While, by reason of her more than ordinary mentality, as well as because of a very adaptable disposition, Margaret bore her life of self-sacrifice and isolation with less unhappiness than most girls could have done, there was one phase of it which was vastly harder upon her. Her nature being unusually strong in its affections, it took hard schooling indeed before she could endure with stoicism the loveless life she led. It was upon her relation with her elder sister Harriet, the only human being who really belonged to her, that she tried to feed her starved heart, cherishing almost with passion this one living bond; idealizing her sister and her sister's love for her, looking with an intensity of longing to the time when she would be free to be with Harriet, to lavish upon her all her unspent love, to live in the happiness of Harriet's love for her.
Harriet's lukewarmness, not manifest under her easy, good-natured bearing, was destined one day to come as a great shock to Margaret.
It was one night about five months before her uncle's sudden death that he talked with her of his will. They were together in the library, waiting for Henry, the negro manservant, to finish his night's chores about the place before coming to help the master of the house to bed.
"I trust, Margaret," Berkeley, with characteristic abruptness, broke a silence that had fallen between them, "that you are not counting on flourishing as an heiress when I have passed out?"
"I must admit," said Margaret apologetically, "that I never thought of that, stupid as it may seem to you, Uncle Osmond. Now that you mention it, it would be pleasant."
"'Pleasant?' To have me die and leave you rich?"
"I mean only the heiress part would be pleasant—and having English dukes marrying me, you know, and all that."
"How many English dukes, pray? I fancy they are a high-priced commodity, and my fortune isn't colossal."
"I shouldn't want a really colossal fortune."
"Modest of you. But," he added, "if I did mean to do you the injury of leaving you all I have, it would be more than enough to spoil what is quite too rare and precious for spoiling"—he paused, his keen eyes piercing her as he deliberately added—"a very perfect woman."