Mrs. Elton entered, and quite confirmed what Margaret had said.

"But," she added, "it is time Lady Emily had something to eat. Go to the cook, Margaret, and see if the beef-tea Miss Cameron ordered is ready."

Margaret went.

"What a comfort it is," said Mrs. Elton, wishing to interest Lady Emily, "that now-a-days, when infidelity is so rampant, such corroborations of Sacred Writ are springing up on all sides! There are the discoveries at Nineveh; and now these Spiritual Manifestations, which bear witness so clearly to another world."

But Lady Emily made no reply. She began to toss about as before, and show signs of inexplicable discomfort. Margaret had hardly been gone two minutes, when the invalid moaned out:

"What a time Margaret is gone!--when will she be back?"

"I am here, my love," said Mrs. Elton.

"Yes, yes; thank you. But I want Margaret."

"She will be here presently. Have patience, my dear."

"Please, don't let Miss Cameron come near me. I am afraid I am very wicked, but I can't bear her to come near me."

"No, no, dear; we will keep you to ourselves."

"Is Mr.--, the foreign gentleman, I mean--below?"

"No. He is gone."

"Are you sure? I can hardly believe it."

"What do you mean, dear? I am sure he is gone."

Lady Emily did not answer. Margaret returned. She took the beef-tea, and grew quiet again.

"You must not leave her ladyship, Margaret," whispered her mistress.

"She has taken it into her head to like no one but you, and you must just stay with her."

"Very well, ma'am. I shall be most happy."

Mrs. Elton left the room. Lady Emily said:

"Read something to me, Margaret."

"What shall I read?"

"Anything you like."

Margaret got a Bible, and read to her one of her father's favourite chapters, the fortieth of Isaiah.

"I have no right to trust in G.o.d, Margaret."

"Why, my lady?"

"Because I do not feel any faith in him; and you know we cannot be accepted without faith."

"That is to make G.o.d as changeable as we are, my lady."

"But the Bible says so."

"I don't think it does; but if an angel from heaven said so, I would not believe it."

"Margaret!"

"My lady, I love G.o.d with all my heart, and I cannot bear you should think so of him. You might as well say that a mother would go away from her little child, lying moaning in the dark, because it could not see her, and was afraid to put its hand out into the dark to feel for her."

"Then you think he does care for us, even when we are very wicked.

But he cannot bear wicked people."

"Who dares to say that?" cried Margaret. "Has he not been making the world go on and on, with all the wickedness that is in it; yes, making new babies to be born of thieves and murderers and sad women and all, for hundreds of years? G.o.d help us, Lady Emily! If he cannot bear wicked people, then this world is h.e.l.l itself, and the Bible is all a lie, and the Saviour did never die for sinners. It is only the holy Pharisees that can't bear wicked people."

"Oh! how happy I should be, if that were true! I should not be afraid now."

"You are not wicked, dear Lady Emily; but if you were, G.o.d would bend over you, trying to get you back, like a father over his sick child. Will people never believe about the lost sheep?"

"Oh! yes; I believe that. But then--"

"You can't trust it quite. Trust in G.o.d, then, the very father of you--and never mind the words. You have been taught to turn the very words of G.o.d against himself."

Lady Emily was weeping.

"Lady Emily," Margaret went on, "if I felt my heart as hard as a stone; if I did not love G.o.d, or man, or woman, or little child, I would yet say to G.o.d in my heart: 'O G.o.d, see how I trust thee, because thou art perfect, and not changeable like me. I do not love thee. I love n.o.body. I am not even sorry for it. Thou seest how much I need thee to come close to me, to put thy arm round me, to say to me, my child; for the worse my state, the greater my need of my father who loves me. Come to me, and my day will dawn. My beauty and my love will come back; and oh! how I shall love thee, my G.o.d! and know that my love is thy love, my blessedness thy being.'"

As Margaret spoke, she seemed to have forgotten Lady Emily's presence, and to be actually praying. Those who cannot receive such words from the lips of a lady's-maid, must be reminded what her father was, and that she had lost him. She had had advantages at least equal to those which David the Shepherd had--and he wrote the Psalms.

She ended with:

"I do not even desire thee to come, yet come thou."

She seemed to pray entirely as Lady Emily, not as Margaret. When she had ceased, Lady Emily said, sobbing:

"You will not leave me, Margaret? I will tell you why another time."

"I will not leave you, my dear lady."

Margaret stooped and kissed her forehead. Lady Emily threw her arms round her neck, and offered her mouth to be kissed by the maid. In another minute she was fast asleep, with Margaret seated by her side, every now and then glancing up at her from her work, with a calm face, over which brooded the mist of tears.

That night, as Hugh paced up and down the floor of his study about midnight, he was awfully startled by the sudden opening of the door and the apparition of Harry in his nightshirt, pale as death, and scarcely able to articulate the words:

"The ghost! the ghost!"

He took the poor boy in his arms, held him fast, and comforted him.