she said. "Rest a bit yourself; you look so tired, Towsey, dear." She crept up again, past her mother's closed door, and towards her own room.

Hannah's door was open; she hesitated, then went softly towards it and looked in.

Hannah was lying on the bed in her clothes, asleep, or appearing to be asleep. The dawn shed a blue light into the room. Margaret, standing by the bed, could see that Hannah had been crying; her face was red and blotched with it. Her cheeks were hollow, her poor nose was very pink, her dull, light hair seemed to be more scanty than ever, and she looked so forlorn and sad as she lay there that Margaret could hardly bear it; she realized, as she watched her, how little the world had given Hannah, how little it promised her. Slipping off her shoes, she lay down very softly beside her--a little lower, so that she could nestle her head on Hannah's breast, and put her arm round the square, thin shoulder. Hannah opened her eyes and looked at Margaret and closed them again, and, as if in sleep, drew closer to her with weary satisfaction, and so, for the first time in their lives, they rested an hour together. But neither slept, and, when it was impossible to feign it longer, they looked at each other, and Margaret knew that Hannah was softened.

"I wrote to you yesterday," she began, a little grimly, as if ashamed of being anything else. "I didn't want Towsey to know--I would not even let mother know--for I'd said you shouldn't come back so often. I went out and posted it myself. It will be there this morning. I didn't think the end was coming, or I would have sent before. I'm not as hard as that."

"You wrote to me!" Margaret exclaimed. "Why, Hannah, I wrote to you yesterday--yesterday afternoon; our letters will cross on the way, and both will arrive at the same time."

"It must have been the Lord drawing us to each other."

"If it had only been in time," Margaret whispered.

"I must have seemed harder than I was," Hannah went on; "but I didn't forget that she was the mother of us both, and I didn't think it'd be so soon. I'll never forgive myself while I live."

"I ought to have known you were not so hard as you seemed. And, of course, you didn't know what was going to happen."

"It was the man that came between," said Hannah, bitterly; "it's always a man that comes between women."

Then Margaret pulled herself up on the bed and sat there beside Hannah, looking at her tortured face.

"Mother is lying in the next room," she said, "and can never know, but for her sake let us try and make things better between us. I want you to believe me, Hannah, when I say solemnly that I never liked Mr.

Garratt, or wanted him, or could help anything that he did."

"It doesn't matter," Hannah said. "He's a base and sordid man, and I've done with him forever. He's been here lately, and I've told him so. He only came after me because his mother had heard that the farm would be mine. If the truth's to be told, I never thought much of him, and as for taking a man, caring as he does for theatres and races, for I've found out that he goes to both, why, I'd rather die. But we needn't talk him any more; he'll never come here again."

Then Margaret drew a little closer to her, for even through her own sorrow and the horror of the night her heart was aching for Hannah and clung to her.

"What have you done about the play-acting?" Hannah asked, after a minute or two.

"I have given it up," and there was another silence. Then, grim and forlorn-looking, and with the tears welling into her eyes, Hannah spoke in a low voice, as if she had brought herself to it.

"Margaret," she said, "I've been very hard on you, often and often."

Margaret bent her head and kissed her sister's dress and said nothing, for it was true enough, though she forgave it.

"But I'd like you to understand it," Hannah went on, "then you won't think so bad of me. You see, father came when I was old enough to know, and took mother from me. I felt that he took her, and there was the way he thought about religion and the way that you thought."

"Hannah," said Margaret, "let us speak of it--it's better to do so now while death seems to have broken down the barriers between us. I understand what you mean about father's coming, I do, indeed--I should have felt it, too. But about the religion--you think it a crime that he doesn't believe as you do, but can't you see that if G.o.d has given him intellect to think and feel, and he has used them quite conscientiously, and so come to the conclusions that are his now, he is an honest man? He proved his honesty by giving up a great deal--all sorts of worldly advantages, and some one he loved very much before he saw our mother, and, if he came to a wrong conclusion, don't you think that G.o.d--G.o.d whom you say is a G.o.d of love and very just--will at least honor him for being courageous and not making a pretence?"

"If one doesn't believe in the Lord--" Hannah began.

"Oh, but let me speak," Margaret went on, pa.s.sionately; "it's being honest that matters, and doing right--trying to be all that Christ preached--if we are only that we can leave the rest. It is not we who doubt G.o.d, but you who doubt Him when you think He could be hard and cruel to us. There are so many forms of religion in the world besides the one that you believe in; are all the people to be condemned who try to do right from different points of view? It's all a mystery and beyond our comprehension."

