An hour later a little note was brought to Margaret. It ran:
"Dearest,—I am at Stringer's house, and have just heard. I know how unhappy you must be, and there isn't anything to say except that I love you, which you know already. I am glad I saw her. Send for me when you can see me; I shall be waiting here. Your devoted
"Tom."
And so that trouble was lifted from Margaret's heart; but her tears fell fast while she read the letter.
"If mother were only here," she thought, "and I can't bear to tell Hannah, for she has nothing in her life—nothing to look forward to. Towsey!" she said, going into the kitchen. Towsey gave a start; she was almost asleep. Margaret sat down on her lap, as she had often done years ago when she was a little girl, and she put her arms round Towsey's neck, and cried for a minute or two softly on her shoulder. "I want you to tell me something," she said, when she looked up; "are you sure that mother smiled when she had the telegram that last day she was alive?"
"Ay, that she did," said Towsey; "it didn't hold much, but she seemed to read a great deal into it, somehow."
"Thank God! She must have known. It was from Mr. Carringford, Towsey."
"Yes, I know," said Towsey, "and she thought how it'd be."
It was almost more than Margaret could bear. "If I had only not gone away," she cried, "mother, dear!—mother, dear!"
Mr. Vincent, to call him by his old name, did not return nearly so soon as he might have done. There were his brother's affairs to wind up, he said, and his brother's wife to settle down in a house at Melbourne. Perhaps he dreaded returning to the farm alone. At any rate, he made excuses, and it was nearly four months before he wrote that in another fortnight he would set sail.