nly remember in years to come, that your presence quieted her in
her last moments!"

I felt his sympathy and delicacy too strongly to thank him in words; I
could only _look_ my gratitude as he asked me to follow him up stairs.

We entered the room softly. Once more, and for the last time in this
world, I stood in the presence of Margaret Sherwin.

Not even to see her, as I had last seen her, was such a sight of misery
as to behold her now, forsaken on her deathbed, to look at her, as she
lay with her head turned from me, fretfully covering and uncovering her
face with the loose tresses of her long black hair, and muttering my
name incessantly in her fever-dream: "Basil! Basil! Basil! I'll never
leave off calling for him, till he comes. Basil! Basil! Where is he? Oh,
where, where, where!"

"He is here," said the doctor, taking the candle from my hand, and
holding it, so that the light fell full on my face. "Look at her and
speak to her as usual, when she turns round," he whispered to me.

Still she never moved; still those hoarse, fierce, quick tones--that
voice, once the music that my heart beat to; now the discord that it
writhed under--muttered faster and faster: "Basil! Basil! Bring him
here! bring me Basil!"

"He is here," repeated Mr. Bernard loudly. "Look! look up at him!"

She turned in an instant, and tore the hair back from her face. For a
moment, I forced myself to look at her; for a moment, I confronted the
smouldering fever in her cheeks; the glare of the bloodshot eyes;
the distortion of the parched lips; the hideous clutching of the
outstretched fingers at the empty air--but the agony of that sight was
more than I could endure: I turned away my head, and hid my face in
horror.

"Compose yourself," whispered the doctor. "Now she is quiet, speak to
her; speak to her before she begins again; call her by her name."

Her name! Could my lips utter it at such a moment as this?

"Quick! quick!" cried Mr. Bernard. "Try her while you have the chance."

I struggled against the memories of the past, and spoke to her--God
knows as gently, if not as happily, as in the bygone time!

"Margaret," I said, "Margaret, you asked for me, and I have come."

She tossed her arms above her head with a shrill scream, frightfully
prolonged till it ended in low moanings and murmurings; then turned her
face from us again, and pulled her hair over it once more.

"I am afraid she is too far gone," said the doctor; "but mak