"You will see, dear Madam, the hand of God in it all. You say that on the 18th day of January you began to think of my Margaret, and of offering her a home. On that day, after many a sleepless night, I asked leave of my mistress to see a physician; she not only permitted it, but sent for the family doctor. He told me I had six months to live, and no more. Now, here was my poor child to be deprived of her mother, not well-educated enough to teach, too well-educated to be happy among a crowd of ill-bred servants, and I knew not what would become of her. There was only one thing I could do, and that was to leave her with my God. He knew I had no wicked ambition for her, though I did want her so bred, that if her father's family ever fell in with her, they need have no occasion to be ashamed of her. And then I knew that if her natural tastes could be at all gratified, it would keep her from a fondness for dress, and visiting and idling, and other follies to which young women are prone. Now, all my prayers for her are answered. Before you knew of her coming need, your heart was made to yearn over her; and now I can die in perfect peace, for you will be a mother to my child, and teach her all I could have taught her, and far, far more." "And where do you propose to die?" asked Mrs. Grey. Two remarkable women had got together, and were talking in this quiet, passionless way of so solemn an event as death. How was this? It arose from the fact that commotion, and hue and cry, and clamor belong only to undisciplined characters. Who ever heard of the General of an army becoming panic-stricken and demoralized? He leaves that to the common soldier. Both Mrs. Grey and Mrs. Haydon had passed through too many and too deep waters to regard death as anything more than a little rill, over which one passed at a single footstep. "I shall have to go to a hospital," said Mrs. Haydon. "And have Margaret nurse you?" "That is not allowed. And if it is not asking too much, since you so kindly propose to care for my child, might she come to you directly?" "While you go off, alone, to die in a hospital? No; oh, no. Were you to go at once?" "Yes, at once. I have toiled on till I can toil no more." "Is it possible that you are so ill, yet show it so little?" "It's the quiet mind, the doctor says, that keeps me up. He said that if I had worried, it would have hastened my death. Thank God, I have learned to cast all my care on Him, and He has cared for me." There was silence for some minutes. What might be mistaken for dogged submission, Mrs. Grey recognized as the kind of faith that travels across and moves mountains. She was decisive in all her ways always knew her own mind, and now came to a very rapid conclusion. "Does Margaret know?" "No, Madam. Would you be willing to break it to her?"