The reply to my letter came on the morrow from Frank Forrester. What a day it was! I recollect it well. All the summer had gone in one terrible storm of wind. Alas! Reuben had been only too just in his sad prophecy: the red sunset upon the citadels of cloud had meant mischief indeed.

The gale had burst that very night. Before midnight the wind was tearing up across the marsh like some live thing, rending the air with its threatening voice, almost rending the earth with its awful tread, as it swept, grieving, muttering, moaning, and rushed at last with a wild shriek upon us—a restless, relentless, revengeful foe. Even to me, strong and hearty girl, whom not even trouble and heartache, that was sore enough in those days, could keep from the constraining sleep of a healthy youth—even to me that night the voice of the wind was appalling.

I lay in bed waiting and listening for its grim footsteps as they sped across the dark waste without, distant at first and almost faint, growing nearer and nearer, louder and louder, till with a yell, as of fierce triumph, the maniac burst against the windows, as though it would rend the house in pieces for its sport. Afar the sullen roar of the sea mingled with the lash of the pitiless gusts breaking, baffled, upon the distant beach, only to renew its unwearied attack with ceaseless, weary persistence.

I got up and looked out of the window. There was a cold moon shining faintly in a gray sky, where the clouds hurried wildly about as though seeking to escape some fierce pursuer; it gave a veiled feeble light, in which the near farm buildings looked like unsubstantial things that the wind might lift in its unseen hands and scatter like dead leaves upon the ground; in the phantom whiteness the black trees waved helpless, beseeching arms, bowing themselves to earth beneath the mighty grasp of that great, invisible strength; one could almost fancy it might pass into shape, so near and terrible seemed its personality as it advanced, sure and strong, across the wide, dim distance that was only marsh-land to me who knew that it was not sea.

Some one stirred in the house. It was father; he was coming up-stairs; he was still dressed; he had been sitting up all this time with those papers of his. I upbraided him for it, and said it was enough to give him his death of cold, but he seemed scarcely to hear me. His face was very pale.

"It's a rough night, a very rough night, Meg," he said, sorrowfully.

"Oh yes, father, it is," answered I, sympathetically, thinking of the hops that this would be the ruin of. But he made no allusion to them, he only said: "Those poor creatures down in the huts will have a bad time of it. And so many children too! They will be frightened, poor lambs."

And then after a pause he added: "Little David Jarrett was very weak when I called this afternoon, Meg. I'm afraid he'll not last out this gale. I think he would like me to go round and see him."

"Not now, father, not to-night?" I cried. But he did not answer, and I remember that it was with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded him to go to bed.

In the morning I was sorry that I had done so. The little lad was dead.

We were all seated at breakfast. The gale still raged outside; the garden was strewn with boughs of fruit-trees and blossoms of roses that the wind had ruthlessly torn from their stems; even from the distance of our hill we could see the white storm-crests upon the bosom of the laboring sea, and the snow of the foam as it dashed against the strong towers upon the coast.

Mother sat silently pouring the tea and looking anxiously across at father, who was eating no breakfast; Joyce alone was much the same as usual, for I—well I don't know what I looked like—I felt wretched. The post had brought me the reply to my letter to Frank Forrester, and it was not what I wanted.

I sat moody and miserable. And to us all sitting there—very unlike the bright family that we generally were—came a messenger with the news—little David Jarrett had passed away in the night. I can see father's face now; not sad, no: grave, and with a strange drawn look upon it that I could not understand. His eyes shone out very dark and deep from the white face that almost looked like parchment; the shaggy eyebrows and strong tufts of gray hair a mockery of strength upon it. But this is as it rises up before me now in terrible reality; then I saw nothing, I guessed nothing. Oh, father, father, that the old days might come back once more!

He said nothing, he gave no outward sign of trouble; he got up and went out, and we cleared away the breakfast-things. We were not given to expressing ourselves.

