Meg sat in the nursery in Laura's home, with Laura's child on her lap.

The child had been ailing, but had finally fallen asleep with his head on her shoulder. Margaret was fond of children, and little boys especially generally took to her.

This year-old baby, who was too young to regard her with wonder or pity, was a comfort to her, and she felt most at ease in his society. Laura was kind, but brimming over with unspoken questions; and Laura's husband obviously patronised the "poor thing" who had made such a "shocking mistake," and who must, he thought, be truly glad to find herself in comfortable quarters again!

She had made mistakes enough, to be sure! She had committed a most terrible and fatal one in marrying for any reason but that which alone sanctifies marriage; but, at least, she was not ashamed of her preacher. Meg's soft grey eyes would brighten dangerously when this portly and rather self-indulgent gentleman too evidently pitied her. What was he that he should dare to despise Barnabas Thorpe?

Nevertheless, her heart warmed to Laura. The tie of blood drew the sisters together: they mourned the same father, at any rate; though, in Meg's case, the mourning was tempered by deep thankfulness in having been allowed to see him once more.

Laura came into the room presently, and sat down on the low rocking-chair by the fireplace, letting her busy hands be idle for once, while she watched the sister who had the fascination of an enigma for her.

The semi-darkness, the cosy quietness of the nursery, thawed their mutual reserve.

"I expect that Barnabas will come for me to-morrow. I wonder what can have kept him so long," said Meg. "I am glad that you persuaded me to stay here with you, Laura. It is good for one to have a breathing space to bury remembrances in. I don't think that I missed a word or look of father's while I was with him, now I feel as if I could put that away. One doesn't forget, but one must lay one's grief decently below the surface; and you have given me time to do that."

"I hate to think that you may be spirited away—and to I don't know what hardships," cried Laura impetuously.

But Meg shook her head. "I don't want to stay for ever! It is very pretty and 'soft'; it has been pleasant to sit in easy chairs and tread on velvety carpets, and, above all, to see you again; but I couldn't bear to live this life now. Even as it is, I feel as if there were a sort of disloyalty in the enjoyment of it. You must not fancy that I am being dragged away against my will, when Barnabas fetches me. I believe you imagine all sorts of horrors, Laura; but, indeed, I am telling you the truth! The preacher is very good to me. I don't think there is another man in the world who would have been so good."

"He ought to be," said Laura; "seeing that you threw away everything else for love of him."

"Oh no, it was not for love!" cried Meg. "And he never supposed that it was."

"Then you were madder than I thought." Laura sat bolt upright to give force to her emphatic whisper. She had grown stout and matronly since the days when she had advised her sister to "marry any decently rich man who would be good to her," and her views had ripened. "If people marry for love, at least they have their cake, even though they may get through it pretty soon, and go hungry when it's eaten. I've sometimes thought that I hardly saw that side of the question enough when I was young. I was terribly afraid of sentiment. But you, Meg—you, who of all women I ever met were the most high-flown!—if you didn't love him, what possessed you?"

"It is an old story now," said Meg, colouring. "Let it be. Barnabas understands about it. No one else ever will." She was silent for a few minutes, thinking of that scene at Ravenshill which she had but half understood at the time. "It is only afterwards that we know what we have done! I wonder whether all things that have happened to us will be seen by us in the right colours and the right proportion, as soon as we are in the next world. Will they all seem to shift into different places, like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope?"

"My dear," said Laura, with the twinkle that Meg remembered of old, "I am distinctly of the earth, earthy. I don't know, and I don't much care, about the next world; but I am curious about this one. I should like to hear what happened to the Meg I used to know. Where did he take you? Were you tolerably happy, or—or not?"

"I was happy when he was preaching," said Meg. "What shall I tell you?" She reflected a moment, and then began drawing word pictures of scenes by the way—of the tramps they had talked to; of the gipsies over whose fires they had sat; of meetings on heathery hills, and on village commons. She dwelt rather on the lighter side of her experiences, and her stories illustrated the gentler traits of the preacher's character—his tenderness for very old people and young children, and his hopefulness. She told how he had given a screw of tobacco to a dirty old tramp incarcerated in a far-off northern gaol, and how, on the beadle's rebuking him for his leniency, he had said: "She's ower ninety, man! ower deaf to hear the preachin' o' goodwill; but the 'baccy 'ull carry a bit o' th' message, an' she'll understan' that".

