I meant to tell you, I always meant to tell
you, but I did not like to grieve you by what was over and gone; but I
am dying--God knows I can not live in this weakness--let me see
Margaret once, and bid her goodbye before I go."

Ah, there was no doubt now! slowly, but surely, the color faded out of
the sweet face.

If he had raised that helpless arm of his, and felled her to the
ground, she could not have felt so stunned and bruised and giddy as
she stood there, winding and unwinding the fringe of the quilt between
her cold fingers, with that strange filmy look in her eyes.

She understood it now. The arrow so feebly winged had sped to the
depths of that innocent heart, and what she would not have believed if
an angel had told it her, she had heard from her husband's lips.

Margaret was beloved and not she, and Fay must bear it and live.

And the fair child-face grew whiter and whiter, but she only took the
nerveless hands in hers and kissed them.

"Do not fret, Hugh, it shall be as you wish," she said, in a voice so
low that he only just heard her, for a sobbing breath seemed to impede
her utterance; "it shall be as you wish, my dear husband," and then,
not trusting herself to look at him, she left the room.

In the corridor she met Saville.

"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 Ma