“I have consulted Margaret’s will always; in many things I have given up to it, but here, where reason is so fully on my side, I will go on.  I have no patience with her weak stubbornness, no patience with her presumption in forbidding my servants to do as I have told them; such measures I will never allow in my house;” and John Greylston, in his angry musings, struck his cane smartly against a tall crimson dahlia, which grew in the grass-plat.  It fell quivering across his path, but he walked on, never heeding what he had done.  There was a faint sense of shame rising in his heart, a feeble conviction of having been himself to blame; but just then they seemed only to fan and increase his keen indignation.  Yet in the midst of his anger, John Greylston had the delicate consideration for his sister and himself to repeat to the men the command she had given them.

“Do as Miss Greylston bade you; let the trees stand until further orders.”  But pride prompted this, for he said to himself, “If Margaret and I keep at this childish work of unsaying each other’s commands, that sharp old fellow, Reuben, will suspect that we have quarrelled.”

Mr. Greylston’s wrath did not abate; and when he came home at dinner-time, and found the table so nicely set, and no one but the little servant to wait upon him, Margaret away, shut up with a bad headache, in her own room, he somehow felt relieved,—­just then he did not want to see her.  But when eventide came, and he sat down to supper, and missed again his sister’s calm and pleasant face, a half-regretful feeling stole over him, and he grew lonely, for John Greylston’s heart was the home of every kindly affection.  He loved Margaret dearly.  Still, pride and anger kept him aloof from her; still his soul was full of harsh, unforgiving thoughts.  And Margaret Greylston, as she lay with a throbbing head and an aching heart upon her snowy pillow, thought the hours of that bright afternoon and evening very long and very weary.  And yet those hours were full of light, and melody, and fragrance, for the sun shone, and the sky was blue, the birds sang, and the waters rippled; even the autumn flowers were giving their sweet, last kisses to the air.  Earth was fair,—­why, then, should not human hearts rejoice?  Ah! Nature’s loveliness alone cannot cheer the soul.  There was once a day when the beauty even of Eden ceased to gladden two guilty tremblers who hid in its bowers.

“A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger.”  When Margaret Greylston came across that verse, she closed her Bible, and sat down beside the window to muse.  “Ah,” she thought, “how true is that saying of the wise man!  If I had only from the first given John soft answers, instead of grievous words, we might now have been at peace.  I knew his quick temper so well; I should have been more gentle with him.”  Then she recalled all John’s constant and tender attention to her wishes; the many instances in which