He was silent, and after a few moments he left her and she waited for Grace, full of a certain vague unrest, not knowing what she would do, more than half afraid that she would see nothing but satisfaction in the fact of having an income, unable to sympathise with the difference that lay between them, forgetting that Grace knew, after all, very little of those dreadful months, and that it was quite impossible for her to see things from her point of view. She turned to pleasanter things. Lying on the table was a small parcel. She well knew what it was, as she had a letter from the publisher that morning. The proofs of her poem lay before her. Though she had concealed her name her first idea was one almost of fear. She had poured out her whole heart in these lines--her sorrows, her bitter mourning over the past. Reading it all now, how vividly it all came back to her! The lines on her child's death touched her with fresh sorrow; again she felt the terribly blank feeling of loss, and stretched once more her empty arms towards an unanswering grave. It was into this wave of feeling that Grace's voice broke, and it jarred upon her even more than usual. With a hurried knock, as though a formality she might dispense with, and without waiting for an answer, Grace came in, all her clothes and her light fluffy hair in a state of discomposure. "Margaret!" she exclaimed, "I am going away; either I leave the house or Jean--that most tiresome, provoking, aggravating, old Scotchwoman. I will not stay here if she remains!" "What in the world has happened now?" said poor Margaret, worried and troubled, and speaking with a certain sharpness not habitual to her. "You need not speak to me like that. Of course you will take her part; but she has been so impertinent I will not stand it!" "I ask you again," said Margaret, "what has she done? She nursed you faithfully and most kindly. What offence has she given you now?" "She called me a Jezebel, and then said I had a leg in the grave." "I doubt her saying this, and--oh, Grace, how can you?" and Margaret got up and looked steadily at her sister, her own face flushing red as she spoke. "It is nothing to make a fuss about," said Grace, trying to laugh it off, "and it is you yourself who are to blame; you do not know how trying it is to hear you say one day I am looking very pale and am I well, and another day something of the same kind. I will not be ill, Margaret, do you hear?" "I hear," said poor Margaret, in a low voice, shocked and distressed. To her primitive ideas the fact of Grace using rouge was a degradation she could not get over. "You are as bad as Jean," said Grace, angrily: "and I have been waiting for that tiresome man to be gone to tell you my plans. What in the world had he to talk about to-day?" "His business referred more to you than to me," and Margaret, still annoyed and ruffled, spoke very coldly.