Margery was pained and troubled as she took her way along the paddock—pained not so much at the woman’s words as at the thought that the man had re-echoed them and deemed her stupid and plain. She had grown to look on Stuart Crosbie as something bright and delightful in her life. They had played together as children, and the memory of that friendship was the strongest link in the chain that held him as her hero. When he was away, Stuart had written once or twice to Margery, sending her views of the places he visited, and giving her long chatty accounts of his travels. When he came home, they renewed their intimacy; there was not a shadow of surprise or fear in Margery’s mind when the young squire came so frequently to see her.
She had no suspicion that this friendship would annoy his mother or was in any way strange or uncommon. She liked Stuart Crosbie; she could talk to him of her studies, her pursuits—a sealed book in her home—and gradually grew to welcome him as a companion with whom she could converse easily and naturally, and as a friend who would never fail her. Mrs. Morris was too great an invalid to devote much thought to the girl’s amusements, nor would she have been greatly troubled had she known how intimate the young squire and Margery had become; so the girl had had no constraint put upon her; she met, walked, and chatted with Stuart Crosbie as freely as she liked, and no cloud had dawned on her happy life till to-day.
The sight of that other girl, so different from herself, had brought a strange, sharp pang, but that was lost in the pain she endured when she thought that Stuart had agreed with the cruel remark, and that his friendship was gone forever. She wended her way along the paddock, and was turning through the gate to enter the gardeners’ path again, when a hand was stretched out from beside her, took the basket from her, and, putting a finger under her chin, raised her head from its drooping position.
“Well?” said Stuart, quietly.
“Give me my basket, please, Mr. Stuart,” Margery murmured, hurriedly, a crimson wave of color dyeing her cheeks.
“What for?” asked the young man, calmly.
“I must get home. I am very late as it is.”
“Well, why don’t you go?” Stuart inquired, watching the color fade from her cheeks.
“I cannot go without my basket,” Margery answered, trying to be at her ease. “Please give it to me, Mr. Stuart.”
“No,” he answered, briefly.