James Dugdale's attention had been caught by Margaret's look and manner when she spoke of her brother's marriage. He discerned something painful in her mind in reference to it, but he could not trace its nature, and he could not question her just then.
Margaret went to her room, and seated in her old place by the window--its floral framework bore no blossom now--thought out the subject which had come into her mind.
Miss Crofton arrived punctually, and found the drawing-room into which she was shown--very much against her will, for she would have preferred a tumultuous rush upstairs, and the entrée to the nursery region--occupied only by Robert Meredith. They had met during Hayes Meredith's expedition to London, and Lucy, though an engaged young lady, and therefore, of course, impervious to the temptations of coquetry, had perceived with quite sufficient distinctness that this "remarkably nice boy," as she afterwards called him, thought her very pretty, and found her rattling, rapid, girlish talk--which had the delightful effect of setting him quite at his ease--very attractive.
Nothing could be more ridiculous, of course; but then nothing was more common than for very young persons of the male sex (somehow, Miss Lucy avoided calling him a "boy" in her thoughts) to "take a fancy" to girls or women much older than themselves; and in some not clearly-explained or distinctly-understood way, it was supposed to be very "safe" for them to do so. She had no objection to the admiration even of so young an admirer as Robert Meredith, and she was pleased as well as amused by the candid and unequivocal pleasure which Robert manifested on seeing her. The youthful colonial did not suffer in the least from the disease of shyness, and was pleasantly unembarrassed in the presence of the eldest Miss Crofton.
The two had had time to talk over the unexpected return of Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin; and Miss Crofton, who was by no means deficient in perception, had had an opportunity of observing that her young admirer did not share her enthusiasm for Margaret, but was, on the contrary, distinctly cold and disdainful in the few remarks which he permitted himself to make concerning her, before Margaret made her appearance. When she did so, and Miss Crofton had started up and rapturously embraced her, that young lady and Robert Meredith alike remarked simultaneously that she was startlingly pale.
After a great many questions had been asked by Lucy and answered by Margaret, in whose manner there was an indefinable change which her friend felt very soon, and which puzzled her, Margaret took Miss Crofton upstairs for an inspection of little Gertrude and the "thoroughly confidential" talk for which Lucy declared herself irrepressibly eager.
"If she knew--if she only knew--this pure, harmless creature," Margaret thought, with a pang of fierce pain as Lucy Crofton hugged the child and talked to her, and appealed to the nurse in support of her admiration, for which Gerty was poutingly ungrateful,--"if she did but know how it has been with me since we last met, and how it is with my child!"
"Yon are shivering, Margaret. You seem very cold. Let me poke the fire up before we settle ourselves. And now tell me all about yourself, how you really are; of course one could not ask before that young Meredith. I want to see his father so much. By the bye, Haldane told me you knew him so well in Australia. You don't look very well, I think, but you are much stronger than when you went abroad."
"I am much stronger," said Margaret. "But before I talk about myself, and I have a deal to tell you,"--Miss Crofton was delighted,--"I want to talk to you about yourself and Haldane."
Miss Crofton was perfectly willing to enter on so congenial a subject, and she told Margaret all about the arrangements, which included many festive proceedings, to which the girl naturally attached pleasurable anticipations. When she had reached that portion of the programme which included the names and dresses of the bridesmaids, she stopped abruptly, and said with some embarrassment: