When Mr. Drayton returned on the day that Sir Albert had seen Margaret, he came home sorely put out. He had such a complete belief in himself that it annoyed him to find, as he did find every day, that the loss of his manager was in all ways a loss to him. Nothing seemed to prosper just now, and he was annoyed and very much harassed. Entering the little hotel where he had left Margaret, he asked if a man he had expected to call, had called.

The landlord, who was a stout, comfortable, little man, with a strong burr in his voice and a thickness, coming partly from natural guttural tendencies and partly from beer and pipes, answered in the negative, but he said that he thought the gracious lady had interviewed him in the garden.

Surprised, he went to his wife immediately and asked if this was true.

Margaret, who had resolved upon telling him that Sir Albert had been there, and who had spent much time since his departure in thinking whether she was bound to tell her husband what had passed, was taken by surprise, and a quick flush came into her usually pale face.

Like many fair and delicate-looking women she coloured vividly and the flush coloured her throat. Her husband watched her with a suspicious and angry frown, very different from the laughing, mocking one he usually showed her.

"Sir Albert Gerald passed this place accidentally," she said, "he did not know we were here. He spoke to me for a little while, then he went away."

"Indeed! and what makes you turn as red as a peony, because I found this out, eh?"

"You look so strange," she said, frightened a little by his manner.

"Do I? Do you suppose I can look pleased when I see that this man's visit has such power over your cold and indifferent nature, and that for him you tremble and blush, while for me——? Where is this man?" and he rose and went towards the door.

"He has gone to England," said Margaret, gently. "He passed by the purest accident and saw me; he did not know that I was married.... He went away at once."

"Oh! and what did it matter to him whether you were married or unmarried?" he said, angrily; "was he your lover?"

"I never knew it till——" Margaret was too truthful to shirk a direct question.

"Well, be good enough to speak; if you do not——" and he moved close up to her.

His threat gave Margaret courage.

"I have no wish to hide anything from you," she said, coldly and with dignity; "I did not know that Sir Albert Gerald cared for me. I misunderstood something he said to me about not being free. He did not know where I was, and yesterday he passed by accident. He did not know anything. I told him I was now your wife and...."

"And you have cried ever since he left, and that is why you grow white and red," he said. "Had you known he loved you would you have married me?"

"Never!" said Margaret, looking at him directly.

"Thank you," he said, "now I know you. I have been a fool all round!"

He threw himself into a chair and gazed moodily before him.

"You married me knowing I had no love to give," Margaret said, gently; "I told you myself."

"You did not tell me you loved some one else," he said savagely, "and that is quite different; you have deceived me from first to last!"

"I have never wilfully deceived you—and I did not know it myself," she said. "I thought it had been but a pleasant break in my life, and that all was over."

He made her no answer, but as he rose to leave the room he said, "You must be ready to start to-night after dinner. Some bad news hurries me to England."

"To England!" exclaimed Margaret, quickly. "Oh, I shall be glad to be at home once more."

He looked at her for a moment, and then, throwing his head back, he laughed in his usual loud way, and, for the first time, the sound brought relief to her.

She little knew him. She did not know the morbid intense jealousy that filled him. He never forgot the smallest slight to himself, or the tiniest wound offered to his vanity. He kept these feelings carefully covered up, but, sooner or later, he brought them forward, and if he could revenge himself, he did, when the whole transaction had been entirely forgotten by the delinquent himself.

Going to England meant being nearer Grace, from whom she had not heard for a long time, and she felt less forlorn and happier than she had done for a very long time.

Poor child! She did not recognise the great difference Sir Albert's words had made to her. She did not analyse her feelings, but she was really happier because the sting of having loved unsought was taken away from her. She did not realise how much this wounded and hurt her. Now the pain was lighter, all was easier to bear.

