Margaret Capel: A Novel, vol. 1 of 3

by Ellen Wallace

Margaret could not echo this remark: she loved music from her heart, and she sat absorbed in the sweet sounds, quite unconscious this time that Hubert Gage's eyes were fixed upon her face. Elizabeth played splendidly—better than any young lady at her school, and without a book. She sat watching her fine marble hand and arm as she stilled the harp-strings, and began to fancy that she should like to play the harp instead of the organ.

Hubert Gage pressed her very much to play in her turn, but she declined with a feeling of panic that almost made her giddy; and Elizabeth, at her request, sung her a ballad. It was the first time she had ever heard a song spoken, if the phrase may be applied to vocal music, and it moved her almost to tears. Hubert asked her if Bessy did not sing very well, and Margaret, lifting up her dewy eyes, said, "beautifully!" and looked so beautiful when she said it, that he leaned across to his sister, and declared that there was not upon the face of the earth such an exquisite little creature as her friend.

Miss Gage rose from the harp, and they sat round the fire for a chat, but there was no time for any more conversation, for Margaret's carriage was announced.

Captain Gage told her that she must soon come to see Bessy again. Elizabeth took an affectionate leave of her, and Hubert led her into the hall and wrapped her cloak all round her, much as one would muffle up a little child, talking and laughing all the time, and stopping to gather her flowers from the creepers in the hall in the intervals of handing her gloves, and winding her boa round her neck. He then went to the door, and assuring her that it was a hard frost, he offered her a cloak of his own, which she had some difficulty in preventing him from putting on, and which he absolutely insisted on throwing to the bottom of the carriage to keep her feet warm.

Margaret drove off a little taller than she was before. She wondered what the girls at school would have said if they had heard a young man declare he thought her an exquisite creature. She believed nobody thought her so at school. Girls had often told her that young men had quite looked at them, and squeezed their hands at a Christmas dance, but she wondered whether they ever threw their cloaks at their feet, almost like Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth. She had learned some few things that evening. She had spent several hours with a young lady who had not acquired a proficiency in an accomplishment for the sake of exhibiting to her acquaintance, but in order to make her home cheerful. Miss Gage had never asked her for a list of the things she had learned, a list so important to school girls who graduate, by its length, their good opinion of every girl they met.

Margaret had always a thirst for knowledge, and she felt more desirous than ever to cultivate her intellect, now that she found how agreeable it was to converse, or to listen to persons who talked well. She was ashamed to think that she did not know who King Christian was; she had been hurried, when at school, through a compressed History of England, but there had been no hurry in the way she had journeyed through Chaulieu's and Czerney's Exercises. Once impressed with the importance of acquiring information, she determined that nothing should divert her from a steady course of application.

In the midst of these reflections the carriage stopped, and she hastened to the drawing-room to give Mr. Grey an account of her visit before she went to bed. To her great vexation, she found him seated in earnest discourse with a stranger. The candles had burned low, one of the lamps had gone out, and the room was only half lighted. Margaret paused at the door, but Mr. Grey called her in.

"Come here, my child," said he, "I am afraid it is a very cold night. I hope you have taken no chill. Claude, my niece. Well, did you pass a pleasant evening?"

Mr. Haveloc, on being named to Margaret, rose and bowed slightly, placed her a chair, and returned to his own. She felt all her shyness return: coloured, bowed without raising her eyes, and went up to Mr. Grey.