"The New Mistress" (continued 6)

She knew that there had been the three gentlemen visitors to the school while she was absent upon the previous afternoon, and though it was possible that they might have been down to speak to her respecting her failure of trust, her heart told her that it was not; and now her mother’s strong desire to leave the place seemed to have come upon her in turn, and she felt that she would give anything to be a hundred miles away from Plumton and at peace.

She tried to win forgetfulness by devoting herself to the various classes, but in vain; every step she heard seemed to be a visitor coming to ask her about the money not paid, and every subject she took up suggested the notes now lying in her pocket.

Twice over she went to her desk and there wrote a brief letter of thanks to Mr William Forth Burge, but she tore it up directly; and she dared not write one to George Canninge, nor yet to the vicar, from whom she was sure the other amounts had come.

Just in the middle of one of her greatest fits of depression there was a knock at the door, and she dreaded that it might be the vicar, while if it had been George Canninge she felt that she dared not have faced him.

Her heart gave a throb of relief as she heard the familiar tones of Mr William Forth Burge, and the next throb was one of gratitude as she knew that he had had the delicacy to bring his sister with him. Then there was a depressing feeling as she felt that they would show by their manner how displeased and disappointed they were at her breach of trust.

Here she was wrong again, for her visitors’ greeting was warm in the extreme, and with the reaction a sensation of oppression robbed her of the power of speech; while had she not tried hard she would have burst into a passionate flood of tears.

“We were so sorry to hear of your bad headache, my dear,” said little Miss Burge affectionately, “and really I don’t think you ought to be here now. Your poor eyes look as red as red, and you are quite pale and feverish.”

“So she is,” said Mr William Forth Burge. “Why, Betsey, there ought to be a holiday, so that Miss Thorne could take a day or two’s rest.”

“No, no, Mr Burge; I am better,” said Hazel, speaking excitedly; for the kindly consideration of these people had taken away all resentment, all pride, and she felt that she was with friends. “Mr William Forth Burge—”

“No, no; plain Mr Burge or William Burge to me, Miss Thorne. I don’t want a long name from you.”

“Mr Burge—Miss Burge, yesterday I could not have spoken to you upon this subject, but your kindness—”

“There, there, there; don’t say a word about it,” he replied quickly. “I know all, and it was an accident.”

“An accident?”

“Yes, my dear,” broke in little Miss Burge. “Bill talked it over to me last night, and—Now, you won’t be offended, my dear?”

“Nothing you could say would offend me,” cried Hazel eagerly.

“No, of course not, my dear. Well, my brother said to me, ‘depend upon it, Betsey, her poor ma wanted the money for housekeeping or something, and just used it. That’s all.’”

“And he has humiliated me by this letter that I received by post.”

“Don’t call it humiliation, my dear,” cried Miss Burge; “it was only sent out of civility to you as one of our neighbours whom we like, and that’s what it means.”

Hazel hesitated for a few moments, and then, in her loneliness and isolation, she clung to the hands outstretched to help her.

“Mr Burge—Miss Burge, I am so lonely and helpless here. You have heard about the school pence, but I cannot tell you why the amount was wanting. Give me your help and counsel.”

“Then will you let me help you?”

“I shall be most grateful if you will,” cried Hazel.

“Hullo!” shouted Burge, staring up at the partition. “What are you a-doing there?”

“The shutter slipped down a little, sir,” said Mr Chute loudly. “Trying to close it, sir. That’s it!” and the shutter closed with a snap.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said Mr William Forth Burge angrily. “I don’t know as that is it, Mr Chute.” But Mr Chute had by this time fastened the shutter, and had descended from his coign of vantage, looking very red and feeling terribly mortified at having been detected. “He was listening; that’s about what he was doing.”

There was a buzz of excitement amongst the children, but it subsided directly, and Hazel placed at a venture the envelope which she believed to have come from her visitor in his hands.

“You sent that to me, Mr Burge,” said Hazel firmly.

“Well, it was me, as you know, Miss Thorne; and you won’t hurt our feelings by refusing it, will you?”

“I could not take it, sir; but I do appreciate your goodness all the same. Now help me to decide who sent me these letters.”

Hazel’s visitors looked at each other, then at the envelopes, and then back at Hazel.

“Do you want me to say who sent those two letters?” said Mr William Forth Burge gloomily.

“I should be very grateful if you could, sir.”

“This one’s from Mr Canninge, at Ardley, I should say; and the other’s the parson’s writing, I feel sure. If they’ve sent you money, Miss Thorne, of course you won’t want mine—ours.”

It was an endorsement of her own opinion, and for the moment Hazel did not notice the dull, heavy look on her visitor’s face as she exclaimed—

“I have no doubt these gentlemen had kindly intentions, but I cannot take their help, and I want to see whether I might risk a mistake in returning the notes.”

“Oh, I think I’d return ’em,” said Mr William Forth Burge eagerly. “I’d risk its being a mistake. Even if it was, your conduct would be right.”

Hazel looked at him intently, and then bowed her head in acquiescence.

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, “I will risk its being a mistake. Or no: Mr Burge, will you be my friend in my present helpless state? I ask you to return the notes on my behalf.”

“That’s just what I will do,” he cried excitedly, for it seemed to him that he had won the day.

Chapter Thirty Eight.

Mr William Forth Burge is Indignant.

You may make money, and you may turn philanthropist giving right and left, letting not either hand know what the other doeth; but if you think you are going to make innumerable friends by so doing, you are mistaken, for you will most likely make enemies.

You will excite jealousy amongst your equals, because you have passed them in the race; your superiors, as they call themselves, will condemn you, and hold you in contempt for trying, as they say, to climb to their level; and even the recipients of your bounty will be offended.

Mrs Dilly will think that Miss Bolly’s half-pound of tea was better than hers, and old Tom Dibley will be sure to consider the piece of beef his neighbour, Joe Stocks, received “a better cut” than his own.

It was so with Mr William Forth Burge, who gave a great deal of beef to the poor—it was in his way—and who was constantly giving offence by presenting one poor family with better “cuts” than others; and he knew it, too.

“I tell you what, Betsey,” he said, rubbing his ear with vexation, one day, “it’s my full belief that nature made a regular mistake in bullocks. There ought to be no legs and shins, or clods or stickings, my dear, but every beast ought to be all sirloin; though it’s my belief, old girl, that if it was, and you let ’em have it full of gravy, and sprinkled with nice white scraped horse-radish on the top, they wouldn’t be satisfied, but would say the quality was bad.”

“There, never mind, Bill dear,” said his comforter; “some people always would be ungrateful. Old Granny Jinkins is just as bad. She said yesterday that the nice, warm, soft, new flannel jacket I made for her myself was not half so nice and warm as one I gave to Nancy Dean.”

“Yes, that’s just the way,” said Mr William Forth Burge. “The more you help people, the more they turns again’ you. I often wish I’d never made a penny; for what’s the good of it all but to help other people, and be grumbled at afterwards for not helping ’em more?”

“Oh, but all people ain’t the same, dear.”

“There ain’t much difference, Betsey. Here’s old Mrs Thorne quite hates me; that boy thinks I’m a reg’lar cad; and Miss Thorne’s turning the same way.”

“That I’m sure she’s not!” cried little Miss Burge, starting up and speaking angrily, with her face flushed, “Miss Hazel Thorne’s as good as gold, and she thinks you the best of men; and I declare, Bill, that you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and I don’t know what you don’t deserve. It’s too bad. There!”

“Thanky, Betsey, my dear. That seems to do me good. I like to hear you speak out like that. But do you really think she likes me?”

“I’m sure she does, Bill, and there ain’t no think in the matter; and there, for goodness’ sake, don’t you settle down into a grumbler, Bill, because you’ve got no cause to be, I’m sure.”

“Well, I don’t know, Betsey,” he said, stirring his tea slowly. “Things don’t seem to go right. I thought, seeing what I’d done for the schools, I ought to have a pretty good voice in everything, but because I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds over ’em it seems just why I’m to be opposed. Here’s Chute: I showed the committee that he was a miserable spy of a fellow, not content with watching Miss Thorne, but putting it about that she was carrying on with different people in the place and gentlemen from town, just out of spite like, as Lambent agrees with me, because the poor gal wouldn’t notice him. Well, I want him dismissed or made to resign.”

“Well, and isn’t he to go?”

“Go! Lor’ bless you! Why, the committee’s up in arms to keep him; and just on account of that school-pence job, as the poor gal couldn’t help at all, they’d have dismissed her if she hadn’t said she’d resign.”

“Oh, Bill, it’s much too bad!”

“Bad ain’t nothing to it, my dear. I’ve been fighting hard for her stopping, and sending her resignation back; but neither Lambent nor Squire George Canninge won’t interfere, and I’m left to fight it all out, and they’re beating me.”

“And why didn’t you tell me all this before, Bill?” said Miss Burge.

“Oh, I hadn’t the heart to talk about it, my dear,” replied her brother. “It’s all worry and vexation, that it is, and I wish I’d never done nothing for the schools at all.”

“Don’t say that, Bill, when you’ve done so much good.”

“But I do say it,” he cried angrily. “Here is everybody setting themselves again’ me, and it’s all jealousy because I’ve got on. I never asked no favours of ’em before; it’s all been give, give; and now they show what they’re all made of. It’s all horse-leeches’ daughters with ’em, that’s what it is, and I wish Plumton All Saints was burnt. All Saints indeed!” he cried indignantly; “it’s all devils, and no saints in it at all.”

