Faithful Margaret. Mrs. J. M. Simpson

She was dying—good old Ethel Brand, the mistress for half a century of the hoary castle which stood like an ancient cathedral in the midst of the noble estate in Surrey, Seven-Oak Waaste.

No need now of these whispering attendants, and that anxious little physician; she would not trouble them more. No need for these grim medicine vials, marshaled upon the little table near her couch; she was past mortal needs or mortal help; her face, set in cold repose, seemed glistening with supernal light, while waiting for the fatal kiss of death.

And over her bent a woman, breathless, pulseless, motionless, as if carved from stone, listening, with straining ear, for each slow, rattling breath; watching, with great, glistening eyes, for each darkening shadow over the noble face—Margaret Walsingham.

No high-born dame was she; no fortunate next-of-kin, watching with decorous lament for the moment of emancipation from her weary wait for a dead woman's shoes. Only Mrs. Brand's poor companion, Margaret Walsingham.

Four years had she ministered to the whims, the caprices, the erratic impulses of that most erratic of all creations, an eccentric old woman; and exalting the good which she found, and pardoning the frailties she could not blind her eyes to, her presence had become a sweet necessity to the world-weary dowager, who repaid it by unceasing exactions and doting outbursts of gratitude; and there had been much love between these two.

Paler waxed the high patrician face, darker grew the violet circles beneath her heavy eyes.

Margaret clasped her hands convulsively.

"Will she go before seven?" whispered she.

Old Dr. Gay stooped low and listened to the labored inspiration.

"Going—going fast," he said, with faltering lips.

A wail burst from the crowd of servants standing by the door; sobs and tears attested to the love they had borne their dying mistress.

"Hush!" whispered Margaret. "Do not awake her."

"They'll never wake her more," said Dr. Gay, mournfully.

She turned at that with terror in her eyes; she laid a small, strong hand upon the doctor's arm and clung to it convulsively.

"She must live to see St. Udo Brand," said she, in a low, thrilling voice. "She must, I tell you—it is her dearest, her last wish—it is my most earnest prayer. Surely you will not let her die before that wish is fulfilled?"

She gazed with passionate entreaty in the little doctor's face, and her voice rose into a wail at the last words. He regarded her with helpless sympathy and shook his head.

"She can't live half an hour longer," said Dr. Gay. "She'll not see St. Udo Brand."

A fierce shudder seized Margaret Walsingham from head to foot. The blood forsook her lips, the light her eyes—she stood silent, the picture of heart-sick despair.

She had often appealed to Dr. Gay's admiration by her faithfulness, her kindness, her timidly masked self-sacrifices; she appealed straight to his heart now by her patient suffering, unconscious as he was of its cause.

"I will do what I can to keep up her strength," he said, approaching the bed to gaze anxiously again at the slumberer. "I will try another stimulant, if I can only get her to swallow it. Perhaps the London train may be here by that time."

"Thank you! oh, thank you!" murmured Margaret; gratefully. "You little know the desperate need there is for Mrs. Brand seeing her grandson before she dies."

Tears welled to her eloquent eyes, her lips trembled distressfully, she waved the servants from the room and followed them out.

"Symonds, I wish you to hasten immediately to Regis for Mr. Davenport, the lawyer," said she, when she had dismissed the other servants down stairs. "Give him this note and drive him back here as quickly as you can drive."

She dropped her note into the groom's hand, and watched him from the oriel hall window, as he hurried from the court below, out into the deepening twilight, from the road which went to the pretty little village of Regis, some two miles distant.

She stood in the waning light, watching for the lawyer's coming, and her thoughts were wild and bitter.

She had a doom to confront, as terrible to her as unsought martyrdom is to the quailing victim of a blinded hate; a doom from which she fain would court grim death himself if he would open his gates to let her escape; a humiliating and revolting doom from which she recoiled with vehement dislike, every nerve in her high-strung frame quivering with horror.

Ethel Brand had ever been capricious in her life, but of all the mad, impulsive freaks which her lonely heart had led her into, her last caprice was the most ill-advised, the most disastrous.

Margaret Walsingham had answered Mrs. Brand's advertisement for a companion four years previously, when she was a pale, timid girl of twenty, clad in orphan's weeds, and scarce lifting her deep, earnest eyes to the inquisitive gaze of her patroness; but her quiet, grave, soulful character had strangely fascinated the haughty old lady, and from the humble post which she had gone to Castle Brand to fill, she quickly rose to be the prime object of all its mistress' dreams, to be beloved, and indulged, and admired as no living mortal had ever been by that closely-guarded heart, save St. Udo Brand. Margaret Walsingham was a sea-captain's daughter. Up to her twelfth year she had sailed the seas in his ship and looked to him for society; and not till then was she sent on shore to be educated. Still the stout captain had been ambitious for his daughter, and had taken care that her education, when it did commence, should be thorough, comprehensive and elegant in all its branches; so that when after eight years of ceaseless learning on her part, and ceaseless voyaging on his, he proposed going home to England and retiring with his daughter upon a handsome fortune, she was well fitted to adorn the society he intended to surround her with. But the ill-starred captain went down in a Biscay gale when also within sight of home, and with him went his whole life's savings, leaving his Margaret fatherless, homeless and fortuneless.

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