"I am sorry to hear you say that, even in fun (I know you are not in earnest). I should never have been able to think of Margaret in the same way if she had acted differently."
"But, Paul, why? Margaret suffered horribly and behaved like an angel. Why should she not reap any benefit?"
"It is not a thing to argue about, it is a thing one feels," he answered; "and I am quite grieved, darling, that you should pretend to think differently." This was pleasant; then Paul went on, "I cannot myself fathom her motives: but the way I read the story of her life is, that she was, for some reason, anxious to make a home for you—so you have told me—rushed into the scrape, and has repented ever since. Girls are so curious. I suppose she had the independence you have; so where the good of it all was I cannot see. Then, when she found what she had done, her better, higher nature prevailed, and she gave the money away."
"You really think it wrong to benefit in any way by that man's money?" asked Grace, horribly conscious, and feeling most uncomfortable; "supposing, Paul—only supposing—I had benefitted, would you have blamed me?"
"Do not put such absurd questions," he answered, sharply; "it is not the least like you to have done such a thing. Can you not see that, in one sense, in a sort of way, it is almost like blood-money? Imagine being the better for anything of the kind! I believe the money would bring a curse and not a blessing!"
Grace felt an acute and miserable pang of self-reproach; she was afraid now that her husband might find out, and she knew that the loss of his esteem would be terrible to her. He and Margaret thought so much alike; what could she do?
His appointment was worth a few hundreds a year, and the six hundred a year she had was counted in arranging their expenses.
Whenever the future was talked of, this miserable idea haunted her. When Paul advised her to get something, whenever money was in question, there was this one constant weight upon her mind, and the strange thing to herself was, that now she began to see a little as he did, and she could not now understand how she had reconciled herself to accepting it, how she could have claimed her right to this money so complacently.
Paul had proposed to her, thinking her penniless, and the small fortune had been a joyful surprise. How she wished now that she had never had anything to do with it!
But she could not see her way out of it. She knew that, if she spoke to Margaret, Margaret would do without things and help her, but for that very reason she could not speak to her.