"Nothing will induce me to spend any of my husband's money on myself or upon you, Grace. You do not know my feeling about it. I sinned in marrying him, and I should perpetuate the sin if I spent his wealth upon me and mine. I cannot go through what I once did, and now that I see everything more clearly I cannot act against my conviction." "Then what is the use of your having sacrificed yourself?" asked Grace, in a tone in which anger and contempt were mingled; "really, Margaret, you are so high-flown and so ridiculous! Of course, taking it in that way, one would not expect you to do the thing again. I never should dream of asking you, but, having done it, what is the use of undoing all the good of it?" "The good of it! Oh, Grace, do not speak of it; it cuts me to the heart, dear, that you, my own sister, cannot understand me better, that you cannot see that evil, and not good, came of it!" "Of course," said Grace drying her eyes, "the poor little child's death is an evil to you, and I assure you whenever I think of it I could cry. Don't think, because I don't want to wear black, that I am not as sorry as I can be: but now that dreadful man is dead why should you not be comfortable again?" Margaret sprang from her seat and stood opposite her sister; her countenance was lit up with a sort of passionate sorrow and regret. "Do you not understand something--a little of what I feel? Do you know, Grace, that when that little life was given to me I thought nothing signified. I neglected that poor, unhappy man; I kept away from him; I avoided him; I lived but for my child. Then, when the end came, and I had to stand by and see it die--die because the help extended to many other children was withheld from it; then I saw that I had made it my idol, and that in every particular I had failed towards the man I had vowed to...." "But how could you when he was mad?" asked Grace; "it was quite impossible." "I also said that to myself, Grace, but I knew that when I stood beside him and took those terrible vows--vows I never realised till I heard them slowly and solemnly pronounced before God's altar--Oh, Grace, you are very dear to me, but, when you talk of my sacrifice being thrown away, I think of my child's life sacrificed. Oh, Grace, can you not see that I sinned? What could I expect? How is it that girls so thoughtlessly take those awful things upon themselves, say those words, and yet do not mean them: and yet I did it!" "But you did it for me, darling--for me--and it does seem different. You did not do it for yourself." "God knows I did not," said poor Margaret, upon whose fragile and delicate frame this scene was acting feverishly. "But I did it. We need not argue about it, dear; we need not discuss it any more, we should never think of it alike! We are different, dear, and we see things differently--very very differently."