se between me and the advantages your
mother offers you. It is for you to decide."

"Oh, I can't, I can't! Why need I decide now?" said Margaret, clasping
her hands. "Let me have time to think!"

"No, you must decide now, Margaret," said Lady Caroline. "You have done
a very unjustifiable thing in coming here to-day, and you must take the
consequences. If you still wish to marry Mr. Wyvis Brand, you had better
accept the offer of his mother's protection and remain here. If you come
away with me, it must be understood that you give up any thought of such
a marriage. You must renounce Mr. Wyvis Brand from this time forth and
for ever. Pray, don't answer hastily. The question is this--do you mean
to stay here or to come away with me?"

She rose as she spoke, and began to arrange the details of her dress,
as though preparing to take her departure. Margaret stood pale,
irresolute, miserable between her mother and her lover. Wyvis threw
out his hands to her with an imploring gesture and an almost frenzied
cry--"Margaret--love--come to me!" Janetta held her breath.

But in that moment of indecision, Margaret's wavering eye fell upon Mrs.
Brand. The mother was an unlovely object in her abject sorrow and
despair. Her previous coldness and awkwardness told against her at that
moment. It suddenly darted through Margaret's mind that she would have
to accept this woman, with her common associations, her obscure origin,
her doubtful antecedents, in a mother's place. The soul of the girl who
had been brought up by Lady Caroline Adair revolted at the thought.
Wyvis she loved, or thought she loved; Wyvis she could accept; but
Wyvis' mother for her own, coupled with exclusion from the home where
she had lived so many smooth and tranquil years, exclusion also from the
society in which she had been taught that it was her right to take a
distinguished place--this was too much. Her dreams fell from her like a
garment. Plain, unvarnished reality unfolded itself instead. To be poor
and obscure and unfriended, to be looked down upon and pitied, to be
snubbed and passed by on the other side--this was what seemed to be the
reality of things to Margaret's mind. It was too much for her to accept.
She looked at it and passed by it.

She stretched out her hand timidly and touched her mother's arm.
"Mamma," she said falteringly, "I--I will come with you." And then she
burst into tears and fell upon her mother's neck, and over her shoulder
Lady Car