When the message came, Margaret thought nothing of the muslin and starch. The bonnet that had been worth its weight in gold, and the black-freckled dress, were all forgotten. But she thought of the words which her cousin John had spoken to her as soon as they had got through the little gate into the grounds of the Cedars when they had walked back together from the railway station at Twickenham; and she remembered that she had then pledged herself to be firm. If he alluded to the offer he had then made, and repeated it, she would throw herself into his arms at once, and tell him that she would serve him with all her heart and all her strength as long as God might leave them together. But she was quite as strongly determined to accept from him for herself no other kind of provision. That money which for a short while had been hers was now his; and she could have no claim upon him unless he gave her the claim of a wife. After what had passed between them she would not be the recipient of his charity. Certain words had been written and spoken from which she had gathered the existence, in Mr Slow’s mind, of some such plan as this. His client should lose her cause meekly and graciously, and should then have a claim for alms. That had been the idea on which Mr Slow had worked. She had long made up her mind that Mr Slow should be taught to know her better, if the day for such offering of alms should ever come. Perhaps it had come now. She took up a little scarf that she wore ordinarily and folded it tight across her shoulders, quite forgetful of muslin and starch, as she descended to the drawing-room in order that this question might be solved for her.

Sir John met her almost at the door as she entered.

“I’m afraid you’ve been expecting me to come sooner,” he said.

“No, indeed; I was not quite sure that you would come at all.”

“Oh, yes; I was certain to come. You have hardly received as yet any official notification that your cause has been lost.”

“It was not my cause, John,” she said, smiling, “and I received no other notification than what I got through Mrs Mackenzie. Indeed, as you know, I have regarded this law business as nonsense all through. Since what you and Mr Slow told me, I have known that the property was yours.”

“But it was quite necessary to have a judgment.”

“I suppose so, and there’s an end of it. I, for one, am not in the least disappointed,—if it will give you any comfort to know that.”

“I don’t believe that any other woman in England would have lost her fortune with the equanimity that you have shown.”

She could not explain to him that, in the first days of dismay caused by that misfortune, he had given her such consolation as to make her forget her loss, and that her subsequent misery had been caused by the withdrawal of that consolation. She could not tell him that the very memory of her money had been, as it were, drowned by other hopes in life,—by other hopes and by other despair. But when he praised her for her equanimity, she thought of this. She still smiled as she heard his praise.