"Oh! hold your peace with your romance, Jean. It was always sore, sore against my will to entertain the thought of him—and now that she has got over it——"
"She will never get over it," said Miss Jean. "Oh, Margaret, have ye no mercy in you? Will you let her heart break just for a prejudice, just for——"
"Do you call it a prejudice that the man should be a gentleman, that his father before him should have been a gentleman?——"
"I care nothing for his father before him," exclaimed Jean, with the energy of passion. "He is as true a gentleman as ever stepped. I call it just a prejudice——"
"Hold your peace, Jean. Break her heart! when I tell you she is mending, mending day by day. Her peace shall not be disturbed again. I will write to him that it is too late. He is gentleman enough for that, I allow; that he will go away, that he will do nothing disloyal to me——"
"Would you have him disloyal to her?" Miss Jean cried. "No, Margaret! I have done your bidding many a day, but I will not now. If you write and bid him go, I will write and bid him stay. He will judge for himself which of us knows best."
Margaret rose to her feet with an indignant gesture.
"Will you defy me—me, your own sister?" she said.
"Oh! Margaret, do not break my heart!—but I will defy all the world for Lilias," cried Miss Jean. "She is more than my sister, she is my bairn; and yours too—and yours too!"
"It is for that," cried Margaret, with something like a sob, "that I will just defend her to the death."