"I cannot tell you," she said; "I cannot explain it, and because I cannot I am forced to believe it, to feel that it is so. The world seems far away from me somehow, even my own small precious world. You remember, when I spoke to you before, I told you how much I dreaded the effect of what had happened on myself, on my own feelings--how strangely the sense I have always had of being so much older than my husband, the dread of losing the power of enjoying the great happiness of my life, had seized hold of me?" "I remember." "Well," she continued, "all this fear has left me now--indeed, all fear of every kind, and the power of suffering, I think. When I think of the grief of those I shall have to leave, if my presentiment is realised, I don't shrink from it as I did when the first thought of the possible future came to me. After all, it is for such a little, little time." Her eyes were raised upwards to the light, and a smile which the listener could not bear to see, and yet looked at--thinking, with the vain tenderness so fruitful in pangs of every kind and degree of intensity, that at least he never, never should be unable to recall _that_ look--came brightly over her face, and slowly faded. "O, no, Margaret; life is awfully long--hopelessly long." "It seems so sometimes, but it has ceased to seem so to me. You must not grieve for what I am saying to you. If all is what you will think right with me, and we are here together again, you will be glad to think, to remember how I told you all that was in my heart; if it is otherwise, you will be far more than glad, James." In his heart there arose at that moment a desperately strong, an almost irresistible longing to tell her now, for the first time and the last, how he had loved her all his life. But he resisted the longing--he was used to self-restraint--and said not a word which could trouble her peace. They returned to the house shortly after, and went in by the drawing-room window. At the foot of the green slope Margaret paused for a minute, and looked with a smile at the open window of her room. A white curtain fluttered about it; there was a stir as of life in the room, but there was no one there. "You will take care of the passion-flower, James?" she said. "I think the blossoms will be splendid this year." A few hours later, and the house was deserted by all but James Dugdale. Hayes Meredith and his son had escorted Lady Davyntry to her own house, and gone on from thence to dine with the Croftons. The first letter which James Dugdale received was from Margaret. She wrote in good spirits, and gave an amusing account of her father's delight with the Deane, and admiration--a little qualified by the difficulty of acknowledging at least its equality with his own--of Mr. Baldwin's collection, and his frequent expressions of surprise at finding the journey by no means so disagreeable or portentous an undertaking as he had expected. She was very well, except that she had taken cold.