Margery did not reply for the moment: she was swelling with displeasure.
“Margery, what is atrophy, for I don’t understand it a bit?”
“It’s rubbish,” flashed Margery—“as applied to my poor dear mistress. She has died of the trouble—that she couldn’t speak of—that has eaten into her heart and cankered there—and broke it at the last. Atrophy! but those doctors must put a name to everything. Jean, woman, I have been with her all through it, and I tell you that it’s the trouble that has killed her. She has had it on all sides, has felt it in more ways than the world gives her credit for. She never opened her lips to me about a thing—and perhaps it had been better if she had—but I have my eyes in my head, and I could see what it was doing for her. As I lay down in my clothes on this very sofa last night, for it wasn’t up to my bed I went, with her so ill, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, that if she could but have broken the ice and talked of her sorrows they might have worn off in time. It is burying the grief within people’s own breasts that kills them.”
Jean was silent. Margery began turning the grounds in her empty tea-cup round and round, staring dreamily at the forms they assumed.
“Hark!” cried Jean.
A sound was heard in the next room. Margery started from her chair and softly opened the door. But it was only her master, who had gone round the bed and was leaning over Meta. Margery closed the door again.
George had come to the conclusion that the child would be best in bed. Meta was lying perfectly still, looking earnestly at her mamma’s face, so soon, so soon to be lost to her. He drew the hair from her brow as he spoke.
“You will be very tired, Meta. I think you must go to bed.”
For answer Meta broke into a passionate storm of sobs. They roused Maria from her passive silence.
“Meta—darling,” came forth the isolated words in the difficulty of her laboured breath—“I am going away, but you will come to me. You will be sure to come to me, for God has promised. I seem to have had the promise given to me, to hold it, now, and I shall carry it away with me. I am going to heaven. When the blind was drawn up yesterday morning and I saw the snow, it made me shiver, but I said there will be no snow in heaven. Meta, there will be only spring there; no sultry heat of summer, no keen winter’s cold. Oh, my child! try to come to me, try always! I shall keep a place for you.”