"Why cannot I go with you? Surely Mr. Drayton cannot be so barbarous as to separate us now." "I do not know what arrangements he has been able to make, dear. I must go alone, first." "If you go alone I shall never follow: I know so well what it will be." "I will do my best; surely you know that I will do my best; you know it is my dearest wish." "Yes, but you know, my dear old thing, that you have _not_ got my power of managing people. Now look at old Sandford. Swore I should never live here again: anathematized me, I believe, and sent his poor little sister into fits, such was the violence of his language, and, after all this, I return; I walk in. I am no hypocrite, and I say quite quietly that I only came because I had nowhere else to go,--and the lion became a lamb." "You do not understand Mr. Drayton." "Is he worse than the old bear here?" and Grace made a comical face of dismay. Margaret did not smile. She forced herself to speak plainly. "It is difficult to know what is right sometimes," she said, thoughtfully. "I never could tell an untruth, and sometimes telling the truth does not make things smooth. Grace, my darling, I married Mr. Drayton to give you a home and comforts you so sorely needed. He knows it was _only_ for that, and he resents it, and he will _never_ let me have you, never." She sobbed, and she was not given to tears. Grace stared at her in stupefied astonishment. "You do not mean to say that you let him find this out?" "No, I told him. I told him before I married him. How could I act a lie?" "And he married you after this frank explanation, and now turns round upon you! How like a man!" and Grace, who had a most limited acquaintance herself with any men, looked supremely scornful. "Well, my dear Margaret, I shall not go with you, but I shall follow you." "But Grace, darling----" "But Margaret, darling. I will not hear a single word. I shall choose my own time and arrive in my own way--but go I will." She laughed Margaret's scruples to scorn and turned the subject. Grace was so gay and bright, so overflowing with good-humour, that all the inmates of Renton Place were taken by surprise, save and except Jean, who answered Mrs. Dorriman's expression of satisfaction by one short sentence, "Milk aye bubbles before it boils." And Mrs. Dorriman felt angry, and accused her faithful old servant of prejudice and superstition, to which Jean made not the slightest reply. Margaret was a little uneasy; her experience of Grace's wilfulness made her dread some step that would bring happiness to neither of them. But she heard no more of her projected visit, and by degrees she began to hope that it had merely been a wild way of talking. One great change was brought about by her sister's delicacy. Mr. Sandford, talking to the doctor one day about himself--Grace refused to see any doctor there--alluded to the eldest Miss Rivers as being delicate.