"Hannah, for shame!" Mrs. Vincent said, but even her efforts to keep the peace seemed somewhat futile.
"It's a pity you didn't go to Australia with your father," Hannah went on. "You are only in the way here."
"Oh, if he had but taken me!" Margaret answered, fervently.
"Perhaps he didn't want you. We've only his word for it there is this brother in Australia—and what is that worth, I should like to know?"
Mrs. Vincent looked up quickly from her seat in the porch. "I'll have you speak with respect of the man who is my husband," she said, gently.
"And shame to you, mother, that he is. He has undermined your faith, and made you forget your first husband's child."
"Hannah, you will be silent," Mrs. Vincent answered, with some of her old dignity. "We have each kept to our own way of thinking, and neither has meddled with the other. And I have never forgotten your father, nor what was due to him; but one has to make the best of life, and I was a young woman when he died."
Something in her voice touched Hannah. "I know that, mother," she said, "and I've tried to be a good daughter to you, and if sometimes I've thought I didn't get my share of what you felt, why it's only natural that I should complain. What's come between us and is trying to come between me and what is due to me, is the artfulness that has got no principle to build upon."
"If I could only get away! If Mrs. Lakeman would ask me to stay with her, or if only I were like Miss Hunstan, and could act and live by myself till father comes back," Margaret said to herself, till the idea took deeper and deeper hold upon her.
Why shouldn't she? All things have a beginning, all journeys a starting-point. Mr. Garratt had told her how Miss Hunstan had begun by holding up the train of a princess, and how step by step she had reached her present position. She wished she could see Miss Hunstan. They had only met once, and for a few minutes, but she had told Margaret that she would like to see her again, and, as Tom had said, some people were never strangers. She longed to go to London and ask her advice, and she didn't think her father would be angry or object if he knew all that was going on at Woodside Farm. He saw no harm in theatres, and she was not sophisticated enough to understand the difficulties in the way of a girl who was not yet twenty, going to London with a vague idea that she could "walk on." But for the unfortunate meeting with Mr. Garratt she might have consulted Sir George Stringer. She had hoped that he would come again, but day after day went by without a sign of him. Half a dozen times she went towards his house, wondering if she dared go up to the door and boldly ask for him, and half a dozen times her courage failed her.