It was so difficult, also, to get at the exact truth of anything; there were endless memorandums but nothing to tell what these referred to--a contemplated purchase or to one completed.

When all was known, things were better than Mr. Drayton had at first feared, in so far that a few hundreds a year were left him, but only that.

Mr. Sandford had an interview with Margaret; he thought her looking ill, and he wanted her to go to Scotland with him, to see Grace. She referred to her husband, and asked him if he would mind her going.

"Mind it! Will that matter?" he said, curtly.

"I wish to go if you can spare me," she said gently.

"I can spare you," he said, very roughly; "if you wish to go, that is quite sufficient."

"I wish to see my sister. I will not stay away long; and whilst I am away will you not arrange something? Are you going to sell your house--you like it, I know, and the garden?"

She spoke, wishing to cheer him. Mr. Sandford had told her that he was not obliged to sell this place. She did not quite understand her husband's remaining so downcast, and in such an odd state, and she was vexed that Mr. Sandford should see him in so disagreeable a light.

After some discussion it was agreed that he should go to the Limes, and have everything put in order for his wife's return. But as they parted she caught his expression, and it made her so uncomfortable that she felt vexed at having left him just then.

This impression left her after a little while, she sat very silent all the long journey, and Mr. Sandford had on his side much to think of.

When they arrived at Renton, Grace was in a state of excitement almost painful to witness. She laughed, she cried, she moved about her, till Margaret persuaded her to be quiet and to go to bed. She feared all manner of things she hardly knew what; and, longing for rest and quiet herself, she felt most thankful that Mrs. Dorriman had given her another room. Next day she found she had still a battle to fight with Mr.

Sandford.

"Now your husband is not in a position to do anything for your sister,"

he said, "you will stay here."

"Stay for a time, yes, but my husband's losses will make him wish to have me with him more than ever, I think. He did not wish me to stay away?"

"Oh! he wants you fast enough, but you cannot pretend to care for him; and, now that he has been such a fool as to squander a magnificent fortune, what can your object be in going back to him?"

"To do my duty," said Margaret, simply.

"Your duty! To my thinking, as he has not behaved at all well, you are not bound to go back to him. Has he behaved well? I ask you plainly."

Margaret did not answer the question.

"Nothing can absolve me from doing what I feel to be right."

She spoke very quietly, and Mr. Sandford said no more at the time, but he constantly renewed the subject, and Margaret was weary of repeating her own views of her position.

It was hard enough to find him so bent upon her staying, it was harder still to parry the urgent attacks made by her sister.

"If you go I shall die," Grace said one day, after a long and weary argument, in which poor Margaret had tried to show her a higher sense of duty.

"Why do you try me so?" Margaret said at length. "Can you never see things seriously? Oh, Grace, can you conceive it possible for me to take a solemn vow and make light of it afterwards?"

"But you cannot pretend that you _love_ that man, Margaret?"

"Therein lies my sin--and my punishment," the young wife answered with a quivering lip. "We cannot command our affections--that I know, but we can check them, and we can at any rate try and not fail in other things."

Grace did not like the grave tone she spoke in; she had rallied from the fatigue of her journey, and amused her sister often by her endeavours to win a smile from Mr. Sandford. She was as usual reckless in her speech, and the only difference Margaret could see was that she did not try to provoke him; on the contrary, in all her sallies now, there was a certain subtle implied deference to his wishes, new and rather winning.

The same sad reflection came often to Margaret. Seeing Grace so contented now, she quite forgot her misery at the prospect of such a home before her; and she was forced to see that she had ruined her own life on insufficient grounds. There was so much pain in this, and Grace's wild spirits so jarred upon her, that after a few days had pa.s.sed away she announced her departure.

It was only then that she found how Grace clung to the idea of going with her.

"Why cannot I go with you? Surely Mr. Drayton cannot be so barbarous as to separate us now."

"I do not know what arrangements he has been able to make, dear. I must go alone, first."

"If you go alone I shall never follow: I know so well what it will be."

"I will do my best; surely you know that I will do my best; you know it is my dearest wish."

"Yes, but you know, my dear old thing, that you have _not_ got my power of managing people. Now look at old Sandford. Swore I should never live here again: anathematized me, I believe, and sent his poor little sister into fits, such was the violence of his language, and, after all this, I return; I walk in. I am no hypocrite, and I say quite quietly that I only came because I had nowhere else to go,--and the lion became a lamb."

"You do not understand Mr. Drayton."

"Is he worse than the old bear here?" and Grace made a comical face of dismay.

Margaret did not smile. She forced herself to speak plainly.

"It is difficult to know what is right sometimes," she said, thoughtfully. "I never could tell an untruth, and sometimes telling the truth does not make things smooth. Grace, my darling, I married Mr.

Drayton to give you a home and comforts you so sorely needed. He knows it was _only_ for that, and he resents it, and he will _never_ let me have you, never."

She sobbed, and she was not given to tears.

Grace stared at her in stupefied astonishment.

"You do not mean to say that you let him find this out?"

"No, I told him. I told him before I married him. How could I act a lie?"

"And he married you after this frank explanation, and now turns round upon you! How like a man!" and Grace, who had a most limited acquaintance herself with any men, looked supremely scornful. "Well, my dear Margaret, I shall not go with you, but I shall follow you."

"But Grace, darling----"

"But Margaret, darling. I will not hear a single word. I shall choose my own time and arrive in my own way--but go I will."

She laughed Margaret's scruples to scorn and turned the subject.

Grace was so gay and bright, so overflowing with good-humour, that all the inmates of Renton Place were taken by surprise, save and except Jean, who answered Mrs. Dorriman's expression of satisfaction by one short sentence,

"Milk aye bubbles before it boils."

And Mrs. Dorriman felt angry, and accused her faithful old servant of prejudice and superst.i.tion, to which Jean made not the slightest reply.

Margaret was a little uneasy; her experience of Grace's wilfulness made her dread some step that would bring happiness to neither of them. But she heard no more of her projected visit, and by degrees she began to hope that it had merely been a wild way of talking.

One great change was brought about by her sister's delicacy. Mr.