"My wedding-day!" murmured the girl, slipping from her couch and gazing through the lace-draped windows on the white world without. But at that moment a maid entered and she told Jessie Bain the story of the tragedy.
A thunder-bolt from a clear sky, the earth suddenly opening beneath her feet, could not have startled Jessie Bain more. A few minutes later she recovered her composure and hurried to Mrs. Varrick's room.
Mrs. Varrick reached out her hand to Jessie, and the next moment they were sobbing wildly in each other's arms. Little by little the girl's noble spirit in all its grandeur gained the ascendency. Slowly she turned to the housekeeper, who was sobbing over the fact that there was no one to take care of Hubert's wife, until a trained nurse the doctor had expected should arrive.
"She shall be my care," said Jessie, determinedly. "I will go to her at once; lead the way, please."
Who shall picture the dismay of Jessie when she looked upon the face of the woman who had come between her and the man she was to have wedded that day and found that it was the very creature whom she herself had sheltered—the girl whom she had known as Margaret Moore?
The doctor was greatly moved at the heroic stand Jessie Bain proposed to take in nursing her rival back to health and strength.
"Not one woman in a thousand would do it," he declared. "May Heaven bless you for it! Besides," he added in a low, grave voice, "you could serve poor Hubert Varrick in no better way than by restoring her. If she dies it will go hard indeed with young Varrick."
Jessie realized this but too well, and bent all her energies to nurse her back to health and strength, though what she suffered no one in this world could tell.
If Margaret recovered, she knew that she would go away with Hubert. He might not love her, but he would be obliged to live his whole life out with her. If she died, he would hang for it. Better that he should live, even with the other one, than die.
Her heart went out to Hubert Varrick in the bitterest of sorrow. She realized what he must be suffering. She would have flown to him on the wings of love, but she dared not.