"Now, there is one last thing which you have got to do for your uncle Maurice, and I have brought you down here to tell you what that last thing is." Annie was silent. She shrank a little more into the shelter of the rough old cloak, and moved farther from her cousin. "You must do it Annie," he said, speaking in a decided voice; "you must on no account whatever fail at this supreme juncture." "Well?" said Annie when he paused. "Your uncle is expecting you. God has kept him alive in order that he may see your face again. To him your face is as that of an angel. To him those blue eyes of yours are as innocent as those of a little child. To him you are the spotless darling, undefiled, uninjured by the world, whom he has nurtured and loved for your father's sake and for your own. You must on no account, Annie, open his eyes to the truth with regard to you now. It is your duty to keep up the illusion as far as he is concerned. I have taken all this trouble to bring you to his bedside in order that he may have his last wish gratified, and you must not fail me. Perhaps your uncle's prayers may be answered; and God, who can do all things, will change your heart. "Now, remember, Annie, you have to forget yourself to-night and to think only of the dying old man. Promise me, promise me that you will do so." "You have spoken very strangely, Cousin John," said Annie after a very long pause. "I--I will do--my--best I am very bad--but--I will do--my best." The next instant Annie's icy-cold little hand was clasped in that of John Saxon. "You have to believe two things," he said. "A great man who was as your father, whom God is taking to Himself. That man loves you with all his heart and soul and strength. When he dies, there is another man, unworthy, unfit truly, to stand in his shoes, but nevertheless who will not forsake you. Now let us get back to the Rectory." There was a feeling of peace in the old house, a wonderful calm, a strange sense of aloofness as though the ordinary things of life had been put away and everyday matters were of no account. The fact was this: that for several days now, for long days and long nights, the beautiful Angel of Death had been brooding over the place; and the people who lived in the old Rectory had recognised the fact and had arranged their own lives accordingly. Money did not matter at all in the shadow of that Presence; nor did greatness--worldly greatness, that is--nor ambition, nor mere pleasure; and, above all things, self-love was abhorrent in that little home of peace, for the Angel of Death brooding there brought with him the very essence of peace. It was a curious fact that Annie Brooke, when she passed under the threshold and entered on what she expected to be the most awful time of her whole life, found that same peace immediately descend upon her. She lost all sense of fear, and every scrap of regret at having left the good and gay things of life at Zermatt.