ot think I should have been so indelicate as to
have asked this question if I had not come to fancy that Nurse made
out the story worse than it really was, for my behoof. Aunt Isobel was
so cheerful and bright with us!--and I was not at that time able to
believe that any one could mend a broken heart with other people's
interests so that the marks should show so little!

My aunt had a very clear skin, but in an instant her face was thick
with a heavy blush, and she was silent. I marvelled that these were
the only signs of displeasure she allowed herself to betray, for the
question was no sooner out of my mouth than I wished it unsaid, and
felt how furious she must naturally feel to hear that her sad and
sacred story was bandied between servants and children as a
nursery-tale with a moral to it.

But oh, Aunt Isobel! Aunt Isobel! you had at this time progressed far
along that hard but glorious road of self-conquest which I had hardly
found my way to.

"I beg your pardon," I began, before she spoke.

"You ought to," said my aunt--she never spoke less than decisively--"I
thought you had more tact, Isobel, than to tell any one what servants
have said of one's sins or sorrows behind one's back."

"I am _very_ sorry," I repeated with shame; "but the thing is, I
didn't believe it was true, you always seem so happy. I am _very_
sorry."

"It is true," said Aunt Isobel. "Child, whilst we are speaking of
it--for the first and the last time--let it be a warning for you to
illustrate a very homely proverb: 'Don't cut off your nose to spite
your own face.' Ill-tempered people are always doing it, and I did it
to my life-long loss. I _was_ angry with him, and like Jonah I said to
myself, 'I do well to be angry.' And though I would die twenty deaths
harder than the death he died to see his face for five minutes and be
forgiven, I am not weak enough to warp my judgment with my misery. I
was in the right, and he was in the wrong. But I forgot how much
harder a position it is to be in the wrong than in the right in a
quarrel. I did not think of how, instead of making the return path
difficult to those who err, we ought to make it easy, as GOD
does for us. I gave him no chance of unsaying with grace or credit
what he could not fail to regret that he had said. Isobel, you have a
clear head and a sharp tongue, as I have. You will understand when I
say that I had the satisfaction of proving that I was in the right and
he was in the wr