"No doubt," replied Mr. Grey, uneasily. He did not seem as if he liked referring to the subject, and he began to pull out the stops and put them in again, as if his thoughts were occupied by one engrossing topic.
"How greatly the world fails in its measurement of a character like his," said Mr. Warde.
"True—true," returned Mr. Grey.
"Proud, susceptible, extreme in every thing, and easily deceived from the very integrity of his own nature. I can scarcely picture to myself a character more likely to become the dupe of an unprincipled woman; for while her vanity prompted her to make him her slave, he firmly believed that her heart was devoted to him, and a mistaken sense of justice impelled him to return her supposed regard."
"You know that he did not elope with her," said Mr. Grey.
"So I heard," replied Mr. Warde; "but it was said that the husband intercepted them."
"Her tame husband," remarked Mr. Grey, "there was no duel."
"Thank God for that!" said Mr. Warde, "matters were quite bad enough."
All this passed in a very low voice, but Margaret listened with all her might, and caught nearly the whole of the discourse. The iniquitous conversation of a boarding-school had rendered her no stranger to histories like the present; but she had rather considered them in the light of improper fictions, which it was very naughty in the girls to talk about, than as some of the actual occurrences of life, such as might be discussed by two grave old men like those before her. She looked at the music-book which she held in her hand, and seeing the name of Claude Haveloc on the title-page, she laid it aside, and resolved to play from her own music in future. She was in many respects a remarkable little creature.
It might be reckoned one of the greatest advantages of her earlier life, that she had not been sent to school until the death of her mother, which took place when she was fourteen years old. Until that time she had been well and delicately brought up. Her father, a Colonel in the Company's service, had sent her to a highly respectable school, intending at the end of three years to return to England, and place her at the head of his house; but not long afterwards, he was killed in an engagement under circumstances that in Europe would have exalted his name to the stars, but which never transpired beyond the confines of the distant province in which it took place; if we except a brief and inaccurate statement in the papers, coupled with a hasty regret that the Company should have lost an efficient servant.