Margaret Hayley had not replied a word during the whole application of that verbal instrument of torture, though it seemed evident from the context that some conversation employing the tongues of both must have passed at an earlier period of the interview. She had merely writhed in body and groaned in spirit, as every moment told her more and more distinctly that in her dark hour she had no mother who could understand and sympathize with her--that cant phrases and pious generalizations were to be hurled against her at that moment when most of all she needed to be treated by that mother like a wearied child, drawn home to her bosom and cradled to sleep amid soothing words and loving kisses. But Margaret Hayley did something else than writhe when the accusation of having acquired his wealth by dishonesty was cast upon the man whom she had worshipped--yes, the man whom she worshipped still, in spite of the one terrible defect which seemed to draw an eternal line of separation between them. She started up from her recumbent position, her hair dishevelled, her eyes red with weeping, and her whole face marked and marred by the anguish she had been suffering,--sprang up erect at once, with all her mother's pride manifest in voice and gesture, and said: "Mother, are you a rank hypocrite, or have you neither sense nor memory?" A strange question, from a daughter to her mother! The reply was not quite so strange, and it seemed to have much more of earnest in it than any portion of the long tirade she had before been delivering: "Margaret Hayley, how _dare_ you!" "We can dare a good many things, when we do not care whether we live or die!" was the reply. "And though I have loved and respected you as my mother, I do not know that I have ever been afraid of you. Now listen. You have hated Carlton Brand, ever since he first came to this house, because he did not treat your religious assumptions with quite as much deference as you considered proper. He may have been right, or wrong: no matter now, as he is out of the way! But you have hated him, and you know it--because I loved him--I am not ashamed to own it!--loved him with my whole soul, as I believed that he deserved--as any woman _should_ love the man whom she expects to take her to his heart!" "Well, what if I did dislike him? I had a right to do that, I suppose!" answered the mother, her voice no longer religiously calm, but rough and querulous.