Uncle Russelthorpe sat alone in his library on the evening of the ball: the habit of shuffling out of family gatherings had grown on him, his queer slip-shod figure was seldom seen beyond its own precincts now. His distaste for his wife increased with increasing age, and her loud voice and rather aggressive strength jarred more on him.

Perhaps, after all, Meg's was not the saddest tragedy in that house; for it is better to burn than to rot, and it is doubtful whether the over-hasty actors who bring grief on themselves, and other people, in their attempts to make the world turn round the other way, do half the harm of the easy-going philosophers, who sit with their talents in napkins, and say, "Let be! why struggle against the inevitable?" Stagnant water is not a healthy feature in the landscape at any time.

It was late in the evening, the soft air came in at the window laden with dew, as well as with sweetness. The old man got up to close the shutters; he had a morbid dislike to intrusion, and the servants did not dare invade his sanctum. He lit his lamp, and fell back into the depths of his armchair with a sigh of relief, because that small effort was accomplished. He had grown weaker lately, though no one had noticed it. He no longer studied with the avidity of old, but sat often, as he sat to-night, with his hands on his knees, peering into the fire. Perhaps he saw shadows of the past there—ghosts of possibilities that were never realities, saddest of all ghosts are these "might-have-beens," pale phantoms that have never known life. He had started with rather more than the average share of brains and money, and come to the conclusion, now that his days were few and evil, that the game had hardly been worth playing, sorry fun at the best! Presently some one spoke behind him, and he frowned irritably.

"Who is it?" he asked rather crossly. "I'm busy. What do you want in here?"

"It is I—Margaret!" said a voice with a suspicion of tremor in it; and his niece walked round his chair, and after a moment's hesitation, sat down on a high-backed seat opposite him.

Uncle Russelthorpe straightened himself with a jerk. This was a most unprecedented visit, and his curiosity overcame his annoyance. Meg had hardly been in his study since the days when she had haunted it as a child. What could she want? It was not a house where the young ones ever intruded unnecessarily on their elders' leisure; and Mr. Russelthorpe, though he had a secret partiality for his youngest niece, did not consider her any "affair of his". His wife managed the girls, and "very funnily too," he sometimes thought.

Meg sat pressing her fingers together and looking straight at him. She had not taken this unusual step without a pretty strong motive.

"Uncle," she said, "I want advice! You used to be very kind to me when I was a little girl. Will you give it to me, please?"

"Eh? What?" said her uncle. "You'd better go to——" he was about to say "your aunt," but feeling that that counsel was rather a cruel mockery, seeing that Meg's relations with Mrs. Russelthorpe were more than usually strained just then, ended, "to your father for it."

"Yes, but I don't know how," said Meg; "he is somewhere in Greece, I suppose."

"Hm—wise man!" said Uncle Russelthorpe. "I don't, as a rule, think much of Charles' worldly wisdom; but that way he has of going off, without leaving an address, has always struck me as admirable; it secures such absolute immunity from worries."

"I suppose I am one of the worries," said Meg, with a smile that was more sad than merry. "Since I can't bother him, I'm worrying you!"

"Not at all!" said the old gentleman politely; but he drew his watch out of its fob and fidgeted.

"You see there is no one else," said Meg apologetically. "Uncle Russelthorpe, I mean to go away. I can't stay here any longer. Father promised me that he would write soon, and perhaps send for me. He has been gone nearly two months, and I have not heard from him. Perhaps,"—with her ungovernable desire to shift the blame from his shoulders—"perhaps, he is ill, or he may have sent a message that has not been given to me. Anyhow, I can't—oh I can't—wait much longer."

"Tut, tut!" interrupted Mr. Russelthorpe. "You are young and impatient. When you are my age, you will not say 'can' and 'can't' so easily. There are few things we can't endure, hardly any I should say; and our skins become toughened with age, fortunately, and our hearts colder, also most fortunately."

Meg shivered involuntarily.

"But I haven't begun to be old yet!" she cried. "That doesn't help me!"

The old man looked at her uneasily; he had something of the feeling that one of the audience of a play might have, if suddenly appealed to by an actor: he hated being dragged out of his safe place as spectator, and being asked for practical advice.

"I think the sort of life we lead is all wrong from beginning to end," said this inconvenient niece; and the corners of Mr. Russelthorpe's lips twitched a little, he was genuinely sorry for her unhappiness, but her revolutionary sentiments amused him.

