"What about me?" she cried in a kind of frenzy, throwing her self-control to the winds. "It is all of self you speak. Don’t you understand that it is a martyrdom and nothing else that I have suffered in the last five--no, in the last ten years, ever since I was able to know the meaning of the things that happened? Through you our souls, our hearts, and sometimes our bodies have been starved in Achree, and the old place has been suffered to sink into the dust, and has finally passed into the hands of strangers. All this would not have mattered if only you had been good and brave and a little like what you ought to have been. We could have borne poverty with a smile. But it was your misdeeds, your squandering of Achree that poisoned existence for him until slowly his mind gave way. And I had to stand by and see it and be glad of it, because in that way he suffered less. But I suffered more. If there is a God in heaven He must judge this day between you and me, Malcolm Mackinnon." "For God’s sake Isla, hold your tongue!" he repeated, but his voice sounded weak and almost faint. He was no coward in some directions, but the look on his sister’s face was awful to see and her words seared themselves upon his brain. He had no idea until now of the red-hot fires of passion glowing beneath her quiet exterior. But now he knew, and the revelation never afterwards passed from his remembrance. "I must speak just this once, for we are going to part, Malcolm; now the last bond between us is snapped. I will never forgive you. You broke my father’s heart, and mine is in the dust, where it will lie till the end. I hope that you are very proud of your work." He turned away with a deep groan and covered his face with his hands. "Now you are the Laird of Achree," she continued, "and there is none to hinder you from making its devastation complete. As for me, I will pass away from Glenogle and never come near it any more." He turned to her then, and his eyes looked for a moment as hers sometimes had done, full of a most wistful appeal. "Hold hard, Isla! Don’t you think I’ve had enough? I don’t want to justify myself. I admit that the letter gave the shock, and that is punishment enough for me. Don’t rub it in. Far less has sent a man to the lower-most hell." She did not seem to comprehend the words--or even to hear them. She appeared suddenly to be possessed by a new idea, and, undoing the pearl button of her blouse, she drew forth the letter and held it out. "Take it. There is no use for me to keep it. I don’t want to read it. It is yours."