"Margery clear," said Clara, "you are in trouble of some sort; I see it in your heavy eyelids and those lines about your mouth, which make even your smile a sad one. Can I help you at all? Is there nothing I can do? I am such a poor thing, and so debarred from most means of usefulness, that it would be conferring a favour upon me, if you could let me serve you. Is it a case in which money would be of any service, Margery dear?"
Margie shook her head. "No, thank you, Miss Clara," she replied. "It has nothing to do with money. But I am puzzled to know what to do for the best, or whether I ought to do and say nothing."
[CHAPTER IV.]
PLOTTING AGAINST THE INNOCENT.
NURSE was gone, and Margie fairly established in her place, yet managing to do a great deal besides caring for the invalid. There was not an atom of selfishness or anything that was exacting in Clara Raye's nature.
All that there was of these qualities and of jealousy had gone to mar the character of Mabel, who had never known the restraining power of religion in her own experience, the fear of God, which purifies the life; the love of Jesus, which intensifies and makes more true, more abiding, all worthy love; the vivifying influence of the Holy Spirit, at once the Convincer, the Awakener, and the Comforter of the human life that has learned the great secret of the life to come.
There was thus nothing to control the strong passions inherited from that beautiful Creole mother of hers; no steady motive to hold in check the many headlong impulses and wild ideas which seemed sometimes to take possession of this undisciplined nature, as we read the demons did of those unhappy sufferers in the olden times. And, unfortunately for Mabel, Nicholas had begun to tire and sicken of her intensity. The man's nature was fickle, changeable, incapable of any steady or faithful love; and the fierce and exacting fidelity of this girl wearied him till he could no longer hide from her his distaste alike of her passionate endearments and her equally passionate suspicions and accusations. And she, on her side, laid the whole blame of what she called this change in him upon his fancy—or supposed fancy—for Margery Grayling.
As for Margie, now that her work was all upstairs, she and Nicholas seldom met. Much of her time was spent in the east wing, where no one else went, except at rare intervals. And whenever Clara could spare her, she returned for a while to the old lady; and yet, in spite of this, Mabel's unreasoning jealousy invented all sorts of imaginary circumstances connecting together the objects of her love and hate—both love and bate bordering upon madness in their intensity.
"You're getting to care less and less for me," sobbed Mabel one evening, when she had gone down to say good-night to Nicholas, and found him alone in the library. "And I know why it is. I'd like to kill that girl, I would!"
"What girl?" questioned the young man coldly.