Mr. Drayton, in the meantime, took greater pains to talk to Margaret, to discover how he could please her, with no particular object in view; but she interested him, in the first place, and the fact of her life being "arranged for" made her still more interesting. Besides, paying marked attention to all she said and did enabled him to leave Grace alone. He was not a sensitive man, but Grace's impertinence was much too open not to go home to him. She despised him and showed she did so far too openly, and from passive disapprobation he began to dislike her heartily. The girls were right, his was a character that was vindictive. He was wrapped up in a thick skin of self-esteem; he was good-humoured and cheery so long as he was admired and his vanity satisfied by flattery, direct or indirect, but once his self-love was pierced or wounded it rankled, and woe to the person who had inflicted the wound.

His visit was drawing to a close; he had been with Mr. Sandford for some days, and so far nothing had come of it. Grace was out of the question, and Mr. Sandford saw it. The investments he wished him to make were equally undecided; Mr. Drayton would do nothing without consulting his manager, and was waiting to hear from him. He extended his visit for two days, and he spent those two days in trying to make Margaret understand something of his feeling for her. Mr. Sandford was at his office all day and Mrs. Dorriman said nothing; and though Mr. Drayton's way of looking at Margaret and his fits of absence might have enlightened him he thought he had made all that so impossible that it never gave him any uneasiness, and in two days he would be gone.

But the old story was repeated in this instance. Mr. Drayton, in hurrying home to have a word with Margaret, managed to slip, and, falling the whole length of the flight of stairs at the office, came down on the stone flags at the bottom with a bruised shoulder and a sprained leg, and of course had to remain at Renton.

Mr. Sandford had to go to his office daily with the full consciousness that his unwelcome guest was making the most of his opportunities. Still he hoped things might come right in the end.

Poor Mr. Drayton hardly regretted his accident since it placed him near her, Margaret, the lady of his dreams. For love had come to him in a violent fashion, and he acknowledged to himself that if she would not listen to him he would be miserable all his life.

Love plays such strange pranks in its flight. In this case it gave the self-confident man timidity; his noisy laugh was modified, his manner softened. He was very much in earnest.

Margaret never for one moment thought of his meaning anything. She was very sorry for him, as any kind-hearted girl might be for the sufferings of any one or even any thing, and this pity gave her voice a still more dangerous softness. Each day found him longing to speak to her and losing courage when she came near him. He was longing to know what the arrangement meant that Mr. Sandford had dwelt upon. Longing to hear from her, about herself and her future, because, once he knew that, his course would be plain. If there was really nothing in which her heart was interested would it not be possible to alter things? She was so young she could not already have met her fate.

She was so often with Mrs. Dorriman he seldom saw her alone; it was with a throb of pleasure that he saw her come into the drawing-room alone one afternoon, some snowdrops and ivy-leaves in her hand. She had been walking, and she had thrown back her cloak and pushed her hat off her head a little, and she came forward to fill some glasses with her flowers, unconscious of his emotion, full of some thought which had suggested itself to her whilst she was out, and a smile breaking the gentle gravity which was her habitual expression.

"There are still many glasses to fill," he said, as, lying a prisoner upon the sofa, he watched her accustomed fingers arranging and re-arranging the pure, white blossoms with the glossy background of leaves.

She looked up with a little smile and a heightened colour.

"Those are to stand empty till to-morrow; Grace wishes it. I thought you would like a few to look at, but to-morrow Grace is going to arrange all the flowers."

"What is that for? Is to-morrow a great festivity? Miss Grace does not generally give herself any trouble for nothing," he said laughing.

"My sister takes trouble when she thinks it necessary," said Margaret, with a pretty, dignified reproach, quick to resent the slightest implied disapprobation of her beloved Grace; "to-morrow will be my birthday. I shall be seventeen," she said, with full consciousness of her advanced years.

"Seventeen," he murmured, "only seventeen!"

"Did you think I looked more or less than that?" she asked gaily.

"I hoped you were more than that," he said in a confused tone; "I knew you were very young, your uncle told me that. He told me something else about you," he went on trying to gain courage, and trying to read her countenance, which without a shadow of suspicion was turned towards him in all its sweetness and candour.

"I hope he gave me a good character."

"Your character needs no giving; it is written in your face."

He spoke in a lower and more hurried tone, and she once again raised her eyes to his in surprise.

