"Would the little change to Ashlydyat benefit you, Maria? If so, if it would help to give you strength for your voyage, come to us at once. Now don't refuse! It will give us so much pleasure. You do not know how Lord Averil loves and respects you. I think there is no one he respects as he respects you. Let me take you home with me now."

Maria's eyelashes were wet as she turned them on her. "Thank you, Cecil, for your kindness: and Lord Averil--will you tell him so for me--I am always thanking in my heart. I wish I could go home with you; I wish I could go with any prospect of it doing me good; but that is over. I shall soon be in a narrower home than this."

Lady Averil's heart stood still and then bounded on again. "No, no!

Surely you are mistaken! It cannot be."

"I have suspected it long, Cecil! but since the last day or two it has become certainty, and even Mr. Snow acknowledges it. About this time yesterday, he was sitting here in the twilight, and I bade him not conceal the truth from me. I told him that I knew it, and did not shrink from it; and therefore it was the height of folly for him to pretend ignorance to me."

"Oh, Maria! And have you no regret at leaving us? I should think it a dreadful thing if I were going to die."

"I have been battling with my regrets a long while," said Maria, bending her head and speaking in low, subdued tones. "Leaving Meta is the worst.

I know not who will take her, who will protect her: she cannot go with George, without--without a mother!"

"Give her to me," feverishly broke from the lips of Lady Averil. "You don't know how dearly I have ever loved that child Maria, she shall never know the want of the good mother she has lost, as far as I can supply your place, if you will let her come to me. It is well that the only child of the G.o.dolphins--and she is the only one--should be reared at Ashlydyat."

Of all the world, Maria could best have wished Lady Averil to have Meta: and perhaps there had been moments when in her troubled imagination she had hoped it would be so. But she could not close her eyes to its improbabilities.

"You will be having children of your own, Cecil. And there's Lord Averil to be considered!"

"Lord Averil is more than indulgent to me. I believe if I wished to adopt half a dozen children, he would only smile and tell me to prepare a nursery for them. I am quite sure he would like to have Meta."

"Then--if he will--oh, Cecil, I should die with less regret."

"Yes, yes, that is settled. He shall call and tell you so.

But--Maria--is your own state so certain? Can nothing be done for you?--nothing be tried?"

"Nothing, as I believe. Mr. Snow cannot find out what is the matter with me. The trouble has been breaking my heart, Cecil: I know of nothing else. And since I grew alarmed about my own state, there has been the thought of Meta. Many a time have I been tempted to wish that I could have her with me in my coffin."

"Aunt Cecil! Aunt Cecil! How many summer-houses are there to be, Aunt Cecil?"

You need not ask whose interrupting voice it was. Lady Averil lifted the child to her knee, and asked whether she would come and pay her a long, long visit at Ashlydyat. Meta replied by inquiring into the prospect of swings and dolls' houses, and Cecil plunged into promises as munificently as George could have done.

"Should George not be with you?" she whispered, as she bent over Maria before leaving.

"Yes, I am beginning to think he ought to be now. I intend to write to him to-night; but I did not like to disturb him in his preparations. It will be a blow to him."

"What! does he not know of it?"

"Not yet. He thinks I am getting ready to go out. I _wish_ I could have done so!"

No, not until the unhappy fact was placed beyond all doubt, would Maria disturb her husband. And she did it gently at last. "I have been unwilling to alarm you, George, and I would not do so now, but that I believe it is all too certain. Will you come down and see what you think of me? Even Mr. Snow fears there is no hope for me now. Oh, if I could but have gone with you! have gone with you to be your ever-loving wife still in that new land!"

Lord Averil came in while she was addressing the letter. Greatly shocked, greatly grieved at what his wife told him, he rose from his dinner-table and walked down. Her husband excepted, there was no one whom Maria would have been so pleased to see as Lord Averil. He had not come so much to tell her that he heartily concurred in his wife's offer with regard to the child, though he did say it--say that she should be done by entirely as though she were his own, and his honest honourable nature shone out of his eyes as he spoke it--as to see whether nothing could be done for herself, to entreat her to have further advice called in.

"Dr. Beale has been here twice," was her answer. "He says there is no hope."

Lord Averil held her hand in his, as he had taken it in greeting; his grave eyes of sympathy were bent with deep concern on her face.

"Cecil thinks the trouble has been too much for you," he whispered. "Is it so?"

A streak of hectic came into her cheek. "Yes, I suppose it is that. Turn to which side I would, there was no comfort, no hope. Throughout it all, I never had a friend, save you, Lord Averil: and you know, and G.o.d knows, what you did for us. I have not recompensed you: I don't see how I could have recompensed you had I lived: but when I am gone, you will be happy in knowing that you took the greatest weight from one who was stricken by the world."

"You have been writing to George?" he observed, seeing the letter on the table. "But it will not go to-night: it is too late."

"It can go up by to-morrow's day mail, and he will receive it in the evening. Perhaps you will post it for me as you walk home: it will save Margery's going out."

