"Yes, it would. But it would be very hard too," said Janetta, thinking how lovely Margaret looked, and what a heroine of romance—what a princess of dreams—she would surely be some day. And she, poor, plain, brown, little Janetta! There was probably no romance in store for her at all.
But Life holds many secrets in her hand; and perhaps it was Janetta and not Margaret for whom a romance was yet in store.
"Hard? Do you call it hard?" Margaret asked, with a curiously exalted expression, like that of a saint absorbed in mystic joys. "It would be most easy, Janetta, to give up everything for love."
"I don't know," said Janetta—for once unsympathetic. "Giving up everything means a great deal. Would you like to go away from Helmsley Court, for instance, and live in a dingy street with no lady's maid—only a servant of all-work—on three hundred a year?"
"I think I could do anything for a man whom I loved," sighed Margaret; "but I cannot feel as if I should ever care enough for Sir Philip Ashley to do it for him."
"What sort of a man would you prefer for a husband, then?" asked Janetta.
"Oh, a man with a history. A man about whom there hung a melancholy interest—a man like Rochester in 'Jane Eyre'——"
"Not a very good-tempered person, I'm afraid!"
"Oh, who cares about good temper?"
"I do, for one. Really, Margaret, you draw a picture which is just like my cousin, Wyvis Brand."