"No," answered the Major's daughter, "there was no time. He could not have borne it; the surprise, the shock, would have been too great." "So it seemed to me. But I wanted your opinion too. You see, about me there is more than there used to be in his mind, or, rather, in his fancy: he doesn't distinguish. What were once surmises he now thinks facts, and he fully believes in them. He has constructed a sort of history, and has woven in all sorts of imaginary theories in the most curious way. For instance, he thinks that my mother was one of a family well known in New York--so they tell me, at least; I know little of New York--the Forsters of Forster's Island. My mother was plain Mary Foster, from Chester, Vermont, or its neighborhood, a farmer's daughter. In the same way he has built up a belief that my father was an Episcopal clergyman, and that he was educated in England. My father was a Baptist missionary; he was a man of fair education (he educated me), but he was never in England in his life. These are only parts of it, his late fancies about me. To have brushed them all away, to have told him that they were false, that I had all along been deceiving him, to have bewildered him, given him so much pain--my dear gray-haired old Major! Oh, Sara, I could never have done it! 'A son?' he would have said, perplexed. 'But there is only little Scar.' It would have been cruelty, he believes in me so!" Her voice quivered, and she stopped. "He has never had more cause to believe in you than now, mamma--to believe in your love for him; he does not know it, but some day he will. You have been so unswerving in your determination to make secure, first of all, his happiness and tranquillity, so unmindful of your own pain, that it seems to me, his daughter, as if you had never been so faithful a wife to him as now." "Oh, say it again!" said Madam Carroll, burying her face in her hands. "I did my best, or at least I tried; but I have been so--tortured--harassed--" The Major stirred in the next room; they hurried softly in. He was awake; he turned his head and looked at his wife as she stood beside the bed. "You and Sara both here?" he said. "Did I go to bed, then, very early this evening?" He did not wait for reply, but went on. "I have had such a beautiful dream, Marion; it was about that drive we took when we were first married--do you remember? Through the woods near Mayberry. There was that same little stream that we had to cross so many times, and the same bank where you got out and gathered wild violets, and the same spring where we drank, and that broken bridge where you were so frightened--do you remember?" "Yes," answered his wife, brightly; "and I remember, too, that you lost your way, and pretended that you had not, and wouldn't ask, for fear I should suspect it."