"It would only make you unhappy, dear. It was all over forty years or more ago. Sallie, when she saw you, put her arms about you. You had only to come together. The oftener she sees you, the more she will love you. My lover's mother shut the door in my face."
"In your face? Why?"
Margaret moved closer to Miss Clendenning, stirred by a sudden impulse, as if she could even now protect her from one who had hurt her.
Miss Lavinia bent forward and picked up the brass tongs that lay on the fender at her feet. She saw Margaret's gesture, but she did not turn her head. Her eyes were still watching the smouldering embers.
"For no reason, dear, that you or any other Northern woman could understand. An old family quarrel that began before I was born."
Margaret's cheeks flushed and a determined look came into her face.
"The coward! I would not have cared what his mother or anybody else did, or how they quarrelled. If I loved you I would have married you in spite of everything."
"And so would he." She was balancing the tongs in her hand now, her eyes still on the fire. She had not looked at Margaret once.
"What happened then?"
Miss Clendenning leaned forward, spread the tongs in her little hands, lifted an ember and tucked it closer to its neighbor. The charred mass crumbled at the touch and fell into a heap of broken coals.