'Papa! guess who is here!'
He looked at her; she saw the idea of the truth glimmer into their filmy sadness, and be dismissed thence as a wild imagination.
He threw himself forward, and hid his face once more in his stretched-out arms, resting upon the table as heretofore. She heard him whisper; she bent tenderly down to listen. 'I don't know. Don't tell me it is Frederick—not Frederick. I cannot bear it,—I am too weak. And his mother is dying!' He began to cry and wail like a child. It was so different to all which Margaret had hoped and expected, that she turned sick with disappointment, and was silent for an instant. Then she spoke again—very differently—not so exultingly, far more tenderly and carefully.
'Papa, it is Frederick! Think of mamma, how glad she will be! And oh, for her s