"Is it true? what does he mean when he says your future is arranged for? Is there any one?" he brought out in quick agitated tones. Margaret was startled; if her uncle had said this, he meant it, and she knew enough of his will to dread having to submit to any thing he chose for her.

Her whole being rose in protest:

"My life is not arranged for, though I do not know what those words mean, and there is no one," she added very vehemently.

He saw how true her words were, and he hurried on afraid of losing courage, of not being able to say what he wanted to say, if he paused.

"Margaret," he said in a tone that compelled her attention, and trying to raise himself as he read her face. "If you have no one, if there is no one, if you are free to be won, may I not try and win you?"

Poor Margaret shrank back.

"No!" she said, breathlessly, "oh! no!"

"May I not try?" he pleaded. "I am more than double your age, but need that matter? I never have loved any one, and I think I could make you happy. I should not expect you to love me in the same way, and I could give you much, I could surround you with luxuries, and grudge you nothing for your happiness, you should not be dependent."

"If I loved you for these things I should be unworthy, do you not see that?"

He did not heed her.

"You know you do not care for this narrow life, you would like being in the South, in London, you should have a house where you liked, you should do what you liked."

"I cannot," said Margaret, red and pale alternately, "I am sure you mean to be kind, but your words are hateful to me. They are bribing me. No! better to live anywhere, better to be as we are, and as you say dependent, than to be false to ourselves. I cannot say anything else, and oh! pray, pray, say nothing about this to any one, do forget it. It is quite, quite impossible."

His voice was broken by disappointment and a sense of helplessness.

"I cannot forget it," he said, and, hearing Mrs. Dorriman's voice, Margaret left the room hurriedly.

He dwelt upon her words in the way that people have of hugging a painful remembrance. There must be some one else he thought, and he tried so to comfort himself, but in vain. His vanity was wounded, but he was too thoroughly in love with her to heed that so much, he was cruelly hurt. What was the use of the flattering assertions of his people? he had always been assured of success if he wanted success, and now he had failed.

He was very silent, subdued, and unhappy. He longed now for recovery; the place was hateful to him. He dreaded seeing Margaret again; he was afraid Mr. Sandford might read his story; he was irritable and restless, and very very miserable.

On the top of this came the answer from his cautious manager strongly advising him against Mr. Sandford's scheme, and giving very excellent reasons with which he could not but be content.

He was so fully aware of his own incompetency, that he never for a moment disputed his conclusion; but he was too much upset, too much unlike himself, that night, to go into anything in the shape of business, and he was wheeled into his own room early, pleading headache, and happy to escape from the family party that evening, and be alone with his unhappiness.

His absence created no surprise. Mr. Sandford was indifferent; he was a little annoyed by some checks he had met with in his business things, and a little more irritable than usual, a little harder about Grace's shortcomings, and very violent and disagreeable to her all dinner-time.

Margaret was still unhinged. Mr. Drayton's words had agitated her, and she was sorry for him, more sorry than she could express, when she saw how really he suffered. She could not understand how it was that he could see any merit in her, while Grace was by; only to be sure, Grace had been so persistently antagonistic. But for that she, Margaret, would have escaped, and Grace would have known what to say so much better. Thinking it over she was afraid she had been unkind, but she had been so taken by surprise.

It was not till the sisters were in their own room, and the house was hushed for the night, that Margaret told Grace what had happened.

Their favourite way of talking when the weather made it possible, was standing at their open window—a window that looked a little away from the town; the clear air predominated over the smoke of the busy town then, and what remained was hardly perceptible. The great deep blue sky of night with its "thousand eyes" made up to them for the dull darkness of the days. When it was chilly, one plaid covered them both as the two young faces looked out into the stillness, and whispered their thoughts to each other there.

"Grace," said Margaret, in a low tone, feeling shy even with her sister, her other self, about the great event of the day, "I have something to tell you, something we never dreamed of, that you will be as much surprised to hear as I was."

She clung a little closer to her sister, putting her arm round her waist.

"Have you?" asked Grace, wonderingly, but not roused to much curiosity as yet: "it is wonderful that anything can happen in this place. Every day is like the day that has gone before; each day is as dull and as empty of anything we can care about."

"You will be surprised, Grace; but I want you to promise not to laugh at him."

"Laugh at him!" re-echoed Grace. "Is it Mr. Sandford?"

"No, he knows nothing, and of course we must not tell him."

"Him—you said I was not to laugh at him," said Grace, suddenly startled into consciousness. "Is it anything connected with Mr. Drayton?"

