She had seldom seen Mr. Stevens, though they had a great deal of correspondence. He never could understand her views. Having married Mr. Drayton for his money in the first instance, why did she refuse to benefit by his will afterwards?
This apparent inconsistency troubled him; he had judged her harshly before they had met, and now he had learned to like her so well that he wanted some explanation of her conduct that would satisfy him.
He came to see her, now, because some things had remained unexplained, and he felt that much trouble and correspondence might be saved by a personal interview.
Margaret never saw him without emotion. She had that sort of instinct, we most of us have, about the liking or disliking an acquaintance has for us, and she knew that, though he showed her civility and even compassion, she had not his approval.
How could he approve of her, knowing only the bare fact of her marriage? Sometimes she longed to tell him at any rate so much as might set her right in his eyes, because the disapprobation of an essentially just man was painful to her.
But the circumstances that had led to her marriage, and which she had judged to be so important at the time, had been proved to possess no real importance. She had yielded to her sister's weak dread of a poverty she detested, and her hope of escaping to a more congenial atmosphere; and, when she found that Margaret's sacrifice had not altered her conditions, she calmly accepted them as the inevitable, and poor Margaret felt that all she had suffered had not been in reality demanded of her.
In this lay the sting of it all—and she could not now bring herself back to that excitement of feeling and agony of mind about Grace which had pushed her into an action she now so bitterly regretted.
"You have resigned all Mr. Drayton's money now, Mrs. Drayton," said Mr. Stevens, after a long conversation. "This last cheque to the Children's Hospital is the last balance, as far as regards you. Of course your sister's remains untouched, and, I suppose, as the investment is a good one, she will not care to disturb it."
"My sister's?" inquired Margaret, wonderingly. "What money do you refer to?"
"Do you not remember? Mr. Drayton told me you made a great point of it—that you asked him to settle something on her—that in the event of his death she should be provided for."