Margaret also was beginning to make another discovery, and one that filled her with pain and even terror. She had too candid a mind not to own a truth to herself, however unwillingly, and the truth which frightened her and dismayed her was the wide difference existing between her sister and herself. She had all her life looked up to Grace, admired her and worshipped her. Every day now showed her that Grace had, in all ways, a lower standard than she had. She was contented to spend her time in perfect and complete idleness; she would no longer even talk upon matters of any importance with her sister. All those questions of religious thought which crowd upon a young girl when her mind begins to draw its own conclusions and she shakes off those boundaries and lines which have, up till then, been the accepted guides for all her belief, were too evidently distasteful to Grace to be persisted in. We feel it as irreverent to allow a careless hand to touch our holiest and highest thoughts as we do if a scoffer enters a church with us. Poor Margaret, often perplexed, asking herself questions that have always baffled the wisest men, blamed her own want of perception for not understanding. She had a high ideal, a desire for the best, and she was often miserable because of a supposed short-coming of a faith that was not unwavering. To turn to Grace, who was, she thought, so far her superior in point of cleverness, would have been such an endless comfort to her.
But it was not only in these deeper things that the sisters differed. Grace, full of vanity, was insatiable in her appetite for applause. She took endless trouble to obtain attention, conceiving attention invariably to mean admiration. Not all Margaret's love for her could conceal the fact from her widely-opening eyes, and to the higher character of the severe young sister this intense vanity was almost a worse fault than one perhaps of a stronger type. It seemed to her to be so absolutely beneath the dignity of a woman, and of such a woman as Grace.
In the room they shared together every candle was brought to bear upon the glass, and the time Grace took to curl and crimp and crisp her hair left Margaret none. Luckily, by chance, her long, thick hair was simply smoothed back and twisted in a coil that required but a few moments to arrange.
Those moments, during which Margaret's grave young eyes were fixed wonderingly upon her sister, were full of grief to her. Then Grace's habit of laughing off a question, her little transparent caprices and deceits, filled the younger sister with apprehension. Imaginative as she was, the truth exaggerated itself to her inexperienced eyes, and she saw her sister drifting from her and slipping each day down to a lower level, while she stood by helpless. These thoughts filled her mind, to the exclusion of other things; she tried to read, she tried to enjoy the great stretch of water, the faint, blue hills with the varying lights, but her heart was heavy, and she sat down at the foot of a sharp and rocky gorge and gave herself up to melancholy reflections.
Then something happened—what, she never rightly knew—but there was a sudden shout, a rushing and falling of the rock under which she was sitting, and a figure vainly endeavouring to protect itself came crashing down and lay helpless a few yards from where, with the instinct of self-preservation, Margaret had sprung. For one second she stood breathless, trembling all over with the sudden shock and fright, then she rallied and went quickly up to the prostrate form, lying so still that she was afraid death would confront her.
She took courage, and moved the checked deer-stalker's cap that had fallen over the face, and she saw a man, not very young, his eyes closed and his teeth clenched, a look of agony impressed upon his features.
With the necessity for help came strength; she flew down to the burn and dipped her handkerchief in water, bathed his mouth and eyes and forehead, and then, seeing how he lay, all of a heap, she gently moved him so that he might breathe more easily, then she knelt and prayed with all her heart. It seemed long before he showed any signs of life, and the poor child was getting very nervous and very anxious; she could not leave him alone there, she thought, till she knew how it would be; and she went on dabbing his face and hands, with a very faint hope of his responding to her efforts. But at last life, that had been so nearly shaken out from the great massive frame, began to tingle once more through his veins, and, after a long shuddering sigh and a smothered exclamation of pain, his eyes opened and stared back at hers in complete bewilderment. He had heard her praying.
"I saw you fall; there was no one else; are you very much hurt?" said Margaret, anxiously, all in one breath.
"I am afraid I am," he answered, and the deep tones of his voice were full of suppressed pain.
"Can you move at all? Should you be afraid of being left? Shall I go for help?"