The rainy weather had indeed been very propitious to the study of German. For a fortnight Margaret had spent some hours of each day with Miss Young; and over their books they had learned so much of one another's heart and mind, that a strong regard had sprung up between them. This new friendship was a great event to Miss Young;--how great, she herself could scarcely have believed beforehand. Her pupils found that Miss Young was now very merry sometimes. Mr Grey observed to his wife that the warmer weather seemed to agree with the poor young woman, as she had some little colour in her cheeks at last; and Margaret herself observed a change in the tone of the philosophy she had admired from the beginning. There was somewhat less of reasoning in it, and more of impulse; it was as sound as ever, but more genial. While never forgetting the constancy of change in human affairs, she was heartily willing to enjoy the good that befell her, while it lasted. It was well that she could do so; for the good of this new friendship was presently alloyed. She was not aware, and it was well that she was not, that Hester was jealous of her, almost from the hour of Margaret's learning what a vast number of irregular verbs there is in the German. Each sister remembered the conversation by the open window, on the night of their arrival at Deerbrook. Remembering it, Margaret made Hester a partaker in all her feelings about Maria Young; her admiration, her pity, her esteem. Reserving to herself any confidence which Maria placed in her (in which, however, no mention of Mr Enderby ever occurred), she kept not a thought or feeling of her own from her sister. The consequence was, that Hester found that Maria filled a large space in Margaret's mind, and that a new interest had risen up in which she had little share. She, too, remembered the conversation, but had not strength to act up to the spirit of it. She had then owned her weakness, and called it wickedness, and fancied that she could never mistrust her sister again. She was now so ashamed of her own consciousness of being once more jealous, that she strove to hide the fact from herself; and was not therefore likely to tell it to Margaret. She struggled hourly with herself, rebuking her own temper, and making appeals to her own generosity. She sat drawing in the little blue parlour, morning after morning, during Sophia's reading or practising, telling herself that Margaret and Miss Young had no secrets, no desire to be always _tete-a-tete_; that they had properly invited her to learn German; and that she had only to go at any moment, and offer to join them, to be joyfully received. She argued with herself,--how mean it would be to do so; to agree to study at last, in order to be a sort of spy upon them, to watch over her own interests; as if Margaret--the most sincere and faithful of living beings--were not to be trusted with them. She had