"As we are to spend the day in your beautiful house----"
"Nay," he interrupted, "you are to spend a week or two at least with me."
"Ah!" rejoined the wily Margaret, to make her ground sure, "but you did not count upon an additional incumbrance in the shape of Me."
"An incumbrance, my dear young lady!" exclaimed Mr. Weston, completely won over, as she intended he should be--she hadn't been an actress for nothing. "Have at her with another quotation, Gerald!"
"Thou shalt have five thousand welcomes," said Mr. Hart, readily "without the fivepence, Margaret."
"Bravo! bravo!" cried Mr. Weston. "My friend's friends are mine. I shall be delighted with your society."
Indeed, he was unexpectedly pleased with the two girls; they were well dressed, and bore themselves like ladies--as they were--and this gratified the old worldling.
"Very well, then," said Margaret, with a bewitching smile; "I could not say No on less persuasion. So I propose that you two gentlemen run way and chat, and leave Lucy and me to amuse ourselves, if you are not afraid to trust us."
Mr. Weston, thinking to himself, "Really a very charming creature!" made a gallant reply, and taking his friend's arm, walked with him into the garden.
Margaret and Lucy sat or strolled in the balcony which fringed the windows of the first floor of the house. Margaret, in her tender watchfulness of Lucy, had observed the little start of surprise which Lucy had given on seeing Mr. Weston, and she found a difficulty in accounting for it.