“What a time Margaret is gone! —­ when will she be back?”

“I am here, my love,” said Mrs. Elton.

“Yes, yes; thank you.  But I want Margaret.”

“She will be here presently.  Have patience, my dear.”

“Please, don’t let Miss Cameron come near me.  I am afraid I am very wicked, but I can’t bear her to come near me.”

“No, no, dear; we will keep you to ourselves.”

“Is Mr. —­ , the foreign gentleman, I mean —­ below?”

“No.  He is gone.”

“Are you sure?  I can hardly believe it.”

“What do you mean, dear?  I am sure he is gone.”

Lady Emily did not answer.  Margaret returned.  She took the beef-tea, and grew quiet again.

“You must not leave her ladyship, Margaret,” whispered her mistress.  “She has taken it into her head to like no one but you, and you must just stay with her.”

“Very well, ma’am.  I shall be most happy.”

Mrs. Elton left the room.  Lady Emily said: 

“Read something to me, Margaret.”

“What shall I read?”

“Anything you like.”

Margaret got a Bible, and read to her one of her father’s favourite chapters, the fortieth of Isaiah.

“I have no right to trust in God, Margaret.”

“Why, my lady?”

“Because I do not feel any faith in him; and you know we cannot be accepted without faith.”

“That is to make God as changeable as we are, my lady.”

“But the Bible says so.”

“I don’t think it does; but if an angel from heaven said so, I would not believe it.”

“Margaret!”

“My lady, I love God with all my heart, and I cannot bear you should think so of him.  You might as well say that a mother would go away from her little child, lying moaning in the dark, because it could not see her, and was afraid to put its hand out into the dark to feel for her.”

“Then you think he does care for us, even when we are very wicked.  But he cannot bear wicked people.”

“Who dares to say that?” cried Margaret.  “Has he not been making the world go on and on, with all the wickedness that is in it; yes, making new babies to be born of thieves and murderers and sad women and all, for hundreds of years?  God help us, Lady Emily!  If he cannot bear wicked people, then this world is hell itself, and the Bible is all a lie, and the Saviour did never die for sinners.  It is only the holy Pharisees that can’t bear wicked people.”

“Oh! how happy I should be, if that were true!  I should not be afraid now.”

“You are not wicked, dear Lady Emily; but if you were, God would bend over you, trying to get you back, like a father over his sick child.  Will people never believe about the lost sheep?”

“Oh! yes; I believe that.  But then —­”

“You can’t trust it quite.  Trust in God, then, the very father of you —­ and never mind the words.  You have been taught to turn the very words of God against himself.”