"Don't say it in that way, my dear, or else you'll make me think you mean to turn a cold shoulder on me for not coming to you before." "Oh, no." "But we've only just come to town; and though of course I heard the story down in Scotland--" "Did you?" "Did I? Why, everybody is talking about it, and the newspapers have been full of it." "Oh, Mrs Mackenzie, that is so terrible." "But nobody has said a word against you. Even that stupid clergyman, who calls you the lamb, has not pretended to say that you were his lamb. We had the whole story of the Lion and the Lamb in the _Inverary Interpreter_, but I had no idea that it was you, then. But the long and the short of it is, that my husband says he must know his cousin; and to tell the truth, it was he that sent me; and we want you to come and stay with us in Cavendish Square till the lawsuit is over, and everything is settled." Margaret was so startled by the proposition, that she did not know how to answer it. Of course she was at first impressed with a strong idea of the impossibility of her complying with such a request, and was simply anxious to find some proper way of refusing it. The Incharrow Mackenzies were great people who saw much company, and it was, she thought, quite out of the question that she should go to their house. At no time of her career would she have been, as she conceived, fit to live with such grand persons; but at the present moment, when she grudged herself even a new pair of gloves out of the money remaining to her, while she was still looking forward to a future life passed as a nurse in a hospital, she felt that there would be an absolute unfitness in such a visit. "You are very kind," she said at last with faltering voice, as she meditated in what words she might best convey her refusal. "No, I'm not a bit kind; and I know from the tone of your voice that you are meditating a refusal. But I don't mean to accept it. It is much better that you should be with us while all this is going on, than that you should be living here alone. And there is no one with whom you could live during this time so properly, as with those who are your nearest relatives." "But, Mrs Mackenzie--" "I suppose you are thinking now of another cousin, but it's not at all proper that you should go to his house;--not as yet, you know. And you need not suppose that he'll object because of what I said about Lady Ball and myself. The Capulets and the Montagues don't intend to keep it up for ever; and, though we have never visited Lady Ball, my husband and the present Sir John know each other very well."