CHAPTER VIII.
When Margaret stepped for the last time across the threshold of her mother's home, she must have had the rare comfort of knowing that she had done everything in her power to promote the highest welfare of those who, with her, had shared its shelter. The children of the household had grown up under her fostering care, nor had she, in any flight of her vivid imagination, forgotten the claims and needs of brothers, sister, or mother. So closely, indeed, had she felt herself bound by the necessity of doing what was best for each and all, that her literary work had not, in any degree, corresponded to her own desires. Her written and spoken word had indeed carried with it a quickening power for good; but she had not even been able so much as to plan one of the greater works which she considered herself bound to produce, and which could neither have been conceived nor carried out without
