Part 11 (1/2)
”Mother!” cried the girl, piteously; ”you _must_ believe me! You _know_ that when Al asked me to marry him, and I said I would, I had no idea, not the slightest idea, that he had a penny in the world!”
”Hush, Margaret! hush, my dear! you are excited, and so am I. Don't say anything you may wish afterwards that you had not. G.o.d bless you, and make you a happy woman, and a good wife; but don't begin your married life with a--” Mrs. Parke choked down the word with a great sob, and hastily left the room. It was high noon, and she had not yet put on her own array.
Margaret stood stiff and blind with horror. Had she really known, then?
Had her hand been bought? Then she remembered her own innocence when she told her love. Not so proudly, not so freely, not so gladly, could it ever have been told to the millionaire's son. A rush of self-pity came over her, softening the indignant throbbing of her heart, and opening the fountains of tears. She was at the point where a woman must have a good cry, or go mad,--but where could she give way? Not here, where anyone might come in. Indeed, there was Winnie's voice at the door of the nursery, eager to show her bridesmaid's toilette. Margaret s.n.a.t.c.hed up two white shawls which lay ready on the sofa, caught up the heavy train of her gown in one hand, and flew down the front staircase like a hunted swan, through the library to the sacred room beyond--her father's study, now, as she well knew, deserted, while its owner was above, reluctantly dressing for the festivity. She pushed the only chair forward to the table, threw one shawl over it, and laying the other on the table itself, sat down, and carefully bending her head down over her folded arms, so as not to crush her veil by a feather's touch, let loose the flood-gates. In a moment she was crying as only a healthy girl who seldom cries can, when she once gives up to it.
Someone spoke to her; she never heard it. Someone touched her; she never felt it. It was only when a voice repeated, ”Why, Margaret, dearest, what is the matter?” that she checked herself with a mighty effort, swallowed her sobs, and still holding her handkerchief over her tear-stained cheeks and quivering mouth, turned round to find herself face to face with her bridegroom, who having stopped to take up his best man, Alick Parke, was waiting till that young man tied his sixth necktie. She well knew that a lover who finds his betrothed crying her eyes out half an hour before the wedding has a prescriptive right to be both angry and jealous; but he looked neither; only a little anxious and troubled.
”Darling, has anything happened?”
”No--not exactly; that is--O Al! they won't believe me!”
”They! who?”
”Not one single one of them. Not mother, even mother! I thought she would--but she doesn't.”
”Does not what?”
”She does not believe,” said Margaret, trying to steady her voice, ”that when you asked me to marry you, and I said I would, that I did not know you were rich. I told her, but she won't believe me.”
”Well,” said Mr. Smith, quietly, though with a little flush on his face; ”it's very natural. I don't blame her.”
”Al!” cried Margaret, seizing both his hands; ”O Al, you don't--you do--_you_ believe me, don't you, Al? _don't_ you?”
”Of course I do.”
[Ill.u.s.tration]
POOR MR. PONSONBY
On a bright, windy morning in March, Miss Emmeline Freeman threw open the gate of her mother's little front garden on Walnut Street, Brookline, slammed it behind her with one turn of her wrist, marched with an emphatic tapping of boot-heels up the path between the crocus-beds to the front door, threw that open, and rushed into the drawing-room, where she paused for breath, and began before she found it:
”O mamma! O Aunt Sophia! O Bessie! What do you think? Lily Carey--you would never guess--Lily Carey--I was never so surprised in my life--Lily Carey is engaged!”
Mrs. Freeman laid down her pen by the side of her column of figures, losing her account for the seventh time; Miss Sophia Morgan paused in the silk stocking she was knitting, just as she was beginning to narrow; and Bessie Freeman dropped her brush full of colour on to the panel she was finis.h.i.+ng, while all three exclaimed with one voice, ”To whom?”
”That is the queer part of it. You will never guess. Indeed, how should you?”
”To whom?” repeated the chorus, with a unanimity and precision that would have been creditable to the stage, and with the due accent of impatience on the important word.
”To no one you ever would have dreamed of; indeed, you never heard of him--a Mr. Reginald Ponsonby. It is a most romantic thing. He is an Englishman, very good family and handsome and all that, but not much money. That is why it has been kept quiet so long.”
”So long? How long?” chimed in the trio, still in unison.
”Why, for three years and more. Lily met him in New York that time she was there in the summer, you know, when her father was ill at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. But Mr. Carey would never let it be called an engagement till now.”
”Did Lily tell you all this?” asked Bessie.
”No, Ada Thorne was telling everyone about it at the lunch party. She heard it from Lily.”