"Misguided girl!" the paper ran, "you have nearly destroyed your own happiness forever, for want of truth and confidence. Did I not tell you to be true and faithful to the last, and your happiness would be secure? Write me down an answer to these questions:
"Do you still love him whom you loved first?
"Has your heart never swerved from him through vanity, lightness, or caprice?
"Was it solely to save his life that you consented to wed a man whom, if there be any honesty in the heart of woman, you are bound to hate?
"Answer at once, and answer truly."
"Here's a pen and ink, darling," said Doctor M'Feely, bringing the implements for writing from a distant table. "I'll take it upon me that you can answer all the questions handsomely enough; and the man says something about a hope, in his letter to me--though how the devil he found me out, or his little spalpeen of a boy in blue and silver either, I can't tell. He can't have an optic glass that will look all the way from Lincolnshire to Cerne Abbas--to say nothing of the corners it would have to look round."
"I will answer truly at all events," replied Margaret, "be there hope or no hope;" and, taking the pen, she wrote rapidly, "I love him ever. No feeling of my heart has ever swerved from him. It was solely to save his life that I consented to wed a man whom I do hate. This is all true, so help me Heaven at my utmost need."
"There, Doctor M'Feely," she said, "give him that. But it is all in vain. You know the marriage is appointed for Friday next."
"Friday!" said the doctor; "that's an unlucky day, my dear; I never knew any one married on Friday in all my life."
"There never before was such a bridal," said Margaret. "Unlucky! Oh, Doctor M'Feely, if they chose the most unlucky day in all the calendar, they had hardly found one black enough to fit my wedding. I will not be married in mourning," she said, "for it would grieve my father; but I will have no bridal finery; I will not affect to rejoice while my heart is dying."