Do you remember it ?" and taking the locket containing the ivory portrait of Ida from her neck where she had worn it so many years, she opened and gave it to the girl.
"Why, it is my ivory portrait!" exclaimed Ida.

"How did you come by it?
What do you mean about my leaving the world?
Something strange has happened to me, I know, but did I die?
I don't remember dying.

Oh, can't somebody explain what has happened to me ?" The dazed look which had disappeared from her face since her recognition of the village and the homestead had come back, and her last words were a bitter cry that went to the hearts of the listeners.
Now, all the time they had been in the carriage, Paul had been trying to think of some mode of setting her relationship to Miss Ludington in a light so clear that she must comprehend it, for it was evident that the confused explanations at Mrs.Legrand's had availed little, if anything, to that end.

Unless this could be done she seemed likely to remain indefinitely in this dazed mental state, which must be so exquisitely painful to her, and was scarcely less so to them.
"If you will listen to me patiently," he said, "I will try to explain.
You know that some strange thing has happened to you, and you must expect to find the explanation as strange as the thing itself; but it is not hard to understand." Ida's eyes were fixed on him with the expression of one listening for her life.
"Do you remember being a little girl of nine or ten years old ?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!" she answered.

"I remember that perfectly well." "You are now a young woman," he went on.