The two elderly ladies rose with some surprise at the entry of a strange visitor.

It was three years since she had paid her last visit there, and for a moment they did not recognize her.
"Don't you know me, aunts ?" "Why, goodness me!" the eldest exclaimed, "if it isn't our little Lucy grown into womanhood! My dear child, where have you sprung from ?" And the two ladies warmly embraced their niece, who, as soon as they released her from their arms, burst into a fit of crying, and it was some time before she could answer the questions showered upon her.
"It is nothing, aunts," she said at last, wiping her eyes; "but I am so glad to be with you again, and I have gone through so much, and I am so happy, and it's so nice being with you again! Here is Chloe waiting to speak to you, aunts.

She has come with me all the way." The old negress, who had been waiting in the passage, was now called in.
"Why, Chloe, you look no older than when you went away from here six years ago," Miss Kingston said.

"But how did you get through the lines?
We have been terribly anxious about you.

Your brother was here only a fortnight ago, and he and your father were in a great way about you, and reproached themselves bitterly that they did not send you to us before the troubles began, which certainly would have been a wiser step, as I told them.