The clamor of the bell in the South Church striking noon, and the shrilling of the steam-whistle softened by the thick-falling snow, roused Richard from his abstraction.  He was surprised that it was noon.  He rose from the bench and went home through the storm, scarcely heeding the sleet that snapped in his face like whip-lashes.  Margaret was going to die!

For four or five seeks the world was nearly a blank to Richard Shackford.  The insidious fever that came and went, bringing alternate despair and hope to the watchers in the hushed room, was in his veins also.  He passed the days between his lonely lodgings in Lime Street and the studio, doing nothing, restless and apathetic by turns, but with always a poignant sense of anxiety.  He ceased to take any distinct measurement of time further than to note that an interval of months seemed to separate Monday from Monday.  Meanwhile, if new patterns had been required by the men, the work in the carving departments would have come to a dead lock.

At length the shadow lifted, and there fell a day of soft May weather when Margaret, muffled in shawls and as white as death, was seated once more in her accustomed corner by the west window.  She had insisted on being brought there the first practicable moment; nowhere else in the house was such sunshine, and Mr. Slocum himself had brought her in his arms.  She leaned back against the pillows, smiling faintly.  Her fingers lay locked on her lap, and the sunlight showed through the narrow transparent palace.  It was as if her hands were full of blush-roses.

Richard breathed again, but not with so free a heart as before.  What if she had died?  He felt an immense pity for himself when he thought of that, and he thought of it continually as the days wore on.

Either a great alteration had wrought itself in Margaret, or Richard beheld her through a clearer medium during the weeks of convalescence that followed.  Was this the slight, sharp-faced girl he used to know?  The eyes and the hair were the same; but the smile was deeper, and the pliant figure had lost its extreme slimness without a sacrifice to its delicacy.  The spring air was filling her veins with abundant health, and mantling her cheeks with a richer duskiness than they had ever worn.  Margaret was positively handsome.  Her beauty had come all in a single morning, like the crocuses.  This beauty began to awe Richard; it had the effect of seeming to remove her further and further from him.  He grew moody and restless when they were together, and was wretched alone.  His constraint did not escape Margaret.  She watched him, and wondered at his inexplicable depression when every one in the household was rejoicing in her recovery.  By and by this depression wounded her, but she was too spirited to show the hurt.  She always brought a book with her now, in her visits to the studio; it was less awkward to read than to sit silent and unspoken to over a piece of needle-work.