If not ... Margaret came to herself with a start. A horrible conviction began to pierce through all her anxiety. The end would have to be her marriage with Mr. Drayton.
There was nothing else. These two courses alone were open to her. After all, as _he_ was not free, did it matter so much what became of her? In all good women's natures there is a vein of self-sacrifice. Her life, she thought, would not have been in vain if she could save her sister. And she did not in the least comprehend Mr. Drayton's character.
She thought him unrefined, noisy, but probably good-hearted and generous. She thought of Grace so completely as a bit of herself that it never for a moment crossed her mind that any one would think of them apart. The absence of all close ties, save that one, made it all in all to her.
Slowly she went upstairs. She would speak to Grace. She would appeal to her. She knew only too well that if she acted without her consent, if she appealed to Mrs. Dorriman, Grace would work herself into a fever; the consequences might be fatal to her. She could not write and not speak, because she knew that she had grown very dear to the poor woman, who had so little outlet for her affections, and that she would come herself to look after them.
When she went into her sister's room she found her asleep; but it was not the sleep of perfect convalescence. There was still much fever, and as poor Margaret watched her tossings and wretched moanings at intervals, her heart sank, and she feared everything!
Sir Albert Gerald hurried to his Welsh home finding the tediousness of his journey and the inevitable jolting of the railway-carriage almost beyond his strength.
John remonstrated in vain. To the young man there was something tragical in his mother's death, apart from the only being she loved and clung to.
That doubt that visits most people when one loved is gone, as to whether we have in any way failed towards them, visited him now. Even his new passion for Margaret was for the moment pushed upon one side, and he would, he must, be beside her, see her once more; and he would not allow any personal ease or want of strength to stay him.
The result might have been guessed by all. When he got home he carried out his wish, he did see that loved face once more, but a return of the acute internal pain stretched him on his bed, and the local doctor, fearing for him in his reduced state, gave him opiates, and so kept him from consciousness and suffering at the same time.