“It is beautiful’ done, yes, yes. I couldn’t do it more clean myself, I, Angelique, no. But, ma p’tite I hear, hear, and be calm! The master is himself! The master has awoke, yes, and is askin’ for his child. True, true. Old Joe, he says, ‘Come! quick, soft, no cry, no laugh, just listen.’ Yes. Oh, now all will be well!” Margot almost hushed her very breathing. Her uncle awake, sane, asking for her. Her face was radiant, flushed, eager, a face to brighten the gloom of any sick room, however dark. But this one was not dark. Joe knew his patient’s fancies. He had forgotten none. One of them was the sunshine and fresh air; and though in his heart he believed that these two things did a world of harm, and that the ill-ventilated and ill-lighted cabins of his own people were more conducive to recovery, he opposed nothing which the master desired. He had experimented, at first, but finding a close room aggravated Mr. Dutton’s fever, reasoned that it was too late to break up the foolish habits of a man’s lifetime; and as the woodlander had lived in the sunlight, so he would better die in it, and easier. If she had been a trained nurse, Margot could not have entered her uncle’s presence more quietly, though it seemed to her that he must hear the happy beating of her heart and how her breath came fast and short. He was almost too weak to speak at all, but there was all the old love, and more, in his whispered greeting. “My precious child!” “Yes, Uncle. And such a happy child because you are better.” She caught his hand and covered it with kisses, but softly, oh! so softly, and he smiled the rare, sweet smile that she had feared she’d never see again. Then he looked past her to Angelique, in the doorway, and his eyes roved toward his desk in the corner. A little fanciful desk that held only his most sacred belongings and had been Margot’s mother’s. It was to be hers, some day, but not till he had done with it, and she had never cared to own it, since doing so meant that he could no longer use it. Now she watched him and Angelique wonderingly. For the woman knew exactly what was required. Without question or hesitation, she answered the command of his eyes by crossing to the desk and opening it with a key she took from her own pocket. Then she lifted a letter from an inner drawer and gave it into his thin fingers. “Well done, good Angelique. Margot--the letter--is yours.” “Mine? I am to read it? Now? Here?” “No, no. No, no, indeed! Would you tire the master with the rustlin’ of paper? Take it, else. Not here, where ever’thin’ must be still as still.” Mr. Dutton’s eyes closed. Angelique knew that she had spoken for him, and that the disclosure which that letter would make should be faced in solitude. “Is she right, Uncle, dearest? Shall I take it away to read?” His eyes assented, and the tender, reassuring pressure of his hand.