f course it was she of whom they
were talking. Was she, then, so greatly to be pitied? The idea was such
a novel one that she could not take it in all at once, but gradually the
truth of what they had said dawned with overwhelming force upon her mind.

"A lonely, unloved youth." Yes, such a youth had certainly been hers. Of
course her grandfather had never loved her. In the bewildered state of
her mind she hardly knew whether she had always realised that fact, or
whether she had taken his affection for her for granted. And he had
allowed her no friends, no parties, no dances. Why had she thus been
brought up aloof from every one? Certainly, as Mr. Summers had said in
reply to Dr. Knowles' question as to whether she was content with her
existence, she was content simply because she knew no better one. She
had not realised before in what a very different fashion other girls were
brought up. But now her eyes were open. That simple phrase, "She does not
know, poor child, what she is missing," had told her more than many
lengthy explanations could have done.

Looking back afterwards on those moments during which she had stood
gazing with unseeing eyes after the departing figures of the two men,
they seemed to her to make a dividing line between all her previous
and her after life. She had thought that the departure of Miss Bidwell
had been an epoch in it; now that sank into comparative insignificance,
for after all her departure had left her, Margaret, unchanged.

But the same could not be said of this event. Hitherto she had blindly,
unquestioningly accepted her grandfather's right to order every detail
of her life, and if she had thought about the matter at all she had
doubtless supposed that his authority over her would always be as
absolute as it was now.

However, it was one thing to discover that her childhood had missed, and
her girlhood was losing, many of the pleasures that should rightly belong
to them, but to remedy this state of affairs was quite another. Although
the idea that her grandfather had been unduly strict with her had been
thus suddenly brought home to her, it did not in the least lesson the
habitual awe in which she stood of him, and as she was obliged to
continue to adhere to the rules he had laid down for her, she began to
wonder whether she had not been happier when she had not dreamed of
questioning his right to exact such unquestioning obedience from her.

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis foll