Mr. Sandford laughed his usual sarcastic laugh.
"If! if! if!" he exclaimed. He was going to say something, but there was a look in her face that warned him he had better not. He turned sharply round and went off to his own room.
"Grace, my darling!" whispered Margaret to her sister as they stood in the window that night with the grimy world before them hushed into silence, and the stars shining down upon them, "perhaps this will be the Prince."
"It does not sound like it, Margaret," she answered, scornfully. "A manufacturer, and a man no longer young."
"We cannot tell," said Margaret. "But it may be, oh, I hope, I hope it may be your prince, and that he may be charming and everything your prince ought to be."
"I hope so," said Grace, whispering also, and in a voice trembling with some suppressed feeling. "For, Margaret, I am very, very wretched here, and I sometimes think if I see no escape for myself, if no change comes, I shall die. Oh!" she exclaimed, breaking into the silence of the night with a passionate cry she could not repress, "if life holds nothing more for me than this, then give me death!"
CHAPTER VII.
That finality of all things, whether of happiness or of misery, brought Jean's long illness to a close—and the pleasure Mrs. Dorriman had in seeing her recover was often now tinged with sorrow when she thought of the separation that must follow.
Her brother had been forbearing, but his patience must not be overtaxed. Mrs. Dorriman knew nothing of those changes of feeling which softened Mr. Sandford towards her and any one she loved. She stood no longer to him in the antagonism he himself had placed her in. If she was acting against him in any way, if she knew what he dreaded, she might know he was satisfied that the knowledge had come without understanding. Her great sweetness of temper was something soothing to him, her kindness to her old servant, the unfailing cheerfulness towards her, was a sort of surprise to him. He found her no longer, in his eyes, a weak woman, whom he could keep by him, and under his authority, but a woman full of unexpected tenderness. Towards himself the habit of years gave her a certain submissiveness; he began to wish, as he lay, often wakeful, that this could be changed. But affection! He had no hope, no belief, in this as possible from her to him. He had blighted her life; her crushed spirits were a standing proof of this; and then he would laugh himself to scorn.