After all, how petty a thing she had urged her sacrifice for, and how easily the self-will that had in the end been obliged to give in might have done so before, and saved her!
A recognition, dim as yet, came to her of the beauty of her sister's character. How far apart they stood in feeling! How Margaret insisted on not only truth, but the highest expression of truth, as the only thing she cared for.
Tears chased each other down her face, and each morning found her pale and unrefreshed.
Want of sleep and the incessant torment of a newly awakened conscience made Grace unusually irritable, her gay spirits were fitful, and, indeed, were only used as a mask to hide the perpetual pain she had to bear, a pain so far, far, more agonizing than any bodily pain.
Mr. Sandford--who was, himself, out of health--had no affection to enable him to support her provoking ways.
He was terribly annoyed and concerned about Margaret, he was upset and mortified by other things.
It was impossible for Mr. Drayton to have lost, as he had lost, without the fact being known far and wide, and Mr. Sandford's share was universally condemned. He was accused openly of having made a cat's-paw of the man whose genial laugh and careless ways had gained him the epithet of a "good fellow" from men who had neither suffered through him or known his counter-balancing want of attraction.
Mr. Sandford knew that had he not been a fool and a timid fool, just when he ought to have been bold, he would not have lost, but there was just that grain of truth in the accusation which made it sting.
The reputation of a man in business--who has not the root of honesty where honesty must be a _sine quâ non_--if respect is to be given; is like graceful species of fir trees to be found on Scottish hills and in many a wood, where, instead of sending their roots well down into the earth, as do the other kinds, they spread close to the surface, and the first rough wind throws them over and exposes the shallow hold they have of mother earth. Mr. Sandford's name, once holding so high a place, began to be mentioned with a little reticence. A shake of the head or a shrug of the shoulders says a good deal, though it cannot be repeated. It has weight; gestures are often remembered when words, especially vague words, are forgotten.