If she had been a trained nurse Margot could not have entered her uncle’s presence more quietly, though it seemed to her that he must hear the happy beating of her heart and how her breath came fast and short. He was almost too weak to speak at all, but there was all the old love, and more, in his whispered greeting:
“My precious child!”
“Yes, uncle. And such a happy child because you are better.”
She caught his hand and covered it with kisses, but softly, oh! so softly, and he smiled the rare sweet smile that she had feared she’d never see again. Then he looked past her to Angelique in the doorway and his eyes moved toward his desk in the corner. A little fanciful desk that held only his most sacred belongings and had been Margot’s mother’s. It was to be hers some day, but not till he had done with it, and she had never cared to own it since doing so meant that he could no longer use it. Now she watched him and Angelique wonderingly.
For the woman knew exactly what was required. Without question or hesitation she answered the command of his eyes by crossing to the desk and opening it with a key she took from her own pocket. Then she lifted a letter from an inner drawer and gave it into his thin fingers.
“Well done, good Angelique. Margot—the letter—is yours.”
“Mine? I am to read it? Now? Here?”
“No, no. No, no, indeed! Would you tire the master with the rustlin’ of paper? Take it else. Not here, where ever’thin’ must be still as still.”
Mr. Dutton’s eyes closed. Angelique knew that she had spoken for him and that the disclosure which that letter would make should be faced in solitude.
“Is she right, uncle, dearest? Shall I take it away to read?”