And as Margaret departed, Mr. Adair with lifted eyebrows and in significant silence handed an envelope to his wife. She glanced at it with perfectly unmoved composure. It was what she had been expecting: a letter from Wyvis Brand asking for the hand of their daughter, Margaret Adair.
CHAPTER XXIX.
MARGARET'S CONFESSION.
Margaret heard nothing of her lover's letter that night. It was not thought desirable that the tranquillity of the evening should be disturbed. Lady Caroline would have sacrificed a good deal sooner than the harmonious influences of a well-appointed dinner and the passionless refinement of an evening spent with her musical and artistic friends. Mr. Adair's sisters were women of cultured taste, and she had asked two gentlemen to meet them, therefore it was quite impossible (from her point of view) to discuss any difficult point before the morning. Margaret, who knew pretty well what was coming, spent a rather feverish half-hour in her room before the ringing of the dinner-bell, expecting every minute that her mother would appear, or that she would be summoned to a conference with her father in the library. But when the dinner hour approached without any attempt at discussion of the matter, and she perceived that it was to be left until the morrow, it must be confessed that she drew long breath of relief. She was quite sufficiently well versed in Lady Caroline's tactics to appreciate the force and wisdom of this reserve. "It is so much better, of course," she said to herself, as her maid dressed her hair, "that we should not have any agitating scene just before dinner. I dare say I should cry—if they were all very grave and solemn I am sure I should cry!—and it would be so awkward to come down with red eyes. And, of course, I could not stay upstairs to-night Perhaps mamma will come to me to-night when every one is gone."
And armed with this anticipation, she went downstairs, looking only a little more flushed than usual, and able to bear her part in the conversation and the amusements as easily as if no question as to her future fate were hanging undecided in the air.
But Lady Caroline did not stay when she visited Margaret that night as usual in her pretty room. She caressed and kissed her with more than customary warmth, but she did not attempt to enter into conversation with her in spite of the soft appeal of Margaret's inquiring eyes. "My dear child, I cannot possibly stay with you to-night," she said. "Your Aunt Isabel has asked me to go into her room for a few minutes. Good-night, my own sweetest: you looked admirable to-night in that lace dress, and your singing was simply charming. Mr. Bevan was saying that you ought to have the best Italian masters. Good-night, my darling," and Margaret was left alone.
She was a little disturbed—a little, not very much. She was not apt to be irritable or impatient, and she had great confidence in her parents' love for her. She had never realized that she lived under a yoke. Everything was made so smooth and easy that she imagined that she had only to express her will in order to have it granted. That there might be difficulties she foresaw: her parents might hesitate and parley a good deal, but she had not the slightest fear of overcoming their reluctance in course of time. She had always been a young princess, and nobody had ever seriously combated her will.
"I am sure that if I am resolute enough I shall be allowed to do as I choose," she said to herself; and possibly this was true enough. But Margaret had never yet had occasion to measure her resolution against that of her father and mother.
She went to bed and to sleep, therefore, quite peacefully, and slept like a child until morning, while Wyvis Brand was frantically pacing up and down his old hall for the greater part of the night, and Janetta was wetting her pillow with silent tears, and Philip Ashley, sleepless like these others, vainly tried to forget his disappointment in the perusal of certain blue-books. Margaret was the cause of all this turmoil of mind, but she knew nothing of it, and most certainly did not partake in it.