ackenzie had sent up with her
love to know if Miss Mackenzie would come down. Would she go down? Of
course she would go to her cousin. She was no coward. Indeed, a true
Griselda can hardly be a coward. So she made up her mind to go to her
cousin and hear her fate.

The last four-and-twenty hours had been very bitter with Sir John
Ball. What was he to do, walking about with that man's letter in his
pocket--with that reptile's venom still curdling through his veins?
On that Thursday morning, as he went towards his office, he had made
up his mind, as he thought, to go to Margaret and bid her choose her
own destiny. She should become his wife, or have half of Jonathan
Ball's remaining fortune, as she might herself elect. "She refused
me," he said to himself, "when the money was all hers. Why should she
wish to come to such a house as mine, to marry a dull husband and
undertake the charge of a lot of children? She shall choose herself."
And then he thought of her as he had seen her at the bazaar, and
began to flatter himself that, in spite of his dullness and his
children, she would choose to become his wife. He was making some
scheme as to his mother's life, proposing that two of his girls
should live with her, and that she should be near to him, when the
letter from Mr Maguire was put into his hands.

How was he to marry his cousin after that? If he were to do so, would
not that wretch at Littlebath declare, through all the provincial
and metropolitan newspapers, that he had compelled the marriage?
That letter would be published in the very column that told of the
wedding. But yet he must decide. He must do something. They who read
this will probably declare that he was a weak fool to regard anything
that such a one as Mr Maguire could say of him. He was not a fool,
but he was so far weak and foolish; and in such matters such men are
weak and foolish, and often cowardly.

It was, however, absolutely necessary that he should do something. He
was as well aware as was Mrs Mackenzie that it was essentially his
duty to see his cousin, now that the question of law between them had
been settled. Even if he had no thought of again asking her to be
his wife, he could not confide to any one else the task of telling
her what was to be her fate. Her conduct to him in the matter of the
property had been exemplary, and it was incumbent on him to thank her
for her generous forbearance. He had pledged himself also to give his
mother a