Volume I Part 17 (2/2)

Something might have been uttered by Mr. Sandford, had not his attention been drawn to Grace. She had spoken some words that had roused even gentle Mrs. Dorriman to indignation, for the words had reference to Jean.

”Her illness was nothing much,” she was saying, ”and she gained her point. She got poor Mrs. Chalmers out of it and stepped into her shoes.

I liked Mrs. Chalmers myself.”

”It is very unfair to say this of Jean,” said Mrs. Dorriman, with a heightened colour; ”she never meddled or interfered, and I never asked her to stay; she stayed because Mrs. Chalmers left suddenly and we had no one else.”

”Yes, my dear Mrs. Dorriman, but _why_ did she leave suddenly? There are two sides to every question,” said Grace, with her little air of superiority, caring nothing really about the question, but in rather a state of irritation, and arguing merely because she had no other way of venting her ruffled feelings. She was unreasonably cross, first because Mr. Drayton was not what she had expected, and then because something might have come of his visit and nothing had come, and she saw before her the monotony of days, and nothing, no excitement, nothing in sight.

Her spirits were low and when this was the case she was always cross.

”What are you driving at?” exclaimed Mr. Sandford angrily; ”what do you know about it?”

”Only that that Highland woman, Mrs. Dorriman's servant, managed to get Mrs. Chalmers out of the house. I suppose I may have an opinion on the subject?” said Grace, her colour rising and her temper also.

”You have no business to say anything of the kind,” thundered Mr.

Sandford, too angry to restrain his voice, sending terror into the timid soul of his sister and making Margaret turn pale, while she instinctively rose and stood by Grace; ”Mrs. Chalmers ventured to be insolent to _me_ and she left, as all people may expect to do who venture to show insolence to me or mine.”

”If _you_ have an opinion I may have mine,” persisted Grace, too much roused herself to feel afraid of him.

”You may have an opinion but you are not ent.i.tled to express it in my house,” he answered, still more irritated by her manner; ”you can wait for that till you have a house of your own, a thing which appears to me very problematical, since no man would care to have an upsetting, conceited young woman as a wife with no fortune, or looks, or any single recommendation.”

Grace was pale with anger. Margaret turned upon him like a young lioness.

”How can you say such unkind, such untrue things?” she exclaimed pa.s.sionately. ”Oh! Grace, my darling, do not heed him.”

”I do not heed him,” said Grace, magnificently, wounded and stung beyond belief, and quivering with pa.s.sion, ”but I want to know why you keep us in your house, hating us so evidently--we will not stay, we will go. You offered us a home, and now you speak as though we were a burden. We will go, Margaret.”

”Speak for yourself, I offered you a home for the sake of one I loved. I did not know you then. When I saw what you were, I still kept that home open to you for the sake of your sister; you put yourself above her in everything, you have made her believe you her superior in all things, but she is worth a dozen of you, and so every man in his senses will think as they know you.”

Grace was in tears by this time, and Margaret tried to get her to go out of the room, but she was struggling forwards, she would not go till she had said something, and she meant the last word to be very cutting.

”Brother,” said Mrs. Dorriman, imploringly, ”you are wrong; you are saying things now in the heat of pa.s.sion that you will be sorry for afterwards. It is hard to be obliged to eat the bread of dependence, and to have it cast up to you.”

”It is her own fault,” he said, angrily; ”she gives herself airs and graces as though she were above the ground she treads upon. It makes me ill the way she goes on, and she must hear it!”

”Spare her now.”

”Oh! I'll spare her, but she has to lower her head; even Drayton would have nothing to say to her, though I did my best, and praised her up to the skies when I spoke to him.”

”That is more than enough!” sobbed Grace, as with Margaret clinging to her she rushed to her own room, and the sisters sobbed out their misery in each other's arms.

But crying would not help them; they resolved to leave the house, to go far from this, _where_ they did not exactly know; they did not know any one except their school-mistress, and having left her with flying colours it seemed terrible to them to have to go back and face the wonder and the pity they would meet with.

They were both so young and so inexperienced. They sat thinking, not wholly miserable now because they were conscious of a sort of excitement and they were together.

Grace at that moment could not help thinking what a small beginning generally leads to large conclusions--this beginning had been so very, very trifling.

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