Volume Iii Part 31 (2/2)
”And so able to help you,” said Margaret, feelingly.
She also felt this burden of loneliness; felt it all the more because of the contrast between her own life and that of others.
Christie was much moved when the news was told her.
”It is coming near, my dear,” she said to Margaret, ”in the Lord's good time.”
Margaret did not comprehend her.
Jean was most amusing upon the subject.
”And what for no!” she asked, when Mrs. Dorriman told her. ”You have never had real true love, though Mr. Dorriman, poor man, was aye fond of you in his way; but he was a crookit stick, with no pith in him. This man's a man to be proud of. There's stuff in him, and you will be able to lean on him. It's not a light puff of wind will blow him down!”
Mrs. Dorriman wrote to her brother, and, in a few words which she found difficult to write, told him of her engagement.
She also said that she trusted Margaret would fill her place and live with him. ”I think Margaret will be more to you than I could ever be.”
She wound up by saying, ”You have been kind, but I have always felt that you were disappointed in me. I am not strong-minded enough to be a good companion for one so accustomed to more intelligence.”
Had she deliberately steeped her pen in gall she could not have given him a bitterer moment.
He was physically unfit for any excitement or worry. His illness had gained rapidly upon him, and he suffered terribly at times.
He received a letter from Margaret which also troubled him greatly.
Knowing him to be well off, and that he did not care about money for its own sake, she wrote with confidence to him about Grace.
”She has given up the money left to her after me which I refused to take. I am afraid that giving it up will embarra.s.s her and Paul. You have often offered to settle money upon me--to give me much that I did not want--will you do something for my sister? will you arrange something to make up to her for what she has given up? I think you feel with me, that accepting that money would humiliate me whether it was accepted by Grace or by myself.”
A few days and then came the answer.
”DEAR MARGARET,
”I have nothing to give. I have no right to give anything, and I have not got it in my power. I am ill, and I am miserable. When I can I am going to Inchbrae. I have something to say to my sister. I think your ideas about that overstrained.”
To say Margaret was disappointed is to say little. She doubted now whether the stand she had taken was the right one. All at once she seemed to see everything differently; for a moment or two she felt as though her sensitiveness on this subject had led Grace to disaster.
But, on re-reading her sister's letter, she saw that her objections had had no weight; it was Paul who thought as she did; it was because of her husband that Grace had yielded.
Before she had time to arrange in her own mind whether it would be wise or not to let Mrs. Dorriman know about Mr. Sandford's illness and his loss of fortune, Mrs. Dorriman had come up to her and recognised her brother's writing.
At first when Margaret tried to put her off with the convenient word ”business,” Mrs. Dorriman was ready to believe it, but Margaret's countenance was expressive; and the little woman, anxious at any rate about her brother, got so hysterical that she was only pacified by its being given her.
”I must go to him!” she exclaimed as she saw the tremulous handwriting; ”he must be very ill.”
”You had better ask Mr. Stevens what he thinks,” said Margaret, gently.
”My dear, yes. What a comfort it is to have some one with a good head on his shoulders who will advise me what is best to be done. It is such a comfort! But I am very unhappy about my brother; I must write at once.”
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