"I have been ill—very ill, but I'm better. I shall be well, now you have come."
"I thought you were dying," he said, a little resentfully, thinking that he had been hurried away from Margaret for nothing.
"I should have died if you hadn't come," she answered. "Sit down—there," and she signed to a chair close to the sofa.
"Where's Mrs. Lakeman?" he asked, looking round uneasily.
"She has one of her bad attacks of neuralgia. You are glad to come to us?" She turned up her great eyes almost imploringly at him.
"Yes; but I don't understand." He looked out at the glen beneath the windows, and followed the course of the stream with his eyes. "That sort of telegram shouldn't be sent without a good deal of reason."
"But I have been very ill, Tom, dear; and I have wanted you so." She held out her hands; he looked at her uneasily, but he did not take them. Somehow her manner was different from the one to which he was accustomed, and a misgiving, he did not know of what, rose in his heart. "I felt that no one else could make me well," she added, in a pathetic voice.
"Good! We'll see what can be done. Now, are you going to give me some breakfast?"
"It will be here directly. Tell me about naughty little Margaret. Is her lover with her?"
"Why, of course not; I have just come away."