Beatrice shifted a little in her seat; and then stood up.
“Well, it is this. I do not believe your mother is so—so—is what she sometimes seems. I think she is very sore and angry; there are a hundred reasons. I think no one has—has faced her before. She has been obeyed too much. And—and I think that if I stay I may be able—I may be some good,” she ended lamely.
Chris nodded.
“I understand,” he said softly.
“Give me another week or two,” said Beatrice, “I will do my best.”
“You have worked a miracle with Meg,” said Chris. “I believe you can work another. I will not tell my father; and the others shall not either.”
A wonderful change had indeed come to Margaret during the last month. Her whole soul, so cramped now by circumstances, had gone out in adoration towards this stranger. Chris found it almost piteous to watch her—her shy looks, the shiver that went over her, when the brilliant figure rustled into the room, or the brisk sentences were delivered from those smiling lips. He would see too how their hands met as they sat together; how Margaret would sit distracted and hungering for attention, eyeing the ceiling, the carpet, her embroidery; and how her eyes would leap to meet a glance, and her face flush up, as Beatrice throw her a soft word or look.
And it was the right love, too, to the monk’s eyes; not a rival flame, but fuel for divine ardour. Margaret spent longer, not shorter, time at her prayers; was more, not less, devout at mass and communion; and her whole sore soul became sensitive and alive again. The winter had passed for her; the time of the singing-birds was come.