He stayed long, then he said,
"The only thing to be settled now is, whether the interest from the fifteen thousand pounds you will have nothing to do with is to be applied to charitable purposes or paid to your sister?"
"I will write to you."
"Do; and Mrs. Dorriman, do you know, is trusting to me to see you safe through the perils of your long journey."
"But it will give you so much trouble."
"Not at all;" he spoke in such a kind tone that Margaret felt she had gained him as a friend.
"Dear Mrs. Dorriman," she said softly, "what a lesson she is to us all; so unselfish and so perfectly unconscious of all her own virtues!"
He was silent, and after a few moments he left her and she waited for Grace, full of a certain vague unrest, not knowing what she would do, more than half afraid that she would see nothing but satisfaction in the fact of having an income, unable to sympathise with the difference that lay between them, forgetting that Grace knew, after all, very little of those dreadful months, and that it was quite impossible for her to see things from her point of view.
She turned to pleasanter things. Lying on the table was a small parcel. She well knew what it was, as she had a letter from the publisher that morning.
The proofs of her poem lay before her. Though she had concealed her name her first idea was one almost of fear. She had poured out her whole heart in these lines—her sorrows, her bitter mourning over the past. Reading it all now, how vividly it all came back to her! The lines on her child's death touched her with fresh sorrow; again she felt the terribly blank feeling of loss, and stretched once more her empty arms towards an unanswering grave.