"I can remember some; he was very kind; and he said something about making me happy and about living where I liked in London, or anywhere, and giving me luxuries. I hated his saying all that, and I said so. I said it was like a bribe."
"It was not nice," said Grace slowly, "he ought not to have said it. And yet—oh, Margaret!" she exclaimed, fervently, "think how near we have been to the realization of our dreams! To leave this hateful place—which is choking me, and making me wretched—to go away, to live in the centre of all that is worth living for!"
Margaret was perfectly overwhelmed at this discovery. Grace was disappointed; she wished her to marry this man, whom she had laughed at, and turned into the bitterest ridicule, ever since she had seen him, and had seen that he was not in the least like the expected prince who was to rescue her!
The poor child could not get over it. She stood still clasping her; but she felt as though her world had crumbled to pieces at her feet. She was roused from the deepest and cruellest pain by feeling Grace's tears dropping fast upon her. Grace was weeping, and she was the cause of her tears. She struggled with a feeling of indignation also. A sense of being unfairly and unjustly put in the wrong, made her less hurt than angry after a moment. It seemed as though in a supreme moment of her life her sister had failed her.
"Grace," she said, after a long silence seemed to have made her voice startling, "if this had come to you, would you have done it?"
"How can I tell?" said Grace. "Nothing comes to me, it seems."
"But you can imagine—you can put yourself in my place."
"No, I cannot! We are so different—you and I."
"And yet we used to think alike, up till now, Grace. I have always seen the wisdom of your thoughts; you surely cannot counsel me to marry a man who has never appeared to me in any but a ridiculous light."
"No, I do not counsel it," said Grace; "but I cannot help seeing that this was a chance for us both, and that it has gone."