"No. I will be something better," she said, tenderly. "I will be your nurse, your comfort if I can. If I had only known, there are many things better than Greek that I might have learned!"
Hilox did not get its Greek professor, but the culture of Mount Seward was not wasted. Mrs. Lee lived years, often in anguish unspeakable, relieved by intervals of peace and freedom from pain. The daughter became almost the mother in their intercourse as time passed, and the bloom on her cheek paled sooner than on her mother's in the depth of her sympathy. But the end came at last, and the suffering life went out with a soft sigh, as a child falls asleep.
On a little shelf in Margaret's room her old text-books, seldom opened, are souvenirs of her busy life at college. Her hand has learned the cunning which concocts dainty dishes and lucent jellies; her housekeeping and her hospitality are famous. She is a bright talker, witty, charming, with the soft inflections which make the vibrant tunefulness of the Virginian woman's voice so tender and sweet a thing in the ear. Mount Seward is to her the Mecca of memory. If ever she has a daughter she will send her there, and—who knows?—that girl may be professor at Hilox.
For though Margaret is not absent from her own household, she is not long to be Margaret Lee. The wedding-cake is made, and is growing rich and firm as it awaits the day when the bride will cut it. The wedding-gown is ordered. Dr. Angus has proposed at last; he had never thought of wooing or winning any one except the fair girl who caught his fancy and his heart ten years ago, and when Margaret next visits her New England relations it will be to present her husband.
The professor, who had been her most dearly beloved friend during those happy college days, her confidante and model, said to one who recalled Margaret Lee and spoke of her as "a great disappointment, my dear:"
"Yes, we expected her to make a reputation for herself and Mount Seward. She has done better. She has been enabled to do her duty in the station to which it has pleased God to call her—a good thing for any girl graduate, it seems to me."