"I must e'en let ye go, I suppose," said Barnabas; "for, an' I hold ye, your soul 'ull slip through my fingers, an' go an' watch by him all the same. God be with ye, my dear!"
He released her unwillingly, and Margaret ran back to her father. Mr. Deane was wide awake and slightly flushed.
"Meg! Meg! I dreamed I had lost you, that you had leaped over a precipice," he cried.
He was excited, and not quite himself. He recognised her on her return to his room; but, as the day wore on, he became more feverish, and in the evening he was delirious.
All through the night he talked eagerly to his dead wife, evidently believing her to be present; but in the small hours the fever left him, and, in the collapse that followed it, he died. He died with Meg's hand clasped in his, with his head on his sister's shoulder; but unconscious of the presence of either of the women, each of whom had, in her way, loved him better than all else in the world.
Laura stood at the foot of the bed during the last terrible hour, with her arm round Kate, who had come just in time. Kate kept turning her beautiful head away,—she could hardly bear to see this death struggle.
Margaret's eyes never moved from her father's face. When Mr. Deane's head fell forward on his breast, the last sobbing breath drawn, the awful involuntary fight for life over, Meg's expression relaxed, as if she, too, were relieved.
"It is over!" she said.
Only when some one tried to unclasp the living hand from his she fell on her knees with a smothered cry—after all, she had not gone with him.
Laura led Kate away, crying bitterly; if Mr. Deane had been the best and most dependable father on earth, instead of merely the most charmingly affectionate when he happened to be at home, they would not have loved him more, possibly they would have loved him less; for a woman's love will fill up the measure wherein a man falls short of what he might have been.