Volume Ii Part 17 (1/2)

”Of course not. Poor darling! when he first proposed to her we were at Renton, and oh, it was hateful to me then, though I think it tolerable now; and I was wild to get away--anywhere from that smoky place. Poor Margaret refused him, and told me about it.... You will see why I am so heart-broken now. I was disappointed. I was so selfish, and I thought she might have done it.”

”Is that when----”

”Now, do not interrupt me,” she said, struggling to speak in a light tone, though her heart was heavy. ”I am just like a clock, I can go on when I am wound up, and if I am put back I strike all wrong.”

”I will not interrupt you--but,” he said, colouring, ”would your sister wish me to hear all this--think only of her--if she disliked it?”

”I am not thinking or talking of her, except with reference to my part of the story,” said Grace, pettishly.

”Well, we went to Lornbay, I daresay you remember the place well, as you were laid-up there. Well, Margaret had another lover there” (she did not see him start), ”and this long, lanky, would-be fast youth also wished to marry my Margaret, and, of course, she said, No; and I was not at all annoyed,” she continued, navely, ”for he had not a sixpence.

”Well--you see I begin all my sentences with that useful word--but it was anything but well now. We went off to a most detestable little village called Torbreck, and there I stupidly caught cold and coughed. I never heard of any one who coughed as I did. Then Mr. Drayton found us out, and I forget exactly what he did, but he gave us ever so many things, and grapes; and how I thanked him. Then he again wanted to marry Margaret. ”Oh!” she exclaimed, the tears running down her face, ”I never, never can forget one night.” She came and knelt beside my bed, and she asked me if this sacrifice would really be what I wished; she said it would be giving her life, and that it was worse for her now than it had been before she had been at Lornbay. Sir Albert, do not turn away from me now. You cannot hate my deed worse than I do--you cannot have a lower opinion of me than I have of myself. I excited myself, and I bid her ”do it!” and Grace lay back in her chair utterly exhausted.”

What could the young man say? The deed was done and nothing could undo it. The utter selfishness of Grace's conduct could find no excuse; he tried to master his emotion; he could only succeed in saying in a broken voice something about G.o.d's forgiveness.

But Grace was past all the anguish of seeing this horror in his face.

She had exerted herself to tell him the story, and put Margaret right in his eyes; and she had given way to exhaustion, and was deaf and blind to all that pa.s.sed round her--for the time.

He stayed a little while, and left her, shocked at the violence of his own feeling against her.

The image of his poor childish love--kneeling beside the bedside of the sister she adored, who sacrificed her remorselessly--for what? A few luxuries.

It was absolutely terrible to think of, and he forgot to take into account the feebleness of health that might have impaired judgment. He waited in London till he thought Mrs. Dorriman had time to answer, whence for fear of any mistakes he had dated his telegram. Her answer came, and was not fully satisfactory. _My brother is very ill, and I cannot leave him, but I send my maid Jean._

He went again to Grace's lodgings, and he told the landlady that an old family servant was on her way. Then he tried to think how best to convey this news to Margaret.

He felt that his having been admitted was a chance, and he was afraid of making things worse for her by going there too often; but he must risk something, she must know in some way about her sister, she must have her mind set at rest.

Unable to make up his mind he was wandering about when he was attracted by a curious-looking book in a bookseller's shop. It was something more than a shop, for he read there that it was no less a place than the office of the ”Industrious Workman,” a paper he knew by name.

He went in to ask the price of the book, and the intelligent little man, who was tearfully reading a poem, put it down to attend to him, saying as he did so, ”I beg pardon for being so absorbed, but I have something very lovely here;” and handing him the paper Sir Albert recognised in the neatly-written lines--Margaret's handwriting.

CHAPTER VII.

When Margaret left Renton Place, and that Grace had seen her off, the first real sense of having been to blame came to disturb her mind. That intense belief in herself which, as a rule, s.h.i.+elded her from uncomfortable feelings, deserted her now; she tried to argue herself into some more cheerful vein, but found it hopeless. Was it that she was weaker, and that her illness had shaken her nerves? When night fell and the household slept, memory came to confront her. Her selfishness filled her with remorse; how many things she could look back upon now, when Margaret, her sweetness, and her devotion never failing, had been counted as so little, tested by her own all-absorbing love of having her own way?

After all, how petty a thing she had urged her sacrifice for, and how easily the self-will that had in the end been obliged to give in might have done so before, and saved her!

A recognition, dim as yet, came to her of the beauty of her sister's character. How far apart they stood in feeling! How Margaret insisted on not only truth, but the highest expression of truth, as the only thing she cared for.

Tears chased each other down her face, and each morning found her pale and unrefreshed.

Want of sleep and the incessant torment of a newly awakened conscience made Grace unusually irritable, her gay spirits were fitful, and, indeed, were only used as a mask to hide the perpetual pain she had to bear, a pain so far, far, more agonizing than any bodily pain.

Mr. Sandford--who was, himself, out of health--had no affection to enable him to support her provoking ways.

He was terribly annoyed and concerned about Margaret, he was upset and mortified by other things.

It was impossible for Mr. Drayton to have lost, as he had lost, without the fact being known far and wide, and Mr. Sandford's share was universally condemned. He was accused openly of having made a cat's-paw of the man whose genial laugh and careless ways had gained him the epithet of a ”good fellow” from men who had neither suffered through him or known his counter-balancing want of attraction.