son had deceived her.
And if so, why had he wished to deceive her? Could it be that he had
allowed her to give away half her money, and had promised to marry
her with the other half? There were moments in which her dear son
John could be very foolish, in spite of that life-long devotion
to the price of stocks, for which he was conspicuous. She still
remembered, as though it were but the other day, how he had persisted
in marrying Rachel, though Rachel brought nothing with her but a
sweet face, a light figure, a happy temper, and the clothes on her
back. To all mothers their sons are ever young, and to old Lady Ball
John Ball was still young, and still, possibly, capable of some such
folly as that of which she was thinking. If it were not so, if there
were not something of that kind in the wind why should he--why should
she--be so hard and uncommunicative in all their answers? There lay
her niece, however, sick with the headache, and therefore weak, and
very much in Lady Ball's power. The evil to be done was great, and
the necessity for preventing it might be immediate. And Lady Ball
was a lady who did not like to be kept in the dark in reference to
anything concerning her family. Having gone downstairs, therefore,
for an hour or so to look after her servants, or, as she had said,
to allow Margaret to have a little sleep, she returned again to the
charge, and sitting close to Margaret's pillow, did her best to find
out the truth.

If she could only have known the whole truth; how her son's thoughts
were running throughout the day, even as he sat at the Abednego
board, not on Margaret with half her fortune, but on Margaret with
none! how he was recalling the sweetness of her face as she looked up
to him in the square, and took him by his coat, and her tears as she
spoke of the orphan children, and the grace of her figure as she had
walked away from him, and the persistency of her courage in doing
what she thought to be right! how he was struggling within himself
with an endeavour, a vain endeavour, at a resolution that such a
marriage as that must be out of the question! Had Lady Ball known all
that, I think she would have flown to the offices of the Abednego
after her son, and never have left him till she had conquered his
heart and trampled his folly under her feet.

But she did not conquer Margaret Mackenzie. The poor creature lying
there, racked, in truth, with pain and sorrow, altogether incapable
of any escape fr