"Though surely not more childish than a man," she answered, rising from her low seat, and standing beside him with her serious eyes shining into his. "O Sidney, I wish we were poorer people. I should like to work for you, as Laura does for George, because they are not rich. I shall never have any real work to do for you; that would be my idea of happiness. I will wear your diamonds. Oh, yes! But you must not make a child of me."
"You are not a child, but an angel," he said.
"Ah! if you think me an angel," she replied gayly, "it will be very bitter to find out your mistake. But still angels are ministering spirits. Don't you think I would rather use my hands in sewing for you than have you load them with rings? And my feet would be less weary moving up and down on errands for you, than dancing through tedious dances with some other man. I am sure poor people have ways of happiness that we know nothing of."
"Margaret," he said, "you have grown up too much alone. You have missed the wholesome companionship of girls of your own rank."
"Ah!" she cried, "I'm no longer an angel."
She turned away from him rather shyly and sadly, he thought, and touched the bell.
"If you had been a poorer man," she said, "you would have bought me a beautiful flower, and I should have worn it now, at once; and perhaps, I might have kissed it when it was faded, and put it away as something sacred. But now my maid must take charge of these costly things, and I cannot keep them for no one else to see."
"Margaret," he cried, "I would have brought you the loveliest flower in England, if I had known!"
As she stood a little way apart from him, with downcast eyes, he noticed for the first time that she was wearing no flowers. Was it for this reason? Had she waited for him to bring one that she might carry in her bosom this memorable evening, and put it away as something sacred, which no one should see but herself? And it would have been so if he had been a poor man. For a moment he caught a glimpse, through Margaret's eyes, of a happiness simpler, more natural, and nobler in the married life than that which lay before him and her. He could almost have wished himself as poor a man as his cousin George, for the sake of it.
But the door opened in answer to Margaret's ring, and a middle-aged woman entered, whom he fancied he knew by sight. Her face was pleasant, with traces of prettiness, which had become refined by thought and by some sadness. Margaret put her hand affectionately on her arm.