Her eyes re-opened, her heart expanded and her glance thanked heaven: for it increased the miracle that Sebastian should be led to her by her husband's brother.
"I should not have seen you passing through the palace and not following you might never have called you 'Mother!' the word so sweet and tender to utter."
Recalled to her bliss, she hugged him again and said:
"Yes, you are right, my boy; it is most sweet: but there is perchance another one more sweet and tender; 'My son!' which I say to you as I press you to my heart. But in short," she suddenly said, "it is impossible that all should remain mysterious around us. You have explained how you come here, but not how you recognized me and ran after me, calling me your mother."
"How can I tell? I do not myself know," replied Sebastian, looking at her with love unspeakable. "You speak of mysteries? all is mysterious about you and me. List to me, and I will tell you what seems a prodigy."
"It is ten years since I knew you. You do not understand. I have dreams which my father calls hallucinations."
At the reminder of Gilbert, passing like a steel point from the boyish lips, Andrea started.
"I have seen you twenty times, mother. In the village, while playing with the other schoolboys, I have followed you as you flitted through the woods and pursued you with useless calls till you faded away. Crushed by fatigue I would drop on the spot, as if your presence alone had sustained me."
This kind of second existence, this living dream, too much resembled what the medium herself experienced for her not to understand him.
"Poor darling," she said as she pressed him more closely, "it was vainly that hate strove to part us. Heaven was bringing us together without my suspecting it. Less happy than you, I saw my dear child neither in dream nor reality. Still, when I passed through that Green Saloon I felt a shiver; when I heard your footsteps behind mine, giddiness thrilled my heart and brain; when you called me 'Lady' I all but stopped; when you called me 'Mother!' I nearly swooned; when I embraced you, I believed."
"My mother," repeated Sebastian, as if to console her for not having heard the welcome title for so long.
"Yes, your mother," said the countess, with a transport of love impossible to describe.