. "He's always writing about
politics. I hate them, so he pretends to hate them too. But he doesn't
really. He loves them."

"I know nothing about politics," said Maggie with profound truth. "Your
husband must be very clever."

"He's better than that," said Katherine with pride; "I hate perfect
people, don't you?"

"Oh, indeed I do!" said Maggie from the bottom of her heart. They then
came to her particular business.

"I would like to get some work to do," said Maggie, "that would make me
independent. I have three hundred pounds of my own."

"What can you do?" asked Katherine.

"I don't know," said Maggie.

"Can you shorthand and type?"

"No, I can't," said Maggie; "but I'll learn."

"Must you be independent soon?" asked Katherine. "Are you unhappy where
you are?"

Maggie paused.

"Don't tell me anything you oughtn't to," said Katherine.

"No," answered Maggie. "It isn't that exactly. I'm not happy at home,
but I think that's my fault. My aunts are very good. But I want to be
free. It is all very religious where I am, and they want me to believe
in their religion. I'm afraid I'm not religious at all. Then I don't
want to be dependent on people. I'm very ignorant. I know nothing about
anything, and so long as I am kept with my aunts I shall never learn."

She stopped abruptly. She had thought suddenly of Martin. His coming
had altered everything. How could she say what she wanted her life to
be until her relation to him were settled? Everything depended on that.

This sense of Martin's presence silenced her. "If I can feel," she said
at last, "that I can ask your advice. I have nobody ... We all seem ...
Oh! how can I make you understand properly! You never will have seen
anything like our house. It is all so queer, so shut-up, away from
everything. I'm like a prisoner ..."

And that is perhaps what she was like to Mrs. Mark, sitting there in
her funny ill-fitting clothes, her anxious old-fashioned face as of a
child aged long before her time. Katherine Mark, who had had, in her
life, her own perplexities and sorrows, felt her heart warm to this
strange isolated girl. She had needed in her own life at one time all
her courage, and she had used it; she had never regretted the step that
she had then taken. She believed therefore in courage ... Courage was
eloquent in every movement of Maggie's square reliant body.

"She could be braver than I have ever been," she thought.

"Miss Cardinal," she said, "