"I'm not so sure. My own impression is--though if you were to ask me I could not tell you in so many set terms on what it's founded--that we're well rid of the lady, and that we are rid of her I think there's very little doubt."
Frank Staines remarked--
"If the lady's mad, or if she's subject to fits of madness--and if she isn't I don't know what she is--it's just as well that you've discovered it before it was too late".
Judging from their silence that seemed to be the opinion of the others also.
The next morning Miss Wallace was distinctly in an uncommunicative mood, as Miss Johnson, who paid her a very matutinal call, found, whereupon the young lady expressed herself with characteristic frankness.
"Really, Meg, I've known you for quite a time, and I was just beginning to think that you were a really Christian person, but now it's actually bursting on me that you can be nothing of the kind. You sit there, mumchance, looking all sorts of things and saying nothing; and if there can be anything more exasperating than that, I should like to know what, it is. You promised, last night, before you went to Mrs. Lamb, that you would tell me everything that happened--I'm sure something did happen, by the looks of you--yet the more I ask you questions, the more you won't answer them. Do you call that being as good as your word? I don't--so that's plain. I'm disappointed in you, Margaret Wallace."
Margaret smiled, a little wanly.
"I hope you'll forgive me, Dollie, please! but I can't talk to you just now, and especially about last night. Ask Harry, or Mr. Staines, they'll tell you everything, and perhaps a little later I will myself, but just now I really and truly can't."
Dollie, eyeing her shrewdly, perceiving she was in earnest, bowed to the inevitable.
"Very well; I shouldn't dream of asking anything of Mr. Frank Staines, he might treat me even worse than you are doing. But it's possible that I may put a few questions to your Harry. The fact is that if some one doesn't tell me something soon I shall simply burst with curiosity. I have never concealed from any one that curiosity's my ruling passion--it's the case with all literary persons, my dear! Meg!"--she went and put her arm about the girl's neck, and the tone of her voice was changed--"if anything horrid happened at that woman's, never mind; after all, horrid things don't really matter, they generally turn out much better than they seem. I once had thirteen MSS. rejected in one week, and yet I bore up, and I planted them all before I'd done with them. I've never seen you look like this before, and I don't half like it. I always make you the heroine of all my stories, because you're the best plucked girl I ever met; so buck up, and stop it as soon as you conveniently can."