how to help her, and then to see her reviving; and you have been kind, too," she added, as a faint colour came into her cheek, "and I believe you told Mrs. Dorriman. Indirectly we owe it to you, and I am grateful to you."

He was thrown off his guard.

"Margaret," he said, hoarsely, "would it pain you to owe it all to me? If your letter is to thank Mrs. Dorriman then do not send it for I never wrote to her. Those things and the attendance you think so much of, trifles in themselves, are really for you from me. I would die to serve you! These seem but little things."

Margaret, startled and alarmed, looked at him with dismay and even terror in her face; she felt as though the meshes of a net were being drawn together and that she was being suddenly made to feel all efforts at escape were powerless.

Mr. Drayton still watched her keenly. Would this avowal help him or keep her further from him?

"How can I thank you?" she said at last, with white and trembling lips.

"You know how. Do not speak, for if you spoke just now you might destroy all my hopes of happiness. I know," he said, bitterly, "that not only you do not love me but that you positively shrink from being under any obligation to me. But, Margaret, think it over. I am ready to do all I can, and you have no one else. I would be content to love you; I do not expect that a young and beautiful girl like you can return my passion."

He stopped short. Margaret sat silent, cold as a very statue.

"Think it over," he repeated, and his voice was full of pathos and passion. "And, when you have decided, send me one word, come. Till then I will leave you in peace."

He rose and left her, and the poor child sat on with the dazed feeling of helplessness that sometimes follows the news of some great calamity, hardly able to think, her head in a perfect whirl.

She was roused by the nurse, who told her her sister wanted her.

Then one ray of hope came to her; she would speak of it to Grace; she thought, now Grace was better and more capable of forming an opinion, she would herself wish to prevent this way of escape and that she would think of going back and propose it. She went to her, into the larger room Mr. Drayton had insisted upon her having, and went up to the sofa where Grace lay placid, surrounded by flowers and things he had sent her.

"Grace," she said, kneeling by her and looking in her sister's face with a world of protest and anxiety in her eyes, "when you are quite well again you would not mind giving up luxuries. When you are really yourself again you will not fear poverty?"

"Margaret, what do you mean?" exclaimed Grace, in agitated tones; "these things, as you call them, are necessities to me now."

"But, if to have them, Grace, I was forced to do something I very much hate doing, that would spoil my life for always; you would do without things when you are well, Grace? And we might go back."

"You may do what you like, Margaret, just as you choose, but I never will go back to that odious man and that detestable place."