When the interview was over, her cousin walked home with her to Arundel Street, and said much to her as to the necessity for this trial. He said so much, that she, at last, dimly understood that the matter could not be set at rest by her simple renouncing of the property. Her own lawyer could not allow her to do so; nor could he, John Ball, consent to receive the property in such a manner. "You see, by that newspaper, what people would say of me." But had he not the power of making everything easy by doing that which he himself had before proposed to do? Why did he not again say, "Margaret, come and be my wife?" She acknowledged to herself that he had a right to act as though he had never said those words,--that the facts elicited by Mr Maguire's visit to the Cedars were sufficient to absolve him from his offer. But yet she thought that they should have been sufficient also to induce him to renew it. On that occasion, when he left her at the door in Arundel Street, he had not renewed his offer. CHAPTER XXV Lady Ball in Arundel Street On Christmas Day Miss Mackenzie was pressed very hard to eat her Christmas dinner with Mr and Mrs Buggins, and she almost gave way. She had some half-formed idea in her head that should she once sit down to table with Buggins, she would have given up the fight altogether. She had no objection to Buggins, and had, indeed, no strong objection to put herself on a par with Buggins; but she felt that she could not be on a par with Buggins and with John Ball at the same time. Why it should be that in associating with the man she would take a step downwards, and might yet associate with the man's wife without taking any step downwards, she did not attempt to explain to herself. But I think that she could have explained it had she put herself to the task of analysing the question, and that she felt exactly the result of such analysis without making it. At any rate, she refused the invitation persistently, and ate her wretched dinner alone in her bedroom. She had often told herself, in those days of her philosophy at Littlebath, that she did not care to be a lady; and she told herself now the same thing very often when she was thinking of the hospital. She cosseted herself with no false ideas as to the nature of the work which she proposed to undertake. She knew very well that she might have to keep rougher company than that of Buggins if she put her shoulder to that wheel. She was willing enough to do this, and had been willing to encounter such company ever since she left the Cedars. She was prepared for the roughness. But she would not put herself beyond the pale, as it were, of her cousin's hearth, moved simply by a temptation to relieve the monotony of her life. When the work came within her reach she would go to it, but till then she would bear the wretchedness of her dull room upstairs. She wondered whether he ever thought how wretched she must be in her solitude.