“And yet spurns society? Ours!”
“No, simply develops no affinity for it; would like to, if only to please me; but can’t. Doesn’t even make intimate companions among men; simply clings to his fond, lone father, and the lone father to him, closer than any pair of twin orphan girls that ever you saw. I don’t believe any thing in life could divide them.”
“Ah, don’t you trust him! Man proposes, Cupid disposes. A girl will stick to her mother; but a man? Why, the least thing—a pair of blue eyes, a yellow curl”—
The bachelor gayly shook his head, and, leaning over with an air of secrecy, said: “A pair of blue eyes have shot him through and through, and a yellow curl is wound all round him from head to heel, and yet he sticks to his father.”
“He can’t live,” said the lady. Marguerite’s hand pressed her arm, and they rose. As the bachelor drew the light curtain of a long window aside, that they might pass in, the light fell upon Marguerite’s face. It was entirely new to him. It seemed calm. Yet instantly the question smote him, “What have I done? what have I said?” She passed, and turned to give a parting bow. The light fell upon him. She was right; it was Claude’s friend, the engineer.
When he came looking for them a few minutes later, he only caught, by chance, a glimpse of them, clouded in light wraps and passing to their carriage. It was not yet twelve.
Between Marguerite’s chamber and that of one of the daughters of the family there was a door that neither one ever fastened. Somewhere down-stairs a clock was striking three in the morning, when this door softly opened and the daughter stole into Marguerite’s room in her night-robe. With her hair falling about her, her hands unconsciously clasped, her eyes starting, and an outcry of amazement checked just within her open, rounded mouth, she stopped and stood an instant in the brightly lighted chamber.
Marguerite sat on the bedside exactly as she had come from the carriage, save that a white gossamer web had dropped from her head and shoulders, and lay coiled about her waist. Her tearless eyes were wide and filled with painful meditation, even when she turned to the alarmed and astonished girl before her. With suppressed exclamations of wonder and pity the girl glided forward, cast her arms about the sitting figure, and pleaded for explanation.
“It is a headache,” said Marguerite, kindly but firmly lifting away the intwining arms.—“No, no, you can do nothing.—It is a headache.—Yes, I will go to bed presently; you go to yours.—No, no”—
The night-robed girl looked for a moment more into Marguerite’s eyes, then sank to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and wept. Marguerite laid her hands upon the bowed head and looked down with dry eyes. “No,” she presently said again, “it is a headache. Go back to your bed.—No, there is nothing to tell; only I have been very, very foolish and very, very selfish, and I am going home to-morrow. Good-night.”