"Yes," murmured Margaret, in a low voice, "he spoke to me this evening. He told me, Grace, that he—loved me. I was so sorry about it."

"Why should you be sorry? It must not be thought of in a hurry; but we must try and be sensible about it," answered Grace.

"It does not require much thought," said Margaret, surprised, almost bewildered, by her sister's quiet tone, as if the question could be weighed. "I told him at once it was quite impossible of course."

"But you need not have done it in such a hurry, why not think it over?" Grace spoke as though she was disappointed.

Margaret was conscious of the keenest pain she had ever known in all her life. She paused for a moment, almost breathless. Her sister, then, saw a possible conclusion widely different from hers: that she did so seemed to set them further apart in feeling than they had ever been. "You yourself have done nothing but laugh at him, we have laughed together," she said in a pained voice; "he was to be the prince, and he came, and you yourself said how middle-aged and uninteresting he was—do you forget, Grace?"

"I do not forget, Margaret, darling, it is true; but if I encouraged you to laugh, and in so doing have spoiled the future for you—and for me," she added, in a lower tone.

"Spoiled the future!" exclaimed Margaret, wondering, "we think differently. I am sorry, I was very sorry, because he cared so much—but no future with him is possible. Think, Grace, how annoyed we have been by his noisy laughter, by his endless jokes, by his very ways. How is it you forget?"

"It is different," said Grace. "Mind, I do not say, take him; but I say you might have thought of it for a little while. What did he say, Margaret can you remember?"

"I can remember some; he was very kind; and he said something about making me happy and about living where I liked in London, or anywhere, and giving me luxuries. I hated his saying all that, and I said so. I said it was like a bribe."

"It was not nice," said Grace slowly, "he ought not to have said it. And yet—oh, Margaret!" she exclaimed, fervently, "think how near we have been to the realization of our dreams! To leave this hateful place—which is choking me, and making me wretched—to go away, to live in the centre of all that is worth living for!"

Margaret was perfectly overwhelmed at this discovery. Grace was disappointed; she wished her to marry this man, whom she had laughed at, and turned into the bitterest ridicule, ever since she had seen him, and had seen that he was not in the least like the expected prince who was to rescue her!

The poor child could not get over it. She stood still clasping her; but she felt as though her world had crumbled to pieces at her feet. She was roused from the deepest and cruellest pain by feeling Grace's tears dropping fast upon her. Grace was weeping, and she was the cause of her tears. She struggled with a feeling of indignation also. A sense of being unfairly and unjustly put in the wrong, made her less hurt than angry after a moment. It seemed as though in a supreme moment of her life her sister had failed her.

"Grace," she said, after a long silence seemed to have made her voice startling, "if this had come to you, would you have done it?"

"How can I tell?" said Grace. "Nothing comes to me, it seems."

"But you can imagine—you can put yourself in my place."

"No, I cannot! We are so different—you and I."

"And yet we used to think alike, up till now, Grace. I have always seen the wisdom of your thoughts; you surely cannot counsel me to marry a man who has never appeared to me in any but a ridiculous light."

"No, I do not counsel it," said Grace; "but I cannot help seeing that this was a chance for us both, and that it has gone."

Margaret shivered.

"It is getting cold," she said, abruptly, "and I am tired."

She kissed her sister with a long, lingering kiss. It was as if she were bidding farewell to the sister she had known, so much had her words jarred upon her heart and hurt her.

Grace slept. Through the uncurtained window, with no blind between her and the bright stars she so loved to look upon, Margaret lay awake.

She was only conscious at first of a vivid and keen disappointment. All Grace's cutting speeches about this man's inferiority were fresh in her memory, and now—she thought it possible! Then she thought of all their high expectations when they left school, and of the way in which Grace had been made a sort of leader among them. Grace, who had never really worked, who only did things when she felt inclined, whose work was, as often as not, done for her, and who took all for granted, as due to her personal influence—why had she the position she took up? Softer thoughts succeeded these; during their long stay at school how often Grace had defended her from the oppression of others. How often she had used her influence in her behalf; how often stood out till she had obtained some concession for her.

Loving words and caresses, the numberless little actions that knit sisters together, floated before her. The times without number when she had been filled with pride; and how proud she was of Grace. If she could be seen; if only the world could see her, she would have it at her foot—so she had always thought, so she thought still. Then as a flash came the thought, "Could I do it?" She thought of all it might give Grace; of the many things she might have in her power; and she began to feel once more bewildered; her brain was getting weary; her eyes were closing, and her lips framed the words, "I cannot do it," as she sank into slumber.

