"Hush," said Lionel, seizing him by the arm; "your face is quite enough. I'd rather not hear it again, please." And he plunged his hands into his pockets, and sunk back shuddering into the corner of the brougham.
Bowker was silent; and they drove on without interchanging a word until William stopped the coachman at a small gate in a high garden-wall. Then Lionel looked up with a strange frightened glance, and asked, "Is this the place?"
"It is," said Bowker; "she has been here for some little time now. You had better let me go in first, I think, and prepare for your coming."
And all Lionel answered was, "As you please," as he shrunk back into his corner again. He was under a totally new experience. For the first time in his life he found himself suffering under a conscience-pang; felt disposed to allow that he had acted badly towards this woman now lying so stricken and so helpless; had a kind of dim hope that she would recover, in order that he might--vaguely, he knew not how--make her atonement. He felt uncomfortable and fidgetty. Bowker had gone, and the sun-blistered damp-stained garden-door had been closed behind him, and Lionel sat gazing at the door, and wondering what was on the other side of it, and what kind of a house it was, and where she was, and who was with her. He never thought he should have felt like this. He had thought of her--half a dozen times--when he was out there; but he knew she was a clever girl, and he always had a notion that she would fall upon her legs, and outgrow that first girlish smite, and settle down comfortably, and all that kind of thing. And so she would now. They were probably a pack of nervous old women about her--like this fellow who had brought him here--and they exaggerated danger, and made mountains of mole-hills. She was ill--he had little doubt of that; but she would get better, and then he'd see what could be done. Gad! it was a wonderful thing to find any woman caring for a fellow so; he might go through life without meeting another; and after all, what the deuce did it matter? He was his own master, wasn't he? and as for money--well, he should be sure to have plenty some day: things were all altered now, since poor old Arthur's death; and-- And at that moment the door opened; and behind William Bowker, who was pale and very grave, Lionel saw the house with all its blinds drawn down. And then he knew that his better resolutions had come too late, and that Margaret was dead.
Yes, she was dead; had died early that morning. On the previous day she had been more than usually restless and uncomfortable, and towards evening had alarmed the nurse who thought she was asleep, and who herself was dozing--by breaking out into a shrill cry, followed by a deep long-drawn lamentation. Annie Maurice at the sound rushed hastily into the room, and never left it again until all was over. She found Margaret dreadfully excited. She had had a horrible dream, she said--a dream in which she went through all the miseries of her days of penury and starvation, with the added horror of feeling that they were a just punishment on her for her ingratitude to Geoffrey Ludlow. When she was a little quieted, she motioned Annie to sit by her; and holding her hand, asked her news of Geoffrey. Annie started, for this was the first time that, in her calm senses, Margaret had mentioned him. In her long ravings of delirium his name was constantly on her lips, always coupled with some terms of pity and self-scornful compassion; but hitherto, during her brief intervals of reason, she had talked only of Lionel, and of her earnest desire to see and speak to him once again. So Annie, pleased and astonished, said,
"He is getting better, Margaret; much better, we trust."
"Getting better! Has he been ill, then?"
"He has been very ill--so ill that we at one time feared for his life. But he is out of danger now, thank God."
"Thank God!" repeated Margaret. "I am grateful indeed that his death is not to be charged to my account; that would have been but a bad return for his preservation of my life; and if he had died, I know his death would have been occasioned by my wickedness. Tell me, Miss Maurice--Annie--tell me, has he ever mentioned my name?"
"Ah, Margaret," said Annie, her eyes filling with tears, "his talk is only of you."