“But can’t Mr Lambent settle it?”

“No, he couldn’t if he’d moved; and those two cats—there, I can’t call ’em anything else—who are always going about preaching charity and love to the poor people, and giving ’em ‘Dairyman’s Daughters’ instead of beef or tea, have been setting every one again’ the poor gal, and they’re at the bottom of it all I know. They hate her like poison.”

“Well, I don’t know about as bad as poison,” said little Miss Burge thoughtfully; “but they don’t like her, and I don’t think that Mrs Canninge likes her either.”

“No, I’m sure she don’t; but I don’t care,” said Mr William Forth Burge furiously. “I’m not beaten, and if that poor girl will stand by us, I’ll stand by her, to the last shilling I’ve got.”

“That’s right, Bill!” cried little Miss Burge enthusiastically, “for I do like her ever so; and the good, patient way in which she puts up with the fine airs and silly ways of her ma makes me like her more and more. I haven’t got a very bad temper, have I, Bill?”

“I think you’ve got a regular downright good ’un, Betsey,” said her brother, looking at her admiringly.

“Well, Bill, do you know if I was to go there much, Mrs Thorne would make me a regular spitfire. She gives me the hot creeps with her condescending, high-and-mighty ways. She’s come down in the world. Well, suppose she has. So’s thousands more, but they don’t—they don’t—”

“Howl,” said Mr William Forth Burge, “that’s it; they don’t howl. Lor a mussy me, what difference do it make? Do you know, Betsey, I believe I was just as happy when I first started business on my own account; and I’m sure I thought a deal more of my first new cart, with brass boxes and patent axles, painted chocklit—it was picked out with yallar—than I did of our new carriage, here, and pair. Ah! and my first mare, as I only give fifteen pun for, could get over the ground better than either of these for which I give two hundred because they was such a match.”

“There, now, you’re beginning to grumble again, Bill, and I won’t have it. You’ve grown to be a rich man, all out of your own cleverness, and you ought to be very proud of of it; and if you’re not, I am.”

“But, you see, Betsey, I ain’t so happy as I thought I should be.”

“Then you ought to be, seeing how happy you can make other folks; and oh, Bill, by-the-way, them Potts’s are in trouble.”

“Well, that ain’t nothing new. Potts always is in trouble. He ought to have been christened Beer Potts or Pewter Potts, though they don’t know what a pewter pot is down in this part of the world.”

“That’s better, Bill; now you’re beginning to joke,” said little Miss Burge, smiling, “But you’ll do something for the Potts’s?”

“I’ll never do nothing for anybody else again in the place,” said Mr William Forth Burge; “a set of ungrateful beggars. What’s the matter with Potts? Been tipsy again?”

“I’m afraid he has, Bill; but that isn’t it. They’ve got the fever there; that big, saucy girl, Feelier, is down with it and the poor mother wants money badly.”

“Why don’t she work for it, then?”

“Oh, she do, Bill; she’s the most hard-working woman in the place.”

Mr William Forth Burge’s hand went into his pocket, and he brought out five pounds, to place them in his sister’s hand.

“I wouldn’t give it her all at once, dear,” he said; “but a pound at a time like. It makes it do more good.”

Little Miss Burge had the tears in her eyes as she gave her brother a sounding smack on either cheek.

“Now, don’t you pretend again, Bill, that you ain’t happy here,” she said, “for ain’t it nice to be able to do a bit of good like this now and then?”

“Of course it is,” he replied, “but they only jumps on you afterwards. Here we’re going to do this, and p’r’aps save that child’s life; and as soon as she gets well the first thing she’ll do will be to make faces at your back in the school, as I’ve seen her do on Sundays over and over again.”

“Oh, I don’t mind, Bill.”

“But you’re not going to the house where that gal’s ill?”

“Oh no, Bill dear; I won’t go down. Don’t you be afraid about that. And look here; you make a big fight of it, and beat ’em about Miss Thorne.”

“I’m going to,” he replied. “But I say, Betsey,” he continued, half turning away his face.

“Yes, Bill.”

“Should—should—”

Mr William Forth Burge’s collar seemed to be very tight, for he thrust, one finger between it and his neck, and gave it a tug before continuing hoarsely—

“I never keep anything from you, Betsey?”

“No, Bill, you don’t. You always was a good brother.”

“Should—should you mind it much, Betsey, if I was to—to—get married?”

Little Miss Burge stood gazing at him silently for some minutes, and then she said softly—

“No, Bill; I don’t think I should. Not if it was some one nice, who would make you very happy.”

“She is very nice, and she would make me very happy,” he said slowly. “But, Betsey—my—dear—do—you—think—she’d—have me?”

Mr William Forth Burge’s words came very slowly indeed at last, and he rested his arms upon his knees and sat in a bent position, looking down at the carpet as if waiting to hear what was a sentence of great moment to his life.

“Bill dear, I know who you mean, of course,” said the little woman at last, tearfully. “I don’t know. She likes you, for she told me she did; but I shouldn’t be your own true sister if I didn’t say that p’r’aps it’s only as a friend; and that ain’t love, you know, Bill, is it?”

“No,” he said softly; “no, Betsey; you’re quite right, dear. But I’m going to try, and—and I’m only a common sort of a chap, dear—if she says no, I’m going to try and bear it like a man.”

“That’s my own dear—dear—O Bill, look; if there she isn’t coming up to the house!”

And little Miss Burge ran off to hide her tears.

Chapter Thirty Nine.

William Forth Burge Makes Love.

Mr William Forth Burge’s heart gave a big throb, and his red face assumed a mottled aspect as he went out to the front to welcome Hazel Thorne, who shook hands warmly; and her pale face lit up with a pleasant smile as he drew her hand through his arm and led her into the handsome breakfast-room, his heart big with what he wished to say, while he asked himself how he was to say it, and shrank trembling from the task.

“Yes, my sister’s quite well,” he said, in answer to a question. “She’ll be here directly; and I hope the little girls are quite well. When may they come and spend the day?”

“It is very kind of you, Mr Burge,” said Hazel, giving him a grateful look; “but I think they had better not come.”

“Oh! I say, don’t talk like that,” he cried. “My dear Miss Thorne—”

He could get no farther. He had made up his mind to declare his love, but his heart failed as he mentally told himself it would be madness to ask such a thing of one so different to himself.

“She’ll go away again, and I shall have said nothing,” he thought. “It can’t never be, for she’s too young and nice for me.” And then, as is often the case, the opportunity came, and, to his own astonishment, William Forth Burge said, simply and honestly, all that was in his heart leaving him wondering, in spite of his pain, that he had spoken so truthfully and well.

“You have always been so kind, Mr Burge,” began Hazel, “that I shrink from letting you think I impose upon your good nature; but one of my girls is down with a very serious illness, and I have come to ask you to help her poor mother in her time of trial.”

“Help her? Why, of course,” he cried, leaving his chair and crossing to take Hazel’s hands. “Is there anything I wouldn’t do if you asked me, Miss Thorne? My dear, don’t think I’m purse-proud—because I tell you I’m a rich man; for I only say it so as you may know there’s plenty to do good with; and if you’ll come to me, my dear, and let it be yours or ours, or whatever you like to call it—there it is. You shall do as you like, and I’ll try, and I know Betsey will, to make you as happy as we can.”

“Mr Burge!” cried Hazel piteously as she rose to her feet.

“Just a minute,” he pleaded. “It isn’t nothing new. It’s been growing ever since you come down here. Don’t be offended with me. I know I’m twice as old as you, and more, and I’m very ordinary; but that don’t keep me from loving you very, very dear.”

“Don’t—pray don’t say any more, Mr Burge,” cried Hazel appealingly. “I—I cannot bear it.”

“No, no; don’t go yet, my dear,” he cried. “If you only knew what a job it has been to work myself up to say this, you wouldn’t be so hard as to stop me.”

“Hard! Pray don’t call it hard, Mr Burge. I grieve to stop you, for you have been so truly kind to me ever since I came.”

“Well, that isn’t saying much; my dear. Betsey and me was kind—I say that ain’t right, is it? I know now—Betsey and I was kind because we always liked you, and I thought it would be so nice if some day or other you could think me good enough to be your husband.”

“Dear Mr Burge, you cut me to the heart, for I seem as if I were so ungrateful to you after all that you have done.”

“Oh, no!” he said quickly; “you’re not ungrateful. You’re too pretty and good to do anything unkind.”

“Mr Burge!”

“You see, it is like this, my dear. I’m not much of a fellow; I never was.”

“You have been the truest and kindest of friends, Mr Burge; and I esteem you very much.”

“No! Do you, though?” he cried, brightening up and smiling. “Well, that does me good. I like to hear you say that, because I know you wouldn’t say anything that was not true.”

“Indeed, I would not Mr Burge,” said Hazel, laying her hand upon his arm; and he took it quietly, and held it between both of his.

“All the same, though,” he went on dolefully, “I am not much of a fellow, though I’ve been a very lucky one. I never used to think anything about the gals—the ladies, and they never took no notice of me, and I went on making money quite fast. I used to think of how prime it would be to have a grand house and gardeners down here at Plumton, and how Betsey would enjoy it; and then what a happy time I should have; but somehow it hasn’t turned out so well as I thought it would. You see, I’ve been a butcher—not a killing butcher, you know, but a selling butcher; and though the gentry’s very kind and patronising, and make speeches and no end of fuss about everything I do or say, I know all the time that they think I’m a tradesman, and always will be, no matter how rich I am.”

