Who’d have guessed it from her lip,
Or her brow’s accustomed bearing,
On the night she thus took ship,
Or started landward, little caring?”
—Browning.
Christmas approached, and the gay belles of Richmond were preparing for the festivities of that season.
Colonel Compton with his family and a few chosen friends went down to Compton Lodge to spend the holidays in country hospitalities, hunting, etc.
The party had been there but a few days, when, on Christmas morning, while the family and their guests were assembled in the old, oak-paneled, front parlor, before breakfast, and Colonel Compton was standing at a side table, presiding over an immense old family punch bowl, from which he ladled out goblets of frothy eggnog to the company, the door was quietly opened, and without announcement Marguerite De Lancie entered, saying, “A merry Christmas! friends.”
“Marguerite! Marguerite!” exclaimed—first Cornelia, and then all the young ladies that were present, pressing forward to meet her, while the matrons and the gentlemen of the party, with less vehemence but equal cordiality, waited to welcome her.
“My lost sweetheart, by all that’s amazing!” cried Colonel Compton, who, in his engrossment, was the very last to discover the arrival.