thout any telling.
Nothing can make me believe it isn't, no matter what you say, either of
you. So you may as well tell me all about her. I won't move till you
do."

"So be it, then," said Mrs. MacDonald in an iron voice. "The time had to
come some day. Let it be to-day, though for your father's sake I would
have spared you the knowledge until you reached your twenty-first year.
Do not flatter yourself that your threat 'not to move' has the smallest
effect on me. It has none. If I chose, I could force you to obey me this
instant, and put those reminders of sin out of my sight. But if you have
any sense of shame in you, any affection for your father's memory, it
will be the severest punishment I can inflict to tell you the truth
while you are wearing that dress and looking at the face of that
portrait."

Despite her inward flame of fury, which did not wane, the girl was
struck into silence by her grandmother's tone and manner. She stood very
still and white in the coral satin.

"You can go now, Muir," said Mrs. MacDonald. "What is to come must be
between me and my son's child."

Without a word the housekeeper turned and went away. Perhaps she was
glad to escape. And now that her own scolding was over, there was
sympathy in the last look she threw the girl.

There was a certain vague and very dim sense of gratitude in Barrie's
heart toward Mrs. MacDonald for what she had just done. For Barrie did
not want other ears to hear evil words spoken of her mother, and she was
sure that they would be spoken.

Not until the stairs had ceased to creak under the departing feet did
Grandma again open her lips. She had seemed to be thinking intently, as
if making up her mind how to begin. Perhaps she was praying for
guidance, Barrie told herself; but the morning and evening prayers in
the dining-room with a few servants assembled were like harangues or
didactic instructions to Heaven rather than supplications. Barrie
thought that her grandmother had created a God for herself in her own
image, and considered that she had a right, therefore, to tell Him what
to do. Why should an all-good, all-wise God create a disagreeable,
unkind person like Grandma? It didn't stand to reason. And Miss Hepburn
was of opinion that God was indeed beneficent, in spite of those eternal
fires in which she, almost equally with Grandma, fervently believed.

When there was no further sound of the housekeeper, Mrs. MacDonald began
to speak, slowly and v