“But I’m sure people esteem you very much, Mr Burge.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “they don’t. It’s the money they think of. You esteem me, my dear, because you’ve just told me so, and nothing but the truth never came out of those pretty little lips. They don’t think much of me. Why should they, seeing what a common-looking sort of fellow I am? No: don’t shake your head, because you know it as well as I do. I ain’t a gentleman, and if I’d twenty million times as much money it wouldn’t make a gentleman of me.”

“And I say you are a gentleman, Mr Burge—a true, honest, nature’s gentleman, such as no birth, position, or appearance could make.”

“No, no, no, my dear,” he said sadly; “I’m only a common man, who has been lucky and grown rich—that’s all.”

“I say that you are a true gentleman, Mr Burge,” she cried again, “and that you are showing it by your tender respect and consideration for a poor, helpless, friendless girl.”

“No: that you ain’t, my dear,” he cried with spirit; “not friendless; for as long as God lets William Forth Burge breathe on this earth, with money or without money, you’ve got a friend as’ll never forsake you, or say an unkind—lor’, just as if one could say an unkind word to you; I couldn’t even give you an unkind look. Why, I don’t, even now, when what you’ve said has cut me to the heart.”

“I couldn’t—I couldn’t help it, Mr Burge,” she cried.

“I suppose you couldn’t, my dear; but if you could have said yes to me, and been my little wife—it isn’t money as I care to talk about to you—but the way in which I’d reglar downright worship you, and care for them as belongs to you, and the way in which you should do everything you liked, and have what you liked—There, I get lost with trying to think about it,” he said dolefully, “and I go all awkward over my grammar, as you, being a schoolmistress, must see, and make myself worse and worse in your eyes, and ten times more common than ever.”

“No, no, no!” she cried excitedly; “I never, never thought half so much of you before, Mr Burge, as I do now. I never realised how true a gentleman you were, and how painful it would be to say to you what I now say. I do appreciate it—I do know how kind and generous you are to wish to make me your wife—now, in this time of bitter disgrace.”

“Tchah!” he cried contemptuously; “who cares for the disgrace? I’d just as soon believe that the sun and moon had run up again’ one another in the night as that you had taken the beggarly school pence. Don’t say another word about it, my dear: it makes me mad, as I told Miss Rebecca and Miss Beatrice yesterday. I said it was a pack of humbugging lies, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves for believing it. I know who had—”

“Hush! oh, pray hush!” cried Hazel piteously.

“All right, my dear, mum’s the word; but don’t you never say no word to me again about you having taken the money. It’s insulting William Forth Burge, that’s what it is.”

Hazel looked up sadly in his face, which was now scarlet with excitement.

“I thank you, Mr Burge,” she said simply; and then, smiling, “Am I not right in saying that you are a true gentleman?”

“No, no no, my dear; you are not right,” he replied sorrowfully.

“But I am!” she cried.

“No, my dear, no; but I know you think you are; and if—if you could go on thinking that I was just a little like a gentleman, you’d make me very happy indeed, for I do think a deal of you.”

“It is no thought—no fancy, Mr Burge; but the truth.”

“And if some day—say some day ever so far off—though it would be a pity to put it off long, for a fellow at my age don’t improve by keeping—I say if by-and-by—”

“Mr Burge—dear Mr Burge—”

“I say—say that again.”

“Mr Burge,” said Hazel, laying her hands in his; “you have told me you loved me, and asked me to be your wife.”

“Yes,” he said, kissing her hand reverently, “and it’s been like going out of my sphere.”

“It would be cruel of me not to speak plainly to you.”

“Yes,” he said dejectedly, “it would; though it’s very hard when a man’s been filling himself full of hope to find it all go—right off at once.”

“It is my fate to bring misery and trouble amongst people,” she sobbed, “and I would have given anything to have spared you this. I respect and esteem you, Mr Burge, more than I can find words to say; but I could never love you as your wife.”

He dropped the hand he held, and turned slowly away that she might not see the workings of his face; and then, laying his arms upon the mantelpiece, he let his head go down, and for the next few minutes he stood there, with his chest heaving, crying softly like a broken-hearted child.

“I cannot bear it,” muttered Hazel, as she wrung her hands and gazed wildly about the sumptuously furnished room, as if in search of help; for the troubles of the past had told upon her nerves. She felt hysterical, and could not keep back her own tears, which at last burst forth in a wild fit of passionate sobbing, as she sank into the nearest chair and covered her face with her hands.

This roused her suitor, who took out his flaming orange handkerchief, and used it freely and simply, finishing off, after he had wiped his eyes, with a loud and sonorous blow of his nose.

“’Tain’t being a man!” he said, in a low tone. “I’m ’bout ashamed of myself. It’s weak and stoopid, and what will she think?”

His face was very red now, but a bright, honest glow came into his eyes, and his next act showed how truly Hazel had judged his character and seen beneath the surface of the man. For, giving himself a sounding blow upon the chest, he pulled himself together, and the odd appearance, the vulgarity, all passed away as he crossed to where Hazel sat, weeping and sobbing bitterly.

“Don’t you cry, my dear,” he said softly, as he stretched out one heavy hand and touched her gently and reverently upon the arm. “I beg your pardon for what I’ve said, though I’m not sorry; for it’s made us understand one another, and wakened me up from a foolish dream.”

There was something in his voice that soothed Hazel, and the sobs grew less violent.

“It wasn’t natural or right, and I ought to have known better than to have expected it; but they say every man gets his foolish fit some time or other in his life, and though mine was a long time coming, it came very strong at last. It’s all quite over, my dear, and I know better now, and I’m going to ask you to say once more that common, vulgar sort of fellow as I am, you are going to look upon me as your friend.”

“Common!” cried Hazel hysterically, for the bonds that she had maintained for weeks had given way at last, and her woman’s weakness had resulted in tears and sobs. “Common!—vulgar! No, no!”

She caught his hands in hers and pressed them to her lips. Then she would have sunk upon her knees and asked his pardon for the pain she had unwittingly caused, but he caught her in his arms and held her helplessly sobbing to his breast.

They neither of them were aware that the drawing-room door was opened, and that Miss Burge and Rebecca Lambent had entered, the former to look tearfully on, the latter indignant as she muttered, “Shameless creature!” between her teeth.

“What! have you made matters up, then, Bill?” cried Miss Burge excitedly as she ran forward. “Oh, my dear, my dear!”

Her tears were flowing fast as she paused before them, trying to extricate her handkerchief from an awkward pocket and arrested by her brother’s words.

“Yes, Betsey, we’ve made it up all right,” he said.

“I—I didn’t think it,” sobbed Miss Burge.

“No,” he said; “and it isn’t as you think, for this is our very, very dear young friend, Betsey, and—and as I’m plenty old enough to be her father, Hazel Thorne’s going to let me act by her like one, and stand by her through thick and thin, in spite of all that the world may say, including you, Miss Lambent.” He spoke proudly, as he drew Hazel closer to his breast, and stood there softly stroking her hair, with so frank and honest a light shining out of his eyes that it brightened the whole man.

“Sir!” exclaimed Rebecca.

“Madam!” he cried, “I don’t want to be rude; but, as your company can’t be pleasant to Miss Hazel Thorne, I’d take it kindly if you’d go.”

“And I was ready to forget my position and marry a man like this,” muttered Rebecca as she walked down to the gate. “Oh, that creature! She came upon Plumton like a curse.”

“Betsey, my dear,” said Mr William Forth Burge, speaking to his sister, but speaking at Hazel, “you and me never had anything kept from one another, and please God we never will, so I’ll tell you. I’ve been asking Miss Hazel Thorne here to be my wife.”

“Yes, Bill dear, I know—I know,” sobbed little Miss Burge.

“And while I’ve been asking her, it came over me like that I was wrong to ask her, and that it wouldn’t be natural and right.”

“Oh, Bill dear!”

“She’s been so good and tender, and kind and sensible, that it’s been like taking the scales from before my eyes, and been a sort of lesson to me; and somehow, my dear, I feel as if I was a different sort of man to what I was before. I’m not a speaker, and I can’t express myself as I should like to; but what I want to say is, that I feel as if I was more of a man and a bit wiser than I was.”

“Oh, Bill dear!”

“I’m getting on fast for fifty, Betsey dear, and Miss Thorne here—I should like to say Hazel Thorne here—is only two-and-twenty or thereabouts, and she’s going to be like our own child from now, if she will, and we’re going to try and keep away troubles for the future till she wants to go away. And now we won’t say any more about it, but let things settle down. Stop a minute, though, Hazel Thorne, my dear; you’ve made me a gentleman, and we shall be friends.”

For answer Hazel left Miss Burge, who had been sitting by her with her arm round her waist, and, placing her hand in his, she looked him full in the eyes, seeing no longer the homeliness of the man, hearing no more his illiterate speech, but gazing as it were straight into his simple honest kindly heart. She hesitated for a moment, and then, reaching up she kissed, him as a child would kiss one she loved.

Chapter Forty.

“I Want Teacher.”

One low, weary, incessant cry in the shabby, sloping-roofed, whitewashed room.

The place was scrupulously clean; there was not so much as a speck upon the windows; but the chamber was miserably bare. One well-worn, damaged rush-chair was beside the worm-eaten, stump bedstead, a box supported a chipped white jug and basin, and an old sack unsewn and opened out formed the carpet. The only other article of furniture was a thin, very old, white scrap of dimity curtain half drawn across the lead lattice-paned window upon a piece of tape.

