Margaret started, and the proud indignant color rose to her face; but she restrained herself.
“May I ask your reason, Sir Wilfred?”
“I have a very good, sufficient reason,” returned the old man, sadly; “Hugh is my only son.”
“I do not understand—”
“Perhaps not, and it is my painful task to enlighten you, Miss Ferrers,” hesitating a little, “I do not wonder at my son’s choice, now I see you; I am quite sure that you are all he represents you to be; that in all respects you are fitted to be the wife of a wealthier man than Hugh. But for my boy’s sake I am compelled to appeal to your generosity, your sense of right, and ask you to give him up.”
“I can not give your son up,” returned Margaret, with noble frankness; “I am promised to him, and we love each other dearly.”
“I know that,” and for a moment Sir Wilfred’s eyes rested on the beautiful face before him with mingled admiration and pain, and his voice softened insensibly. “My dear, I know how my boy loves you, how his whole heart is centered on you. I can do nothing with him—he will not listen to reason; his passion for you is overmastering, and blinds him to his best interest. I have come to you to help me save him in spite of himself.”
At this solemn adjuration Margaret’s face grew pale, and for the first time her courage forsook her.
“I can not bear this,” she returned, and her young voice grew thin and sharp. “Why do you not speak plainly and tell me what you mean? Why do you ask me to save Hugh—my Hugh—when I am ready to give up my whole life to him? You speak as if his marriage with me would bring him a curse.”
“As it most surely would to him and to his children, Miss Ferrers. Margaret—I may call you Margaret, for I knew you as a child—it is no fault of yours if that be the truth. My dear, has no one told you about your mother?”
She looked at him with wide-open, startled eyes. “My mother, Sir Wilfred! no, I was only seven when she died. I think,” knitting her white brows as though she were trying to recall that childish past, “that she was very ill—she had to go away for a long time, and my poor father seemed very sad. I remember he cried dreadfully at her funeral, and Raby told me I ought to have cried too.”
“I loved your mother, Margaret,” returned the old man, and his mouth twitched under his white mustache. “You are not like her; she was dark, but very beautiful. Yes, she was ill, with that deadly hereditary illness that we call by another name; so ill that for years before her death her husband could not see her.”
“You mean—” asked Margaret, but her dry white lips refused to finish the sentence. Sir Wilfred looked at her pityingly, as he answered—
“She was insane. It was in the family—they told me so, and that was why I did not ask her to marry me. She was beautiful, and so many loved her—your father and I among the number. Now you know, Margaret, that while my heart bleeds for you both, I ask you to release my son.”
CHAPTER IV.
“WHEN WE TWO PARTED.”
Nay—sometimes seems it I could even bear
To lay down humbly this love-crown I wear,
Steal from my palace, helpless, hopeless, poor,
And see another queen it at the door—
If only that the king had done no wrong,
If this my palace where I dwelt so long
Were not defiled by falsehood entering in.
There is no loss but change; no death but sin;
No parting, save the slow corrupting pain
Of murdered faith that never lives again.
Miss Mulock.
The following evening Margaret walked down the narrow path leading to the shore. It was a glorious evening, warm with the dying sunset, gorgeous with red and golden light.
Broad margins of yellow sands, white headlands, mossy cliffs, with the scarlet poppies and pink-eyed convolvuli growing out of the weedy crevices; above, a blue ineffable sky scored deeply with tinted clouds, and a sea dipping on the shore with a long slow ripple of sound; under a bowlder a child bathing her feet in a little runlet of a pool, while all round, heaped up with coarse wavy grasses, lay seaweed—brown, coralline, and purple—their salty fragrance steeping the air; everywhere the sound of cool splashes and a murmur of peace.
The child sat under the bowlder alone, a small brown creature in picturesque-looking rags, a mere waif and stray of a child, with her feet trailing in the pool; every now and then small mottled crabs scrambled crookedly along, or dug graves for themselves in the dry waved sand. The girl watched them idly, as she flapped long ribbons of brown seaweed, or dribbled the water through her hollowed hands, while a tired sea-gull that had lowered wing was skimming slowly along the margin of the water.
Another time Margaret would have paused to speak to the little waif of humanity before her, for she was a lover of children, and was never happier than when she was surrounded by these little creatures—the very babies crowed a welcome to her from their mother’s arms. But this evening Margaret’s eyes had a strange unseeing look in them; they were searching the winding shore for some expected object, and she scarcely seemed to notice the little one at her play.
Only four-and-twenty hours had passed since Sir Wilfred had paid that ill-omened visit to the Grange, and yet some subtle mysterious change had passed over Margaret. It was as though some blighting influence had swept over her; her face was pale, and her eyes were swollen and dim as though with a night’s weeping, and the firm beautiful mouth was tremulous with pain.
“I thought I should have met him by now,” she murmured; “I am nearly at the boat-house; surely Sir Wilfred must have given him my message.” But the doubt had hardly crossed her mind before a tall figure turned the corner by the lonely boat-house, and the next moment Hugh was coming rapidly toward her.
“Margaret!” he exclaimed, as he caught hold of her outstretched hands, “what does this mean? why have you kept me away from you all these hours, and then appointed this solitary place for our meeting?” Then, as she did not answer, and he looked at her more closely, his voice changed: “Good heavens! what has happened; what has my father done to you? How ill! how awfully ill you look, my darling!”
“It is nothing; I have not slept,” she returned, trying to speak calmly. “I am unhappy, Hugh, and trouble has made me weak.”
“You weak,” incredulously; then, as he saw her eyes filling with tears, “sit down on this smooth white bowlder, and I will place myself at your feet. Now give me your hand, and tell me what makes you so unlike yourself this evening.”
Margaret obeyed him, for her limbs were trembling, and a sudden mist seemed to hide him from her eyes; when it cleared, she saw that he was watching her with unconcealed anxiety.
“What is it, Margaret?” he asked, still more tenderly; “what is troubling you, my darling?” But he grew still more uneasy when she suddenly clung to him in a fit of bitter weeping and asked him over and over again between her sobs to forgive her for making him so unhappy.
“Margaret,” he said at last, very gently but firmly, “I can not have you say such things to me; forgive you who have been the blessing of my life; whose only fault is that you love me too well.”
“I can not be your blessing now, Hugh;” and then she drew herself from his embrace. “Do you remember this place, dear? It was on this bowlder that I was sitting that evening when you found me and asked me to be your wife. We have had some happy days since then, Hugh, have we not? and now to-night I have asked you to meet