The girl argues thus:--"How unhappy, how vexed, how poor he must be to misbehave! Poor thing!" Margaret was full of this sweet womanly pity, when, to her great surprise, scarce an hour and a half after he left her, Gerard came running back to her with the fragments of a picture in his hand, and panting with anger and grief.
"There, Margaret! see! see! the wretches! Look at their spite! They have cut your portrait to pieces." Margaret looked, and, sure enough, some malicious hand had cut her portrait into five pieces.

She was a good girl, but she was not ice; she turned red to her very forehead.
"Who did it ?" "Nay, I know not.

I dared not ask; for I should hate the hand that did it, ay, till my dying day.

My poor Margaret! The butchers, the ruffians! Six months' work cut out of my life, and nothing to show for it now.
See, they have hacked through your very face; the sweet face that every one loves who knows it.

Oh, heartless, merciless vipers!" "Never mind, Gerard," said Margaret, panting.