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172 _ WILD MARGARET,
you are there—and you have just told me. Dead! Dead I
Austin—don’t—kcep—it from me! Tellme all. Look, I'll
be quiet. I won’t utter a sound. Doctor, for Heaven's
sake make him tell me.”
The doctor turned his face away. It was wet with tears;
there was not a tear in Austin Ambrose’s eyes.
‘Shall I tell him—or wait?’ he whispered to the doc-
tor. -
The doctor nodded. .
‘Better now than later; the shock will be less now he
is weak. Poor fellow, poor fellow!”
Austin Ambrose bent down, and in a few words
scarcely audible, told the story. He said nothing of tue
visitor who had come, nothing of Margaret’s anguish. Ac-
cording as he told it, Margaret had strolled down to the
rock and remained there too long, until the tidal wave had
caught her and washed her out to sea. oo
Blair listened, his face pallid as that of death, his wide
eyes fixed gleamingly on the speaker’s face, his hands
clutching the quilt. Hvery now and then his lips moved
as if he were repeating the words as they dropped cau-
tiously from Austin Ambrose’s lips, and when he had fin-
ished he still leant upon his arm and looked at Austin
with horror and despair. . a
Then, without a cry, he sank back upon the pillow and
closed his eyes.
‘“‘He has swooned,”’ said Austin. ‘It was too soon.”
The doctor shook his head.
‘No; better now than later.”
After a moment or two Blair opened his eyes.
‘‘Have you told me.all?” he demanded, and there was
“something in the tone and the wild glare of his eye that
smote Austin Ambrose and made him quail.
__ ‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment’s pause, ‘‘everything:
has been done, Blair. Everything. I think you will know
that without my saying it. There is no hope—there was
‘none from the first. She was not seen after the. tide
reached her—she will not be seen again. Blair, you wil
play the man for—for all our sakes,’ and he pressed the
hot hand clutching the quilt.
Blair looked at him and withdrew his hand; they saw
his lips move once or twice, and guessed whose name they
formed; then he spoke.
‘Austin, did you ever pray?’ It was a strange, a sol-
‘emn question. ‘If so, pray now, pray that I may die!’
Over the weeks that followed it will be well to draw @
veil; enough that during them the strong man hovered be-
‘ween life and death, at times raving madly and calling
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