“Of course I will.  I will be quite patient, I promise you, whatever comes to me.”

When Harry woke, after a very troubled sleep, from which he had often started with sudden cries of terror, Hugh made him promise not to increase the confusion of the household, by speaking of what he had seen.  Harry promised at once, but begged in his turn that Hugh would not leave him all day.  It did not need the pale scared face of his pupil to enforce the request; for Hugh was already anxious lest the fright the boy had had, should exercise a permanently deleterious effect on his constitution.  Therefore he hardly let him out of his sight.

But although Harry kept his word, the cloud of perturbation gathered thicker in the kitchen and the servants’ hall.  Nothing came to the ears of their master and mistress; but gloomy looks, sudden starts, and sidelong glances of fear, indicated the prevailing character of the feelings of the household.

And although Lady Emily was not so ill, she had not yet taken a decided turn for the better, but appeared to suffer from some kind of low fever.  The medical man who was called in, confessed to Mrs. Elton, that as yet he could say nothing very decided about her condition, but recommended great quiet and careful nursing.  Margaret scarcely left her room, and the invalid showed far more than the ordinary degree of dependence upon her nurse.  In her relation to her, she was more like a child than an invalid.

About noon she was better.  She called Margaret and said to her: 

“Margaret, dear, I should like to tell you one thing that annoys me very much.”

“What is it, dear Lady Emily?”

“That man haunts me.  I cannot bear the thought of him; and yet I cannot get rid of him.  I am sure he is a bad man.  Are you certain he is not here?”

“Yes, indeed, my lady.  He has not been here since the day before yesterday.”

“And yet when you leave me for an instant, I always feel as if he were sitting in the very seat where you were the moment before, or just coming to the door and about to open it.  That is why I cannot bear you to leave me.”

Margaret might have confessed to some slighter sensations of the same kind; but they did not oppress her as they did Lady Emily.

“God is nearer to you than any thought or feeling of yours, Lady Emily.  Do not be afraid.  If all the evil things in the universe were around us, they could not come inside the ring that he makes about us.  He always keeps a place for himself and his child, into which no other being can enter.”

“Oh! how you must love God, Margaret!”

“Indeed I do love him, my lady.  If ever anything looks beautiful or lovely to me, then I know at once that God is that.”

“But, then, what right have we to take the good of that, however true it is, when we are not beautiful ourselves?”

“That only makes God the more beautiful —­ in that he will pour out the more of his beauty upon us to make us beautiful.  If we care for his glory, we shall be glad to believe all this about him.  But we are too anxious about feeling good ourselves, to rejoice in his perfect goodness.  I think we should find that enough, my lady.  For, if he be good, are not we his children, and sure of having it, not merely feeling it, some day?”