.

All the way across the Atlantic poor lonely Peg had many opportunities
of reviewing that brief glimpse of English life. She felt now how wrong
her attitude had been to the whole of the Chichester family. She had
judged them at first sight. She had resolved that they were just
selfish, inconsiderate, characterless people. On reflection, she
determined that they were not. And even if they had been, why should
Peg have been their accuser? And after all, is there not an element of
selfishness in every nature? Was Peg herself entirely immune?

And in a family with traditions to look back on and live up to, have
they not a greater right to being self-centred than the plebeian with
nothing to look back on or forward to? And, all things considered, is
not selfishness a thoroughly human and entirely natural feeling? What
right had she to condemn people wholesale for feeling and practising it?

These were the sum and substance of Peg's self-analysis during the
first days of her voyage home.

Then the thought came to her,--were the Chichesters really selfish? Now
that she had been told the situation, she knew that her aunt had
undertaken her training to protect Ethel and Alaric from distress and
humiliation. She realised how distasteful it must have been to a lady
of Mrs. Chichester's nature and position to have occasion to receive
into her house, amongst her own family, such a girl as Peg. And she had
not made it easy for her aunt. She had regarded the family as being
allied against her.

Was it not largely her own fault if they had been? Peg's sense of
justice was asserting itself.

The thought of Alaric flashed through her mind, and with it came a
little pang of regret for the many occasions she had made fun of
him--and in his mother's presence. His proposal to her had its pathetic
as well as its humorous side. To save his family he would have
deliberately thrown away his own chance of happiness by marrying her.
Yet he would have done it willingly and cheerfully and, from what she
had seen of the little man, he would have lived up to his obligations
honourably and without a murmur.

Alaric's sense of relief at her refusal of him suddenly passed before
her, and she smiled broadly as she saw, in a mental picture, his eager
and radiant little face as he thanked her profusely for being so
generous as to refuse him. Looking back, Alaric was by no means as
contemptible as he had appeared at first sight. He had been coddled