"'Tell me at once!' I said. 'Keep nothing back!'

"'Immediately on her return from Marseilles,--you remember that?'

"'Yes, yes! go on!'

"'She established herself here. Nobody could come between her and you;
and a brave, true girl she proved herself. Oh, but she was wild about
you! She offered the doctors extravagant sums--she would have bribed
Heaven itself, if she could--not to let you die. But there came a
time,--one night, when you were raving about Margaret,--I tell
you, it was terrible! She would have the truth, and so I told
her,--everything, from the beginning. It makes me shudder now to think
of it,--it struck her so like death!'

"'What did she say?--what did she do?'

"'She didn't say much,--"Oh, my God! my God!"--something like that.
The next morning she showed me a letter which she had written to
Margaret.'

"'To Margaret?' I started up, but fell back again, helpless, with a
groan.

"'Yes,' said Joseph,--'and it was a letter worthy of the noblest
woman. I wrote another, for I thought Margaret ought to know
everything. It might save her life, and yours, too. In the mean time,
I had got worse news from her still,--that her health continued to
decline, and that her physician saw no hope for her except in a voyage
to Italy. But that she resolutely refused to undertake, until she got