“Pray believe that I feel deeply what a sacrifice you are making.  Since I wrote to you, much that she has said in her delirium has told me”—­(he hesitated)—­“has told me more, I am afraid, than you would wish me to have known, as a comparative stranger to you.  I will only say, that secrets unconsciously disclosed on the death-bed are secrets sacred to me, as they are to all who pursue my calling; and that what I have unavoidably heard above stairs, is doubly sacred in my estimation, as affecting a near and dear relative of one of my oldest friends.”  He paused, and took my hand very kindly; then added:  “I am sure you will think yourself rewarded for any trial to your feelings to-night, if you can only remember in years to come, that your presence quieted her in her last moments!”

I felt his sympathy and delicacy too strongly to thank him in words; I could only look my gratitude as he asked me to follow him up stairs.

We entered the room softly.  Once more, and for the last time in this world, I stood in the presence of Margaret Sherwin.

Not even to see her, as I had last seen her, was such a sight of misery as to behold her now, forsaken on her deathbed, to look at her, as she lay with her head turned from me, fretfully covering and uncovering her face with the loose tresses of her long black hair, and muttering my name incessantly in her fever-dream:  “Basil!  Basil!  Basil!  I’ll never leave off calling for him, till he comes.  Basil!  Basil!  Where is he?  Oh, where, where, where!”

“He is here,” said the doctor, taking the candle from my hand, and holding it, so that the light fell full on my face.  “Look at her and speak to her as usual, when she turns round,” he whispered to me.

Still she never moved; still those hoarse, fierce, quick tones—­that voice, once the music that my heart beat to; now the discord that it writhed under—­muttered faster and faster:  “Basil!  Basil!  Bring him here! bring me Basil!”

“He is here,” repeated Mr. Bernard loudly.  “Look! look up at him!”

She turned in an instant, and tore the hair back from her face.  For a moment, I forced myself to look at her; for a moment, I confronted the smouldering fever in her cheeks; the glare of the bloodshot eyes; the distortion of the parched lips; the hideous clutching of the outstretched fingers at the empty air—­but the agony of that sight was more than I could endure:  I turned away my head, and hid my face in horror.

“Compose yourself,” whispered the doctor.  “Now she is quiet, speak to her; speak to her before she begins again; call her by her name.”

Her name!  Could my lips utter it at such a moment as this?

“Quick! quick!” cried Mr. Bernard.  “Try her while you have the chance.”

I struggled against the memories of the past, and spoke to her—­God knows as gently, if not as happily, as in the bygone time!

“Margaret,” I said, “Margaret, you asked for me, and I have come.”