"It's true," he said with lazy emphasis. "Some women are pretty, and are content with that, and think it's good enough for you to sit and look at them; others are clever, and consider that if they talk and you listen it's all right. But you—why, you are the loveliest woman I know, and you are the cleverest. Madge, dear, I have no right to get the whole thing like this. There are so many better men who deserve it more than I do."
Margaret laughed.
"We don't get our deserts, Blair," she said. "You, for instance, might have married a dragon of propriety, who would keep you in order by the terror of her eye; or a plain heiress, who would bring you a large fortune to waste, anything but a foolish girl, who has no money and no family to bless herself with. There's that boat again! Where is it going?" she broke off.
He raised himself on his elbow indolently.
"That is the Days' boat," he said drowsily. "I don't know where it is going. Fishing, I suppose."
"They can't fish on this tide," said Margaret, who, though she had been only a week in Appleford, had learned more about its ways and habits than Blair would have gleaned in a year.
"No!" he said carelessly. "I can't quite make these Days out. They let us these lodgings, and they make us very comfortable, but I've a kind of feeling that they have some other way of getting their living that I don't understand. Now, why should he go out to sea this morning if he isn't going fishing?"
"The ways of Appleford are mysterious," said Margaret with a laugh, "and it would take a clever man to fathom them."
"Austin, for instance," he said, drawing a little nearer so that he could take her hand.
A slight cloud crossed Margaret's brow.