"I must forbid you to speak again," she said; "my son is the doctor, and, if you disobey me, I shall summon him."
Hyacinth closed her eyes; a quiet sense of rest fell over her, and she was asleep again.
"Poor child," said Mrs. Chalmers, looking at her. "Who is she? I wonder what is her name?"
She slept so long that the kind-hearted woman began to feel uneasy. She went down and told her son.
"Sleeping, is she? Then do not wake her; sleep is the best medicine for her. Mind she has plenty of port wine and beef-tea."
"She says she has forgotten her own name," said Mrs. Chalmers, anxiously.
"She will be all right by and by, mother. I only hope the return of memory will not bring her pain."
The next time Hyacinth opened her eyes, she saw a keen, kind, shrewd face looking at her own, and a pair of dark eyes that smiled as she smiled.
"You are getting better," said Dr. Chalmers.
She raised her hand to her head, and then a slight look of alarm crossed her face. "Where is my hair?" she asked, wonderingly.
"We sacrificed your hair to save your brain," he replied; "it was all cut off."
Then he heard her give a profound sigh, and he guessed that memory was returning. He took one of the thin worn hands in his.
"I do not want you to think of painful things just now," he said. "Will you bear in mind that nothing but absolute rest will restore you to health, and compose yourself accordingly?"
Hyacinth did as she was advised: she discarded all painful thoughts from her mind, and consequently slept as she had not slept for many long weeks. She awoke one morning calm and composed, with reason and memory fully restored. She knew that she was Hyacinth Vaughan. Slowly and by degrees the terrible past returned to her.
"I was in time, thank Heaven!" she said. "I was in time!" She remembered the crowded court--the hundreds of eyes that had been turned upon her--the thunder of applause that none of the officers could repress--the ringing cheers that followed Claude's release. But after that all was a blank. She remembered nothing that had passed since she stood in the assize court, blind and dizzy, until she opened her eyes in that pretty room.
White, fragile, worn almost to a shadow, helpless as a child, she lay there now with reason in full sway. Dead to her old life, to her friends, her hopes, her plans--dead to her lover and her love--she was painfully beginning a new life, in which none of these had any part--a new life into which she felt that hope, love, or happiness could never come.