"I'd like to know what it is you think?" said Hannah.

"I think that one should be thankful to the Unseen Power that has put all the beauty and happiness into the world; that one should try never to think unkindly or judge harshly, and that we should help each other all we can, and leave the rest to the Power one doesn't understand. Some one wrote once, 'I want to accept the facts as they are, however bitter or severe, to be a lover and a student, but never a lawgiver,' which means that we should not judge others, but only love them and help them and do our work as best we can."

"I think you mean well; but I wish you felt more about religion," Hannah said, a little grudgingly. She looked down at her again, for Margaret had crept back into her arms. It was a new sensation to feel any one there, and she felt almost ashamed of the comfort it gave her. "I'm sorry if I seemed hard," she said, gently. "You know the Bartons were always strict. But you won't go away again? I can't bear to think of you in London."

"I don't want to go away again," Margaret answered; "I want to stay here with you and father; I feel as if I could never go anywhere else as long as I live."

"There hasn't been anything wrong?" Hannah asked, with a note of alarm.

"You haven't done anything you shouldn't?"

"No, Hannah, nothing; but I wish I had never gone."

"There's always something to be sorry for; we have to bear it as the penalty of our weakness. I'd give all I had in the world to remember that we'd both stood by mother at the last," Hannah answered, with a sigh, and then she said--almost tenderly, "You had better try and sleep a little; you look worn out, and there's father to tell yet. It'll be bad for him; I don't know how he'll take it." She held Margaret closer in her arms and watched her, and gradually, worn out with the long night and weeping and excitement, they fell asleep.

Towsey came in a couple of hours later and looked at them.

"I never thought to see them like that together," she said, and went softly out again. "I wish she had seen it; but there, perhaps she does--she may be standing by looking on for all we know."

Sir George Stringer went to Great College Street early that afternoon; the expression of Margaret's face haunted him, and he could not rest till he had seen her again. Mrs. Gilman had told him of Margaret's sudden departure the night before and the reason of it.

"Poor thing! poor thing!" he said to himself as he walked away. "I think I'll go to Chidhurst for the week-end. I might be of some use to her--that young scoundrel, Tom, is in Scotland, and she has only the grim half-sister to look after her."

He walked across the fields in the evening to the farm, and stopped, hesitating in the porch, afraid to enter or to ring and disturb the silence that death consecrates.

Hannah saw him and came forward, grim as usual, but gaunt and sad.

"Did you want to see any one?" she asked.

"I heard that your mother was dead," he answered, awkwardly; "I came to see if I could be of any use. I have known her husband all my life--where is Margaret?"

"She's lying down; she's made her head bad with fretting."

"What have you done about her father?"

"We haven't told him yet. Margaret says he's coming back. It will be bad for him then."

"But he ought to be told."

"We'll send a telegram to-morrow. It'll be time enough; it's no good hurrying sorrow on him. He'll have had a day longer to think he'll see her again."

Sir George looked at her shrewdly. "A kind woman at heart," he thought, and then he said aloud, "You know that he is Lord Eastleigh now?"

"Yes, I know; but I can't see that it matters. It won't make any difference to the end."

"You are quite right"; and he shook her hand. "Give my love to Margaret," he said, and turned away. "It would be a good thing," he thought, as he went back across the fields to his house, "if we all lived in the country; people get spoiled when they congregate in cities; that woman looked quite indifferent to Vincent's t.i.tle. Upon my soul, I liked her to-night."

x.x.xIII

When Tom had travelled all night and driven five miles by the edge of a forest at the foot of a chain of hills, he found himself at the place the Lakemans had taken near Pitlochry. A lovely house, with a wood round it, and through it a view of a glen, and a stream that hurried white and frothing towards the distance. He asked how Miss Lakeman was in a whisper, half expecting to hear that she was dead.

"Miss Lakeman hasn't been very well, sir," the servant answered, and showed him into a charming room where there was a divine view from the open windows. Near the farther window there was a breakfast-table laid daintily for two, with fresh fruit and late roses in a bowl. Lena was lying on a sofa beside it in a muslin gown, just as Mrs. Lakeman had told Dawson Farley she would be. Her face looked thin and pale, her eyes large and restless; she seemed weak and worried, but there was not a sign of dangerous illness about her. She tried to raise herself as he entered, but apparently was not able to do so.