Her father had occasionally experienced a difficulty in breathing this spring, which had for the time distressed him exceedingly.  Margaret was less alarmed, as this difficulty went off completely in the intervals; but she still was so desirous of his shaking off the liability altogether, as to make her very urgent that he should accept Mr. Bell’s invitation to visit him at Oxford this April.  Mr. Bell’s invitation included Margaret.  Nay more, he wrote a special letter commanding her to come; but she felt as if it would be a greater relief to her to remain quietly at home, entirely free from any responsibility whatever, and so to rest her mind and heart in a manner which she had not been able to do for more than two years past.

When her father had driven off on his way to the railroad, Margaret felt how great and long had been the pressure on her time and her spirits.  It was astonishing, almost stunning, to feel herself so much at liberty; no one depending on her for cheering care, if not for positive happiness; no invalid to plan and think for; she might be idle, and silent, and forgetful,—­and what seemed worth more than all the other privileges—­she might be unhappy if she liked.  For months past, all her own personal cares and troubles had had to be stuffed away into a dark cupboard; but now she had leisure to take them out, and mourn over them, and study their nature, and seek the true method of subduing them into the elements of peace.  All these weeks she had been conscious of their existence in a dull kind of way, though they were hidden out of sight.  Now, once for all she would consider them, and appoint to each of them its right work in her life.  So she sat almost motionless for hours in the drawing-room, going over the bitterness of every remembrance with an unwincing resolution.  Only once she cried aloud, at the stinging thought of the faithlessness which gave birth to that abasing falsehood.

She now would not even acknowledge the force of the temptation; her plans for Frederick had all failed, and the temptation lay there a dead mockery,—­a mockery which had never had life in it; the lie had been so despicably foolish, seen by the light of the ensuing events, and faith in the power of truth so infinitely the greater wisdom!

In her nervous agitation, she unconsciously opened a book of her father’s that lay upon the table,—­the words that caught her eye in it, seemed almost made for her present state of acute self-abasement:—­

’Je ne voudrois pas reprendre mon coeur en ceste sorte:  meurs de honte, aveugle, impudent, traistre et desloyal a ton Dieu, et sembables choses; mais je voudrois le corriger par voye de compassion.  Or sus, mon pauvre coeur, nous voila tombez dans la fosse, laquelle nous avions tant resolu d’ eschapper.  Ah! relevons-nous, et quittons-la pour jamais, reclamons la misericorde de Dieu, et esperons en elle qu’elle nous assistera pour desormais estre plus fermes; et remettons-nous au chemin de l’humilite.  Courage, soyons meshuy sur nos gardes, Dieu nous aydera.’