I took Frank's letter out of my pocket and read it over and over again; it was very short—there was scarcely anything in it, and yet I read it over and over again. He thanked me for writing; it was very kind of me to write; he was sorry his friends had been so anxious about him; it had been a needless "scare," there never had been much amiss, and he was all right again now. He was sorry his friend Thorne had lost the election. What did my father think of it? He was afraid it would be a long while before he should get time to come to Marshlands again. That was all.

No wonder I read it over and over again to try and find something more in it than was there! There were only two sentences that meant anything at all, and they made my heart wild with anger.

"What did my father think of it?" And "he was afraid it would be a long while before he should find time to come to Marshlands again."

They were insulting, heartless sentences. Yes, even as I look back upon it now, with all the bitterness of the moment passed, I think they were that. As if he—who had been honored by my dear father's intimate friendship, who knew his views as few of his friends knew them—should not have known better than I "what my father thought of it." If he ever found time to come to Marshlands again perhaps he would find out. Not a word of Joyce in it—not a stray hint, not a hidden allusion! Was it possible, was it really possible, that a man could seem to love so bravely, and could forget in a few short months? Were the squire's warnings just after all? Forget, forget? I repeated the word to myself, to me it seemed so impossible that one should ever be able to forget. At that time I don't believe I even thought it possible that one should live without the thing that one most craved for.

I sat there on the low window-seat, crushing the letter in my hand, looking out at the wild clouds that hurried across the sky, looking out at the havoc that the gale had made, and thinking perhaps of another havoc than the havoc wrought by the wind. But it was all Joyce's fault, I said to myself; she might have prevented it if she had liked. Why had she not prevented it?

Some one came into the room. I crushed the letter into my pocket and started up.

It was Trayton Harrod. He wore that same harassed, preoccupied look that I had noticed in him before; it maddened me, though I might have known well enough why he was preoccupied—there was anxiety enough on the farm.

"Where's your father?" asked he, quickly.

"He's out," I answered, shortly.

"I wanted him particularly," said Harrod again.

"Well, he's out," repeated I. "He has gone to Mrs. Jarrett's. The little boy died last night."

"Oh, I'm sorry, very sorry," said he. "I know he was very fond of the child." And then, after a minute, he added, "But it's really very important that I should see your father at once, Miss Margaret. Could you not go across and tell him so?"

"No," said I, ungraciously. "I don't think I could; I shouldn't like to disturb him." And then, half penitently, I added, "Can't I help you?"

He smiled, but gravely. "No," answered he; "I'm afraid this time your father must decide for himself."

"Is it ruin?" I asked, after a minute. "I suppose so."

He started and looked at me sharply. "What do you mean?" he asked. "No, I sincerely hope it's nothing of the kind."

"Oh," answered I, "I was afraid there wasn't a chance after this gale of anything but ruin to the whole crop."

"You mean the hops," replied he, as if relieved; and it did not strike me at the time to wonder what he could have thought I meant. "I'm afraid it's a bad lookout for them. That's why I want to see your father at once. It must, I fear, alter some arrangements I have made. I must telegraph." He paused a moment, thinking; then he added, "Is the squire expected here to-day, do you know?"

I flushed. "Not that I know of," said I; "but how should I know? He never comes to the Grange now."

I jerked out these sentences foolishly, incoherently.

"No, I know he has not been here quite so often of late," said he. "I've noticed it, and I've been sorry. But he'll come back. Never fear, he'll come back," smiled he, looking at me.

The heat in my face grew to fire. "I don't care whether he comes back or not," stammered I.

"No, no, of course not," answered Harrod, quickly, as though he were afraid he had said a foolish thing; "but I care very much. I have pinned my faith on the squire."

Something rose, choking, in my throat. How dared he say that he had pinned his faith on the squire! In what way had he done so; what did he mean?

"I want to have a long talk with you one of these days," he added, gravely.

I looked at him. I think my face must have grown white. I could not make my lips form the words, but I suppose my eyes spoke them, for he added, "About many things." And then after a pause again: "There's something I think squire may be able to do that I haven't been able to do. I want you to ask him."

