Maggie rushed up and kissed her.  “What is it; darling,” she asked; “what is wrong?  You look ill; your eyes have a strange expression.”

Annabel’s reply was scarcely audible.  The pain and torpor of her last short illness were already overmastering her.  Maggie was alarmed at the burning touch of her hand, but she had no experience to guide her and her own great joy to make her selfish.

“Annabel, look at me for a moment.  I have wonderful news to give you.”

Annabel’s eyes were closed, She opened them wide at this appeal for sympathy, stretched out her hand and pushed back a tangle of bright hair from Maggie’s brow.

“I love you, Maggie,” she said in that voice which had always power to thrill its listeners.

Maggie kissed her friend’s hand and pressed it to her own beating heart.  “I met Geoffrey Hammond today,” she said.  “He gave me a letter; I have read it.  Oh, Annabel, Annabel!  I can be good now.  No more bad half-hours, no more struggles with myself.  I can be very good now.”

With some slight difficulty Annabel Lee drew her hot hand away from Maggie’s fervent clasp; her eyes, slightly distended, were fixed on her friend’s face; the flush of fever left her cheeks; a hot flood of emotion seemed to press against her beating heart; she looked at Maggie with passionate longing.

“What is it?” she asked in a husky whisper.  “Why are you so glad, Maggie?  Why can you be good now?”

“Because I love Geoffrey Hammond,” answered Maggie; “I love him with all my heart, all my life, all my strength, and he loves me.  He has asked me to be his wife.”

Maggie paused.  She expected to feel Annabel’s arms round her neck; she waited impatiently for this last crowning moment of bliss.  Her own happiness caused her to lower her eyes; her joy was so dazzling that for a moment she felt she must shade their brilliance even from Annabel’s gaze.

Instead of the pressure of loving arms, however, and the warm kiss of sympathy, there came a low cry from the lips of the sick girl.  She made an effort to say something, but words failed her:  the next moment she was unconscious.  Maggie rushed to the bell and gave an alarm, which brought Miss Heath and one or two servants to the room.

A doctor was speedily sent for, and Maggie Oliphant was banished from the room.  She never saw Annabel Lee again.  That night the sick girl was removed to the hospital, which was in a building apart from the halls, and two days afterward she was dead.

Typhus fever was raging at Kingsdene at this time, and Annabel Lee had taken it in its most virulent form.  The doctors (and two or three were summoned) gave up all hope of saving her life from the first.  Maggie also gave up hope.  She accused herself of having caused her friend’s death.  She believed that the shock of her tidings had killed Annabel, who, already suffering from fever, had not strength to bear the agony of knowing that Hammond’s love was given to Maggie.