Lord Averil put the letter into his pocket. He stood looking at her as she lay a little back in her easy-chair, his arm resting on the mantelpiece, curious thoughts pa.s.sing through his mind. Could he do nothing for her?--to avert the fate that was threatening her? He, rich in wealth, happy now in the world's favour; she, going to the grave in sorrow, it might be in privation--_what_ could he do to help her?

There are moments when we speak out of our true heart, when the conventionality that surrounds the best of us is thrown aside, all deceit, all form forgotten. Lord Averil was a good and true man, but never better, never truer than now, when he took a step forward and bent to Maria.

"Let me have the satisfaction of doing something for you; let me try to save you!" he implored in low earnest tones. "If that may not be, let me help to lighten your remaining hours. How can I best do it?"

She held out her hand to him: she looked up at him, the grat.i.tude she could not speak shining from her sweet eyes. "Indeed there is nothing now, Lord Averil. I wish I could thank you as you deserve for the past."

He held her hand for some time, but she seemed weak, exhausted, and he said good night. Margery attended him to the outer gate, in spite of his desire that she should not do so, for the night air was cold and seemed to threaten snow.

"Your mistress is very ill, Margery," he gravely said. "She seems to be in danger."

"I'm afraid she is, my lord. Up to the last day or two I thought she might take a turn and get over it; but since then she has grown worse with every hour. Some folks can battle out things, and some folks can't; she's one of the last sort, and she has been tried in all ways."

Lord Averil dropped the letter into the post-office, looking mechanically at its superscription, George G.o.dolphin, Esquire. But that he was preoccupied with his own thoughts, he might have seen by the very writing how weak she was, for it was scarcely recognizable as hers.

Very, very ill she looked, as if the end were growing ominously near; and Lord Averil did not altogether like the tardy summons which the letter would convey. A night and a day yet before George could receive it. A moment's communing with himself, and then he took the path to the telegraph office, and sent off a message:

"Viscount Averil to George G.o.dolphin, Esquire.

"Your wife is very ill. Come down by first train."

The snow came early. It was nothing like Christmas yet, and here was the ground covered with it. The skies had seemed to threaten it the previous night, but people were not prepared to find everything wearing a white aspect when they rose in the morning.

The Reverend Mr. Hastings was ill. A neglected cold was telling so greatly upon him that his daughter Rose had at length sent for Mr. Snow.

Mrs. Hastings was away for a day or two, on a visit to some friends at a distance.

Mr. Hastings sat over the fire, dreamily watching David Jekyl, awaiting the visit of Mr. Snow, and thinking his own thoughts. David was busy in the garden. He had a bit of c.r.a.pe on his old felt hat for his recently-interred father. The c.r.a.pe led the Rector's thoughts to the old man, and thence to the deprivation brought to the old man's years, the loss to the sons, through George G.o.dolphin. How many more, besides poor old Jekyl, had George G.o.dolphin ruined! himself, that reverend divine, amongst the rest!

"A good thing when the country shall be rid of him!" spoke the Rector in his bitterness. "I would give all the comfort left in my life that Maria, for her own sake, had not linked her fate with his! But that can't be remedied now. I hope he will make her happier there, in her new home, than he has made her here!"

By which words you will gather that Mr. Hastings had no suspicion of the change in his daughter's state. It was so. Lord and Lady Averil were not alone in learning the tidings suddenly; at, as it may be said, the eleventh hour. Maria had not sent word to the Rectory that she was worse. She knew that her mother was absent, that her father was ill, that Rose was occupied; and that the change from bad to worse had come upon herself so imperceptibly, that she saw not its real danger--as was proved by her not writing to her husband. The Rector, as he sits there, has his mind full of Maria's voyage, and its discomfort: of her changed life in India: and he is saying to himself that he shall get out in the afternoon and call to see her.

The room faced the side of the house, but as Mr. Hastings sat he could catch a glimpse of the garden gate, and presently saw the well-known gig stop at it, and the surgeon descend.

"Well, and who's ill now?" cried Mr. Snow, as he let himself in at the hall-door, and thence to the room, where he took a seat in front of the Rector, examined his ailment, and gossiped at the same time, as was his wont; gossiped and grumbled.

"Ah, yes; just so: feel worse than you have felt for twenty years. You caught this cold at Thomas G.o.dolphin's funeral, and you have not chosen to pay attention to it."

"I think I did. I felt it coming on the next day. I could not read the service in my hat, Snow, over _him_, and you know that rain was falling.

Ah! There was a sufferer! But had it not been for the calamity that fell upon him, he might not have gone to the grave quite so soon."

"He felt it too keenly," remarked Mr. Snow. "And your daughter--there's another sad victim. Ah me! Sometimes I wish I had never been a doctor, when I find all that I can do in the way of treatment comes to nothing."

"If she can only get well through the fatigues of the voyage, she may be better in India. Don't you think so? The very change from this place will put new life into her."