Margaret had never dwelt much upon the subject of her husband's wealth, and since he had broken faith with her, and had refused to help Grace, she had made up her mind that she would manage to do so—so soon as she had the command of money she expected to have, as a matter of course. She was one of the few women who not only did not care for ornament but who rather disliked it. She had a preference for everything simple and fresh, and considered that all things in the matter of dress were spoiled by ornamentation and trimming. She loved soft stuffs that took graceful folds, and had a dislike to rustling silks, and the few gowns she had, were remarkable for their softness, the harmonious colouring in which no two colours ever entered, and a certain fitness for her peculiar style. This outward expression of her sense of what was pleasant to look at, was in correspondence with her purity of thought, into which so little that was mean or small could enter. She might be what Grace always said she was—exalted and apt to incline to a certain exaggeration of feeling about all things; but everyday things to her seemed of importance, since they affected the lives of others, and she had the highest possible conception of the duties of life in general, and of her own life in particular. She resolutely put away from her all thoughts of what might have been, and resolved to do her best to be a more congenial wife to her husband. In order to fulfil these duties she must learn to know him better, to understand his affairs, and to show her interest in his occupations.

Mr. Drayton, who at this moment was guarding his losses and his real position carefully from the knowledge of every one as far as possible, was disagreeably surprised by her developing what he considered curiosity on the subject. He imagined directly that in some way she had received a hint, and was proportionately alarmed and annoyed.

He found it useless to try and give her superficial explanations, which were generally inconsistent. She was so completely unprejudiced, and her real interest lay so completely outside those things, that her critical faculty was utterly impaired, and she demonstrated his fallacies with a quickness which amazed him. She had all the acuteness he was wanting in, and he was forced to confess to himself that had it not been too late, she might have given him valuable help.

But he did not understand her, and he mistrusted her; consequently he gave her no real confidence, and indeed upon more than one occasion he tried to mislead her.

From that moment she never asked him another question. She had done what she conceived to be her duty, and the result was to lower him for ever in her eyes. She was indeed a severe young judge, as many of her discoveries were "in the way of business," and might have been made to bear an elastic interpretation; but she was conscious that this outcome of her sense of duty was destroying every chance of forbearing with her husband's peculiarities, and, if so, she must resign herself to not understanding; she gave him no more trouble, and he was equally incapable of comprehending the withdrawal of her interest as he was of its origin.

Without a soul to speak to, without any real interest in her life, Margaret did what many a woman before her has done, where there has existed an unusually active brain and no outlet for thought in any other direction. She began to write, and her sense of harmony, and the fervid and poetical temperament she possessed, drove her to writing in metre.

Not always. She sometimes wrote down her impressions of character, of scenes—she put down those rapid and subtle changes of feeling about things animate and inanimate that received life and colour from the mood of the moment. She found so great a relief from this occupation that it gradually absorbed her. It was like pouring out her very soul to a friend, who could never wound her or disappoint her.

But she never conceived that there was any danger in it. All was carefully destroyed or locked away. She had many lonely hours and a constant struggle with herself. But for this occupation she would have suffered more. The moment a passionate grief or sorrow can find expression it obtains relief, it is the being pent up and choked back that gives intensity.

She had known love (such as he required) to be impossible as regarded her husband, but she had thought esteem and a certain regard enhanced by his business ability, was within her reach. She now discovered that he was not true, that he had no great capacity or clearness of understanding, and that his standard in all and everything was as low as it could be.

This discovery was not so much a shock to her as an excuse for her not caring more for him. She had been guided by instinct to a right judgment of his character; and there was a sense of having understood him from the first, which was not without its gratification.

All this went down on paper—as a critical essay it was admirable, trenchant, concise, and to the point—but it was a terrible picture judged dispassionately, and, as Margaret finished it, she hastily put it into her blotting-book; she felt troubled and guilty when her husband called her, and she resolved to destroy this record of her inmost convictions. She had perhaps been wrong in writing it, even for her own eye. Then they left that evening.

The journey was hurried over with small regard to her comfort and convenience, but Margaret heeded nothing; the thoughts of once more being within reach of Grace supported her through fatigue and all else.

She was quite aware as regarded her husband that had she chosen to flatter him, and had she only been able to stoop a little, she might have ruled him, but her principle was too high for this, and she made a point of being honest with him to her own loss.

When they reached London it was yet early in the morning, and they went, greatly to her surprise, to a small and very second-rate hotel in the City, where everything was dingy and mean.

