"Just at first he was rather vexed," she answered, "but Dr. Fergusson is very tactful; he inspires confidence. I think it will be all right now. And I have come back here to have some tea with you," she added brightly, seeing and understanding the old servant's anxious glances. "I am going to confess that I have been awake a great deal of the night, and tea will be very refreshing." She added these words, because she saw that the other woman would be more likely to drink her own tea, if she felt that Christina was really in need of the refreshment, and her surmise was right.
"Oh! but you must have your tea at once," the woman in the bed exclaimed. "I can't bear to think I have been keeping you awake; indeed, it is dreadful to think that you have all unwittingly come into my shadowed life," she added under her breath, whilst the girl seated herself beside the bed; and Elizabeth served them both.
"I am glad I have been able to help you," Christina said impulsively, when the servant softly left the room; "you don't know how glad I should be if I could do anything—to—make things easier for you," she ended rather lamely, but the admiration in her eyes was unmistakable, and the shapely white hand with its one ring, was laid on Christina's.
"You have helped me to-night more than you suppose," she said; "there is something very restful about your personality, little girl, do you know that? All night you have given me a feeling of rest and peace."
"I am glad," Christina answered, a light flashing into her eyes; "I believe I would rather be restful to people than anything else in the world."
"A rest-bringer," was the soft answer; "you will always be that, if you go on as you have begun. And, it is work worth doing—to bring rest to tired souls, to those who go through the vale of misery, who know—what pain means. Be a rest-bringer, little girl; you could not be anything better or sweeter."
Christina flushed vividly, partly at the words of praise, partly because, as they were spoken, a face rose before her mental vision, a man's face, lined and rugged, with marks of pain carved upon it, with a haunting look of pain in its grey eyes. And with that remembrance, came also a sudden impetuous wish that it might be given to her to bring rest to the man who was Lady Cicely's cousin, the man whose very name she did not know. She was startled out of the strange train of thought, by her companion's voice.
"I cannot imagine," she was saying, "why it is that your face and voice are in some odd way familiar to me, and yet you assure me we have never met before?"
"We have never met," Christina answered decidedly. "I could not have forgotten you if I had ever seen you—and oh!" she went on with an eager girlish gesture, "please mayn't I have some name to remember you by—not any name that—that you would rather I did not know," she added quickly, seeing an anxious look in the other's eyes; "only just something to keep in my thoughts of you."
"Call me—just—Margaret in your thoughts," was the answer; "that is one of my names; call me that."