It was into this wave of feeling that Grace's voice broke, and it jarred upon her even more than usual.
With a hurried knock, as though a formality she might dispense with, and without waiting for an answer, Grace came in, all her clothes and her light fluffy hair in a state of discomposure.
"Margaret!" she exclaimed, "I am going away; either I leave the house or Jean—that most tiresome, provoking, aggravating, old Scotchwoman. I will not stay here if she remains!"
"What in the world has happened now?" said poor Margaret, worried and troubled, and speaking with a certain sharpness not habitual to her.
"You need not speak to me like that. Of course you will take her part; but she has been so impertinent I will not stand it!"
"I ask you again," said Margaret, "what has she done? She nursed you faithfully and most kindly. What offence has she given you now?"
"She called me a Jezebel, and then said I had a leg in the grave."
"I doubt her saying this, and—oh, Grace, how can you?" and Margaret got up and looked steadily at her sister, her own face flushing red as she spoke.
"It is nothing to make a fuss about," said Grace, trying to laugh it off, "and it is you yourself who are to blame; you do not know how trying it is to hear you say one day I am looking very pale and am I well, and another day something of the same kind. I will not be ill, Margaret, do you hear?"
"I hear," said poor Margaret, in a low voice, shocked and distressed. To her primitive ideas the fact of Grace using rouge was a degradation she could not get over.