“That is false pride, my dear.”

“Very well, aunt. I daresay it is false; but it is my pride. I may be allowed to keep my pride, though I can keep nothing else.”

“What you say about earning your bread is very proper; and I and John and your uncle also have been thinking of that. But I should be glad if some additional assistance should be provided for you, in the event of old age, you know, or illness. Now, as to earning your bread, I remarked to John that you were peculiarly qualified for being a lady’s companion.”

“For being what, aunt?”

“For being companion to some lady in the decline of life, who would want to have some nice mannered person always with her. You have the advantage of being ladylike and gentle, and I think that you are patient by disposition.”

“Aunt,” said Miss Mackenzie, and her voice as she spoke was hardly gentle, nor was it indicative of much patience. Her hysterics also seemed for the time to have given way to her strong passionate feeling. “Aunt,” she said, “I would sooner take a broom in my hand, and sweep a crossing in London, than lead such a life as that. What! make myself the slave of some old woman, who would think that she had bought the power of tyrannising over me by allowing me to sit in the same room with her? No, indeed! It may very likely be the case that I may have to serve such a one in the kitchen, but it shall be in the kitchen, and not in the drawing-room. I have not had much experience in life, but I have had enough to learn that lesson!”

Lady Ball, who during the first part of the conversation had been unrolling and winding a great ball of worsted, now sat perfectly still, holding the ball in her lap, and staring at her niece. She was a quick-witted woman, and it no doubt occurred to her that the great objection to living with an old lady, which her niece had expressed so passionately, must have come from the trial of that sort of life which she had had at the Cedars. And there was enough in Miss Mackenzie’s manner to justify Lady Ball in thinking that some such expression of feeling as this had been intended by her. She had never before heard Margaret speak out so freely, even in the days of her undoubted heiress-ship; and now, though she greatly disliked her niece, she could not avoid mingling something of respect and something almost amounting to fear with her dislike. She did not dare to go on unwinding her worsted, and giving the advantage of her condescension to a young woman who spoke out at her in that way.

“I thought I was advising you for the best,” she said, “and I hoped that you would have been thankful.”

“I don’t know what may be for the best,” said Margaret, again bordering upon the hysterical in the tremulousness of her voice, “but that I’m sure would be for the worst. However, I’ve made up my mind to nothing as yet.”