Of course the romantic story of Agnes's youth was known to every one present, and this unexpected allusion awakened immediate interest.
"Oh, yes," she replied to a question; "I suppose I do remember a good deal, considering how very young I was, and yet I often wonder that I do not remember more, as it was all so unusual;" and then she added, laughing: "I seem to forget that no event could surprise a child _in her first experiences of life_. Yet I remember trivial things, as, for instance, the losing of a hat. I clearly recall our watching my hat on one occasion when it blew into the river, _and was never recovered_! Think of the tragedy of it! I can see it now, tossing like a little boat, as it floated away.
"And the funny little cabin I remember--I know I do, for there were things which papa never saw, on the inside, in what he calls my 'boudoir,' the white cabin, which I shall never forget. When anything is kept ever in mind by constant description, it is hard to know how much one really remembers. You know, papa spent only one night there and his thoughts were turned backward, so that he naturally kept only vague impressions of the place.
"Yes, he has made a sketch of it from memory, and I am sorry. Why? Oh, because I was sure at first that it was not correct, and now it has come to stand to me in place of the true picture, which has faded. It is a way with pictures if we let them over-ride us. Why, my grandmother in Boston has a friend who had his wife's portrait painted after she was lost at sea. He spent all the money he had to have it done by a 'best artist who had made a hasty sketch of her in life,' and when it came home he did not recognize it--really thought a mistake had been made. Then, seeing that it _was she_ as authoritatively pictured, and that he had paid his all to get it, he bethought him to study it, hoping some day to find her in it. And so he did, gradually.
"He had it hung over his smoking-table, and every evening he scrutinized it until its insistence conquered. For a whole year he lived in the companionship of an absent wife as seen in an artist's mood (this last sentence is a direct quotation from my Boston grandmama, who is fond of the story). And--well, 'what happened?' Why, _this_: One day the woman came home. People 'lost at sea' occasionally do, you know. And would you believe it? Her widower--I mean to say her husband--refused to receive her. _He did not know her!_ He simply pointed to the painting and shook his head. And if she hadn't been a person of resolution and resource,--descended from the _Mayflower_,--why, she would have had to go away. But she had her trunk brought in and quietly paid the expressman and took off her bonnet--_and stayed_. But it was an absurdly long time before her husband was wholly convinced that he was not the victim of an adventuress. And she says that even now he sometimes looks at her in a way she does not like.