t with a
steadfast light in her eyes, the girl stepped down, received her
father's kiss, and went straight to her mother, waiting in the doorway.

"I am glad--glad you have come, my darling!" said the mother. "While you
are here I can give everything up. But, my love, this is not what we
planned!"

"No, my dearest," said the girl, "but that is of no consequence. I wish
I had known sooner how much, how very much, I was wanted at home!"

"But you will not be a Professor of Greek!" said the mother that night.
It was all arranged for the operation, which was to take place in a
week's time, the surgeons to come from the nearest town. The mother was
brave, gay, heroic. Margaret looked at her, wondering that one under the
shadow of death could laugh and talk so brightly.

"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