“My darling husband,” she whispered, “I know it is all my fault, but you have forgiven me—you must not let me make you unhappy.”
“Oh,” he said, bitterly, “to think I have brought my wife to this that she should need to apologize to her own servants. But then they all know you are an angel.”
But she would not let him talk like this. What were his faults to her—was he not her husband? If he had ill-used her, would she not still have clung to him? “Dear, it is only because of your goodness and generosity that I am here now,” she said, kissing his hand; “you need not have looked for me, you know;” and then she made him smile by telling him of Ellerton’s quaint speeches; and after that he let himself be consoled.
Years afterward he told her, that the days that followed their return home were their real honey-moon, and she believed him; for they were never apart.
Bonnie Bess hailed her mistress with delight, and Fay resumed her old rides and drives; only her husband was always with her. Hugh found out, too, that her clear intelligence enabled her to enter into all his work, and after that he never carried out a plan without consulting her; so that Fay called herself the busiest and happiest little woman in the world.
* * * * * *
And what of Margaret?
In one of the most crowded courts of the East End of London there is a sister who is known by the name of “Our Sister,” though many patient, high-souled women belonging to the same fraternity work there too.
But “Our Sister” is, par excellence, the favorite, from the crippled little road-sweeper who was run over in Whitechapel Road to the old Irishwoman who sold oranges by day, and indulged in free fights with others of her sex at night. “And the heavens be her bed, for she is a darlint and an angel,” old Biddy would say; and it would be “tread on the tail of my coat”—for it was an Irish quarter—if any man or boy jostled “Our Sister” ever so lightly.
“Our Sister” used to smile at the fond credulity and blind worship of these poor creatures. She was quite unconscious that her pale, beautiful face, bending over them in sickness, was often mistaken for the face of an angel. “Will there be more like you up yonder?” exclaimed one poor girl, a Magdalene dying, thank God, at the foot of the Cross; “if so, I’ll be fine and glad to go.”