A turn in the cabbage-garden, revealed a few coloured leaves and some late flowers mixed with the "useful" vegetables; these were better than nothing, and the girls gathered them and then went through the town, attracting, of course, a good deal of attention in that out-of-the-way place, where few gentry ever came. Grace went home not altogether unhappy. One or two clerks and several of the shop people had followed her and her sister with admiring glances, and, in the absence of all else, this was acceptable. She returned to the house in good-humour, and walked more daintily than ever, meeting Mr. Sandford at the front door. He had come home earlier than usual to receive his sister. He was satisfied to see she was not sulky; if she had been he had made up his mind to put it down, and her too, at once. Grace was, however, soon in her own room, getting ready for the encounter she dreaded. From the first Mrs. Dorriman should be taught the place she was to have; outwardly she might be mistress, order dinner, and keep the servants in their places, but, as regarded interference with her and Margaret, it was not to be, and she was thirsting to make this evident to her and settle it all at once. As usual she was rehearsing the words and the manner in which she should speak when Mr. Sandford called her. He had his own notion of what was respectful to his sister, and before she had time to make a stand or say a word she had intended to say he was hurrying her downstairs with no very gentle grip upon her arm, having made up his mind that, as the proper thing to do was to go downstairs to the front door to receive Mrs. Dorriman, there she should go. The carriage was not in sight even, but he had seen the train come in; and as Grace, standing beside him at the open hall-door, felt the cold wind blowing in upon her, she added this to the other wrongs, and almost hated him. CHAPTER IV. The last afternoon of her stay at Inchbrae had come. Mrs. Dorriman, under the impression she was working very hard, carried several things upstairs that ought to have remained down, and wandered about helplessly, a terrible sense of having an enormous deal to do and to arrange pressing upon her; mixed with that ever constant and depressing feeling which distinguished her, of not being up to the mark. Can anything be more dreadful than a consciousness that strength is _not_ there whatever "the day" may be? and is it not as much a sin to crush and murder a spirit as to destroy a body? and her spirit had been crushed. She sat down upstairs in the favourite corner from where she could see the river rushing into the sea; she took her Bible from a hope of finding comfort--but her spirits were so fluttered that she read the words without taking in their sense.