While the two played, Margaret and Mr. Hinchley sat by the fire, and talked of their uncle, the pleasures of old times, new books, and the thousand other trifles, about which people who have no deep feelings in common converse together.
Miss Chase lost the game, because she had made up her mind to be defeated; but the next she won. Still, during the whole evening her attention was not sufficiently fixed upon either board or moves to prevent her hearing and seeing every thing that passed around her.
[CHAPTER XI.]
THE FEMALE IAGO.
The engagement between Laurence and Margaret Waring had been a family affair, brought about principally by the romance of a maiden aunt, with whom the young man was a favorite.
Edward had been under this relative's charge after the death of his parents, which occurred during his childhood, and she had petted and spoiled the boy as only a spinster could have done.
Mr. Waring, the uncle of Margaret, was one of Miss Laurence's nearest neighbors, and the girl had been almost as great a favorite with the spinster as her own nephew. Indeed, it was said that Mabel Laurence had loved Margaret's father in her youthful days; but how that might be nobody really knew, for the old maid wisely kept her own secrets, as women, after all, are apt to do when there is nothing to gratify the vanity in them.
But it happened that the boy and girl were reared almost like brother and sister, and the two houses were almost equally homes to both. Mr. Waring was a confirmed invalid, whose life seemed to hang upon a thread, and Miss Laurence had always been in yearly expectation that the girl would soon come entirely under her charge.