“You will come back here when you have accomplished what you desire?”
“I think so—I cannot tell—I will not promise,” returned Margaret, with an air of indecision; “but at any rate, whether I come or not, I thank you heartily for all your kindness to me, and for all that you have offered to do for me. I am not so used to kindness that I can afford to think little of it.”
“I am afraid it will be too much for her,” thought Martha, as Margaret left the room with an unsteady step. “There is plainly some mysterious sorrow which is preying upon her mind. If I could find out what it is, I would try to comfort her.”
Margaret, on reaching the street got into an omnibus which set her down at the corner of the street on which Jacob Wynne lived.
We will precede her.
The scrivener is seated at a small table. Before him are several small piles of gold which he is counting out from a larger one before him. It is the money which Lewis Rand paid him for his complicity in the iniquitous scheme, the success of which has robbed Helen and her father of a princely inheritance.
Jacob’s eyes sparkled as they rested on the glittering coins before him, and in his heart, as in that of his employer on the day of his uncle’s death, there springs up the exulting thought: “And all this is mine.”
But while he is thus engaged, there is a footfall on the stairs, the step of one ascending slowly and with effort, but Jacob is too much absorbed in his pleasing employment to heed or hear it.
A moment afterwards, and through the half-open door a woman’s face is seen peering. Margaret’s face is thin and pale, the result of her recent exhausting illness, and there is a look of weariness besides, induced by the too great exertion of walking in her weakened state; but her eyes are painfully bright, and her expression pale, thin, and weary as she is, is one of stern determination.
“Seven hundred!” said Jacob, as he completed the seventh pile, and commenced another, unconscious of the eyes that were fixed upon him.