"Are we not going home?" Margaret asked, astonished.

Mr. Drayton laughed uneasily.

"The truth is that there are some people in my house."

"Oh! it is let," said Margaret, in a tone of disappointment. "Then what are we to do?"

"We might take lodgings—they must not be far from here, and then we can see——" He turned on his heel and left her.

When she had rested, she started in a cab to look for lodgings—a weary quest—and all she saw near that part of London were so dingy and so dirty that she returned to the hotel in despair. Her husband came in looking so white and so utterly broken down that she could not imagine what had happened; but he would tell her nothing.

The landlady to whom Margaret spoke suggested some rooms in the country close to a station.

"As you think so much of cleanliness and fresh air, you had better go there, ma'm."

"It is only for a little while—my husband let his place and cannot turn out his tenants before their time is up," said Margaret, happily unconscious what a falsehood this was.

She liked the rooms; and then, when they paid their bill and were leaving, her husband made her understand a little how things were.

Throwing a handful of silver on the table he exclaimed, angrily,

"There! that is every penny I have in the world."

Margaret stared at him—want of money had never yet presented itself to her in connection with him. She did not now understand him literally, but she was startled.

That evening, cheered by the bright cleanliness of the little cottage at Chiselhurst to which they had removed, she asked him to tell her what was wrong.

Then he told her.

"I have lost everything!" he said. "I have not a shilling in the world left, except that money settled upon you. I am ruined—I do not suppose I shall have anything to live upon at all," and he laid his head upon his arms and cried like a child.

"Is there nothing I can do?" faltered Margaret.

"Yes!" he said. "You can go away, Mr. Sandford will take you—you can go. Our married life has been a short, if it has not been a merry, one," he said, bitterly, and he burst into a laugh so wild that Margaret left the room.

She wrote a long letter to Mr. Sandford; understanding him too well to appeal to him for assistance, she asked him to come and look into everything.

"I know a little of my husband's affairs, very little, but what I know convinces me that all cannot be so completely lost as he thinks; I fancy that, unduly elated at times, he is just now unduly depressed; and your clear brain will unravel much—besides, my husband is not well."

This invitation followed Grace's abrupt appearance at his house; and Mr. Sandford, who was, to a certain extent, involved in Mr. Drayton's fall, was content to obey the summons; more than content, there was much that required explanation, and it was a temptation he could not resist.

He was also pleased to have an opportunity of consulting a good doctor about himself. He was unwell and irritable even beyond his normal irritability; and felt ill and completely out of sorts when Mrs. Dorriman met him at breakfast, with a speech carefully arranged to do Grace good and avoid hurting his susceptibilities; she found the question of Grace's remaining in his house had sunk into a question of little importance, and that her little speech, like many another, was not required.

He left Renton, soothed by Margaret's letter to him, and full of bringing her back with him. Of course she would leave Drayton, now he could no longer support her, and he should have her again. Grace he never remembered.

When that young lady woke in the morning she felt surprised to hear all so quiet, and, ringing her bell, she asked Jean, who answered the bell, why all was so still, "Is every body dead and buried?" she said, laughing.

"Eh! Miss Grace, we was to keep quiet for you; you looked so ill last night, Mrs. Dorriman and I have been saying 'whisht!' all the morning, to let you sleep. Shall I bring you some tea?"

"If you will," said Grace; her tone was indifferent, but Jean saw that her eyes had a wistful look in them.

"What is it, my bairn?" the old woman said, her kind heart warming towards the poor girl, so evidently hovering at the gates of death.

"It is nothing," said Grace, with a pitiful little laugh, "but no one has offered to do any thing for me for a long while."

Jean understood, and, when she took in the tea, Mrs. Dorriman accompanied her.

Some women are distinctly born with a gift for nursing, and Mrs. Dorriman was one of these women. Grace, weak and feeble, worn out by the journey, the want of rest and comfort of the last few weeks, was nursed as few are nursed.

She was too weak to wonder about anything. She never asked for Mr. Sandford, and only once for Margaret. She lay there in the place she had so hated, grateful now for its shelter.

