"That I am sure is not the case," returned Mrs. Dorriman; she felt quite convinced that had there been any truth about this she would have heard it counted against him when her brother had been so incensed with her and had said many bitter things.
"I am so very glad to hear it," and Mrs. Wymans lost her sense of discomfort, since it was not true.
"It was a curious marriage for a young girl to make," she remarked abruptly, since she found Mrs. Dorriman's silence a little oppressive.
"I think it was; but, though my brother offered them a home, he had, of course, no real authority over them."
"Ah," said Mrs. Wymans, enchanted to have got at the root of the matter, "people were rather puzzled at his having taken them up so much; do you very much mind telling me, dear Mrs. Dorriman, how it all was? What was the real bond of union?"
"Why should I mind telling you so simple a thing?" and Mrs. Dorriman's amused face was quite a little shock to her visitor; "they are his wife's nieces: he is their uncle by marriage, and being, as you are probably aware, devoted to his wife's memory, he was glad to befriend them."
"And is this really all?" exclaimed Mrs. Wymans, who could hardly get over her disappointment. "Why we all thought--every one thought--and people said something else."
"People are wrong," said Mrs. Dorriman, with a laugh that was a very genuine one; "I cannot myself understand the interest taken in these private matters, but that is the simple fact. Mr. Rivers and my brother married two sisters, who were devoted to each other. When Mrs. Rivers died she recommended her children to Mrs. Sandford, and at her death my brother promised to befriend them. It seems to me such a simple thing."
"It certainly does," and Mrs. Wymans rose to go, and bid farewell to Mrs. Dorriman, who was conscious only of one terrible speech; was it true that Mr. Drayton did----that----and, if it was true, were they right in taking all for granted and leaving Margaret at his mercy? But for the doctor's prohibition she would have gone straight to her brother and laid her new anxieties before him. But she remembered that he was not to be agitated or excited, and she resolutely sat still till all her own excited thoughts became calmer. She took up her knitting and worked on mechanically, while this new responsibility made her feel as though nothing in the world, of such moment, had ever come before her. It was an evil unknown to her; in the old days her father was a man both abstemious and refined in his surroundings, and since her marriage, though she saw terrible accounts in the papers, she had lived so little in any town, and had seen so little that was evil, that she considered people made almost unnecessary fuss about teetotalism; she could not imagine such a fearful thing as drinking touching her order, though she knew it obtained among some poor miserable creatures, of whom she seldom thought without a shudder of sorrow, mingled with disgust.
