There was more of this sort in the letter.  It was full of a kind of sorrowful yearning, as if there was fear that Margaret’s love were slipping away and all the old relations were being broken up, but yet it had in it a certain moral condemnation that the New England spinster could not conceal.  Softened as it was by affectionate words, and all the loving messages of the season, it was like a slap in the face to Margaret.  She read it in the first place with intense mortification, and then with indignation.  This was the way her loving spirit was flung back upon her!  They did not blame her!  They blamed her husband, then.  They condemned him.  It was his generosity that was spurned.

Is there a particular moment when we choose our path in life, when we take the right or the left?  At this instant, when Margaret arose with the crumpled letter in her hand, and marched towards her husband’s library, did she choose, or had she been choosing for the two years past, and was this only a publication of her election?  Why had she secretly been a little relieved from restraint when her Brandon visit ended in the spring?  They were against her husband; they disapproved of him, that was clear.  Was it not a wife’s duty to stand by her husband?  She was indignant with the Brandon scrupulousness; it chafed her..  Was this simply because she loved her husband, or was this indignation a little due also to her liking for the world which so fell in with her inclinations?  The motives in life are so mixed that it seems impossible wholly to condemn or wholly to approve.  If Margaret’s destiny had been united with such a man as John Lyon, what would have been her discernment in such a case as this?  It is such a pity that for most people there is only one chance in life.

She laid the letter and the check upon her husband’s desk.  He read it with a slight frown, which changed to a smile of amusement as he looked up and saw Margaret’s excitement.

“Well, it was a miss-go.  Those folks up there are too good for this world.  You’d better send it to the hospital.”

“But you see that they say they do not blame me,” Margaret said, with warmth.

“Oh, I can stand it.  People usually don’t try to hurt my feelings that way.  Don’t mind it, child.  They will come to their senses, and see what nonsense it all is.”

Yes, it was nonsense.  And how generous and kind at heart her husband was!  In his skillful making little of it she was very much comforted, and at the same time drawn into more perfect sympathy with him.  She was glad she was not going to Brandon for Christmas; she would not submit herself to its censorship.  The note of acknowledgment she wrote to her aunt was short and almost formal.  She was very sorry they looked at the matter in that way.  She thought she was doing right, and they might blame her or not, but her aunt would see that she could not permit any distinction to be set up between her and her husband, etc.