"You need not be sorry," she said, in an odd tone; "we none of us know anything of each other, and I daresay I judge you quite as hardly as you do me."
"Hardly! Do I judge you hardly?"
"You think I am so fearfully frivolous and thoughtless and——I cannot at this moment think of any other words."
"I know your sister best. She is not thoughtless: and may I say to you, Miss Rivers, that the more I know her the more thunderstruck I am at her ever having married poor Drayton?"
"You knew him better than any of us."
"Yes, ever since his boyhood. He had no chance. His father and mother were cousins, and insanity in the family. It was terrible to me to hear of his marriage."
Grace shivered.
"You do not like Mr. Sandford. I remember hearing this. I cannot bear him."
"He is in very bad health now."
"That does not alter things a bit. When I think of all his rudeness and violence ... and he always looks to me as though he had some great sin lying on his conscience."