Poor Margaret's head sank on her breast, her heart grew heavy as lead. Her last supplications had been made, and vainly. Death was stealing closer to his feeble victim.
Where, where was St. Udo Brand that he came not in time to save her and himself from this fatal chain which his grandmother's death was to rivet round them both?
The trampling of horses hoofs reached her ear. She started to her feet and listened breathlessly. Yes, through the still April eve stole those welcome sounds, nearer and clearer. An arrival at Castle Brand.
Margaret took her dying friend in her arms and tenderly kissed her cold, trembling mouth, and laid her on her pillow again.
"Captain Brand has arrived," said she, softly. "I shall bring him in at once."
She stepped to the doctor's side—he was still stirring the stimulant with a nervous hand.
"Give it to her quickly," she whispered; "the heir has come."
She left the chamber, her pulses throbbed with a vague sense of evil, her limbs seemed heavy as lead; and as she crept down the great vaulted staircase, lit by pale, flickering tapers, she thought that her own tall shadow writhed and shuddered before her like the phantom of a deadly tear.
The great hall-door stood open, the servants were waiting decorously in the hall to greet the heir, and Purcell, the old steward, stood out on the threshold bare-headed, his silvery locks glistening in the broad moon's light.
Margaret Walsingham stepped beside him and eagerly looked for St. Udo Brand.