Lord
Atherton felt sure that it was his lost wife.
Without saying one word, he went at once to Redcliffe; he went to the
address given and was referred to Mrs. Hirste's.
He went there, and said he had every reason to believe the lady
mentioned in the advertisement was his wife. "She left home," he said,
"unknown to us, delirious, without doubt, at the time, and quite unable
to account for her own action."
They took him into the room where she lay; he looked at the flushed face
and shining eyes.
"It is my wife," he said, quietly. "Thank God, I have found her."
But Marion did not know him; her hot lips murmured continually of Allan,
who was persecuting her, and of her husband whom she loved so dearly,
but who would never be willing to see her again.
"How she must have suffered!" he said to himself. Then he telegraphed to
London for a physician and a nurse. They were not long in coming; by
that time the whole village was in a state of excitement and
consternation.
"She will recover, I have every reason to believe," said the doctor,
"but she has evidently suffered long and terribly. Some domestic
trouble, my lord, I suppose, that has preyed upon her?"
"Yes," replied Lord Atherton, "a domestic trouble that she has been
foolish enough to keep to herself and which had preyed on her mind."
She had the best of care, the kindest and most constant attention, yet
it was some time before she opened her eyes to the ordinary affairs of
this life.
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