She asked herself, as she sat beside the Master's bed watching the feeble, groping hand straying over the coverlet, as if it were searching for something, what the Master's wife would have done if she had been in her place. Would her love have stood the test? It had been all fair sailing with her--a long, long sequence of success, distinction, and honour. There had never been a cloud upon the horizon of her love; there had been no harder test than the test of years of patient waiting, and the happy fulfilment of all her dearest hopes. There had not been a single disappointment. Her love had never been tried like Lucy's. Oh, it was too cruel that this blow should have fallen upon her! Lucy was quite sure that if her lines had fallen in such fair, still places as Mrs. Rae's, she would have made quite as devoted a wife. She would have been the tenderest and most loving wife to a successful man--to a man without any moral or mental taint, to a man of stainless reputation; but to a poor, miserable wretch, who had no control over himself, who wanted to be watched, and guarded, and restrained, who might at any moment do some dreadful thing----Oh, no, no, no! Lucy couldn't finish the picture, it was too terrible. She could only throw herself sobbing on the floor beside the Master's bed and grovel on the ground with her face in her hands in a paroxysm of humiliation and despair too deep for words. Oh, why had she such a small soul? 'I am made on such small lines,' she moaned in her self-abasement. 'I am such a mean, pitiful creature. I want to be happy, and safe, and prosperous, and everything to go smooth. I cannot rise to great occasions like other women. I cannot make sacrifices that other women would love to make. I am not Pamela--I am not even Maria Stubbs!' Nurse Brannan came in while Lucy was on the floor beside the bed. She pretended that she was kneeling--Lucy was always pretending things. There was quite sufficient reason to account for her tears and for her kneeling beside the Master's bed. All who loved him in life should have been there, where Lucy was, kneeling and weeping. There was no one else left to kneel and weep but Cousin Mary, and Nurse Brannan fetched her presently, when she saw how near the end was. They watched beside him until the dawn, and then the nurse drew the curtain up and let in the faint gray light of the new day. Lucy sat sobbing miserably beside the bed, and Cousin Mary held the feeble hand in hers--it was too feeble to grope any more; and the rapid beat of the Master's watch on the table beat out like a swift shuttle the solemn closing moments of the Master's life.