"I never had much color, mama," said Margaret gravely. It was almost as though she were not quite well pleased by the remark.
She moved away from the door, and Lady Caroline's eyes followed her with a solicitude which had more anxiety and less pride than they used to show. For Margaret had altered during the last few months. She had grown more slender, more pale than ever, and a certain languor was perceptible in her movements and the expression of her beautiful eyes. She was not less fair, perhaps, than she had been before; and the ethereal character of her beauty had only been increased by time. Lady Caroline had been seriously distressed lately by the comments made by her acquaintances upon Margaret's appearance. "Very delicate, surely," said one. "Do you think that your daughter is consumptive?" said another. "She would be so very pretty if she looked stronger," remarked a third. Now these were not precisely the remarks that Lady Caroline liked her friends to make.
She could not quite understand her daughter. Margaret had of late become more and more reticent. She was always gentle, always caressing, but she was not expansive. Something was amiss with her spirits or her health: nobody could exactly say what it was. Even her father discovered at last that she did not seem well; but, although he grumbled and fidgeted about it, he did not know how to suggest a remedy. Lady Caroline hoped that the return to England would prove efficacious in restoring the girl's health and spirits, and she was encouraged by hearing Margaret express her pleasure in her English home. But she felt uneasily that she was not quite sure as to what was wrong.
"People are beginning to call very quickly," she said, looking at some cards that lay in a little silver tray. "The Bevans have been here, Margaret."
"Have they? When we were out yesterday, I suppose?"
"Yes. And the Accringtons, and—oh, ah, yes—two or three other people."
"Who, mamma?" said Margaret, her attention immediately attracted by her mother's hesitation. She turned away from the door and entered the morning-room as she spoke.
"Oh, only Lady Ashley, dear," said Lady Caroline smoothly. She had quite recovered her self-possession by this time.
"And Sir Philip Ashley," said Margaret, with equal calmness, as she glanced at the cards in the little silver dish. But the lovely color flushed up into her cheeks, and as she stood with her eyes cast down, still fingering the cards, her face assumed the tint of the deepest rose-carnation.
"Is that the reason?" thought Lady Caroline, with a sudden little thrill of fear and astonishment. "Surely not! After all this time—and after dismissing him so summarily! Well, there is no accounting for girls' tastes."