t sense, it is not yours to do what you please with
it."

Then Lady Ball shut the door rather loudly, and sailed away along the
hall. When the passages were clear, Miss Mackenzie made her way up
into her own room, and saw none of the family till she came down just
before dinner.

She sat for a long time in the chair by her bed-side thinking of her
position. Was it true after all that she was bound by a sense of
justice to give any of her money to the Balls? It was true that in
one sense it had been taken from them, but she had had nothing to do
with the taking. If her brother Walter had married and had children,
then the Balls would have not expected the money back again. It was
ever so many years,--five-and-twenty years, and more since the legacy
had been made by Jonathan Ball to her brother, and it seemed to her
that her aunt had no common sense on her side in the argument. Was it
possible that she should allow her own nephews and nieces to starve
while she was rich? She had, moreover, made a promise,--a promise to
one who was now dead, and there was a solemnity in that which carried
everything else before it. Even though the thing might be unjust,
still she must do it.

But she was to give only half her fortune to her brother's family;
there would still be the half left for herself, for herself or
for these Balls if they wanted it so sorely. She was beginning to
hate her money. It had brought to her nothing but tribulation and
disappointment. Had Walter left her a hundred a year, she would,
not having then dreamed of higher things, have been amply content.
Would it not be better that she should take for herself some modest
competence, something on which she might live without trouble to her
relatives, without trouble to her friends she had first said,--but
as she did so she told herself with scorn that friends she had
none,--and then let the Balls have what was left her after she had
kept her promise to her brother? Anything would be better than such
persecution as that to which her aunt had subjected her.

At last she made up her mind to speak of it all openly to her cousin.
She had an idea that in such matters men were more trustworthy than
women, and perhaps less greedy. Her cousin would, she thought, be
more just to her than her aunt had been. That her aunt had been very
unjust,--cruel and unjust,--she felt assured.

She came down to dinner, and she could see by the manner of them all
that the matter had b