Part 7 (1/2)

Margaret only beckoned again and turned away, Janey following in silence and intense curiosity.

When they reached their room, where Margaret's portmanteau had already been placed, the girl began to put up such things as she would need for a short journey. She said nothing till she had finished, and then she sat down on a bed and told Janey what she had learned; and the pair ”had a good cry,” and comforted each other as well as they might.

”And what are you going to do?” asked Janey, when, as Homer says, ”they had taken their fill of chilling lamentations.”

”I don't know!”

”Have you no one else in all the world?”

”No one at all. My mother died when I was a little child, in Smyrna.

Since then we have wandered all about; we were a long time in Algiers, and we were at Ma.r.s.eilles, and then in London.”

”But you have a guardian, haven't you?”

”Yes; he sent me here. And, of course, he's been very kind, and done everything for me; but he's quite a young man, not thirty, and he's so stupid, and so stiff, and thinks so much about Oxford, and talks so like a book. And he's so shy, and always seems to do everything, not because he likes it, but because he thinks he ought to. And, besides--”

But Margaret did not go further in her confessions, nor explain more lucidly why she had scant affection for Mait-land of St. Gatien's.

”And had your poor father no other friends who could take care of you?”

Janey asked.

”There was a gentleman who called now and then; I saw him twice. He had been an officer in father's s.h.i.+p, I think, or had known him long ago at sea. He found us out somehow in Chelsea. There was no one else at all.”

”And you don't know any of your father's family?”

”No,” said Margaret, wearily. ”Ob, I have forgotten to pack up my prayer-book.” And she took up a little worn volume in black morocco with silver clasps. ”This was a book my father gave me,” she said. ”It has a name on it--my grandfather's, I suppose--'Richard Johnson, Linkheaton, 1837.'” Then she put the book in a pocket of her travelling cloak.

”Your mother's father it may have belonged to,” said Janey.

”I don't know,” Margaret replied, looking out of the window.

”I hope you won't stay away long, dear,” said Janey, affectionately.

”But _you_ are going, too, you know,” Margaret answered, without much tact; and Janey, reminded of her private griefs, was about to break down, when the wheels of a carriage were heard laboring slowly up the snow-laden drive.

”Why, here's some one coming!” cried Janey, rus.h.i.+ng to the window. ”Two horses! and a gentleman all in furs. Oh, Margaret, this must be for you!”

CHAPTER V.--Flown.

Maitland's reflections as, in performance of the promise he had telegraphed, he made his way to the Dovecot were deep and distracted.

The newspapers with which he had littered the railway carriage were left unread: he had occupation enough in his own thoughts. Men are so made that they seldom hear even of a death without immediately considering its effects on their private interests. Now, the death of Richard s.h.i.+elds affected Maitland's purposes both favorably and unfavorably. He had for some time repented of the tacit engagement (tacit as far as the girl was concerned) which bound him to Margaret. For some time he had been dimly aware of quite novel emotions in his own heart, and of a new, rather painful, rather pleasant, kind of interest in another lady.

Maitland, in fact, was becoming more human than he gave himself credit for, and a sign of his awakening nature was the blush with which he had greeted, some weeks before, Barton's casual criticism on Mrs. St. John Deloraine.

Without any well-defined ideas or hopes, Maitland had felt that his philanthropic entanglement--it was rather, he said to himself, an entanglement than an engagement--had become irksome to his fancy.

Now that the unfortunate parent was out of the way, he felt that the daughter would not be more sorry than himself to revise the relations in which they stood to each other. Vanity might have prevented some men from seeing this; but Maitland had not vitality enough for a healthy conceit. A curious ”aloofness” of nature permitted him to stand aside, and see himself much as a young lady was likely to see him. This disposition is rare, and not a source of happiness.