‘I am very selfish,’ said she; ‘but it will not be for long.’  Frederick bent down and kissed the feeble hand that imprisoned his.

This state of tranquillity could not endure for many days, nor perhaps for many hours; so Dr. Donaldson assured Margaret.  After the kind doctor had gone away, she stole down to Frederick, who, during the visit, had been adjured to remain quietly concealed in the back parlour, usually Dixon’s bedroom, but now given up to him.

Margaret told him what Dr. Donaldson said.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he exclaimed.  ’She is very ill; she may be dangerously ill, and in immediate danger, too; but I can’t imagine that she could be as she is, if she were on the point of death.  Margaret! she should have some other advice—­some London doctor.  Have you never thought of that?’

‘Yes,’ said Margaret, ’more than once.  But I don’t believe it would do any good.  And, you know, we have not the money to bring any great London surgeon down, and I am sure Dr. Donaldson is only second in skill to the very best,—­if, indeed, he is to them.’

Frederick began to walk up and down the room impatiently.

‘I have credit in Cadiz,’ said he, ’but none here, owing to this wretched change of name.  Why did my father leave Helstone?  That was the blunder.’

‘It was no blunder,’ said Margaret gloomily.  ’And above all possible chances, avoid letting papa hear anything like what you have just been saying.  I can see that he is tormenting himself already with the idea that mamma would never have been ill if we had stayed at Helstone, and you don’t know papa’s agonising power of self-reproach!’

Frederick walked away as if he were on the quarter-deck.  At last he stopped right opposite to Margaret, and looked at her drooping and desponding attitude for an instant.

‘My little Margaret!’ said he, caressing her.  ’Let us hope as long as we can.  Poor little woman! what! is this face all wet with tears?  I will hope.  I will, in spite of a thousand doctors.  Bear up, Margaret, and be brave enough to hope!’

Margaret choked in trying to speak, and when she did it was very low.

’I must try to be meek enough to trust.  Oh, Frederick! mamma was getting to love me so!  And I was getting to understand her.  And now comes death to snap us asunder!’

’Come, come, come!  Let us go up-stairs, and do something, rather than waste time that may be so precious.  Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life.  My theory is a sort of parody on the maxim of “Get money, my son, honestly if you can; but get money.”  My precept is, “Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something."’

‘Not excluding mischief,’ said Margaret, smiling faintly through her tears.

’By no means.  What I do exclude is the remorse afterwards.  Blot your misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a good deed, as soon as you can; just as we did a correct sum at school on the slate, where an incorrect one was only half rubbed out.  It was better than wetting our sponge with our tears; both less loss of time where tears had to be waited for, and a better effect at last.’