"Father really thinks so too. I have never forgotten something he said when I was a child, about Dives preaching contentment to the starving across an over-loaded table."

Uncle Russelthorpe took snuff and shook his head.

"My dear young lady, don't you begin to talk cheap Chartist cant," he said. "One Whig in the family is enough, and Charles' harangues don't sound so well at second-hand; it is his voice and manner that makes any nonsense he chooses to spout go down; besides, he would be considerably deranged, I fancy, if you were to take upon yourself to put all his theories into practice; that's a very pernicious habit that you've contracted—not inherited—I doubt its being so pleasing to him as you imagine."

"But that's worse than anything, and I won't believe you!" cried Meg, with a passion that actually startled him. "Uncle, it makes me feel miserable when you say that; as if father were not ever in earnest! Aunt Russelthorpe tells me that too! She says he never really meant me to live with him, and that I'd taken everything too seriously. It isn't true. I want to go to him, and to hear him say it isn't true. Will you help me? I believe Aunt Russelthorpe knows where he is. Will you make her tell you? Will you give me the money, and send some one with me if I mustn't travel alone? I won't run away. It isn't wrong to want to go to my own father," cried poor Meg, with a rather pathetic pride. "I'll do it openly. My aunt will be angry, but he will understand. I am his child, and he always says I am to come to him in any difficulty. I know that he will be glad!"

There was a confidence in her tone, that made Mr. Russelthorpe wonder for a moment what sort of a man he would have been, if he had had a child with such unlimited faith in him. Really, it was a pity Charles didn't do more to justify it; and that reflection gave rise to another.

"It seems to me," he said, "that a more interesting and younger admirer than your old uncle would be charmed to point an obvious way out of your difficulties. There was a young sprig here the other day; it struck me that his interest in my coins had shot up rather suddenly, like Jack's bean-stalk. I shouldn't wonder if it withered when it's served its turn, eh? My old eyes are not so sharp as they were, but I'm not in my dotage yet. I don't see how I can interfere, my dear; but if you are anxious to leave us,—why, there's the church door conveniently near. Laura and Kate got out by it. I've no doubt the escort to Greece could be provided too."

"You mean Mr. Sauls," said Meg, with a calmness which boded ill for that gentleman's hopes. "I don't think he would be so silly; but, anyhow, I should hate a husband who let me believe what I liked, and do as I thought right because 'it didn't matter'. Mr. Sauls has been rather kind to me. I don't want my gratitude spoilt by that kind of nonsense; please." The last words were a protest against Mr. Russelthorpe's characteristic chuckle. Meg had an impatience of any approach to love-making, that was more boyish than girlish; and the least attempt at sentiment was enough to chill her rather doubtful liking for her father's quondam protÉgÉ.

"I really am in earnest!" she cried. "Don't laugh at me! Aunt Russelthorpe has been saying things I cannot repeat: she says other people say them too. I think," lifting her head proudly, "that they should all be ashamed of themselves, and I don't care in the very least—but"—with a sudden illogical break-down—"I must go away! No one will miss me, you see,—it isn't as if this were home, or as if I were any good to any one, or had any real place. It seems a waste of life to stay and make her angry, and fight every day because I don't any longer do the things she does. Besides," added Meg despairingly, "I don't know how to go on struggling for ever. Aunt Russelthorpe rather likes it, I believe, but I don't. Uncle, I'm so terribly afraid of giving in, and doing everything she wants, and feeling a shameful coward all the rest of my life."

"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Russelthorpe. "'The rest of life!' and, 'for ever and ever!' Eh! how tragic we are at twenty, to be sure!" But again he felt uneasy. The girl was unhappy. He knew she must have been hard pressed before she took the initiative and appealed to him—also there was no doubt that tongues were wagging too fast about her.

He sometimes shrewdly suspected that Augusta wouldn't be sorry to drive her niece into any decently good marriage; and he knew that the one plan her heart was set against was this of Meg's keeping house for Mr. Deane. Why were women such fools? Why, above all, did Meg bother him? He had given up contention on his own account so long ago. Yet it would be good for the poor child to get away; and if Charles understood how matters were, he would be indignant enough. Charles had plenty of spirit, though a baby could hoodwink him. Should he interpose for once, and tell his wife that——

"Margaret!" said a voice behind them. They both started like guilty conspirators; but Meg recovered herself in a second, and stood upright, white and defiant.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was in the doorway dressed for a ball, as she had been long ago when she and Meg had had their first pitched battle. She had an open letter in her hand, and a smile on her lips.