And from the bed arose that one weary, constant cry from between the fevered, cracked lips, night and day—

“I want teacher to come!”

For there was no mischief dancing in her unnaturally bright eyes; the restless hands were not raised to play some trick; the face was not drawn up in some mocking grimace: all was pitiful, and pinched, and sad; for poor Feelier Potts lay sick unto death, and it seemed as if at any moment the dark shadow would float forth from the open window, bearing one more sleeping spirit away.

“I want teacher!—I want teacher!”—night and day that weary, weary burden, ever in the same unreasoning strain; and it was in vain that the poor rough mother, softened now in face of this terrible trouble, sought to give comfort.

“But she can’t come now, my bairn—she can’t come. Oh, do be quiet—do!”

“I want teacher—I want teacher to come.”

Unreasoning ever—for poor Feelier was almost beyond reasoning—there was one great want in her shadowed mind, and it found vent between her lips for the first days loudly, then painfully low, and at last in a hoarse murmur, but always the same—

“I want teacher to come.”

“I won’t come anigh you to speak, miss, for it wouldn’t be right,” sobbed poor, broken-down Mrs Potts, weak now and worn out, as she stood at the cottage gate, after making signs for Hazel to come to the door. For nights past she had been watching by her child’s couch, while her husband had kept watch at the public-house till it was shut, and then he had slept in a barn. For he had only one body, and he was terribly afraid lest it should be stricken by the sore disease.

“I am not afraid of the infection, Mrs Potts,” said Hazel kindly. “You look worn out; let me give you a cup of tea.”

“My dear Hazel,” said Mrs Thorne from the kitchen, where she was seated at the evening meal, “what are you going to do?”

“Good, if I can, mother,” said Hazel simply, and she filled a cup and took it out to the half-fainting woman, who looked her thanks, for she could not speak for some minutes.

“There, miss, and God bless you for it,” she said, handing back the cup. “I felt I must come and tell you, miss, for—for it seems as if she couldn’t die till you had been.”

“Does she ask for me so?” said Hazel.

“She asks for nothing else, miss. It’s always ‘I want teacher,’ and—and I thought miss—if you’d come to the house—if it was only to stand on the other side of the road—the window’s open, miss, and she could hear you, and if you was just to say, ‘I’m here, Feelier!’ or, ‘go to sleep, there’s a good girl!’ it would quiet her like, and then she’d be able to die.”

“Oh, pray don’t speak like that!” cried Hazel. “Let us hope that she will live.”

“I don’t know what for, miss,” said the wretched woman despondently. “Only to live to have a master who’d beat and ill-use her, and make her slave to keep his bairns. I did think I’d like her to live, but the Lord knows best and He’s going to take her away.”

“I’ll come on and see her,” said Hazel quietly. “Poor child! I was in hopes that she was going to amend. Wait for me here till I get my hat, and I will come.”

“What are you going to do, my dear?” exclaimed Mrs Thorne as Hazel passed through the room.

“I am going to see one of my children, mother,” she replied quietly.

“Not that dreadful Feelier Potts, Hazel?”

“Hush, dear! The child is dangerously ill, and her mother can hear your words.”

“But it would be madness to go. It is an infectious disease.”

“I feel, dear, as if it is my duty to go,” replied Hazel, with a curious, far-off look in her eyes; and without another word she followed to the little low cottage by the side of the road.

“There, miss, if you’d stand there I think you could hear her. You see the window’s open. I’ll go upstairs and stir her up like, and then you speak, and—”

“I want teacher! When will she come?”

The words came in a low, harsh tone plainly to Hazel’s ears, and with a sigh she walked straight up to the door. “But you hadn’t better go anigh her. The doctor said—”

“It will not hurt me,” said Hazel quietly.

“Well, miss, if you wouldn’t mind, it would do her a power of good, I’m sure. This way, miss,” and she led her visitor through the room where she had been washing, to the awkward, well-worn staircase, and up this to poor Feelier’s blank-looking room.

“I want teacher!—I want teacher!” came the weary burden as Hazel walked up to the bedside, shocked at the way in which the poor girl had changed.

“I want teacher! When will she come?” came again from the cracked lips as Hazel sank upon her knees by the bedside.

“I am here, my child,” she said softly, as the burning head was tossed wearily from side to side.

The effect was electrical. The thin arms that had been lying upon the coverlet were raised, and with one ejaculation they were flung round the visitor’s neck, the poor child nestling to her with a cry of joy.

“My poor child!” cried Hazel tenderly. And the weary iteration was heard no more.

“She never made that ado over me,” said the mother discontentedly; but no one seemed to heed her, and she stole downstairs to her work, but came up from time to time to find poor Feelier sleeping softly in Hazel’s arms, her head upon her breast. And when Mrs Potts attempted to unloose the clinging hands that were about “teacher’s neck,” the girl uttered a passionate, impatient cry, and clung the tighter to one who seemed to have come to bring her hope of life.

“It was very imprudent of you to come, Miss Thorne,” said the doctor. “I heard you were here from Mr William Forth Burge. He is waiting below. Suppose you try to lay her down; she seems to be asleep.”

Asleep or awake, poor Feelier would not be separated from her friend, and the doctor unwillingly owned at last that it would be undoing a great deal of good to force her away.

“You have given her a calm sense of rest, for which in her delirium she has been so long striving. I must confess that you have done her more good than I.”

“She will go to sleep soon, perhaps,” said Hazel, “and then leave me of her own accord.”

“And then?” said the doctor.

“I can return home, and come again when she asks for me.”

“I’m afraid, Miss Thorne, that you have not thought of the probable consequences of returning home,” said the doctor. “You have young sisters there, and your mother. My dear young lady, it would be exceedingly imprudent to go.”

For the first time the consequences of her step occurred to Hazel, and she looked aghast at the speaker.

“Then there is the school, Miss Thorne. I think, as a medical man, it is my duty to forbid your going there again for some time to come. Yes, I see you look at me, but I am only a hardened medical man. I go everywhere, and somehow one escapes a great portion of the ills one goes to cure.”

There was no help for it, and after coming as an act of kindness to see the poor girl who had cried for her so incessantly, Hazel found herself literally a prisoner, and duly installed in the bedroom as her sick scholar’s nurse.

Chapter Forty One.

Brother and Sisters—Refined.

There was a good deal of conversation about it at the Vicarage, where it became known through a visit paid by Rebecca and Beatrice to the school, and their coming back scandalised at finding it in charge only of the pupil-teachers, who explained the reason of Hazel’s absence, and that she had sent a message to Mr Chute, asking him if he would raise one of the shutters, and give an eye occasionally to the girls’ school, which was, however, in so high a state of discipline now that the pupil-teachers were able to carry it on passably well.

“And of course Mr Chute has done so?” said Miss Lambent.

“No, please ’m; he said he had plenty to do with his own school,” replied one pupil-teacher.

“And he wouldn’t do anything of the sort,” said the other.

“What a disgraceful state of affairs, Beatrice!” exclaimed Miss Lambent; and the sisters hurried away to acquaint their brother with the last piece of news.

“I suppose, with a person of her class, one can only expect the same conduct that one would receive from a servant,” said Beatrice acidly.

“I do not understand you, Beatrice,” said her brother.

“I mean, Henry, that now she has resigned or received her dismissal, we shall only get the same amount of inattention that one would from a discharged servant.”

“For my part,” said the vicar, “I think that Miss Thorne is being hardly dealt with.”

“Absurd, Henry!” said Miss Lambent. “We cannot say a word to you but you take Miss Thorne’s part.”

“Why not, when I see her treated with injustice!”

“Injustice, Henry!” cried Beatrice. “Is it injustice to speak against a young person who behaves like an unjust steward?”

The vicar was silent.

“For my part,” said Rebecca, “I think she should have been dismissed at once; and she would have been, but for the opposition offered by you, Henry, and Mr Burge.”

“For my part,” continued the vicar, ignoring the past speeches, “I can see nothing more touching, more beautiful, and Christian-like than Miss Thorne’s behaviour to this child—one of the sick lambs of her fold.”

“We are sorry, of course, for Ophelia Potts,” said Rebecca; “but she is a dreadful child.”

“A fact, I grant,” said the vicar; “and one that makes Miss Thorne’s conduct shine out the more.”

“Henry!” exclaimed his sisters in a breath.

“We are not doing wrong in staying here, Rebecca,” said Beatrice haughtily. “I do not believe in witchcraft or such follies, but it is as though this woman had bewitched our brother, and as if he were shaping himself in accordance with her plans.”

“I do not understand you, Beatrice,” said the vicar sternly.

“I will be plainer, then, Henry. It seems to me that you are offering yourself a willing victim to the wiles of an artful woman; and the next thing will be, I suppose, that you intend bringing her here as mistress of the Vicarage.”

“I quite agree with Beatrice,” cried Rebecca. “It is time we left you, Henry, to the devices and desires of your own heart.”

The vicar was stern of aspect now, as he paced the library, and hot words of anger were upon his lips, but he stayed them there, and looked from face to face as if seeking sympathy where there was none.

He knew that his sisters were right, and that in following out the dictates of his own heart he would gladly ask Hazel Thorne to be his wife; but he was weak, and the more so that she had given him no hope. His was not the nature that would have made him a martyr to his faith; neither could he be one for his unrequited love. He loved Hazel Thorne; but she did not care for him—he could see it plainly enough; and even had she loved him in return, he was not one who could have braved public opinion for her sake. For the trouble connected with that money was always in his mind. Then there was the society to which he belonged. What would they say if he, the Reverend Henry Lambent, Master of Arts, and on visiting terms with the highest county families, were to enter into a matrimonial alliance with the daughter of a bankrupt stockbroker—one who was only the new mistress!

