"Why?"
"You are no more fit to be a wife, Madge, than a child of five years old. You have no more thought or consideration, foresight or care."
"I am two years older than you are, notwithstanding."
"I fear if you live to be a hundred, you will never have the qualities necessary to secure your own happiness and that of another in the close, knitting bonds of wedded life."
I spoke more seriously than I intended. I was thinking of Mr. Regulus, and most devoutly hoped for his sake, this wild, nondescript girl would never reach his heart through the medium of his vanity. She certainly paid him the most dangerous kind of flattery, because it was indirect.
"You do not know what a sensible man might make of me," she said, shaking her head. "I really wish,—I do not know—but I sometimes think"—
She stopped and leaned her head on her hand, and her hair fell shadingly over her face.
"What, Margaret? I should like exceedingly to know your inmost thoughts and feelings. You seem to think and feel so little;—and yet, in every woman's heart there must be a fountain,—or else what a desert waste,—what a dreary wilderness it must be."
She did not speak, but put both hands over her face and bent it downwards, while her shoulders moved up and down with a spasmodic motion. I thought she was shaking with suppressed laughter; and though I could not imagine what had excited her mirth, I had known her convulsed by a ridiculous thought of her own, in the midst of general seriousness.
But all at once unmistakable sobs broke forth, and I found she was crying heartily, genuinely,—crying without any self control, with all the abandonment of a child.