“Our father was a very proud man. Oh, Master, if Margaret was too proud she got it from no stranger. And her misfortune cut him to the heart. He never spoke a word to us here for more than three days after he heard of it. He sat in the corner there with bowed head and would not touch bite or sup. He had not been very willing for her to marry Ronald Fraser; and when she came home in disgrace she had not set foot over the threshold before he broke out railing at her. Oh, I can see her there at the door this very minute, Master, pale and trembling, clinging to Thomas’s arm, her great eyes changing from sorrow and shame to wrath. It was just at sunset and a red ray came in at the window and fell right across her breast like a stain of blood. “Father called her a hard name, Master. Oh, he was too hard--even though he was my father I must say he was too hard on her, broken-hearted as she was, and guilty of nothing more after all than a little willfulness in the matter of her marriage. “And father was sorry for it--Oh, Master, the word wasn’t out of his mouth before he was sorry for it. But the mischief was done. Oh, I’ll never forget Margaret’s face, Master! It haunts me yet in the black of the night. It was full of anger and rebellion and defiance. But she never answered him back. She clenched her hands and went up to her old room without saying a word, all those mad feelings surging in her soul, and being held back from speech by her sheer, stubborn will. And, Master, never a word did Margaret say from that day until after Kilmeny was born--not one word, Master. Nothing we could do for her softened her. And we were kind to her, Master, and gentle with her, and never reproached her by so much as a look. But she would not speak to anyone. She just sat in her room most of the time and stared at the wall with such awful eyes. Father implored her to speak and forgive him, but she never gave any sign that she heard him. “I haven’t come to the worst yet, Master. Father sickened and took to his bed. Margaret would not go in to see him. Then one night Thomas and I were watching by him; it was about eleven o’clock. All at once he said, “‘Janet, go up and tell the lass’--he always called Margaret that--it was a kind of pet name he had for her--‘that I’m deein’ and ask her to come down and speak to me afore I’m gone.’ “Master, I went. Margaret was sitting in her room all alone in the cold and dark, staring at the wall. I told her what our father had said. She never let on she heard me. I pleaded and wept, Master. I did what I had never done to any human creature--I kneeled to her and begged her, as she hoped for mercy herself, to come down and see our dying father. Master, she wouldn’t! She never moved or looked at me. I had to get up and go downstairs and tell that old man she would not come.” Janet Gordon lifted her hands and struck them together in her agony of remembrance. “When I told father he only said, oh, so gently,