Then there were his sisters. If he married Hazel, always supposing she would accept him, he should have to break with them; and this he was too weak to do. In imagination he had been the stern ruler of Plumton All Saints’ Vicarage for many years, and head of the parish. But it was a mistake: the real captain had been Beatrice, his younger sister; and Rebecca, though the elder, had been first lieutenant. The vicar had only been a private in the ranks.

“Now we are upon this theme,” Beatrice went on, “it would be better, Henry, that the unpleasant feeling that has existed should come to an end.”

“Surely there has been no unpleasant feeling between us,” said the vicar.

“I quite agree with Beatrice—unpleasant feeling,” said Rebecca.

“We are sisters and brother,” continued Beatrice, “and we must remain so.”

“Most assuredly,” said the vicar, smiling.

“I am speaking for Rebecca as well as for myself, then, Henry, when I tell you that we have concluded that the only way in which our old happy relations can be continued will be by separating.”

“Parting?” said the vicar, in dismay.

“Yes, Henry; by parting. Rebecca and I have a sufficiency, by clubbing together our slender resources, to enable us to live a life of content. A life of usefulness, we fear, will no longer be within our reach, for we shall have to leave our poor behind. But that we must be resigned to lose, for it is time, Henry, that we left you free and were—”

“No longer a tax upon you and an obstacle in the path of your inclinations,” said Rebecca.

“But surely—you do not mean—you would not leave the Vicarage?”

“We have carefully weighed the matter over, Henry,” said Rebecca, “and I do not see how, under the circumstances, you could wish us to do otherwise.”

“No, no, it is impossible!” cried the vicar, who seemed deeply moved. “Beatrice—Rebecca, of what are you thinking?”

“Of our duty and your happiness,” said Beatrice firmly.

“At the expense of your own,” exclaimed the vicar.

“We must do our duty,” said Rebecca with a sigh, and the sisters rose and left the room, like clever diplomatists, content with the impression they had made, and feeling that by a bold stroke they had completely riveted their old mastery.

Chapter Forty Two.

Bad News.

The news of Hazel Thorne’s imprisonment, for it could be called little else, was not long in reaching Ardley, and Mrs Canninge watched her son’s countenance to see what effect it had. There had been an increasing coolness between mother and son, and it seemed as if it were rapidly approaching estrangement. Their old affectionate intercourse had given place to a chilling politeness, and though, time after time, in the bitter annoyance she felt, Mrs Canninge had felt disposed to ask her son how soon it would be necessary for her to vacate her position of mistress of the old hall, she had never been guilty of the meanness, but waited her time.

“He shall never marry her,” she said over and over again; and in spite of her better self, the news of the money trouble had been like balm to her wounded spirit. Now, then, the tidings of Hazel’s visit to the sick child had come, and again, in spite of herself, she felt a sensation akin to satisfaction, for this seemed as if it might act as a safeguard to her son.

It was a flimsy one, she knew—a broken reed upon which to lean; but it was something, and every trifle that appeared likely to keep George Canninge and Hazel apart, if it were only for a few days longer, was like a reprieve, and might result in something better to her mind.

The matter was not discussed, but Mrs Canninge noted that her son rode over to the town every morning, and found afterwards that he called at the Burges’ day after day, where he incidentally learned that Hazel was still nursing the fever-stricken child.

It was pleasant to him at this juncture to talk to little Miss Burge, and to listen to her simple prattle about Hazel, and what trouble she and her brother took in sending down everything that was necessary for the invalid and her nurse, so that Hazel might be comfortable.

“It is very kind of you and Mr Burge,” said Canninge one day.

“Oh, I don’t know, Mr Canninge,” she replied; “we want to do all the good we can, and one can’t help loving Miss Thorne.”

“No,” said George Canninge quietly; and as he rode home he repeated little Miss Burge’s words to himself over and over again—“One can’t help loving Miss Thorne.”

But he made no further advances—he did not go to the schoolhouse to make inquiries, nor yet ask at the cottage where Hazel was a prisoner; he contented himself with visiting the Burges day by day, to start back almost in alarm one morning as he saw a look of trouble in little Miss Burge’s face, and before he could ask what was wrong the little woman burst out with—

“Oh, Mr Canninge, that poor, dear girl!”

“What?” he said excitedly. “She has not—”

“Yes, sir, and badly. My brother has been down there this morning, and she is delirious. And oh, poor girl! poor girl! I cannot let her lie there alone. I’m dreadfully afraid of the fever, Mr Canninge; but I shall have to go.”

“You? What! to nurse her?” said George Canninge, with a face now ghastly.

“Yes, sir; I must go. My brother has been down every day, and I’ve never been once!” she cried, bursting into a fit of sobbing. “It’s dreadful cowardly, I know; but I could not help it then.”

“And she may die!” said George Canninge as he rode slowly home; “and I have never told her I loved her. Dare I go to see her now?”

He asked himself that question many times, and again many times on the succeeding days; but he did not go near the place where Hazel Thorne lay now, in the shabby room, upon the bed roughly made up for her by Mrs Potts; while Feelier, the very shadow of herself, lay watching “teacher,” and the tears stole down her wasted cheeks as she listened to Hazel Thorne’s excited talking, for the most part incoherent; but here and there a word came to Feelier’s ears, and she wept again, because she was too weak to get up and wait upon “teacher,” whose attack was rapidly assuming a serious form.

By special arrangement with the doctor, the news as to Hazel’s state was sent to the Burges’ after every visit. Not that this was held to suffice, for little Miss Burge was constantly calling at the doctor’s house, and asking for fresh information when there was none to give.

“I can’t bear this no longer, Bill dear,” said Miss Burge one morning. “There’s that poor girl lying there in that wretched place, and no one but strangers to tend her; and it seems as if all her friends had left her now she is in distress.”

“Not all,” said Burge, raising his drooping head. “I’m down there every day; only I can’t be admitted to her room, poor dear! I wish I might be.”

“And I’ve been holding back,” sobbed little Miss Burge, “because I felt afraid of catching the complaint, and the doctor said it would be madness for me to go; but I’m going down this morning, Bill dear, and if I die for it I won’t mind—at least not very much—for I’m sure I shouldn’t be any good to live if I couldn’t help at a time like this. Hasn’t her poor ma been to her yet?”

“No; she isn’t fit to go,” said Burge. “She is ill, and weak, and foolish, and the doctor told her that if she went she would only take the disease home to the little girls. She would only have worried her poor child and been in the way.”

“I’m glad I’ve never been a mother, Bill, to turn out no more use than that in trouble,” sobbed the little woman. “Now, do drink your tea, dear; it will do you good.”

“Nothing won’t do me no good, Betsey,” said the poor fellow dejectedly.

“But it looks so bad, dear, to see you like this. I declare you haven’t washed and shaved this mornings and your hair ain’t been brushed.”

“No,” he said drearily; “I forgot Betsey—I forgot.”

“Why, Bill!” she exclaimed, looking at him scrutinisingly.

“Yes, dear.”

“Why, you haven’t been to bed all night!”

“No, dear.”

“Why, if you haven’t been watching down there by that cottage!” she cried.

“Yes, dear,” he said quietly. “It seemed to do me good like.”

“Oh, Bill!”

“And then I went to the post-office, and I’ve telegraphed for Sir Henry Venner to come down by special train.”

“You have, Bill dear! Why, that’s the Queen’s doctor, ain’t it.”

“Yes, dear.”

“But won’t it cost a heap of money?”

“I’d give every penny I’ve got and sell myself too,” he said, with a ring of simple pathos in his voice, “if it would bring that poor darling back to herself.”

He laid his arms upon the table, and his forehead went down upon them, as he said softly, as if to himself—

“I don’t want any return—I’m not selfish—and I’d ask nothing back. I could go on loving her always, and be glad to see her happy, only please God to let her live—please God let her live!”

Little Miss Burge, with the tears streaming down her honest round face, rose from her seat at the breakfast-table, and went down upon her knees beside her brother, to lay her cheek against one of his hands.

“I’m going down to her now, Bill dear,” she said softly; “and I’ll watch by her night and day; for I think I love her, poor dear! as much as you.”

“God bless you, Betsey dear!” he said, drawing her to his breast, and speaking now with energy. “I couldn’t ask you to go, for it seemed like sending you where I daren’t go myself; but if you could go, dear, I should be a happier man!”

“And go I will, Bill; and I will do my best.”

“And look here, dear!” he cried, quite excitedly now, “you don’t know how you’re helping me, for now I can do what I want.”

“What’s that, dear?”

“Why, I thought, dear, if the big doctor would give leave, we might bring the poor girl on here; but I daren’t even think of it before, on account of you. You, see, dear, I could send away the servants, and get a nurse to come.”

“Oh yes; do, Bill dear!” cried the little body eagerly. “We’d put her in the west room, which would be so bright and cheerful, and—There, I’m standing talking when I ought to go.”

In fact, within five minutes little Miss Burge was ready, with her luggage on her arm; the said luggage consisting of a clean night-dress, “ditto” cap, a cake of soap, and a brush and comb; with which easily portable impedimenta she was soon after settled in Mrs Potts’s dreary low-roofed room.

“No, miss,” whispered the rough woman, “never slep’ a wink all night; but kep’ on talk, talk, talk, talking about her mother and father, and Squire Canninge, and the school pence, and that she was in disgrace.”

