East Angels: A Novel

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"I have no doubt she would. I see you are afraid to quote."

"Afraid?" said Margaret, in a tone of cold inquiry. And then, with the same cold intonation, she repeated two or three of Garda's joyous phrases.

"Yes, she is happy! Of course it's magnanimous in me to say so, but I owe her no grudge; on the contrary, it has been refreshing to see, in this nineteenth century, a girl so frankly in love. She would have married Lucian Spenser just the same if they neither of them had had a cent; she would have made any sacrifice for him—don't you think so?"

"Yes; but it wouldn't have been a sacrifice to her."

"Bravo! I gave you such a chance to say insidious things."

Margaret smiled a little at this suggestion. Then, in the silence that followed, the old look came back to her face—a look of guarded reserve, which, however, evidently covered apprehension.

She had, indeed, been in great dread. The dread was lest the agitation which had overpowered her during that last conversation she had had with Winthrop before she went back to her husband, should reappear. This brief journey of theirs together was the first perfect opportunity he had had since then to call it forth again; up to to-day there had been no opportunity, she had prevented opportunity. But now she was at his mercy; any one of a hundred sentences which he could so easily say, would suffice to bring back that emotion which suffocated her, and made her (as she knew, though he did not) powerless. But, so far, he had said none of these things. She was grateful to him for every moment of the respite.

Thus they sat there, appearing no doubt to the other passengers a sufficiently happy and noticeably fortunate pair.

For Winthrop had about him a certain look which, in America, confers distinction—that intangible air that belongs to the man who, well educated to begin with, has gone forth into the crowded course, and directed and carried along his fortunes by his own genius and energy to the goal of success. It is a look of power restrained, of comprehension; of personal experience, personal knowledge; not theory. The unsuccessful men who met Winthrop—this very steamer carried several of them—were never angry with him for his good-fortune; they could see that he had not always been one of the idle, though he might be idle now; they could see that he knew that life was difficult, that he had, as they would have expressed it, "been through it himself," and was not disposed to underrate its perplexities, its oppressions. They could see, too, not a few of them, poor fellows! that here was the man who had not allowed himself to dally with the inertia, the dilatoriness, the self-indulgent weakness, folly, or worse, which had rendered their own lives so ineffectual. They envied him, very possibly; but they did not hate him; for he was not removed from them, set apart from them, by any bar; he was only what they might themselves have been, perhaps; at least what they would have liked to be.

And the women on board all envied Margaret. They thought her very fair as she sat there, her eyes resting vaguely on the water, her cheeks showing a faint, fixed flush, the curling waves of her hair rippling back in a thick mass above the little ear. Everything she wore was so beautiful, too—from the hat, with its waving plume, and the long soft gloves, to the rich shawl, which lay where it had fallen over the back of her chair. They were sure that she was happy, because she looked so fortunate; any one of them would have changed places with her blindly, without asking a question.