The stars looked down upon her innocent face—ruffled with the first real care or sorrow it had ever known—they faded as the day strengthened; and then came the blaze of early morning, and the long shafts of light everywhere, and her seventeenth birthday had come.

She met Mr. Drayton that day with an overwhelming sense of consciousness, but she was reassured by his manner, perhaps she had exaggerated—all unwittingly—to Grace and to herself his despair and his passion, for he met her with a smile in which there was nothing to be seen save good-will, and he congratulated her upon having reached so advanced an age in something of his old manner; then he produced his birthday-gift, a ring, deep-set with stones, and with a half-laughing reference to her uncle, Mr. Sandford, for permission, put it into her hand. She took it unwillingly, feeling afraid that in taking it she was in some way giving him cause to think she might change, and she felt no change was possible for her. But she was obliged to accept it and to put it on, and, on the whole, the day passed off well. Mr. Sandford looked anxiously for some indication of any liking between Mr. Drayton and Grace, and was disappointed afresh to see none.

Mr. Drayton was obliged to go, and his going put an end to all hopes about an investment, and the disappointment in two quarters made itself felt in the home party, but was skilfully veiled by Mrs. Dorriman, whose duty it seemed generally to be to stand in the breach and turn all storms and disagreeables aside.

These things, however, once more made Mr. Sandford think of the past. The interest in the present and the anxiety he had felt to arrange matters had driven the past further from him.

Poor Mrs. Dorriman, as she caught her brother's eyes fixed upon her, little thought how he was weighing her in the balance, wondering whether she would show herself more pliable now in the matter of those papers and how best he could talk to her about them.

She herself had put the subject away from her when she first entered his house. She had a confused notion that even thinking of them was treachery whilst under his roof; having done this the companionship of Margaret and the small round of household duties filled up her time and her thoughts; she strove hard to do her duty, and she did it well, giving nothing a divided attention. By degrees the papers and their possible contents became as a forgotten tale. She had the consciousness that they were there, but they were not before her mind now.

Something might have been uttered by Mr. Sandford, had not his attention been drawn to Grace. She had spoken some words that had roused even gentle Mrs. Dorriman to indignation, for the words had reference to Jean.

"Her illness was nothing much," she was saying, "and she gained her point. She got poor Mrs. Chalmers out of it and stepped into her shoes. I liked Mrs. Chalmers myself."

"It is very unfair to say this of Jean," said Mrs. Dorriman, with a heightened colour; "she never meddled or interfered, and I never asked her to stay; she stayed because Mrs. Chalmers left suddenly and we had no one else."

"Yes, my dear Mrs. Dorriman, but why did she leave suddenly? There are two sides to every question," said Grace, with her little air of superiority, caring nothing really about the question, but in rather a state of irritation, and arguing merely because she had no other way of venting her ruffled feelings. She was unreasonably cross, first because Mr. Drayton was not what she had expected, and then because something might have come of his visit and nothing had come, and she saw before her the monotony of days, and nothing, no excitement, nothing in sight. Her spirits were low and when this was the case she was always cross.

"What are you driving at?" exclaimed Mr. Sandford angrily; "what do you know about it?"

"Only that that Highland woman, Mrs. Dorriman's servant, managed to get Mrs. Chalmers out of the house. I suppose I may have an opinion on the subject?" said Grace, her colour rising and her temper also.

"You have no business to say anything of the kind," thundered Mr. Sandford, too angry to restrain his voice, sending terror into the timid soul of his sister and making Margaret turn pale, while she instinctively rose and stood by Grace; "Mrs. Chalmers ventured to be insolent to me and she left, as all people may expect to do who venture to show insolence to me or mine."

"If you have an opinion I may have mine," persisted Grace, too much roused herself to feel afraid of him.

"You may have an opinion but you are not entitled to express it in my house," he answered, still more irritated by her manner; "you can wait for that till you have a house of your own, a thing which appears to me very problematical, since no man would care to have an upsetting, conceited young woman as a wife with no fortune, or looks, or any single recommendation."

Grace was pale with anger. Margaret turned upon him like a young lioness.

"How can you say such unkind, such untrue things?" she exclaimed passionately. "Oh! Grace, my darling, do not heed him."

