthest; but he promised to give me at any rate a couple of months notice, and said that he should expect to have everything ready to be married a week after he landed; for that after waiting all these years he did not see any reason why he should be kept without me a single day, after he returned, longer than necessary.
This was only yesterday. All this has happened in a week. I can hardly steady myself down—I can hardly believe that all this happiness is true, and that in another year Percy will be home to claim me. But yet it is all true, and it seems to have given me back my youth and life again. Every one tells me that in this short week I am so changed, that they look at me almost with wonder, and are hardly able to believe that I am the same person they knew ten days ago, as a quiet, melancholy-looking woman. Thank God for it all—for all His exceeding mercy and goodness to me!
This great grief has had one good effect. It has removed the only obstacle to my marriage with Percy. Three days after I received the joyful news, a letter came to me from Lady Desborough. It was such a letter as I had not imagined that she could have written. She said that, in her grief, she had thought often of me, and had seen how wrong she had been in her conduct towards us. She had said to herself that, if the opportunity could but come over again, she would act differently. That opportunity, by God's mercy, had come, and she wrote to say that she should no longer, in any way, raise the slightest obstacle to our union. She besought me to forget the past, and the weary years of separation and waiting which her cruelty had entailed upon us, and she prayed me to forgive her, and to think of it as if it had never been.
This letter gave me, for Percy's sake, great pleasure. I, of course, responded to it; and from that time we exchanged letters regularly.
Chapter IX.
Prepared For The Attempt.
And now I have told of the joyful news which has so wonderfully altered the current of my life, and restored me to youth and happiness, I must relate another incident which happened, indeed, two months prior to it in point of time, but which I record after it, because the other is so infinitely more important to myself, and, indeed, filled my heart, to the exclusion of all else. And yet, until I received the news of Percy's recovery—I had almost written resurrection, for to me it is indeed a coming back from the grave—I had, from the time the event happened, thought a great deal about it. Not, indeed, that I attached, or do attach, the slightest importance to it, as far as regards myself; but it has brought back to my mind all the circumstances connected with the series of efforts which we made to find the will of Mr. Harmer, from six to seven years ago, and which terminated in the death of the unfortunate Robert Gregory. This research, so long abandoned, has now, strangely enough, been once again taken in hand; and this time even more methodically and determinately than at any of our former attempts, and that by the very person whose conduct indirectly caused the original loss of the will—Sophy Gregory.
It was about a month after my return from my visit to London, that I was in the parlour alone, when Hannah came in and said that a person wished to speak to me.
"Do you know who it is, Hannah?"
"No, miss. She is a servant, I should say, by her looks."
"Did she ask for me, or for Mrs. Mapleside?"
"For you, miss, special."
"Very well, Hannah, then show her in."
And Hannah accordingly ushered my visitor into the room. She was a woman of apparently three or four and thirty, and was paler, I think, than any person I ever saw. Not the pallor produced by illness, although that may have had something to do with it; but a complete absence of colour, such as may be caused by some wearing anxiety, or some very great and sudden shock; her eyes, too, had a strange unnatural look, which, coupled with her unusual paleness, gave her a very strange appearance; indeed, it struck me at once that there was something wrong with her mind, and had not Hannah closed the door as soon as she had shown her in, I should certainly have told her to remain in the room with us. I had not the least recollection of having seen her face before, and waited in silence for her to address me, but as she did not, I said:—
"Did I understand that you wished to speak to me? my name is Miss Ashleigh."
"Then you have no recollection of me?" she asked.
The instant she spoke I recognized her voice: it was Sophy.
"Sophy!" I almost cried out.
"Yes, indeed, Agnes, it is Sophy."
I was very much shocked at the terrible change which seven years had made in her. My poor friend what must she have suffered, what had my grief and sorrow been to hers? We had both lost those we loved best in the world, but I had no painful or shameful circumstances in the death of my lover, as there had been in the death of her husband. Percy had died honourably, in the field of battle; Robert had fallen, shot as a burglar by a woman's hand; beside, I was not alone in the world, I had my brother Harry, and my dear Polly, and Ada, and many kind and sympathizing friends. Sophy was quite alone. Truly my own sufferings seemed but small in my eyes when I thought of hers, and I was very much moved by pity and tenderness for my old friend, as I thought of what she had gone through. All these thoughts rushed through me, as I embraced her with almost more than the warmth of my old affection for her; for it seemed to me that the sorrow which we both suffered was an additional tie between us. It was some time before we were composed enough to speak, or rather before I was; for she, although she had responded to my embrace, and was evidently glad to see me, was plainly in a state of too great tension of mind to find relief as I did in tears.
When I came to look at her face more quietly, I was still puzzled by it. It was not so much that it was changed and aged, as that there was something which seemed to me to be quite different, to what I remembered: what it was I could not for some time
