What could the young man say? The deed was done and nothing could undo it. The utter selfishness of Grace's conduct could find no excuse; he tried to master his emotion; he could only succeed in saying in a broken voice something about God's forgiveness.
But Grace was past all the anguish of seeing this horror in his face. She had exerted herself to tell him the story, and put Margaret right in his eyes; and she had given way to exhaustion, and was deaf and blind to all that passed round her--for the time.
He stayed a little while, and left her, shocked at the violence of his own feeling against her.
The image of his poor childish love--kneeling beside the bedside of the sister she adored, who sacrificed her remorselessly--for what? A few luxuries.
It was absolutely terrible to think of, and he forgot to take into account the feebleness of health that might have impaired judgment. He waited in London till he thought Mrs. Dorriman had time to answer, whence for fear of any mistakes he had dated his telegram. Her answer came, and was not fully satisfactory. _My brother is very ill, and I cannot leave him, but I send my maid Jean._
He went again to Grace's lodgings, and he told the landlady that an old family servant was on her way. Then he tried to think how best to convey this news to Margaret.
He felt that his having been admitted was a chance, and he was afraid of making things worse for her by going there too often; but he must risk something, she must know in some way about her sister, she must have her mind set at rest.
Unable to make up his mind he was wandering about when he was attracted by a curious-looking book in a bookseller's shop. It was something more than a shop, for he read there that it was no less a place than the office of the "Industrious Workman," a paper he knew by name.
He went in to ask the price of the book, and the intelligent little man, who was tearfully reading a poem, put it down to attend to him, saying as he did so, "I beg pardon for being so absorbed, but I have something very lovely here;" and handing him the paper Sir Albert recognised in the neatly-written lines--Margaret's handwriting.
When Margaret left Renton Place, and that Grace had seen her off, the first real sense of having been to blame came to disturb her mind. That intense belief in herself which, as a rule, shielded her from uncomfortable feelings, deserted her now; she tried to argue herself into some more cheerful vein, but found it hopeless. Was it that she was weaker, and that her illness had shaken her nerves? When night fell and the household slept, memory came to confront her. Her selfishness filled her with remorse; how many things she could look back upon now, when Margaret, her sweetness, and her devotion never failing, had been counted as so little, tested by her own all-absorbing love of having her own way?