And she laughed a little over the minor perplexities that had beset her own path when she had struggled along by his side.

"It is different now, for I am older, and have grown accustomed to so much; but oh, Laura, I did not laugh then! So many funny things happened to me, small troubles that I had never reckoned on. For example, my boots wore out. I remember that we were walking along the bed of a stream, and every stone I trod on hurt me. You don't know how they hurt, when one's feet are blistered, and one's boots are in holes. It was only six weeks since I had left Aunt Russelthorpe's house, and it seemed too strange and unnatural to go to the preacher about that sort of thing. I couldn't ask him for money. I thought it would be easier to walk barefoot than to do that; and, after all, one can get through almost anything if one determines that one will. So I limped on, and should have reached the next village all right, if I hadn't trodden on a bit of broken glass. I was unlucky that day; it went through the hole right into my heel. I sat down on a stone and clenched my hands together; I was so afraid of fainting, and the sharp pain made me feel sick. I can see that valley now, with the purple heather and bracken glowing on each side, and the big boulders, and the brown stream brawling in the middle of it, and the preacher tramping steadily along, with his back to me. Of course, he discovered, after a time, that I was not by him, and turned back to look for me; and, just when he reached me, a round soft sheep with curly horns and a broad face jumped up close behind my stone and scuttled away up the hill. It startled me so that it shook the tears, which I had been trying to keep back, down my cheeks, and I found myself sobbing like a baby. Barnabas stood and stared at me; I had never done that sort of thing before, and he was immensely surprised. Then he said: 'You poor little soul, ye just doan't knaw what to do for weariness'. And he sat down and consoled me as if I had been ten instead of twenty-one; and cut my boot off with his pocket-knife, and took the splinter of glass out; and finally picked me up and carried me into the next village. From that day, he took only too much care of me; but he is always tender to any one who is unhappy."

Her thoughts had flown to another time when the difficulties of the life she had chosen had pressed on her more heavily than during those first experiences of physical discomfort.

"He thinks," she said in a low voice, "that no mistake and no sin can be so strong as God is. It is that belief which gives him power over those who have fallen very low. Of course most people agree with him in theory, but he is quite sure of it practically, which is different."

"He has need of his hopefulness," said Laura drily. She had just made up her mind to tell Meg of the arrest; but the nurse came in at that moment, and she put off breaking the news a little longer.

Meg gave up the baby reluctantly, and they went down into the lamp-lit dining-room; Laura very full of thought. This fanatical preacher, with his mania for "converting," with his pernicious views about the intrinsic evil of wealth, had done plenty of harm, she considered; and yet she allowed to herself that his influence was for good too. Margaret was morally a stronger woman now than she had been in her variable and emotional girlhood. Laura remarked also that, though no one could call her sister "pretty" in these days, yet the distinction which she had always possessed was hers still and in larger measure. Meg looked like a queen in disguise in her shabby dress. Alas! alas! and it was all wasted on a street "tuborator," who, at the best, was a mad enthusiast, and, at the worst, a shameful rogue!

Laura's meditations made her unusually silent. Mr. Ashford talked on somewhat pompously, and pressed Meg to eat with rather patronising warmth, for "it was not every day that Mrs. Thorpe got such a meal"; and Meg herself did her best to rise to the occasion and converse pleasantly with her host.

The silver, and the cut glass, and the flowers pleased her eye; for pretty things were to Margaret, as they had been to her father, very sweet. She had spoken the truth when she had said she could not have borne to live in luxury now; yet for a breathing space she enjoyed it.

In nine cases out of ten it is the people with the keenest senses who take to asceticism. He who has never been intoxicated by the scent of flowers has never known the necessity of retiring into a wilderness.

Dinner was half over when Laura saw Meg's colour change. "It is only the man from the bonnet shop. It cannot be any one for you, Meg," she said quickly. Indeed, she fancied that she had good reason to know that it could not possibly be Barnabas Thorpe. Was he not in Newgate?

"It is not Barnabas. It is—Tom!" cried Margaret.

She rose hastily from her chair; and Laura, following the direction of her eyes, saw Tom's queer deformed figure through the open door. He had been standing in the hall; but when Margaret's exclamation reached him, he walked into the dining-room, thinking she had meant to call him.

