A new idea had been awakened in Margaret’s mind, and for the first time she thought how much her sister really had changed.  Carrie, who was four years younger than Margaret, had ever been delicate, and her parents had always feared that not long could they keep her; but though each winter her cough had returned with increased severity, though the veins on her white brow grew more distinct, and her large, blue eyes glowed with unwonted luster, still Margaret had never before dreamed of danger, never thought that soon her sister’s voice would be missed, and that Carrie would be gone.  But she thought of it now, and laying her head upon the table wept for a time in silence.

At length, drying her tears, she folded her letter and took it to the post-office.  As she was returning home she was met by a servant, who exclaimed, “Run, Miss Margaret, run; your mother is dying, and Mrs. Carter sent me for you!”

Swift as the mountain chamois, Margaret sped up the long, steep hill, and in a few moments stood within her mother’s sick-room.  Supported in the arms of Mrs. Carter lay the dying woman, while her eyes, already overshadowed with the mists of coming death, wandered anxiously around the room, as if in quest of some one.  The moment Margaret appeared, a satisfied smile broke over her wasted features, and beckoning her daughter to her bedside, she whispered, “Dear Maggie, you did not think I’d die so soon, when you went away.”

A burst of tears was Maggie’s only answer, as she passionately kissed the cold, white lips, which had never breathed aught to her save words of love and gentleness.  Far different, however, would have been her reply had she known the reason of her mother’s question.  Not long after she had left the house for the office, Mrs. Hamilton had been taken worse, and the physician, who chanced to be present, pronounced her dying.  Instantly the alarmed husband summoned together his household, but Mag was missing.  No one had seen her; no one knew where she was, until Mrs. Carter, who had been some little time absent from the room reentered it, saying “Margaret had started for the post-office with a letter when I sent a servant to tell her of her mother’s danger, but for some reason she kept on, though I dare say she will soon be back.”

As we well know, the substance of this speech was true, though the impression which Mrs. Carter’s words conveyed was entirely false.  For the advancement of her own cause she felt that it was necessary to weaken the high estimation in which Mr. Hamilton held his daughter, and she fancied that the mother’s death-bed was as fitting a place where to commence operations as she could select.

As Margaret hung over her mother’s pillow, the false woman, as if to confirm the assertion she had made, leaned forward and said, “Robin told you, I suppose?  I sent him to do so.”