t? You would not have me let them starve.
Besides, I promised my brother when he was dying."

"Then I must say he was very wrong, very wicked, I may say, to exact
any such promise from you; and no such promise is binding. If you
ask Sir John, or your lawyer, they will tell you so. What! exact
a promise from you to the amount of half your income. It was very
wrong."

"But, aunt, I should do the same if I had made no promise."

"No, you wouldn't, my dear. Your friends wouldn't let you. And indeed
your friends must prevent it now. They will not hear of such a
sacrifice being made."

"But, aunt--"

"Well, my dear."

"It's my own, you know." And Margaret, as she said this, plucked up
her courage, and looked her aunt full in the face.

"Yes, it is your own, by law; but I don't suppose, my dear, that you
are of that disposition or that character that you'd wish to set all
the world at defiance, and make everybody belonging to you feel that
you had disgraced yourself."

"Disgraced myself by relieving my brother's family!"

"Disgraced yourself by giving to that woman money that has come
to you as your fortune has come. Think of it, where it came from!"

"It came to me from my brother Walter."

"And where did he get it? And who made it? And don't you know that
your brother Tom had his share of it, and wasted it all? Did it
not all come from the Balls? And yet you think so little of that,
that you are going to let that woman rob you of it--rob you and my
grandchildren; for that, I tell you, is the way in which the world
will look at it. Perhaps you don't know it, but all that property
was as good as given to John at one time. Who was it first took
you by the hand when you were left all alone in Arundel Street? Oh,
Margaret, don't go and be such an ungrateful, foolish creature!"

Margaret waited for a moment, and then she answered--

"There's nobody so near to me as my own brother's children."

"As to that, Margaret, there isn't much difference in nearness
between your uncle and your nephews and nieces. But there's a right
and a wrong in these things, and when money is concerned, people
are not justified in indulging their fancies. Everything here has
been told to you. You know how John is situated with his children.
And after what there has been between you and him, and after what
there still might be if you would have it so, I own that I am
astonished--fairly astonished. Indeed, my dear, I can only look on it
a