d not submit
herself to its censorship. The note of acknowledgment she wrote to her
aunt was short and almost formal. She was very sorry they looked at
the matter in that way. She thought she was doing right, and they might
blame her or not, but her aunt would see that she could not permit any
distinction to be set up between her and her husband, etc.

Was this little note a severance of her present from her old life? I do
not suppose she regarded it so. If she had fully realized that it was a
step in that direction, would she have penned it with so little regret
as she felt? Or did she think that circumstances and not her own choice
were responsible for her state of feeling? She was mortified, as has
been said, but she wrote with more indignation than pain.

A year ago Carmen would have been the last person to whom Margaret would
have spoken about a family affair of this kind. Nor would she have done
so now, notwithstanding the intimacy established at Newport, if Carmen
had not happened in that day, when Margaret was still hurt and excited,
and skillfully and most sympathetically extracted from her the cause
of the mood she found her in. But even with all these allowances, that
Margaret should confide such a matter to Carmen was the most startling
sign of the change that had taken place in her.

"Well," said this wise person, after she had wormed out the whole story,
and expressed her profound sympathy, and then fallen into an attitude of
deep reflection--"well, I wish I could cast my bread upon the waters in
that way. What are you going to do with the money?"

"I've sent it to the hospital."

"What extravagance! And did you tell your aunt that?"

"Of course not."

"Why not? I couldn't have resisted such a righteous chance of making her
feel bad."

"But I don't want to make her feel bad."

"Just a little? You will never convince people that you are unworldly
this way. Even Uncle Jerry wouldn't do that."

"You and Uncle Jerry are very much alike," cried Margaret, laughing in
spite of herself--"both of you as bad as you can be."

"But, dear, we don't pretend, do we?" asked Carmen, innocently.

To some of us at Brandon, Margaret's letter was scarcely a surprise,
though it emphasized a divergence we had been conscious of. But with
Miss Forsythe it was far otherwise. The coolness of Margaret's tone
filled her with alarm; it was the premonition of a future which she did
not dare to face.

There was a passage