“And teacher kep’ saying Mr William Forth Burge was her dearest friend,” put in Feelier, in a shrill, weak voice.

“Hush!” whispered little Miss Burge, for their voices had disturbed Hazel, who, till then, had been lying in a kind of stupor.

She opened her eyes widely, and stared straight before her.

“Are you there, Mr Burge?—are you there?” she said in a quick, excited whisper.

“No, my dear; it’s me, Betsey Burge. I’ve come to stop with you.”

“I didn’t know how good and kind you were then—when I spoke as I did. I was very blind then—I was very blind then,” sighed Hazel wearily.

“And you’ll soon be better now,” said little Miss Burge in a soft, cheery way. “There—let me turn your pillow; it’s all so hot, and—Mrs Potts, send up for two pillows out of our best room directly.”

“Yes, mum; I’ll go myself;” and Mrs Potts hurried away.

“There, my dear, you’ll be nicer and cooler now, and—Oh, dear me, what a lot of things I do want! Mrs Potts, call at the druggist’s for some eau-de-cologne—a big bottle mind.”

“Yes, mum,” came from below.

“Her poor head’s like fire. There, dear—there, my poor dear, let me lay your hair away from you; it will cool your head.”

“Please, Miss Burge, don’t let them cut off all teacher’s hair,” whispered Feelier from the other bed.

“No, my dear; not if I can help it.”

“I want to tell you I was so ungrateful when you spoke to me as you did, Mr Burge,” said Hazel in her low excited whisper.

“No, no, my darling, not ungrateful,” said little Miss Burge, in the soothing voice any one would adopt to a child.—“Poor dear, she don’t know what she’s saying.”

“I have lain here and thought of what you have done,” continued Hazel, “and how self-denying you have always been to me; and I was ungrateful for it all. I know now I was ungrateful.”

“She is wandering, poor girl!” said little Miss Burge, with a sob, as she busied herself in making the room more comfortable, after she had smoothed Hazel’s pillow and opened the window wide to give her more air. After this she turned her attention to poor Feelier, rearranging her pillow, and ending by bathing her face and hands, the poor girl uttering a sigh of relief and pleasure, sinking back afterwards upon her cool pillow, too weak almost to raise her arm.

“There, now you feel more comfortable, don’t you, my dear?” whispered the busy little woman.

“Oh, yes, and—and—and—please—please I’ll never do so no more.”

Poor Feelier burst into a passionate fit of tearful remorse, sobbing wildly in spite of little Miss Burge’s efforts to calm her.

“Oh! hush, hush, my dear; pray be still.”

“I—I—I used to make faces at you in school,” sobbed Feelier.

“Yes, yes, yes; but hush my dear. You only did it in fun.”

“N-no, I didn’t,” sobbed Feelier; “I did it to make—make the other girls laugh.”

“But hush, pray hush, or you’ll hurt poor Miss Thorne.”

Feelier’s sobs ended in one large gulp, as if by magic, and she lay perfectly still, staring at the other bed.

“Please, Miss Burge,” she whispered, “will you bring some of your roses and put in water by teacher’s pillow?”

“Yes, my dear, that I will,” said the little lady, patting Feelier’s hand. “And now lie still, and don’t talk; let’s keep the room quiet, and try to make her better.”

“Yes, Miss Burge; but please will teacher get well?”

“Why, surely, my dear; and very soon.”

“Because mother said I was a little wretch and gave teacher the fever, and I wish I may die instead.”

“But you shall both get well, my dear, very soon; and then you shall both go down to the sea, and you shall be Miss Thorne’s little maid.”

“Shall I?” cried the girl, with her eyes sparkling and a flush coming into her thin, sunken cheeks.

“Yes, that you shall, my dear; only lie very still, and don’t talk.”

“Please, Miss Burge,” whispered Feelier, “let me tell you this.”

“Well, only this one thing, and then you must be very quiet, my dear.”

“Yes, I will,” whispered Feelier, in a quiet, old-fashioned way; “but that’s how teacher keeps on all night and all day; she keeps on wanting Mr William Forth Burge to come to her, and mother says I kep’ on just the same, asking for teacher to come, and I was quiet when she did, and then”—sob—“she caught the fever too.”

“Yes, yes, my dear; but you’ll soon do better now.”

“But you’d better let old Billy Burge—”

Feelier stopped short, conscious of the slip of her guilty tongue, and looked up at her gentle attendant as if she expected a blow.

“I won’t call him that name agen,” she said demurely, “but if he come he’d do teacher good; only if he did come, he’d ketch the fever too, and I don’t know what’s best, only we mustn’t let teacher die.”

“No, no, my dear; of course not,” whispered little Miss Burge hastily.

“But if she did die I know what I should do,” said Feelier dreamily, and with a drowsy look in her eyes, the effect of being washed and the cooler atmosphere of the room inducing sleep.

“What should you do, my dear?” said Miss Burge, pressing down the pillow to let the cool air blow upon her cheek.

“I should set violets and primroses all over her grave; and if any of the other girls was to pick any of ’em, oh, I would give ’em such a banging! And then—then—then—”

And then poor, weak Ophelia Potts sank into a profound sleep, and little Miss Burge wiped her eyes and sat and watched Hazel’s weary, restless head; listening to her broken sentences and the incoherent mutterings, all of which were to the same tune—that she had been weak and cruel and ungrateful to one who had been all devotion to her, and that she would never rest till she had tried to make him some amends.

“Poor Bill, if he could only hear her now, how glad he’d be!” sighed the watcher; “but this will all pass away, and when she gets well she’ll never know she said a word. Poor Bill; it won’t never—it couldn’t ever be!”

“I want Mr Burge,” cried Hazel suddenly, and her voice sounded hard and strange. “Tell him to come to me—tell him to come.”

“Yes, yes, yes, my darling; he shall come soon.”

“He would catch the fever, do you say? No no; I could not give it to him; he is so kind and good. Tell Mr Geringer, mother, it is impossible; I could not be his wife.”

“Oh, my poor dear!” whispered Miss Burge, bathing Hazel’s burning forehead with the eau-de-cologne that Mrs Potts had now brought; “that poor, poor, burning, wandering brain. Why don’t the doctor come?”

Chapter Forty Three.

The Queen’s Physician.

It was many hours yet before the doctor came, for the life of one patient is no more to a medical man than that of another, and the great physician had several urgent cases to see before he could use the special train placed at his disposal by Hazel’s elderly lover, who had never left the station all the morning, and had given instructions that the starting of the train should be telegraphed to him from the terminus in town.

In addition, he had a messenger, in the shape of Feelier’s brother, who came to and fro every hour to where Mr William Forth Burge was walking up and down the platform, to deliver a report from Miss Burge on the patient’s state.

One of these messages was to the effect that the local doctor had been, and said that there was no change; and that he was stopping at home on purpose to meet the great physician when he came.

So was Mr William Forth Burge’s carriage, and so was a group of the tradespeople and others, for in the easy-going life of a little country town the loss of a day was as nothing compared to the chance of seeing the Queen’s own physician when he came down.

At last, but not till far in the afternoon, came the lightning message speeding along the wires, “Special left King’s Cross 3:30;” and then how slow seemed the rapid special, and by comparison how it lagged upon its way, for it would be quite an hour and a half, the station-master said, perhaps two hours, even at express speed.

And all this time William Forth Burge waited, and would have taken nothing but for the thoughtfulness of the station-master’s wife, who brought him some tea.

“No, six, not yet; that’s the fast down.” Or, “No sir, not yet; that’s only the afternoon goods.” Or again, “No sir; that’s only the slow local. They’ll wire me from Marshton when she passes.”

This from the chief official; and at last the wired message came, and after what seemed to be an interminable time, a fast engine, tender, one saloon carriage, and brake steamed into the station, and a little, quiet dark man stepped out as the door was held open by the station-master, waiting ready to do honour to the man greater in his power than the magician kings of old, but very weak even then.

“Mr William Forth Burge? Thanks. Carriage waiting. Thanks. Now tell me a little of the case.”

This was mastered principally by questions as they drove to the cottage.

“Yes,” said the great man. “I see. The old thing, my dear sir. What can you expect with sanitary arrangements such as these?”

He pointed right and left as they drove along, Mr William Forth Burge suddenly checking the driver, as they were about halfway, to pick up Doctor Bartlett, the resident medical man.

Next followed a consultation in the wretched keeping-room of the cottage, the great doctor treating his humble brother with the most profound respect, and then they went up to the bedroom, and little Miss Burge came down to her brother with her handkerchief to her eyes.

A dreary half-hour followed before the doctors came down, the two occupants of the room gazing up at them with appeal in their eyes as they vacated their chairs in the great man’s favour.

“I can only say, Mr William Forth Burge, that we must hope,” said the great baronet. “It is the most ordinary form of typhoid fever, and must have its course. I may add that I almost regret that you should have called me down, unless my opinion is any comfort to you; for I can neither add to nor detract from the skilful treatment adopted by my confrère, Doctor Bartlett, who is carefully watching the case. What we want is the best of nursing; and, at any cost, let the poor girl be taken to some light, wholesome, airy room.”

“Might we risk moving her?” panted Mr Burge.

“It is a grave risk; but it must be ventured, with the greatest care, under Doctor Bartlett’s instructions; for I have no hesitation in saying that if our patient stays here she will die.”

“God bless you, Sir Henry; I’d have given all I possess for that!” gasped Burge, as he placed a slip of paper in the doctor’s hands.

