“Marguerite, future marchioness of Eaglecliff, when you are married will your ladyship please to remember one poor Cornelia Compton, who lived in an old country house near Winchester, and once enjoyed your favor?” said Miss Compton.
Marguerite shrugged her shoulders with an expression to the effect that the future succession of the Marquisate of Eaglecliff was a matter of no moment to her.
But from this time, Marguerite’s friends accused her, with uncertain justice, of showing somewhat more favor to the boyish lover, who might one day set the coronet of a marchioness upon her brow. When rallied upon this point, she would reply:
“There are certainly qualities which I do like in the young man; he is frank, simple and intelligent, and above all, is perfectly free from affectation, or pretension of any sort. Upon individual worth alone he is entitled to polite consideration.”
There was, perhaps, a slight discrepancy between this opinion and one formerly delivered by Miss De Lancie; but let that pass; the last-uttered judgment was probably the most righteous, as growing out of a longer acquaintance, and longer experience in the merits of the subject.
Thus—while Lord William Daw prolonged his stay, and Mr. Murray fumed and fretted, the months of April, May, and June went by. The first of July the family of Compton Lodge prepared to commence their summer tour among the watering, and other places of resort. They left Winchester about the seventh of the month.
Lord William Daw had not been invited to join their party, nor had he manifested inclination to obtrude himself upon their company, nor did he immediately follow in their train.
Nevertheless, a few days after their establishment at Berkeley Springs, Colonel Compton read in the list of arrivals the names of “Lord William Daw, Rev. Henry Murray, and two servants.”
Enough! The intimacy between the young nobleman and the Comptons was renewed at Berkeley. And soon the devotion of his youthful lordship to the beautiful and gifted Marguerite De Lancie was the theme of every tongue. To escape this notice, Marguerite withdrew from her party, and attended by her maid and footman, proceeded to join some acquaintances at Saratoga.
In vain! for unluckily Saratoga was as free to one traveler as to another, provided he could pay. And within the same week of Marguerite’s settlement at her lodgings, all the manœuvring mammas and marriageable daughters at the Springs were thrown into a state of excitement and speculation by the appearance among them of a young English nobleman, the heir presumptive of a marquisate.