“What if you had never come back?”

“I wouldn’t think of that if I were you,” said Margaret softly.

“But it haunts me,—­that thought.  Sometimes of a morning, after I unlock the workshop door, I stand hesitating, with my hand on the latch, as one might hesitate a few seconds before stepping into a tomb.  There were days last month, Margaret, when this chamber did appear to me like a tomb.  All that was happy in my past seemed to lie buried here; it was something visible and tangible; I used to steal in and look upon it.”

“Oh, Richard!”

“If you only knew what a life I led as a boy in my cousin’s house, and what a doleful existence for years afterwards, until I found you, perhaps you would understand my despair when I saw everything suddenly slipping away from me.  Margaret! the day your father brought you in here, I had all I could do not to kneel down at your feet”—­Richard stopped short.  “I didn’t mean to tell you that,” he added, turning towards the work-table.  Then he checked himself, and came and stood in front of her again.  He had gone too far not to go further.  “While you were ill I made a great discovery.”

“What was that, Richard?”

“I discovered that I had been blind for two or three years.”

“Blind?” repeated Margaret.

“Stone-blind.  I discovered it by suddenly seeing—­by seeing that I had loved you all the while, Margaret!  Are you offended?”

“No,” said Margaret, slowly; she was a moment finding her voice to say it.  “I—­ought I to be offended?”

“Not if you are not!” said Richard.

“Then I am note.  I—­I’ve made little discoveries myself,” murmured Margaret, going into full mourning with her eyelashes.

But it was only for an instant.  She refused to take her happiness shyly or insincerely; it was something too sacred.  She was a trifle appalled by it, if the truth must be told.  If Richard had scattered his love-making through the month of her convalescence, or if he had made his avowal in a different mood, perhaps Margaret might have met him with some natural coquetry.  But Richard’s tone and manner had been such as to suppress any instinct of the kind.  His declaration, moreover, had amazed her.  Margaret’s own feelings had been more or less plain to her that past month, and she had diligently disciplined herself to accept Richard’s friendship, since it seemed all he had to give.  Indeed, it had seemed at times as if he had not even that.

When Margaret lifted her eyes to him, a second after her confession, they were full of a sweet seriousness, and she had no thought of withdrawing the hands which Richard had taken, and was holding lightly, that she might withdraw them if she willed.  She felt no impulse to do so, though as Margaret looked up she saw her father standing a few paces behind Richard.

With an occult sense of another presence in the room, Richard, turned at the same instant.