There was the drive back to the station, the little train steamed out, and that evening, while poor Feelier Potts slept, Hazel Thorne was carried down to the Burges’ carriage, and lay that night in the west room, to keep on talking incessantly of her cruelty to one who had been so noble, so true, and good, and to make appeals to him for his forgiveness, as she now knew how to value his honest love.

Chapter Forty Four.

Mrs Thorne Receives.

Hazel Thorne’s illness came like a shock to Plumton All Saints, and the opposing members of the committee, who had been instrumental in gaining her dismissal, looked angrily one at the other, as if that other one was specially to blame. The Reverend Henry Lambent sent down messengers to know how Miss Thorne was progressing, and later on sent the same messengers to the Burges’ for news.

“Will you not go down and see Mrs Thorne, Rebecca—Beatrice?” he said, one day, appealingly. “This is a troublous time.”

“We had already felt it to be a duty, Henry, and we will run all risks in such a cause.”

There was not the slightest risk in going to the schoolmistress’s cottage, and the sisters went down, to find Mrs Thorne weak and almost prostrate with illness and anxiety, but ready to draw herself up stiffly to receive her visitors.

“Cissy, Mabel, place chairs for these ladies,” she said. “Miss Lambent will perhaps excuse my rising. I am an invalid.”

Rebecca bowed and glanced at her sister, who made her a sign to proceed.

“We have called, Mrs Thorne, knowing you to be in so sad a state of affliction—”

“To offer a few words of condolence,” said Mrs Thorne, interrupting her. “It is very neighbourly and kind, I am sure I am sorry poor Hazel is too unwell to be here to receive you as well.”

“What insolence!” muttered Beatrice.

“Condolence is hardly the word,” said Rebecca stiffly. “We are very much grieved about Miss Thorne, especially as her illness has come almost like a chastisement for her weakness in her discharge of her scholastic trust.”

“Oh! You are alluding to the school trifle she did not pay over to the collector at the time,” said Mrs Thorne haughtily. “It is a pity that so much should have been made of so trivial a matter.”

“Trivial, Mrs Thorne! Your daughter’s conduct—”

“Has always been that of a lady, Miss Lambent. Ah! you single ladies don’t know, and of course never will know, the necessities of housekeeping.”

Beatrice winced.

“I used that money as I would small change, and I must say I am surprised at Mr Lambent or his sisters, or the school committee, or whoever it is, being so absurdly particular.”

“Particular, Mrs Thorne!” cried Rebecca, aghast.

“Yes; it is very absurd. By-the-way, I may as well observe that I have this morning received a letter from my late husband’s solicitor, telling me that fifteen hundred pounds, the result of some business arrangement of his, are now lying at my disposal at the bank; and if you will send the properly authorised person down I will give him a cheque.”

“Mrs Thorne!” exclaimed Rebecca, whom this assumption of perfect equality—at times even of superiority—galled terribly, “we came down here to give you a little good advice—to say a few words of sympathy, and to bring you two or three books to read, and ponder over their contents. I am surprised and grieved that you should have taken such a tone.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Lambent,” retorted Mrs Thorne, who was very pale and much excited; “allow me to tell you that you are making a mistake. I am not in the habit of receiving parochial visits. They may be very acceptable to the poor of your district, but, as a lady, when another lady calls upon me, I look upon it as a visit of ceremony. You will excuse me, but I am not well. My daughter’s illness—my own—rather tells upon me. You will excuse my rising. I beg your pardon, you are forgetting your little books.”

She picked them up from the table, and held them out; the top one was “The Dairyman’s Daughter,” in paper cover.

The Lambent sisters had risen, and were darting indignant looks at Hazel’s mother before she drew their attention to the books they were leaving upon the table; now their anger was hot indeed.

“We brought them for you to read,” cried Rebecca indignantly. “They were for your good. Mrs Thorne, your conduct is insolent in the extreme.”

“Insolent in the extreme,” assented Beatrice.

“I am too unwell to argue with you, ladies,” said Mrs Thorne loftily. “Cissy, my child, take those into the kitchen, and give them to one of the school children as they come by. Mabel, my dear, bring mamma a glass of water.”

She took not the slightest further notice of her visitors, who looked at one another for a few moments, and then left the house, marching by the window with stately stride, while Mrs Thorne leant back in her chair, saying to herself—

“Next time they call I hope they will remember that I am a lady.”

That same evening, as she sat alone, she drew the letter of which she had spoken from her pocket, and read it through again, the second perusal giving her fresh strength and increasing dignity.

“I shall certainly insist now,” she said musingly, as she refolded the letter and tapped her left forefinger with the edge, “upon Hazel entering into a matrimonial alliance with Edward Geringer. He is older, certainly; but what of that? He is rich and loves her, and will make her an admirable husband; and when, by-and-by he leaves her, she will still be young and handsome, and, what is better, rich, and not left, as I have been, at the mercy of the world—Lambents and people of that class. Yes, I am in a position now to insist, and I shall write to Edward Geringer at once. Perhaps his coming would have a favourable effect upon Hazel’s illness—a foolish, weak girl, to persist in going to that house when I so strongly advised her not.”

Mrs Thorne sat musing and building her châteaux en Espagne, while the children amused themselves in the garden.

“Yes,” she continued, “I am once more, I am thankful to say, no longer dependent upon charity, nor yet upon poor Hazel—weak, foolish child! It is a pity she should have grown so conceited and arbitrary on finding herself at the head of affairs. Ah, these young people—these young people! But I will not blame her, for a great deal was due to the teachings of that training institution. I noticed the change in her directly. It did so put me in mind of young Penton, when he received his commission of ensign in the 200th Foot. He had just the same short, sharp, haughty way that my Hazel assumed, poor child! Ah, well! we have nearly got to the end of the school teaching, and it will be a lesson for us all. It was against my wishes that she took it up—that I will say; and it has been very hard upon me to bring me down to the companionship of such a woman as Mrs Chute. I wish I had never seen her, for I should never have thought of using those school pence if it had not been for her.”

Mrs Thorne smoothed down her black silk apron, and sat thinking for some time before exclaiming—

“Yes, I will write a cheque for the amount and send it in a note, with my compliments, to Mr Lambent. It will be the most ladylike way of proceeding. The children shall put on their best hats and take it up. It will be better than trusting the money to the school children or the post. I will do it at once.”

The poor, weak woman smiled with satisfaction as she took out the thin oblong book that had been sent to her that morning, and wrote out a cheque for the amount due for the children’s school pence, carefully blotting and folding it, and placing it in a sheet of note-paper inscribed, “With Mrs Thorne’s compliments.”

“Of course it ought to go to Mr Piper; but I shall send it to the vicar, and he must pay it himself. Good gracious!”

She had just directed the envelope to the Reverend Henry Lambent, when she saw him pass the window; and as she sat listening, her heart beating heavily the while, there was a gentle tap at the door, which was standing open, and the vicar’s voice said softly—“May I come in?”

“Yes; I—that is—Yes, pray come—in, Mr Lambent; but if you have called on account of your sisters’ visit to me this morning, I—”

“My visit was to you alone, Mrs Thorne,” said the vicar gravely.

“But I must protest against any such visits as your sisters’!”

“My dear Mrs Thorne,” said the vicar sadly, “I have come to you, a lady who has known great trouble, as a friend. My dear madam, I have a very painful communication to make. Your daughter—”

“Not worse, Mr Lambent?” cried Mrs Thorne piteously. “Don’t say she’s worse!”

There was a painful silence, and then the vicar sighed heavily as he said—

“Her state is very dangerous indeed.”

Chapter Forty Five.

A Breach of Promise of Marriage.

Hazel seemed to have borne the moving well, and the doctor smiled his satisfaction at seeing his patient in such light and cheerful quarters; but the days had gone on without change. Night and day there had been the same weary, restless wandering of the fevered brain—the same constant talking of the troubles of the past; and little Miss Burge sobbed aloud sometimes as she listened to some of the revelations of Hazel’s breast.

“Poor dear!” she said, and she strove to give the sufferer the rest and ease that would not come, as hour by hour she watched the terrible inroads the fever made in her care-worn face.

“She’s getting that thin, doctor, it’s quite pitiful,” she said; but only to receive the same answer.

“Wait till the fever has exhausted itself, my dear madam, and we will soon build up fresh tissue, and you shall see her gain strength every hour.”

But the fever did not exhaust itself, and in spite of every care Hazel’s state grew critical indeed.

“If I might only see her, dear,” said Mr William Forth Burge; “if I might only speak to her once. I wouldn’t want to come in.”

“No, Bill dear,” said the little woman firmly; “not yet. The doctor says it is best not, and you must wait.”

“Does—does she ever in her wanderings—a—a—does she ever speak about me, Betsey?”

“Yes; sometimes she says you have been very kind.”

“She has said that?”

“Yes, dear; but she is not herself, Bill dear. She’s quite off her head. I wouldn’t build up any hopes upon that.”

“No, I won’t,” he said hastily. “I don’t expect anything—I don’t want anything, only to see her well again. But it does me good to think she can think of me ever so little while she is ill.”

“You see, dear, it’s her wandering,” said his sister; “that’s all.”

“But tell me, Betsey, tell me again, do you think she will get over it?” he said imploringly.

She looked at him with the tears trickling down her face, but she did not answer.

“He comes, you see, and smiles and rubs his hands, and says, ‘She’s no worse—she’s no worse, Mr William Forth Burge, sir;’ but I can’t trust him, Betsey, like I can you. There,” he cried, “see: I’m quite calm, and I’ll bear it like a man. Tell me, do you think she’ll get over it?”

