Volume Iii Part 9 (2/2)

Christie had welcomed her with all the heartiness of an old Highland friend and dependent. She had scrubbed and cleaned, and Mrs. Dorriman, while missing Jean at every turn, was full of grat.i.tude.

”Eh, my dear, time has stood still for you,” Christie said to her, as she watched her quick movements to and fro; ”you are a different woman to what you were when you went away.”

”I am happier, Christie.”

”Aye, you are happier, but you have to get more yet; there's more good to come to you yet.”

Mrs. Dorriman laughed softly.

”Are you prophesying a husband to me at my age, and another husband too?” and then she blamed herself for laughing.

”Your age is no hindrance; but I was not thinking of marrying; I was thinking of the old house, of the old home.”

”Oh, don't,” said Mrs. Dorriman, raising her hands as though pus.h.i.+ng the thought from her; ”do not make me unhappy by making me think of that.

The old place is sold, Christie, and gone from us, gone from me, and I mean to be happy here.”

”It will come back to you,” Christie said, persistently; ”you will see that it will be yours again some day, and it's not a far-off day, either,” she added, more to herself than to Mrs. Dorriman.

Mrs. Dorriman turned away. At that moment, with the broad sea rippling and sparkling beneath, taking a thousand hues as it reflected the moving clouds, and the sea-breeze coming upon her with its exquisite freshness, she felt horribly ungrateful for giving a lingering thought to that other home.

But here, with all its beauty, there was a charm lacking--the charm of memory.

Inchbrae had no a.s.sociations for her, and in that other home there was the dear, kind face of the father, who would doubtless have done more for her had he only had it in his power.

She stood silently trying to stifle any regrets, and to be thankful and grateful for this, the little home she had to offer Margaret.

Margaret had done a good deal, but not all she had hoped to do. She had seen sights that had made her heart sore, and she had helped in many ways, following lines already laid down, and enabling many charities to extend their action. Children learned to watch for her, and those standing round marvelled at the tenderness and skill of her way of handling them.

Knowing her to be childless they were surprised.

Margaret seldom spoke of her little one now. Deep down in her heart she cherished its memory--for a true mother never forgets--but she could not open the wound to strangers or explain why a sick child commanded her strongest compa.s.sion.

Her own name was never brought forward, and all the money arrangements were made for her by Mr. Stevens.

She found the other plan she wished to carry out with regard to Grace much more difficult.

Lady Lyons had spoken the truth as regarded finding the ”great lady,”

with whom alone Grace imagined she would find perfect happiness, and be ”in the swim.” She could hear of no one who had the slightest ambition to chaperone a young lady who was not very beautiful, not very rich, and n.o.body in particular. Grace had more than one interview with what she called hopeful people; and she was too fond of a joke, even against herself, not to repeat them, and even act the scenes, for Margaret's benefit.

But the plain fact remained that she could hear of nothing the least like what she wanted; and Grace, at no time a miracle of patience, got extremely irritable, and accused the world in general of combining together to defeat her.

Margaret, coming home full of the terrible scenes to which she could not accustom herself, was worried beyond description. The sharp contrast between this unfulfilled longing on the part of her sister for mere amus.e.m.e.nt, and the terrible--sometimes horrible--realities, to which she had just before perhaps been standing face to face, struck her painfully. She was but human herself, and there arose between them sometimes angry words and sharp retorts that filled her with dismay afterwards.

In characters so widely apart as theirs, it was only to be expected that a day would come when some tremendous crisis would show each how strained the sisterly chords now were.

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