"Wilful woman," Sir Arthur said, with a shrug of the shoulders; "you often remind me of your poor Aunt Margaret. You have her set obstinacy of character. She was never able to see any other point of view but her own, and you are very like her."
"I—should like to be like Aunt Margaret," the girl answered; "and if she did like her own points of view, I think they were always very beautiful views. I have never met anybody like her."
"She was a good woman," Sir Arthur said, smitten with sudden compunction. "I had no business to say a word against her; she was a good woman, but the thought of her wasted life hurts me."
"Not wasted," Christina said; "I don't think her life was wasted. Her influence can't die away, even now. It was such a wonderful influence—like herself, so beautiful."
"Yes," he repeated, "poor Margaret. She was a good woman, and it hurts me to think of all the trouble of her life. You are like her in many ways. God grant that your life may not hold the sorrows her life held."
Uncle and niece were silent for a few moments after those solemnly-uttered words, and Christina stood looking out across the square, where the trees waved delicate green leaves against a background of May sky, her thoughts full of the beautiful woman who had entered so strangely into her life, through whose instrumentality so vast a change had come to her.
From first to last, Margaret's personality had made a great appeal to Christina, and looking out now into the May sunshine, across the fragrant window-boxes of geranium and mignonette, a vivid recollection came to her of that December afternoon, when Margaret had stood in the lane, pleading with her to fetch a doctor. What apparent inconsequence had led her to drive past that lonely house in the lane, and how strange had been the outcome of that inconsequent drive.
What big results had rested upon such a seemingly small event! Her relationship to Sir Arthur and his sister Margaret, would probably never have been discovered, but for that meeting in the lane; and no one but Margaret would ever have been able to elucidate the mystery about the emerald pendant. It was strange, so strange as to be like some story-book happening, instead of an event in real, everyday life!
Sir Arthur's voice brought her back from her thoughts of the past.
"I am sorry, my dear Christina, that you have made up your mind to stay here, in the very anomalous position you now occupy. But, I quite see that it is useless to argue further with you. If, however, you should, at some future date, see things differently, your Aunt Ellen and I will still be willing to offer you a home under our roof."