father, when reproving me after my fever, came back to my mind in all
their awful significance.

All at once I heard a voice calling my name, and in a moment the tempest
in me was stilled. Yes, it was my darling's voice--she was coming to
me--she would save me in this dire extremity. Again and again she
called, but the voice now sounded further and further away; and with
ineffable anguish I remembered that she would not be able to see me
where I sat. I tried to cry out, "Come quick, Yoletta, and save me from
death!" but though I mentally repeated the words again and again in an
extreme agony of terror, my frozen tongue refused to make a sound.
Presently I heard a light, quick step on the floor, then Yoletta's clear
voice.

"Oh, I have found you at last!" she cried. "I have been seeking you all
over the house. I have something glad to tell you--something to make you
happier than on that day--do you remember?--when you saw me coming to
you in the wood. The mother has left her chamber at last; she is in the
Mother's Room again, waiting impatiently to see you. Come, come!"

Her words sounded distinctly in my ears, and although I could not lift
or turn my rigid eyes to see her, yet I seemed to see her now better
than ever before, with some fresh glory, as of a new, unaccustomed
gladness or excitement enhancing her unsurpassed loveliness, so clearly
at that moment did her image shine in my soul! And not hers only, for
now suddenly, by a miracle of the mind, the entire family appeared there
before me; and in the midst sat Chastel, my sweet, suffering mother, as
on that day after my illness when she had pardoned me, and put out her
hand for me to kiss. As on that occasion, now--now she was gazing on me
with such divine love and compassion in her eyes, her lips half parted,