“Only a little twinge of my old neuralgia, dear,” I said faintly; “these autumn winds are setting it at work again.”

She looked anxiously at me for a few seconds, and then began to untie the bunch of leaves, and spread out the long vines on the bed.

“Oh, if I only had some moss,” she said.

I ran to the green-house and brought her handfuls of beautiful dripping mosses from the rocks in the fernery.  She filled a saucer with them, putting the Tiarella leaves all round the rim, and winding the Linnea vines in and out as they grow in the woods.  Then she leaned back on her pillows and began breaking the partridge-berry vines into short bits, each with a scarlet berry on it.  These she set upright in the moss, changing and rearranging them so often that I wondered what could be her purpose, and leaned forward to see.

“No, no,” she said playfully, pushing me back, “not till it is done.”

Presently she said, “Now look!”

I looked and saw a perfect, beautifully formed G made by the scarlet berries on the green moss.

“There,” she said, “I’ll send that back to George, to show him that I have found him in the berries; or, no,” she added, “we’ll keep it till he comes to see me.  The doctor said I could be carried down-stairs to-morrow, and then I shall begin to ‘receive,’” and she laughed a gay little laugh, and sank back tired.

That moment stands out in my memory as the saddest, hardest one of all.  I think at that moment hope died in my heart.

When I told George of this, and showed him the saucer of moss—­for she had ordered it to be set on the drawing-room table, saying, “It is too pretty to stay up here with bottles and invalids,”—­he buried his face in his hands for many minutes.  When he lifted it, he looked me steadily in the eye, and said,—­

“She has utterly forgotten this whole year.  But I will win her again.”

Then he knelt down and kissed every little leaf and berry which her hands had touched, and went away without speaking another word.

It was decided after this that it could do no harm for him to see her.  Indeed, he now demanded it.  His resolution was taken.

“You need not fear,” he said to Dr. Fearing, “that I shall agitate her by approaching her as if she were my own.  She is not my own.  But she will be!”

We all sat with trembling hands and beating hearts as the hour approached at which we knew the experiment was to be made.

Annie had been carried down-stairs, and laid upon a lounge in the western bay-window of the library.  The lounge was covered with dark green damask.  Old Caesar had so implored to be allowed to carry her down, that Annie had insisted that he should be gratified; and she went down as she had so often done in her childhood, with her soft white face lying close to his shining black one.

As he put her down, in her rose-colored wrapper, on the dark green damask, he knelt before her and burst out in spite of himself, into a sort of wild chant of thanksgiving; but as we entered the door he sprang up ashamed, and turning to Aunt Ann, said:  “Beg pardon, missis, but this rose yere was too much pink rose for old Caesar!”