"Indeed, now," interrupted Magdalen, "there you do me a wrong. It was Margaret who would not suffer me to enter the house and be of any consequence more in Hall, who withstood me when I would draw near to my brother." "She had no power to withstand any one. That you know full well. She weighed naught with her husband. But let that be. If you sinned against her, God is bringing the whip down on your shoulders as well, for I know that what is now falling out is to you great pain and affliction." "That it is indeed," sighed Magdalen. "Anthony is used by the hand of Providence as its rod with the father; Heaven rewards on the proud Squire of Hall every heartache, every humiliation to which he subjected my child. You know not how I have prayed that I might be suffered to see the day when the rod should fall and beat and bruise the back of the offender." "You do not reckon," said Magdalen, "that the chief suffering falls, not on my brother, but on your daughter's son. Is not Anthony the very image of his mother? Has he not her eyes and hair--all the upper part of his countenance? Does not her blood run in his veins? You have desired revenge on my brother, and you have got it through the breaking to pieces of your own grandson." Mistress Penwarne was silent. It was as Magdalen said. "Yes, and whom does Bessie resemble most? She has none of the handsomeness of your Margaret. It is true that she is her child, but she has inherited the plain homeliness of the Cleverdons. Look at yonder picture over the mantel-shelf. That was drawn of me when about her age. Does she not so resemble me at that time that you would say she had taken nothing of the Penwarnes, that she was altogether and only Cleverdon? Yet to her will come Hall. She will be mistress there, and to her child it will descend, to the utter exclusion of Anthony. Nay, I cannot think that the judgment of God, to which thou appealest ever, is falling all to thy side in its weighted scale." The old woman was about to answer when Anthony entered. He was pale, and his pallor reminded her of her daughter as the wan picture recalled Bessie. Mrs. Penwarne rose from her chair and stepped up to him, took him by both his hands, and looked him steadily in the face. As she did so great tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her wrinkled cheeks.