"I do not heed him," said Grace, magnificently, wounded and stung beyond belief, and quivering with passion, "but I want to know why you keep us in your house, hating us so evidently—we will not stay, we will go. You offered us a home, and now you speak as though we were a burden. We will go, Margaret."

"Speak for yourself, I offered you a home for the sake of one I loved. I did not know you then. When I saw what you were, I still kept that home open to you for the sake of your sister; you put yourself above her in everything, you have made her believe you her superior in all things, but she is worth a dozen of you, and so every man in his senses will think as they know you."

Grace was in tears by this time, and Margaret tried to get her to go out of the room, but she was struggling forwards, she would not go till she had said something, and she meant the last word to be very cutting.

"Brother," said Mrs. Dorriman, imploringly, "you are wrong; you are saying things now in the heat of passion that you will be sorry for afterwards. It is hard to be obliged to eat the bread of dependence, and to have it cast up to you."

"It is her own fault," he said, angrily; "she gives herself airs and graces as though she were above the ground she treads upon. It makes me ill the way she goes on, and she must hear it!"

"Spare her now."

"Oh! I'll spare her, but she has to lower her head; even Drayton would have nothing to say to her, though I did my best, and praised her up to the skies when I spoke to him."

"That is more than enough!" sobbed Grace, as with Margaret clinging to her she rushed to her own room, and the sisters sobbed out their misery in each other's arms.

But crying would not help them; they resolved to leave the house, to go far from this, where they did not exactly know; they did not know any one except their school-mistress, and having left her with flying colours it seemed terrible to them to have to go back and face the wonder and the pity they would meet with.

They were both so young and so inexperienced. They sat thinking, not wholly miserable now because they were conscious of a sort of excitement and they were together.

Grace at that moment could not help thinking what a small beginning generally leads to large conclusions—this beginning had been so very, very trifling.

She had been walking up and down one day to obtain the amount of exercise she conceived necessary to her well-being, the day had been damp and she kept to the gravel in front of the house.

Jean, who was at the open window, to use her own expression, trying to get strong, was talking in her rich guttural voice to Mrs. Dorriman, who was in the room, though out of sight, and was watching her.

Conscious of observation—though only the observation of an old woman—Grace, who was proud of her way of moving, stepped forwards and backwards with still more daintiness than usual. She heard Jean say—

"What gars Miss Rivers walk yon way, hippity hop from ane side till another?"

And then in a moment she answered her own question—

"Ou, aye, the gravel's hard; and she'll have corns."

Grace retreated, with a feeling of hatred against her. This little affront was the cause of her impertinence to Mrs. Dorriman, and all that had followed.

Nothing could be done that night, and when the long chilly evening came to an end the sisters crept into bed. They had come to no resolution, they only intended to go away; but it may be noted that in this emergency Grace's superiority failed to assert itself—it was Margaret to whom she turned; Margaret, who, barely beyond childhood, was to think for both.

The last thing Mr. Sandford wanted was to have the difficulty solved in any way derogatory to the position he had taken up, of befriending two girls who had no real claim upon him. If they left his house, all Renton would hear of it, and put their own conclusion upon it.

Like all men who act and speak in a passion he was very angry if he was taken at his word. He found it so easy to forget his harsh sayings, that he never could understand that other people should have any difficulty in doing so.

He had wished to wound Grace and bring her down, and then was annoyed by her retreat. Mrs. Dorriman had so often smarted from his tyranny in old days that she could fully understand and sympathise with the girls; and the incessant rudeness of Grace to herself did not prevent her feeling for her.

Mr. Sandford had implied, and almost said, that he had offered Grace, so to speak, to Mr. Drayton, who would have none of her. She was womanly enough to resent the insult for Grace, as representing girlhood, and she was so indignant with her brother about this that she, for the time, lost all sense of dread. He would not come upstairs, but he sent to request her to go to him to his own room, where he was sitting sending long puffs of smoke across the room. He saw her glance at his pipe, and laid it down—the act in itself spoke of a changed feeling towards her. She keenly remembered in old days how persistently he had made her write for him and talk to him, while the fumes of his pipe had made her feel so ill she could hardly do either.

"Well! what is to be done?" he began, looking at her keenly underneath his shaggy brows.

"I am sure I do not know," she answered, helplessly.

"Well, you had better think. What is the use of being a woman if you cannot arrange things?"

And Mrs. Dorriman thought; and then spoke out her thoughts—a thing new to her when her brother was in question.