It was a long time before she could calm herself down. If there had been anybody to tell it to, that would have been something; but, as she had no way of getting rid of her excitement, it blazed up in her higher and higher. She did not know what to do to calm herself down. She walked about for nearly an hour, now and then going to the window, leaning half out, exposing herself to the fresh air and coolness, eagerly looking for the first early riser, the first window opening, and watching the little belfry grow black against the lightening sky, then flash and blaze to the first touch of the sun. Sleep! she could have sooner done anything else in the world--stretched out her arms like wings and flown, leaped down from the window, called out to all the city, that was what she wanted to do--“Harry, Harry!” She seemed to have but one idea left in the world.
After a while, however, in the desperation of being unable to communicate her discovery, or do anything to bring herself more clearly face to face with so wonderful a revelation, Lydia sat down to trace it again step by step, then lay down on her bed, going over and over the familiar ground. She fell asleep just as the sunshine began to stream into her room, and slept soundly for an hour or two in the depths of her exhaustion; but when she woke it was still early, and a long day before her. Naturally the first thing she did was to survey again the entire circumstances, going over them one by one. She had not much experience, and in her whole life no such lawless incident as a _nuit blanche_, a night spent without taking off her clothes had ever occurred to Liddy before. She felt almost guilty as she found herself lying there, her long hair streaming about her, in her dressing-gown, as she had been when she first sat down at her window to think. Sometimes the morning light dissipates the wisest calculations and conclusions of the night, and turns its theories and revelations into folly; but as she started up hastily, and began to put her facts together again, no such awakening occurred. They seemed more conclusive, more certain, in the sober light of the morning, than they did in the feverish wakefulness of the long, silent night. She pieced them all together hurriedly, in a tremble of excitement. He had been there ten years, and it was ten years since Harry disappeared. He had said nothing about his family, he had even married without any explanation on that point. He had started at the sound of her name; he had understood all she said. He had called his child Ralph--_Ralph!_ after his father, with a prejudice that was North-country all over; and his name was Harry, so called by his wife, though he had himself announced as Isaac Oliver. Lydia thought she could understand exactly what had made him take Isaac Oliver’s name--a moment of despite and despair, yet humour--a putting down of himself from the pinnacle of the Joscelyns to the humility of the lowliest servant, an expedient which would direct the thoughts of anyone who might seek him into another direction. She sprang up, and was fully dressed and ready to begin the extraordinary piece of work she had in hand, before anyone else of the party had stirred. But what was she to do? Was she to go to him straight, without any further inquiry, without a pause, and say, Are you my brother Harry? or, You are my brother Harry! If by any chance he was not so, after all, he would think her mad. What was she to do? She sat down again at the window where she had sat for half the night. The sunshine was pouring in, growing every moment more brilliant, not like the temperate British sunshine which it is a pleasure in the early morning to bathe and bask in, but already blazing, slaying in its Italian force and fervour. She had to close the _persiani_, which she had herself thrown open in her restlessness on the previous night. When all the people of the hotel were in motion, and life fully astir, she went downstairs; but there was nothing to be done there, save to sit down once more and think it all over again. She had not been there long, however, when Lionel came into the room in search of a book; he had been restless too; but he started violently when he caught sight of her buried in a great chair, with her hands clasped in her lap. For the first moment he thought that she must have been there all night.