"O no," she said quietly, "there was no chance for me, of course. I never dreamed of it, my dear. But—but I wanted you to know it. There has never been anybody but you."
I tried to speak, but could not, and again, but the words dried on my lips. Then I saw that she was sleeping—from exhaustion, probably, and sat by her in silence till the deaconess came back, red-eyed, and sent me away. I bent over her and kissed her cheek, before I left, and I am sure that her lips moved and that the hand I had held while she slept pressed mine faintly. But she did not open her eyes, and in the morning the message came that she had drifted easily away, in that same sleep before dawn.
Gone—and I never knew, never faintly surmised, never considered!
Gone—and there had never been anybody but me!
Ah, Peggy, there had need be Someone that knows, to make good the pity of it, the cruelty of it, the senseless waste of it!
But we three, whom she gave so generously to each other, whom, in turn, she tended back to life, into whose lives she has grown as a tree grows, can we call her love wasted?
Nor is it among us alone that her memory flourishes. No woman in all those mountain parishes she loved so well faces her dark hour of travail without blessing her name and the name of her messengers, whom, in the endowment called in memorial of her, Margarita sends to them, to tend them and the children they bear, as Harriet helped her and hers. She lies among them, a stone's throw from the corner-stone she laid nearly twenty years ago, now, and many visitors have never seen the tablet that lies along her grave—so thick the flowers are always lying there.
"Mother says you are not to look so sad, Jerry dear, because it isn't me that Freddy's marrying!" says Peggy softly, behind me, and I come back to the present, with a jerk.
"Not Freddy, perhaps," I answer with pretended severity, "but some other young sprig no better than Freddy, and then poor old Jerry may go hang!"
She slips her firm little hand—Margarita's hand—into mine shyly.