“My darling, I don’t, I can’t despise you.  You shall not go to him.”

“But I must,” answered she, with a despairing faintness more convincing than any vehemence; and then began to weep with a slow, hopeless weeping, like the rain of a November eve.

Margaret got out of bed.  Euphra thought she was offended.  Starting up, she clasped her hands, and said: 

“Oh Margaret!  I won’t cry.  Don’t leave me.  Don’t leave me.”

She entreated like a chidden child.

“No, no, I didn’t mean to leave you for a moment.  Lie down again, dear, and cry as much as you like.  I am going to read a little bit out of the New Testament to you.”

“I am afraid I can’t listen to it.”

“Never mind.  Don’t try.  I want to read it.”

Margaret got a New Testament, and read part of that chapter of St. John’s Gospel which speaks about human labour and the bread of life.  She stopped at these words: 

“For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.”

Euphra’s tears had ceased.  The sound of Margaret’s voice, which, if it lost in sweetness by becoming more Scotch when she read the Gospel, yet gained thereby in pathos, and the power of the blessed words themselves, had soothed the troubled spirit a little, and she lay quiet.

“The count is not a good man, Miss Cameron?”

“You know he is not, Margaret.  He is the worst man alive.”

“Then it cannot be God’s will that you should go to him.”

“But one does many things that are not God’s will.”

“But it is God’s will that you should not go to him.”

Euphra lay silent for a few moments.  Suddenly she exclaimed: 

“Then I must not go to him,” —­ got out of bed, threw herself on her knees by the bedside, and holding up her clasped hands, said, in low tones that sounded as if forced from her by agony: 

“I won’t!  I won’t!  O God, I will not.  Help me, help me!”

Margaret knelt beside her, and put her arm round her.  Euphra spoke no more, but remained kneeling, with her extended arms and clasped hands lying on the bed, and her head laid between them.  At length Margaret grew alarmed, and looked at her.  But she found that she was in a sweet sleep.  She gently disengaged herself, and covering her up soft and warm, left her to sleep out her God-sent sleep undisturbed, while she sat beside, and watched for her waking.

She slept thus for an hour.  Then lifting her head, and seeing Margaret, she rose quietly, as if from her prayers, and said with a smile: 

“Margaret, I was dreaming that I had a mother.”

“So you have, somewhere.”

“Yes, so I have, somewhere,” she repeated, and crept into bed like a child, lay down, and was asleep again in a moment.

Margaret watched her for another hour, and then seeing no signs of restlessness, but that on the contrary her sleep was profound, lay down beside her, and soon shared in that repose which to weary women and men is God’s best gift.