"You see," said Mr. Gage to Margaret, on occasion of one of these attacks, "what you are to expect; when you have been married six months, you will wish yourself single, that you may be bridesmaid to some of your friends."
"No, she will not!" cried Harriet, "you don't see the difference. Do you think, if I had married dear Mr. Haveloc, I should now wish I was single?"
Mr. Gage laughed, and said "that altered the case, he had no doubt; but people with a very little imagination might conjecture the degree of peace that would have been enjoyed by both parties, if Harriet had married 'dear Mr. Haveloc.'"
However, though she was not married to him; she enjoyed the great satisfaction of teazing him to her heart's content. She would come in with a solemn face, and assure him that his lawyer had died suddenly, and the settlements must be transferred into other hands; that his coach-maker had absconded, and he must send elsewhere for his carriage; or that Margaret was up-stairs ill with the influenza, and the doctor was sure it would prove a very tedious attack.
This was the last time she succeeded in mystifying him, for before she had finished speaking, he rushed past her, and up the stairs in search of Margaret, whom he met quietly coming down, in perfect health. Harriet declared that a very affecting meeting took place on the staircase, and made Captain Gage laugh very much with her account of it; but she could not get Mr. Haveloc to believe any more of her provoking tales.
But she could not let him entirely alone. She affirmed that with regard to ladies' dress, he had one single idea, an idèe fixe, which she was anxious to reason him out of.
This idea was a perfect mania for shawls. He presented Margaret with one costly shawl after another, till Harriet said, it was plain he thought ladies' dress consisted of nothing else; and she vowed, that Margaret should go to church on the day, clothed in every single shawl he had ever given her. And then she would draw such a lively picture of Margaret's appearance in this singular costume, as would set every one present laughing.
Then she was always alluding to Mr. Humphries, though this was partly to plague Margaret. She would mention the songs Mr. Humphries liked, and she would sing them of an evening with a great deal of pathos, directing the expression particularly to Margaret. If she happened to wear any thing particularly pretty, she would ask if it was not something of that sort that Mr. Humphries used to admire so much?
Mr. Haveloc was not of a more curious disposition than men in general, but it was natural he should wish to know why Harriet laid so much stress on this Mr. Humphries, and why Margaret should always colour when she did so.
Mr. Gage, who was present one evening when Harriet made one of these allusions, told him that Humphries was a country squire, who lived near Mr. Singleton; a good sort of man, whom he believed Miss Capel had refused when she was at Singleton Manor; that the poor fellow had a large property, but really was such a boor, that you could not be surprised at any woman refusing him.