“I am content,” answered the girl, and her great blue eyes met the gray ones with a steadfast look. “And now tell me all the news. Am I quite forgotten in the village? Do none of them ask for me in Hurstley?” “Margery, I will be candid with you. When you first went I heard very little about you, you know--I seldom go into the village--but in a very short time the news came that you had gone to Australia with Reuben and Robert Bright. The people were hard, dear, and blamed you. The Brights are heartbroken at Robert’s leaving them, and all the fault is laid at your door. They do not speak kindly of you, child, and, when I first heard them, I had great difficulty in holding my tongue. But you had begged for secrecy and silence, and I had given my word. I meant to have written to or seen you, but then came poor Lady Enid’s death, your marriage, and your illness. I could do nothing but wait. I have waited, and now, Margery, I have come here for the very purpose of asking you to take the seal from my lips, that I may explain to the village and silence slander.” Margery had risen to her feet, her hands pressed to her bosom, her face deadly pale. “How cruel the world is,” she murmured, bitterly, “how terribly cruel! They know nothing, yet they speak harshly. They do not know how I begged, how I entreated Robert to go back to his home. You remember how stunned I was when first I learned that he had joined Reuben?” “I know,” answered Miss Lawson, “and I would have all the world do you justice. You are now great; let them know you as you are, and crush their calumny. I do not blame the Brights--their whole life was centered in Robert--but----” “And for the rest I do not care,” interrupted Margery, proudly. “The Brights will hear from Robert soon, and then they will learn the truth and know how they have wronged me. What had I done to the village that at the very beginning of my life they should think ill of me? Oh, Miss Lawson, is the world all like this?” “The world is cruel, Margery, bitter, hard,” the elder woman said, with a sigh; then she added, regretfully, “I am sorry you will not disclose your secret, but you know best, dear, and I have done what I considered my duty.” “You have done as you have done so often--treated me as though I were your own child--and I thank you.” “And have you not been my own?” said the elder woman, with a new light of tenderness on her face. “I have seen you spring up from a tiny child to womanhood; I have loved you through all, and I am proud of you. You are to me what the poet says: “‘For years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower On earth was never seen; This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own.”’” “And nature did that, Margery. No rules of mine could do what she did. You had the germ within you of all that makes a grand, good woman, and it has come to perfection.”