Unable to make up his mind he was wandering about when he was attracted by a curious-looking book in a bookseller's shop. It was something more than a shop, for he read there that it was no less a place than the office of the "Industrious Workman," a paper he knew by name.
He went in to ask the price of the book, and the intelligent little man, who was tearfully reading a poem, put it down to attend to him, saying as he did so, "I beg pardon for being so absorbed, but I have something very lovely here;" and handing him the paper Sir Albert recognised in the neatly-written lines—Margaret's handwriting.
CHAPTER VII.
When Margaret left Renton Place, and that Grace had seen her off, the first real sense of having been to blame came to disturb her mind. That intense belief in herself which, as a rule, shielded her from uncomfortable feelings, deserted her now; she tried to argue herself into some more cheerful vein, but found it hopeless. Was it that she was weaker, and that her illness had shaken her nerves? When night fell and the household slept, memory came to confront her. Her selfishness filled her with remorse; how many things she could look back upon now, when Margaret, her sweetness, and her devotion never failing, had been counted as so little, tested by her own all-absorbing love of having her own way?
After all, how petty a thing she had urged her sacrifice for, and how easily the self-will that had in the end been obliged to give in might have done so before, and saved her!
A recognition, dim as yet, came to her of the beauty of her sister's character. How far apart they stood in feeling! How Margaret insisted on not only truth, but the highest expression of truth, as the only thing she cared for.
Tears chased each other down her face, and each morning found her pale and unrefreshed.
Want of sleep and the incessant torment of a newly awakened conscience made Grace unusually irritable, her gay spirits were fitful, and, indeed, were only used as a mask to hide the perpetual pain she had to bear, a pain so far, far, more agonizing than any bodily pain.
Mr. Sandford—who was, himself, out of health—had no affection to enable him to support her provoking ways.