“Bill dear, I can’t tell you a lie, but I don’t think there’s any present danger. I do think, though, you ought to send for the poor girl’s brother, and let him be down.”

William Forth Burge uttered a low groan, for he read the worst in his sister’s eyes.

“I’ll send for him directly, dear,” he said; and he rose and staggered from the room.

It was in the morning, and the message for Percy to come down at once was sent; after which, in a dull, heavy way, Burge stood staring before him, trying to get his brain to act clearly, as he asked himself what he ought to do next.

“I think I ought to go down to her mother,” he said softly; “and I will.”

In this intent he went softly out into the hall, when little Miss Burge came hastily down the stairs, and her brother gasped as he placed one hand upon his side.

“Bill—Bill,” she whispered excitedly, “she is talking sensibly, and she wants to see you.”

“Wants to see me?” he panted. “No, no; she is wandering, poor girl!”

“No, no, dear,” cried little Miss Burge, clinging to his arm; “she has asked for you hundreds of times when she was wandering, and I wouldn’t tell you—I thought it wouldn’t be right. But now she’s quite herself, and she’s asking for you to come.”

“But ought I,” he said, “in my own house?”

“Yes—now,” whispered back his sister. “But Bill dear, she’s wasted away to a shadow, she’s weak as weak, and you must not say a word more to her than if she was a friend or you were her brother.”

“No, no,” he said hoarsely.

“Come, then. She wants to speak to you, and it may do her good.”

Trembling with excitement, William Forth Burge softly followed his sister up the stairs, trying to smile and look composed, so as to present an encouraging aspect to the invalid, telling himself, heartsore though he was, that it was his duty, and that it would have a good effect; but as he entered the room and saw the change that had taken place, he uttered a low groan, and stood as if nailed to the floor.

For Hazel was changed indeed. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes looked unnaturally large, but the restless, pained expression had passed away, and the light of recognition was in her eyes, as she tried to raise one hand, which fell back upon the coverlet.

He saw her lips part, and she smiled at him as he stood there by the door. This brought him back to himself, and he went hurriedly towards the bedside.

“It was selfish of me to ask you to come,” she said softly; “but you have both shown that you do not fear the fever.”

“Fear it, my dear? No!” he said, taking her thin white hand, kissing it, and making as if to lay it reverently back upon the coverlet; but the fingers closed round his, and a thrill of joy shot through his breast, as it seemed for the moment that she was clinging to him.

“How am I ever to thank you enough?” she said, in a faint whisper. “Why have you brought me here? It troubles me. I feel as if I should make you suffer.”

“But you mustn’t talk now, my darling,” whispered little Miss Burge. “Wait till the doctor has been, and only lie still now and rest your poor self.”

“Yes—rest,” she said feebly—“rest. I feel so easy now. All that dreadful pain has gone.”

“Thank God!”

She turned her eyes upon the speaker with a grateful look and smiled faintly, motioning to him to take the chair by the bedside.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Yes; keep hold of my hand. You have been so kind, and I seem to see it all now so plainly.”

“But my darling, you must not talk. There, just say a word or two to him, and then he must go. I’m going to ask the doctor to come and see you now.”

“No: let him wait. I must talk now. Perhaps to-night my senses will go again, and I shall be wandering on and on amongst the troubles once more.”

“Then you will be very still, dear.”

“Yes; I only want to lie and rest. Don’t leave me, Mr Burge. Hold my hand.”

There was a sweet, calm look upon her face as she lay there, holding feebly by the hand that tenderly grasped hers, and her eyes half-closed as if in sleep.

From time to time William Forth Burge exchanged glances with his sister, but the looks he received in return were always encouraging, and he sat there, care-worn and anxious, but at the same time feeling supremely happy.

An hour had passed before Hazel spoke again, and then it was in a dreamy, thoughtful whisper.

“I’ve been thinking about the past,” she said, “and recalling all that has been done for me. I cannot talk much; but, Mr Burge, I can feel it all. Don’t—don’t think me ungrateful.”

“No, no,” he whispered, as he bent down and kissed her hand; “I never could.”

“I was thinking about—about when you asked me—to be your wife.”

“Yes, yes, my dear!” he said eagerly; “but I was mad then. It was only an old fellow’s fancy. I could not help it. It was foolish, and I ought to have known better. But we know one another now, and all you’ve got to do, my dear, is to grow well and strong, and find out that William Burge is man enough to do what’s right.”

She lay thinking for some little time, and then he felt that a feeble effort was being made to draw his hand closer to her face, and yielding it, once more a wild throb ran through his nerves, for she feebly drew his hand to her cheek and held it there.

“I was very blind then,” she said in a whisper; “but I am not blind now.”

She spoke with her eyes closed, the restful look intensifying as the time glided on.

After a while the woman who had acted as nurse announced the coming of the doctor, who brightened and looked pleased as he saw the change.

“Yes,” he said; “the fever has left her. Now we must build her up again.”

And after satisfying himself about his patient’s state, he beckoned Miss Burge from the room, and gave the fullest instructions as to the course to be pursued, promised to come in again that evening, and went away.

The day glided on, and William Forth Burge kept his place by the bedside, feeling that it was his by right; and then, at times, suffering from a terrible depression, as he told himself that he ought to go, and not presume upon the weakness of one who was in his charge. Hazel lay with her eyes half-closed, apparently in a restful, dreamy state, rousing herself a little when her tender nurse administered to her food or medicine, and then turning her eyes for a few moments to the occupant of the chair by the bedside, smiling at him sadly, afterwards, with a restful sigh, letting her cheek lie against his hand.

“I should like to have seen my little sisters,” she said once softly, “and my poor mother; but it would be cruel to bring them here. I should like to kiss poor Ophelia too.” She laughed faintly here, as if amused. “Poor child!—so good at heart. Poor child!”

There was another long interval of genuine sleep now, which lasted until evening, when Hazel awoke with a frightened start crying out painfully.

“What is it, my pet?” whispered little Miss Burge, bending over the bed, and parting the hair from Hazel’s hot wet brow. “There—there; you’re better now.”

The light of recognition came, and she darted a swift, clear look at the speaker, then turned excitedly to the bedside where William Forth Burge still sat holding her hand.

The peaceful smile came back as she saw him there, and she began speaking in a quick, excited way:—

“I have been dreaming—I thought I had told him it was impossible again—that I could not; for I loved some one else. But I do not. It was a weak girl’s fancy. Miss Burge, I should like to kiss you, dear; but it would be unkind. Touch my face—my lips with your fingers.”

“My darling, I have no fear,” sobbed the little woman; and she bent down and kissed the poor girl passionately, but only to rise in alarm, and make a sign to her brother, which he interpreted aright, and was about to rise and seek for help; but Hazel clung to his hand in alarm.

“No, no! don’t go!” she said hoarsely. “I could not bear it now.”

“I’ll run, Bill!” panted Miss Burge; but a word from Hazel stayed her.

“No; stop!” she whispered. “God knows best, Miss Burge. Lift me a little more. Let my head rest on your shoulder—so!”

William Forth Burge raised the thin, slight form tenderly and reverently, till Hazel’s head rested upon his broad shoulder, and he held her there; but she was not satisfied till he had placed her arm so that it half embraced his neck, and there she lay, gazing with her unnaturally bright, wistful eyes in his, while the great tears slowly welled over their bounds and trickled down his heavy face.

“Miss Burge,” she said again, and there was something very strange and wild in her voice, “I was weak and foolish once; but now it is too late, I have grown wiser—just at last. This is going to be my husband. In his dear memory I shall be his wife, for I love him now—with all my heart!”

She closed her eyes for a few moments, and without a sound little Miss Burge stretched out one hand to the bell, making a sign to the nurse who answered, and then glided away.

There was a long, deep silence then, broken only by a sob from Miss Burge, who now sank upon her knees by the bedside.

Hazel’s eyes opened again, and she gazed about her wildly, and as if in fear; but the restful smile came back, and she sighed as if relieved; and again there was a long silence, during which the watchers waited impatiently for the doctor’s step.

And so the minutes glided by, and the night came on apace—a night they felt would be black and deep, for all hope was gone.

Then Hazel spoke again, and her voice sounded clearer and more distinct—

“I shall not hurt you now,” she said softly, and her thin, wasted hand rose from the counterpane, seemed to tremble in the air for a moment, and then nestled in William Forth Burge’s breast. “Kiss me,” she said softly; “think that—at last—I loved you. So tired—let me sleep!”

Is there truth in the old superstitious stories that we hear? True in their spiritual sense or no, just then a black pigeon that had hovered about the house for days alighted upon the window-sill, and the rustle of its wings sounded loud and painful in the oppressive stillness of that evening.

From the fields the soft lowing of the kine came mellowed and sweet, and from the wood behind the house a thrush sang its evening hymn to the passing day, while, as the west grew less ruddy, the soft dawn-like light intensified in the north.

It needed but one sound to add to the solemnity of the time, and that was the heavy knoll of the church bell, which rang out the curfew, as it had announced the hour from the far-back days when it was cast and blessed, and holy hands first hung it there.

Just then little Miss Burge uttered a faint ejaculation of relief, for there was a quick step upon the gravel; but ere it reached the door there was a deep sigh in the shadowed room, Hazel’s large, soft eyes grew dilate, and their light was for ever gone; another bridegroom had snatched her from her simple-hearted lover’s arms—and that bridegroom was Death!

The End.

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