"I have been looking for you. What are you doing in here, I wonder?" said she. "Here is an answer from your father, Margaret; and now I hope you are satisfied."

Meg held out her hand without a word. Mrs. Russelthorpe gave her the letter over Mr. Russelthorpe's head, who peered up out of his deep armchair. "'So they two crossed swords without more ado,'" he quoted to himself.

Margaret read the letter all through before she spoke. A few months earlier she would have protested at her aunt's having broken the seal, and mastered the contents; now, rightly or wrongly, she felt that the issue of this contest was too serious for her to waste strength in resenting small grievances.

Mrs. Russelthorpe noted the change. Margaret was not quite so contemptible an adversary as she had been: she was growing more womanly.

Meg turned to her uncle when she had finished reading, as to a supreme court of appeal.

"If father had ever got my letter," she said, "he would not have written like this. Please judge for yourself, uncle."

"Charles' hand tries my eyes," murmured Mr. Russelthorpe fretfully.

"Then I will read it aloud," said Meg; and her aunt raised her eyebrows and laughed, but not very mirthfully.

"Margaret is determined on having a scene!"

The first part of the letter was all about the place Mr. Deane was staying in, and the people he was meeting. It was illustrated with pen-and-ink sketches, and was charmingly descriptive and good-naturedly witty. Then came a tender half-playful recommendation to his daughter not to addle her brains with overmuch thinking.

"Your aunt actually tells me that she can't persuade my Peg-top to spin any more!" he wrote. "Of course I only wish you to follow your own conscience, dearest; but don't, even for heaven's sake, turn into a severe old maid, or get crow's-feet and wrinkles before I come home again. I couldn't forgive you! As for that delightful plan which we concocted last time I was at Ravenshill, I fear, on thinking it over, that it is impossible to carry it out,—at least, for the next few years. There are many objections to it, which I lost sight of before; and I believe, that, after all, you are better and happier in your uncle's house, than you would be wandering about with me. Your aunt always writes most kindly of you. It is a long time since I have heard from you.

"Your very affectionate father,
"Charles Deane."

"That is all," said Meg; "and," looking at her aunt, "I am not in the least satisfied;" and then, with a sudden impulsive movement, she knelt down by the old man's chair, and the loose sheets of that rather unsatisfactory epistle floated aimlessly to the floor.

"Father is so far away, and nothing I do or say seems to reach him," she cried; and there were tears in her voice now. "Uncle, I am desperate! Do help me!"

Mr. Russelthorpe glanced nervously from her to his wife.

"Upon my word, Augusta," he began, when Mrs. Russelthorpe interrupted, her louder voice drowning his, as her quick decision mastered his slow championship.

"We've had enough theatricals!" she said. "Get up, Margaret, you are spoiling your dress and wasting your uncle's time, and mine too," with a glance at the clock. But Meg's eyes were still fixed on Uncle Russelthorpe; he had been kind to her when she was a child, and she had always consequently (though illogically) believed in him. Surely, surely he would take her part now.

He fidgeted, shifting his position as if to turn from her eager, pleading face. It was hard on him to be called so suddenly to espouse a side,—on him, who liked to smile at the fallibility of all causes. Prompt action, too, was almost impossible at seventy, when at sixty he had let the reins drop. Yes! it was hard on him, though Meg in her passionate youth couldn't see that.

"I—I don't see what you come to me for," he said feebly. "You are so violent, Meg. Nothing is probably so bad as you imagine, you know; and, if you wait long enough, grievances burn themselves out, like everything else. You may be mistaken too, and fancy—fancy——"

"Yes—I was mistaken," said Meg slowly. She had risen from her knees while the old man mumbled on; the eagerness had died out of her face and left it rather scornful. "I did fancy you would help me, but I shall not fancy it again. I was foolish to trouble you, uncle. I am sorry. I never will any more."

She went out of the library, holding her fair head very high, and without looking at either uncle or aunt; but when she got to her own room she threw herself down on her bed and sobbed, all her dignity vanishing.

"Oh father, father, I do so want you! I can't be good all alone!" she cried. "Why aren't you ever here?"