“Aye, it is indeed,”

“I shall be dead soon, Margaret, and—­”

“Go to sleep, man, or at least lie still,” growled a Woode.  “What is the use of all my care and simples if you won’t do as I order you?”

“And you will ask the baron to forgive an old man’s follies, Margaret?” slowly pursued the father, between the gasps, quite heedless of the counsel given him to remain silent.

“I’ll stop this,” Sir Benedict broke in savagely, as he proceeded to tie the bandages on afresh.  “Father Philip, you shall be silent, or die you must.  That’s better,” he exclaimed, as his patient fell back unconscious.  “He will, perforce, be quiet now awhile, and we may safely remove him to his room.”

“Is he badly hurt, think you?” asked Margaret.

“I don’t think he will ever get better again,” Benedict gravely replied; “he is old, and it is a terrible wound.”

“Neither do I think he will weather it,” added Crowleigh; “I have seen men hurt like that before, fair Mistress Margaret, and we soldiers soon recognise the mark of death.”

Slowly and with great care the poor father was carried into the hall, and as soon as he was laid upon his bed, seeing that there were no signs of returning consciousness, Margaret and Dorothy quietly retired.

“Meg,” exclaimed the younger sister, with glistening eyes, as they sat in cheerless solitude before the blazing logs in their own room, “I have something to tell thee, and I shall mayhap want your aid ere I have done.”

She stopped short, to see if her sister had guessed her secret, but it was apparently undiscovered, so she went on.

“I don’t expect Lady Maude will be very willing; she always opposes us, does she not?”

“Sometimes,” said Margaret drily.

“He is not so rich as De la Zouch,” pursued Dorothy, “so I don’t think she will agree to it at first.”

“To what?  What do you mean?  Father Philip’s accident has turned your head, I verily believe,” replied her sister, as a terrible suspicion of the truth flashed into her imagination.

“Nay, Meg, dear, listen.  I have plighted my troth to-night.”

Margaret jumped from her seat as if stung, and her face turned livid with anger.

“What!” she exclaimed, “you have dared to plight your troth to Master Manners?”

“To John Manners, yes.”

Her voice was quiet and her bearing firm, nor was she half so agitated as her sister, a fact which Margaret was slow to understand.

“Speak fair, Dorothy,” she said, as she tried to persuade herself that she had misunderstood her meaning.  “None of your riddles for me.  You are joking, surely.”

“Nay, I am in earnest, Meg.  Ask him yourself; he will tell you whether I was joking an hour ago.  De la Zouch knows I would perish rather than be his countess.  I told him so myself.  And oh!  Meg, dear, I am so happy now, for I love John Manners so very, very much.”