For as gold is tried by fire,
A heart must be tried by pain.
Adelaide Anne Procter.
“Oh, my lady, what will Doctor Martin say?” exclaimed Mrs. Heron, as she almost lifted her young mistress on to the couch, and stood over her rubbing her cold hands. It was a warm April evening, but Fay was shivering and her teeth chattering as though with cold.
“What does it matter what he says?” returned Fay; the girl’s lips were white, and there was still a scared look in her eyes. “Is that why they would not let me see him—because they have cut off his hair and made him look so unlike himself, and because he talks so strangely?”
“Yes, my lady, and for your own good, and because—” but Fay interrupted her excitedly.
“My good? as though anything could do me good while my darling husband suffers so cruelly. Oh, Mrs. Heron, would you believe it? he did not know me; he looked as though he were afraid of me, his own wife: he told me to go away and not touch him, and to send Margaret. Oh,” with a sort of restless despair in her voice, “who is this Margaret of whom he always speaks?”
Mrs. Heron’s comely face paled a little with surprise—as she told Ellerton afterward, she felt at that moment as though a feather would have knocked her down. “My heart was in my mouth,” she observed, feelingly, “when I heard the pretty creature say those words, ‘who is this Margaret of whom he always speaks?’ Oh, I was all in a tremble when I heard her, and then all at once I remembered Miss Joyce, and it came to me as a sort of inspiration.”
“Do you know who he means?” continued Fay, languidly.
“Indeed, my lady, there is no telling,” returned the good housekeeper, cautiously; “it is often the case with people in fever that they forget all about the present, and just go back to past days; and so it may be Sir Hugh thinks about the little sister who died when he was a lad at school, and of whom he was so fond.”