“Please find the nurse and send her to Sir Hugh,” she said, hurriedly, “and tell Ford I want him to take a note over to Sandycliffe,” and then she went into the library and wrote a few words.
”Dear Miss Ferrers,—My husband wishes to see you; will you come to him at once? He thinks that he is very ill, and can not live, and he wishes to bid you goodbye. He has told me the reason, and it is quite right, and I hope you will come, for I can not bear to see him fret.”
And then she remembered that she had not ordered the pony-carriage, and that Ford would be saddling one of the horses; so she rang for Ellerton, and made him understand very carefully, that Ford was to drive over to the Grange and take the note, and that he must wait and bring Miss Ferrers back with him. “For you must know, Ellerton,” she said, with pathetic dignity, but not looking at the old servant, “that Sir Hugh feels himself worse, and wants to say good-bye to his old friend;” “for of course,” thought Fay, when Ellerton had left the library with tears in his eyes, “if Hugh and she were engaged, all the servants must know, and it was better for me to speak out like that.”
When Margaret read that poor little note the tears fell fast and blotted the page. “Thank God she knows at last,” she said to herself as she folded it up, and then hurriedly prepared to obey the summons.
She hoped that she would not see Lady Redmond before that parting with Hugh were over, for she needed all her strength for that; and to her great relief only Ellerton received her. She was ushered for a few minutes into the empty drawing-room, and then Sir Hugh’s nurse came down to her, and said Dr. Martin had just left the house, and her master would see Miss Ferrers now.
And there was no one in the sick-room when she entered it, though the nurse had told her that she would be in the dressing-room within call. There was no one to see the flash of joy in the sick man’s eyes, when Margaret’s cold lips touched his forehead, or to hear his low “Margaret, darling,” that greeted her.
But when she had looked in his face she knew he would not die, and that her work was before her; and while poor weak Hugh panted out words of passionate longing and despair, she was girding up her strength for what she had to say, and praying for help that she might be able to comfort him.
And no one knew what passed between them but their guardian angels; only Hugh’s miserable selfish passion sunk down abashed as he listened to this brave sweet woman who was not ashamed to tell him how she loved him, and how she would love him to her life’s end. And as he saw into the depths of that pure heart, its stainless purity, its unrepining sorrow, he trembled and was silent.
“What am I that I should touch even the hem of her garment?” he said to himself afterward.
And she told him what he had never guessed, that were he free she would never marry him or any man, for in her trouble long ago she had vowed herself to Heaven; and with a few forcible words she showed him the plan and purpose of her future life—when Raby should have ceased to need her; drawing such calm pictures of a tender ministry and a saintly sisterhood, that Hugh, looking at her with dazzled eyes, thought he could almost discern a faint halo round her head.