Margaret was aghast. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Is it Lena? Has anything happened to her?" Mrs. Lakeman struggled for utterance; when she gained it her words were thick, her voice desperate. "I have come to ask you for her life!" she said. "Me?" "Your telegram has killed her." "Oh!" Margaret's face blanched, for she saw what was coming. Mrs. Lakeman raised herself, and sat down on the sofa and took Margaret's hands, and looked at her with eyes as strangely blue as they were mocking. "Margaret," she said, "I have done a desperate thing; but my child has been ill, she has been fretting and waiting for her lover--for the boy who has always been her lover. She can't bear separation from him. Yesterday morning I sent for him, and told him she was dangerously ill; at five o'clock your telegram--" "It was Tom's telegram." Mrs. Lakeman was impatient at the interruption. "Tom's telegram, then--came. By an accident it was given into her hands instead of mine, and a quarter of an hour later I was bending over her wondering if she would ever open her eyes again. Tom has been ours--all his life," Mrs. Lakeman went on, vehemently; "he and she have grown up together; he has always loved her; he has done everything for us; they have never been three days apart till we went to Scotland the other day. She worships him, and it has been the one hope of my life to see them married. She has never dreamed of anything else; he is the air she breathes and the world she lives in. When that telegram came yesterday it struck her like a death-blow." "Oh, but Tom and I love each other," Margaret cried, in despair. "No, dear," Mrs. Lakeman answered, impressively. "You must know the truth, for my child's life hangs on it. He does not love you--he loves her. He may have been infatuated with you during the last fortnight in which he has been parted from her. It's so like Tom," she added, with a little smile, for she found the tragic rôle a difficult one to maintain. "He has been infatuated so often." "So often?" repeated Margaret, incredulously. "Oh yes," Mrs. Lakeman answered, and the odd smile came to her lips. "You wouldn't believe how many times he has come to confess to me that he has made an idiot of himself. He is always falling in love, and getting engaged, and going to be married." "I can't believe it! I won't believe it!" Margaret cried, passionately. "It's quite true," Mrs. Lakeman answered, coolly. "Generally I have managed to conceal everything from Lena, and to get him out of his scrapes--I have known perfectly well that they were only boyish nonsense, for at the bottom of his heart, Margaret Vincent," she went on, resuming her solemnity, "he loves no one but my child; any other woman would be miserable with him. You won't give him any trouble?" she asked, insultingly; "you will give him up quietly, won't you?" "I can't--I can't believe it."