‘Not that I know of.’
‘I expect I shall find it rather dull.’
Another jealous pang shot through Alec’s heart. Laura and his cousin were agreed on this point. What more natural than that they should amuse each other? In a day or two Semple would be on better terms with Laura than he was himself. Of course he would fall in love with her—and she?
Anyone watching the course of affairs at Glendhu would have thought that Alec’s foreboding was in a fair way of being realized. Laura was very gracious to her guardian’s nephew, and overlooked in the prettiest manner his little vulgarities. The two were constantly together, and neither seemed to feel the want of a more extended circle of acquaintance. It was nobody’s fault, for Semple had been invited to Glendhu before Mr. Taylor’s death had caused Laura to become a member of Mr. Lindsay’s family; but Miss Lindsay determined that she would at least introduce another guest into the house. She wrote to Alec’s sister, and asked her to spend a fortnight at Loch Long.
When the invitation reached the Castle Farm, Margaret’s first impulse was to decline it without saying anything to her father, partly out of shyness and a sense of the deficiencies in her wardrobe, partly because she could not easily at that season be spared from the farm. But when Mr. Lindsay asked if there was anything in her aunt’s letter, Margaret felt bound to mention the matter to him; and he at once insisted upon her going.
Margaret’s advent, however, made little practical difference in the usual order of things at Glendhu. Mr. Semple at first offered her a share of his attentions; but she received them so coldly that he soon ceased to trouble himself about her, and devoted himself to Laura as before, while Margaret seemed perfectly contented with her own society when Miss Lindsay was not with her guests.
There was little intimacy between the two girls, and the blame of this could not fairly be attributed to Laura.
‘I am so glad you have come, Miss Lindsay,’ she had said on the first occasion when they were left alone together. ‘May I call you “Margaret”? I think it is such a perfectly lovely name.’
‘Of course you may,’ said the matter-of-fact Margaret.
‘And you will call me “Laura,” of course.’