She touched lightly upon her experiences during that interval when she had left Torbreck, and had gone to London to see the world, and Mrs. Dorriman was too wise to question her.

Mr. Sandford only wrote once, and that was a short note to his sister, "Margaret refuses to leave her husband," he said, "so you need not expect her."

"I never thought she would," murmured Mrs. Dorriman to herself, to whom it had never occurred as possible.

At Chislehurst, in the small place called by courtesy a villa, Margaret had at first to face her husband's anger. Nothing could have been more hateful to him than this inquiry into his affairs Margaret had requested Mr. Sandford to make, and yet he had no reason to give against it, and it was natural that Mr. Sandford should act for Margaret.

Grace's return was a fresh and a most painful surprise for Margaret. She realised now that she might have saved herself; if Grace could of her own free-will seek shelter at Mr. Sandford's hands, she might have been urged to do so before, and so her sacrifice might have been unnecessary—might? would have been. But once this reflection was fought with, she was glad that her sister, still so delicate, was with Mrs. Dorriman.

In the meantime Mr. Sandford and his unwilling assistant, Mr. Drayton, waded through a mass of papers and accounts; and various transactions came to light that reflected no credit on Mr. Drayton's ability, and still less on his honesty. Some of his acts had been bad, and some were the action of a madman; and were to Mr. Sandford's cool Scotch caution and clear head utterly incomprehensible. He made few remarks, however, betraying his sentiments only by a secret and sudden clench of his hand, as though it might be a relief to knock down something or somebody.

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 passed 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 superstition, 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. Sandford, talking to the doctor one day about himself—Grace refused to see any doctor there—alluded to the eldest Miss Rivers as being delicate.

"We can never get her to go out; she says it tires her; she was always indolent."

"Or delicate," said the doctor; "she should not tire herself; you should send her out driving."

"Out driving! Why there is no carriage."

"No reason there should not be," said the doctor, pleasantly.

The new idea rather took possession of Mr. Sandford, and before many days were over Grace was told that she was to go out, and that a carriage was at her service.

Mr. Sandford's gruff way of announcing this fact did not prevent her seeing the real kindness, and she thanked him, while tears glistened in her eyes and she had a jest on her lips.

Margaret saw her revive under the influence of the fresh air. She had more than once postponed her journey, greatly against her own wishes, and yielding only to Grace's urgent prayers. At length she left Renton, with a heavy heart for her sister. She had too great an affection for her not to see that the excitement and gay manner were all, in reality, part of her illness; she dreaded the worst; each time she tried to talk to her seriously Grace either laughed her to scorn or cried till she made herself ill, and no good was done.

As she went south she tried to face the duties that awaited her—to remember only that her husband was her husband.

It was late and dark when she arrived in London, and when she got to Wandsworth she tried in vain to make out her surroundings. She could see nothing but the lamp-posts; and the scanty light the lamps gave, and which spread such a little distance, served to make the gloom between them darker.

She arrived at length at the Limes, so called because a couple of lopped lime-trees stood sentinel on either side of the gate.

No one was there at the door to meet her. At length an untidy-looking woman arrived—seemed surprised to see her—waited with visible impatience whilst she paid the cabman, dragged in the slender luggage and banged the gate, showing young Mrs. Drayton the way up a flagged footway between some straggling laurels, and into a cheerless unfurnished little stone hall.

"Is Mr. Drayton here? Did he not expect me?" asked the poor young wife, her heart sinking within her.

"Oh! Mr. Drayton's here. He said nothing of your being expected."

She opened a door, and sitting in front of a table littered with papers sat her husband, his face buried in his hands.

He looked at her with a vacant smile—he did not know her.

He was terrible to look at, so unkempt and so neglected looking. He must be ill, very ill!

The fire was out and the room undusted and unswept, a close smell she did not recognise filled the room.

She persuaded him to lie down on the sofa; she got the fire lit; threw open the window, put on the kettle for hot water, and wrote a note, which she sent by the woman to the nearest doctor.

He came and looked down upon the prostrate figure.

"Is he very ill?" asked Margaret, anxiously.

"No, madam," he answered, with a strange expression on his face, "he is only very drunk."