“It would please her—comfort her, I am sure.”
“She has got one of God’s angels beside her, Sutherland. She doesn’t want me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that maid of hers.”
A pang—of jealousy, was it?—shot through Hugh’s heart. How could he see—what right had he to see anything in Margaret?
Hugh might have kept himself at peace, even if he had loved Margaret as much as she deserved, which would have been about ten times as much as he did. Is a man not to recognize an angel when he sees her, and to call her by her name? Had Hugh seen into the core of that grand heart—what form sat there, and how—he would have been at peace—would almost have fallen down to do the man homage. He was silent.
“My dear fellow!” said Falconer, as if he divined his feeling—for Falconer’s power over men and women came all from sympathy with their spirits, and not their nerves—“if you have any hold of that woman, do not lose it; for as sure as there’s a sun in heaven, she is one of the winged ones. Don’t I know a woman when I see her!”
He sighed with a kind of involuntary sigh, which yet did not seek to hide itself from Hugh.
“My dear boy,” he added, laying a stress on the word, “—I am nearly twice your age—don’t be jealous of me.”
“Mr. Falconer,” said Hugh humbly, “forgive me. The feeling was involuntary; and if you have detected in it more than I was aware of, you are at least as likely to be right as I am. But you cannot think more highly of Margaret than I do.”