"Her own words--that, in that contingency, Margaret Walsingham would never marry me--her own words." "You believe in your Perdita's love?" cried the lawyer, throwing his last ball with triumph straight at the bull's eye. "If noble tenderness, and devotion such as hers, is love, I do, most solemnly." "Then she'll do as your Perdita, what she wouldn't do as your enemy, Margaret Walsingham. She'll even lower her pride to marry you, if she thinks it necessary to your happiness." But Mr. Davenport was forced to modify his satisfaction, when, on seeking an audience with his ward, the old negress who had that morning taken Margaret's place in the colonel's sick room, brought from her chamber a note from the young lady. "She's been and gone," said the woman; "and this is for Massa Davenport." It said to the staring lawyer: "DEAR MR. DAVENPORT:--I have thought it best at once to proceed to the Stanhopes', as the situation might become filled up, and all danger of infection has passed from me by this time. "You will see that the colonel is taken excellent care of until the English steamer arrives, when I am sure he will be able to travel; and you will accompany him to Seven-Oak Waaste, and be as useful to him and as faithful as you have been to me. "I am going without bidding you good-by. Perhaps you will be a little angry; but, dear Mr. Davenport, it was far better than if I had. I have been a great bother to you from first to last, haven't I? But you will forgive me, now that our ways lie so widely apart. "Tell Colonel Brand that I wish him to forgive the deception I have practiced upon him; but that I shall never regret the four weeks in which I watched him from the brink of the grave, and that if he can accept a message from Margaret Walsingham, it is that he may always think kindly of his Perdita, and try to keep her apart from his remembrance of a presumed adventuress. "Your affectionate ward, M. W." "Here's a pretty to do!" cried Davenport, bustling into the invalid's room with the little double sheet of note paper fluttering in his hand. "Of all queer dodges, this is the last. She's gone, sir, this morning to her situation at the Stanhopes', and here's the note that she's obliging enough to write by way of good-by to you." St. Udo took the note and scanned each pretty character, while his cheeks became bloodless as snow. It was blistered with tears, and it seemed to breathe in every line its quiet and patient sorrow, and to have become resigned to it, as if there was no remedy. What the colonel's emotions were, to read this little note of his Perdita's, no one may know. He sat up in bed, and looked wildly round him, while the lawyer glared, and dumbly bit his nails. "Let us drive instantly to the Stanhopes'." "You? Humph! You look like a man going driving!" "I tell you I shall drive there if I should faint every mile of the way."