"I was not thinking of that," said Mrs. Dorriman, hastily, "but life is disappointing, and if you cling to the world too much you will feel the many disappointments overwhelmingly."
"Wait till you see," said Grace, hastily brushing her tears away.
Mrs. Dorriman left her; she had not the courage to tell her her own conviction that Mr. Drayton might be kind to her in the matter of money, but as to her living with him and with Margaret, making it in short her home, that she thought entirely unlike him to propose. However, she knew nothing really about the matter. What had passed between the sisters, or what arrangements and stipulations she had made with Mr. Drayton, were equally out of her knowledge, and she trusted from Grace's confident manner that she had something tangible to go upon.
In the meantime Mr. Sandford urged his sister's return, and the doctor was anxious to get Grace to a more congenial climate.
She had certainly been better and brighter lately, and he hoped, if she went somewhere in time, she might yet get well.
Mrs. Munro was extremely offended by his way of disparaging the climate. "What ails you that you are for aye backbiting our climate. If water goes up it's bound to come down somewhere."
"But it is all coming down here just now," he said, laughing, "and it is very damp. It is all very well for you and me, Mrs. Munro, we are both strong and healthy, but that poor young lady will never get well unless we can get her away."
"I don't know about damp," she said. "With a good house over one's head (and this is a good house), and fires, what does the weather outside matter? It's just fidgets, doctor, and nothing else."
The good doctor could not quite understand the hitch. Mrs. Dorriman had written to her brother. She was surprised at Grace's quiescence; forgetting that in the extreme languor of early convalescence we accept things without question, and the fatigue of puzzling over the future is often spared us.
Mr. Sandford was not at all stingy, but he had liked Margaret and had wished to be kind to her, and he blamed Grace for having upset all his arrangements, and most of all for this marriage.