He spoke in his most hard voice; evidently it cost him a pang to have to say that he had not been able to do that something. "Of course it would be in a different way," he said, half to himself, "and the old man is proud; but it's the only chance." And then he added, "And he would do anything for you."

My eyes must have flamed, for he stopped.

"I shouldn't think of asking the squire anything—no, not anything at all," said I, trying to speak plainly. "I don't understand you."

"Well," said he, as if that settled the question, "anyhow, I must get a word with your father this morning. Do you think you can help me?"

"No," repeated I, my voice trembling, "I can't. You had better ask Joyce. She will be able to do any of these things that you want, I dare say."

He did not reply. He just turned his back and went out. I think it was all there was for him to do. And as I stood there, looking after him, with my heart swelling big, and Frank's letter crushed in my hand, Joyce passed across the lawn to the parlor porch.

In a moment, unbidden, unsuspected, like a watercourse broken from its banks, a great anger surged up in my heart towards her. She came gliding into the room with her usual quiet, graceful gait, and went up to the old bureau to get a china bowl that stood there and wanted washing. She fetched it and was going out again, but I stopped her. "Joyce, I want to speak to you," I said.

I suppose there was something in my voice that betrayed my feelings, for as she turned and stood there with the bowl in her hand her face wore just the faintest expression of alarm.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I have had a letter from Frank Forrester," said I. Her face flushed slightly.

"Oh, Meg!" said she.

"Yes," answered I, defiantly; "I wrote to him. There was no reason why, because you were heartless, I should be heartless too. I have no reason for being so prudent. I wrote to him."

Joyce flushed a little deeper, but she did not answer a word to my cruel and unjust accusations; she was always patient and gentle.

"What did he say?" she asked, presently.

"What could he say?" I said, scornfully. "He thanks me for writing; but I ask you how much he can have cared for my writing when the person whom he supposed loved him didn't care to know whether he was dead or alive?"

"That's nonsense, Meg," said Joyce, quietly. "He knew very well that I cared; he knew very well why I didn't write. Why should he expect me to break my word?"

"Why?" cried I, vehemently. "Because if you had had a grain of feeling in you, you must have broken your word; you couldn't have helped yourself. But you haven't a grain of feeling in you. You are as cold as ice. People might love you till they burned themselves up for loving you, but they would never get a spark to fly out of you in return. I suppose you think you loved Frank. Why else should you have said you would marry him? Was it because he was a gentleman, and you were only a farmer's daughter? No; I never imagined that," I added, confidently, seeing that she made a movement of horror. "You're too much of a Maliphant. It must have been because you loved him as much as you can love anybody. And you'll be faithful to him—oh yes, you're too proud to be fickle! You'll hold on silently to the end, just as you said you would hold on! But, good gracious me, does it never occur to you to think that perhaps such milk-and-water stuff might put a man out of heart? He may wait and wait for the ice to melt, but, upon my word, I don't think it would be so very astonishing if, at last, the fire went out with the waiting!"

I stopped, panting, and waited for what she would say. She lifted her eyes to my face—her dark-blue limpid eyes; there was no anger in them, only surprise and distress.

"Oh, Meg," she said, sadly, "do you know that I think you sometimes make up things in your own mind as you want them to be, and then you're angry because they're not like that. Can't you be different?"

"No," said I; "of course I can't be different any more than you can be different. We've got to make the best of one another as we are."

"Well, then, let's make the best of one another, Meg," said Joyce, gently. "We have always done it before, let us do it now."

"I can't make the best of you, Joyce," answered I, half appeased, "when I see you so cold towards the man whom you have sworn to love. I can't. I know you can't be different—people never become different—but, oh, you do make me angry."

"I'm sorry," said Joyce, penitently. "Don't be angry. Perhaps you don't quite understand, although you think you understand so well. I am proud, and I don't think I am fickle; but I am not cold either."