To Laura this extraordinary person seemed a threatening embodiment from that outside world which claimed her sister. To Mr. Ashford he was a most impertinent intruder; but Meg made a quick step towards him. "Oh, Tom, is anything wrong at the farm?" she asked. And then turning to Laura: "This is my brother-in-law."

"I should ask your pardon for disturbing you, ma'am," said Tom, looking at Laura; "but I ha' need of a word with Barnabas' wife."

The accent, and still more the decided way in which he stated what he wanted, reminded Laura of the preacher.

He spoke quite civilly, but the peremptoriness jarred on her. Tom Thorpe was possessed by a sort of defiant repulsion, and glowered indignantly on Margaret and her fine relatives. So she was here in this grand room feasting and amusing herself? but she was "Barnabas' wife" all the same, and he was in prison!

"You shall have as many words as you like with me at once," said Margaret. "May I take him into the library, Laura? Oh, I hope that your father is not ill?"

Tom glanced at the bit of crape on her sleeve and answered, softened: "No, no, lass. Naught o' that kind's happened. Dad's right enough. There's naught but what ye must know already."

"But she does not know!" Laura murmured faintly.

Ten minutes later they heard Meg's visitor go.

"Dear me! Your poor sister will hardly like to appear again to-night," Mr. Ashford said compassionately. "She must be terribly ashamed of her scamp of a husband, though that kind of thing is what she must expect after having——Oh, here she is!"

Margaret's head was very erect, and there was a bright spot of colour on each cheek.

"My brother-in-law has been telling me that my husband has been arrested on Mr. Sauls' charge, and taken to gaol," she said. And there was a prouder ring than usual in her generally low voice. "Mr. Sauls' brain must have suffered! I am sorry for him."

"You are angry with him, you mean!" remarked Laura.

"No," said Mrs. Thorpe. "Any one who is so mad as to think it possible that Barnabas could have done such a thing is not worth being angry with. He knows no better, I suppose, poor thing!"

Laura looked at her husband with a momentary gleam of fun.

"I must get a room close to Newgate, so that I can go in and out as often as I am allowed," continued Meg. "Tom is going to take me to the prison to-morrow. Will you excuse me if I go and put my things together now?"

Laura laughed, albeit a little sadly, when the door closed behind her.

"It has been a queer story from first to last," she said. "But do you think, after that, that she is ashamed of him?"

"She doesn't care much for him," said Mr. Ashford. "If she did, she would be more anxious."

An hour later Margaret had finished packing her clothes into a small bundle, and stood considering a leathern box she held in her hands: should she take it with her or not?

She opened it with the reverent touch a woman gives to relics. There was the pearl ring that her mother, another Margaret, had worn; Laura's first baby socks tenderly treasured; and an unfinished silk purse that had been in process of making when death took that, as well as all other tasks, from the pretty hands that had been so prone to give.

There also was a faded bundle of letters tied with ribbon. The last that Meg unfolded had been penned two days before the writer's death. No one had imagined that she was in any danger; but there was an undercurrent of foreboding, sounding through the overflowing tender happiness which the letter expressed, a foreboding which, as Meg remembered to have heard, had wakened Mr. Deane's anxiety and brought him home just in time.

"Indeed, sweetheart, an' I were to die to-morrow, I should want you only to remember that no woman was ever happier than I have been, and I think none other was ever so happy, seeing that none other was your wife. I long to make up to those not so fortunate as I; but I cannot. I would pray for a long life, only not beyond yours; but if it is not given me" (again that iteration of warning, mingling with her passionate satisfaction in her married life), "I shall yet have been more blessed than any other woman. It will have been worth while to have lived only to have loved you—and——"

Meg put the letter down—surely this was too sacred for any eyes but his to whom it was written; a shame came over her that she had read so much.

Some one else had once said to her: "It is worth while". This dead voice, that was yet so instinct with life, now, after all these years, reiterated it.

She gave Laura the box the next morning, before she left.

"It wouldn't be safe to carry jewels with me to the part of London I am going to," she explained. "Will you take care of them for me? They are best left behind."

She turned the key in the lock, and put the box in Laura's hands.

"There are letters there too," she said. "They are so alive, that, I suppose, father could not bear to burn them. I began to read one; but I did not finish it—I felt as if I oughtn't to."

"Ought not? Why, he left them to you especially!" said Laura. "Who has a better right?"

"I felt as if I had no right to them," said Meg.