"Yes; you would give her to Him without a word," he said, earnestly, almost reverently; for while he loved his wife for her own sake and for her love to himself, he loved her far more for her whole-souled devotion to Christ. He went out now to find the doctor and to propose a consultation. The doctor caught at the suggestion eagerly. "The case is an obscure one," he said. "The child's debility is very great, but I find no explanation of it unless there is some insidious disease upon the brain." "So her mother thinks." "Indeed? I am surprised at that. Yet I ought not to be surprised either, after knowing her all her life. She has her mother's quick intuitions. Well, I will arrange about the consultation, immediately." "Could not I do that?" "Why, yes, I will give you the address of the physician I call in for children. You will find him at his office to-morrow morning, at ten." Mr. Heath was thankful to go. Men are generally as out of place in sick-rooms as steam engines; twenty times he had banged the door and made Mabel cry out, and Belle had shuddered again and again, at the sound of his newspaper, which he could have read just as well in the library. The word "consultation" sent a chill to Margaret's heart. She rushed away to her own room, locked the door, threw herself on her face across the bed, and cried with that bitter, heart-breaking cry which had won the love and sympathy in which she had been revelling. "God wouldn't do such a dreadful thing!" she at last said to herself. "Never was a child adored as Mabel is. There is not one among them all, half so sweet. Why should He take her? He won't! I know He won't! What a fool I am for crying so! And there is aunty _slaving_ over the twins!" She flew to the washstand and tried to remove the traces of her tears; then hurried to the nursery, where she found both babies fretting dismally, and Mrs. Grey doing her best to comfort them. "I have been dreadfully selfish, aunty," she said, taking one of the twins from her. "I must have a very contracted mind, for it can only hold one thing at a time. I am as brimful of Mabel as a nest is full of birds." "It isn't so much a contracted mind, as an exaggerating heart," was the reply. "You magnify every one you love, and every pursuit you engage in." The nurses, who had been having their breakfasts, came now to the nursery, and Margaret drew Mrs. Grey away, to see if she could find comfort in her. "God wouldn't do such a thing as to take away Mabel, would He, aunty?" "I used to think He _could_ not do these agonizing things; but He can, He does, and He knows why I have trembled for Belle when I have seen that steadfast little lover of hers follow her as the needle does the pole. It is Maud and her mother over again--only--" She broke down now, but only for a moment, and asked Margaret's pardon as meekly as a child. "Is it wrong, then, to cry?" asked Margaret, bewildered.