As Marian had talked to her of the house in Wiesbaden and the picture on the wall—­of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine—­she had seen, as by revelation, through a rift in the clouds which separated her from the past—­the picture on the wall, in its pretty Florentine frame, and knew that it resembled the pale, sweet face which came to her so often and was so real to her.  Was it her old home Marian was describing?  Had she lived there once, when the house consisted of only two or three rooms? and was that a picture of her mother, left there she knew not how or why?  These were the thoughts crowding each other so fast in her brain when the faintness and pallor crept over her and the objects about her began to seem unreal.  But the cold water revived her, and she was soon herself again, listening while Marian talked of heat and sun-strokes, with an evident forgetfulness of the peasant girl knitting in the sunshine; but Jerrie soon recurred to the subject and asked, rather abruptly:  ’Was there a stove in that house—­a tall, white stove, in a corner of one of the old rooms—­say the kitchen—­and a high-backed settee?’

Marian stared at her a moment in surprise, and then replied: 

’Oh, I know what you mean—­those unwieldy things in which they sometimes put the wood from the hall.  No; there was nothing of that kind, though there was an old settee by the kitchen fire-place, but not a tall stove.  Mr. Carter had modernized the house, and set up a real Yankee stove—­Stewart’s, I think they called it.’

‘Was the picture in the kitchen?’ Jerrie asked next.

‘No,’ Marian replied, ’it was in a little, low apartment which must once have been the best room.’

’And was there no theory with regard to it!  It seems strange that any one should leave it there if he cared for it,’ Jerrie said.

‘Yes, it does,’ Marian replied; ’but all Mr. Carter knew was that the people of whom he bought the house said the portrait was there when they took possession, and that it had been left to apply on the back rent; also that the original was dead.  He (Mr. Carter) had bought the picture with the house, and offered to take it down, but I would not let him.  It was such a sweet, sunny, happy face that it did me good to look at it, and wonder who the young girl was, and if her life were ever linked with that of the stranger watching her.’

Again the faintness came upon Jerrie, for she could see so plainly on the sombre wall the picture of the sweet-faced girl, with the long stocking in her lap—­a very long stocking she felt sure it was, but dared not ask, lest they should think her question a strange one.  Of the stranger in the back yard watching the young girl she had no recollection, but her heart beat wildly as she thought: 

‘Was that Mr. Arthur, and was the young girl Gretchen?’

How fast the lines touching her past had widened about her since she first saw the likeness in the mirror, and her confused memories of the past began to take shape and assume a tangible form.