Bobby McGinnis found himself in a new position then. He was Mr. Robert McGinnis, the accepted suitor of Miss Margaret Kendall, and as such, he was introduced to Margaret’s friends.
It was just here, perhaps, that misery began for Bobby. He was not more at ease in his new, well-fitting evening clothes than he would have been in the garb of Sing Sing; nor did he feel less conspicuous among the gay throng about Margaret’s chair than he would if he had indeed worn the prison stripes.
As Bobby saw it, he was in prison, beyond the four walls of which lay a world he had never seen—a world of beautiful music and fine pictures; a world of great books and famous men; a world of travel, ease, and pleasure. He could but dimly guess the meaning of half of what was said; and the conversation might as well have been conducted in a foreign language so far as there being any possibility of his participating in it. Big, tall, and silent, he stood as if apart. And because he was apart—he watched.
He began to understand then, why he was unhappy—yet he was not watching himself, he was watching Margaret. She knew this world—this world that was outside his prison walls; and she was at home in it. There was a light in her eye that he had never brought there, though he had seen it sometimes when she had been particularly interested in her work at the Mill House. As he watched her now, he caught the quick play of color on her cheeks, and heard the ring of enthusiasm in her voice. One subject after another was introduced, and for each she had question, comment, or jest. Not once did she appeal to him. But why should she, he asked himself bitterly. They—those others near her, knew this world. He did not know it.
Sometimes the mills were spoken of, and she was questioned about her work. Then, indeed, she turned to him—but he was not the only one to whom she turned: she turned quite as frequently to the man who was seldom far away from the sound of her voice when she was at Hilcrest—Frank Spencer.
McGinnis had a new object for his brooding eyes then; and it was not long before he saw that it was to this same Frank Spencer that Margaret turned when subjects other than the mills were under discussion. There seemed to be times, indeed, when she apparently heard only his voice, and recognized only his presence, so intimate was the sympathy between them. McGinnis saw something else, too—he saw the look in Frank Spencer’s eyes; and after that he did not question again the cause of his own misery.
Sometimes McGinnis would forget all this, or would call it the silly fears of a jealous man who sees nothing but adoration in every eye turned upon his love. Such times were always when Margaret was back at the Mill House, and when it seemed as if she, too, were inside his prison walls with him, leaving that hated, unknown world shut forever out. Then would come Hilcrest—and the reaction.
“She does not love me,” he would moan night after night as he tossed in sleepless misery. “She does not love me, but she does not know it—yet. She is everything that is good and beautiful and kind; but I never, never can make her happy. I might have known—I might have known!”
CHAPTER XXXVII
The Spencers remained at Hilcrest nearly all summer with only a short trip or two on the part of Mrs. Merideth and Ned. The place was particularly cool and delightful in summer, and this season it was more so than usual. House-parties had always been popular at Hilcrest, and never more so than now. So popular, indeed, were they that Margaret suspected them to be sometimes merely an excuse to gain her own presence at Hilcrest.