Why should her words have poured oil upon the flame which her gentleness but two minutes before had allayed? I don't know, but they maddened me.

"You're one or the other," I said. "You are cold, or you are fickle." I went up to her and took hold of her by the wrist—the left wrist, for the right hand still held the blue bowl. "Which is it?" I said, in a low voice; "which is it?"

Her face grew very pale, but she neither winced nor struggled. "Don't, Meg," she said.

"Yes, I will," cried I, fiercely. "Which is it, tell me?"

"It's neither," repeated she.

"I tell you you lie!" cried I. "You are as cold as ice. Frank knows it; Frank feels it. It is killing his love for you. Ah, go away; for pity's sake, go away, or I don't know what I shall say!"

I flung her hand away from me and rushed towards the door; but the sudden movement had jerked the bowl that she held out of her other hand; it fell onto the floor and was smashed into many pieces.

I turned round. Joyce had stooped down and was tenderly picking up the fragments. She had self-control enough to make me no reproach—she was always self-controlled; but the bowl was mother's best blue bowl. The sight of her there, with her concerned face, irritated me beyond endurance. Was there nothing in the world that was worse to break than a blue bowl? I went back to her again and stood over her, watching her with hands that trembled and heart that beat to very pain.

"If you are not heartless," I said, in a low voice; "if you can care for anybody's feelings as much as you care when the china is broken, who is it that you can feel for? You didn't seem to care very much when we thought that Frank had broken his back. Whom do you care for, then?"

I felt my lips tremble with anger, and for one moment I hated her. Oh that I should have to write it down! My own sister, who had been all the world to me two months ago! But it was true. Even through all the crystallizing, cooling mists of distance, I can recall the horrible feeling yet: I knew that—for one moment—I hated her.

"What do you mean?" said she, below her breath, trying to draw back.

"Ah, I can see very well how it might be," continued I, hurrying my words one on top of the other breathlessly—"how you might persuade yourself that you were true to him, and persuade yourself that you were doing a fine honorable thing keeping so strictly to your bargain with mother, when all the time it was because you never wanted to see him, and didn't care whether he loved you or not, and cared very much more whether somebody else loved you—somebody else who, but for you, might have belonged to another person. I can fancy it all very well," cried I, tearing Frank's letter that I held in my hand into little atoms and scattering them about the floor; "I can see just how it might happen, and nobody be to blame. No, nobody be to blame at all."

"Margaret, Margaret, for God's sake, collect yourself!" cried Joyce, her voice breaking into something like a sob. "You frighten me. What do you mean? What can you mean?"

"No, nobody to blame," repeated I, wildly, without paying any heed to her; "only just what one might have known would happen. One, with every gift that God can give, and the other, with—nothing but a vile temper that makes folk shun her even after they've seemed to be friends with her. What does it matter that you have promised to marry another man? Nobody knows it; and when one is as beautiful as you are, I suppose it isn't in human nature not to like to see one's beauty draw people away from what had been good enough for them before. I ought to have known it. There's nobody to blame, of course."

"Margaret," said my sister—and even in the midst of my fury the firm tone of her voice surprised me and checked me for a moment—"you must explain yourself. I don't understand you; I don't, indeed. Perhaps, if you knew everything, you wouldn't have the heart to speak so. You are cruel, and you are unjust. You say I am cold; but even if I am cold I can suffer, Meg; you must recollect that I can suffer."

"Suffer!" cried I, bitterly. "I wish you could suffer one little tiny bit of what I suffer. Ah, for pity's sake, don't let me say any more; don't let me go on; let me go!"

"I can't let you go," said Joyce, with that unusual firmness that did crop up at times so unexpectedly in her. "You must tell me first what you meant when you said that I took people away from what had been good enough for them before."

"Meant!" cried I. "You know well enough what I meant. I meant that it was easy enough for you to be noble and self-sacrificing, when all the time your thoughts were elsewhere. Yes, very easy for you to be patient, waiting for your own lover, when you were busy robbing me of my lover. Oh, don't speak, don't deny it! It's useless. You have done it, and you know that you have done it."

I think I expected Joyce to be crushed—I expected her to cry. I stood there panting and waiting for it. But she was neither crushed nor did she cry; she was not even angry. She stood there quietly, looking away from me out of the window, and at last she said: "You're mistaken, Meg; I never wanted to rob you of your lover. If you remember, when first I came home I told you that it was my hope such a thing might happen between you. I always thought you were too clever for the folk about here, and I thought he was clever. But you know you told me it never could be. You led me to believe you hated him, and always should hate him, because he had come to the farm to do your work. I believed it. Yes, until quite a little while ago I believed it. Then—"

"Well?" asked I, scornfully. "Then? What then?"

"Then, when I began to suspect that I might be mistaken, I resolved to go back and live with Aunt Naomi until matters were settled between you. That's what I was telling Mr. Harrod the day you came into the parlor last week."

"Oh, that's what you were telling him," cried I. "You don't say what he said to you that made you tell him that. You don't say if you also told him that you were engaged to another man."

"I didn't, because he said nothing to me to warrant it," answered my sister. "If he had I should have told him that I was not free."

"Ah, you do mean to keep your word to Frank, then?" asked I.

"I mean to keep my word to him if he wishes it," answered she, in a low voice.

Her face ought to have shamed me, but it raised the devil in me.

"Well, if you still love Frank there is no need for you to go away," said I, brutally. "Or is it because you are afraid of Mr. Harrod's peace of mind that you want to go?"

"Oh, Meg, how can you?" murmured Joyce.

Yes, how could I? The evil spirit was stronger than myself.

"It doesn't occur to you that this fine generosity of yours comes too late," cried I. "But the mischief is done. I won't have you go away now. I will go away."

"You!" exclaimed Joyce. "Where?"

"Not to Aunt Naomi's," I began, scornfully; and for a moment the temptation rose up in me to show her that I too was loved, was sought—to tell her where I might go if I chose, and be cherished, I knew it, for a lifetime. But the memory of the squire's face, of the little tremble in his voice, came back to me, and I could not speak of his love. "Not to Aunt Naomi," I said. "To be a governess."

"Oh no, Meg, I couldn't let you do that," said Joyce, concernedly. "I thought perhaps you were going to say something quite different. I have had a fancy now and then of late that we were all of us mistaken in that foolish notion of the reason why the squire has been such a faithful visitor to us all these years. Supposing it were as I fancy, don't you think you could grow to love him, Meg? He is worthy of you in every way."

She spoke with a strange pleading; her words heaped fuel on the fire within me; she paused for an answer, but I gave her none. "He is coming here to-night. I heard him promise mother he would come. Oh, how I wish it might be about you! Do you think there is any chance?"

Her voice flew at me like a shaft from a bow. I felt myself grow cold.

"How dare you?" I cried. "How dare you?"

I could say no more—I was paralyzed—I had no words.

Poor transparent Joyce, who had meant to be so generous, and who undid her work so thoroughly! How little I repaid her with my gratitude. She stood there gazing at me with a frightened expression on her lovely face.

"Go away, go away!" I stammered, wildly. "I want you to go away."

She made a movement forward as if to beg my pardon for anything she had said amiss. There was concern, pity, distress in her eyes, but I put her away. She went out of the room slowly, clasping the fragments of the broken bowl in her apron.

I threw myself down on the far window-seat. I did not cry, I never cried; but my whole body was trembling convulsively. I sat there in a trance till the latch of the front door roused me, and I heard some one come slowly, very slowly, across the hall.

Father came into the parlor; he came across to where I was, and laid his hand upon my head. The touch of it seemed to pass into me and soothe my troubled spirit.

"God help us to forget our troubles in those of others, Meg," he said, gravely, after some minutes.

And then I remembered that he had just come from the death-bed of that little lad whom he had loved so well.

I think there were tears in my eyes then.