As Margaret made no answer, he went on:
“You were quite a child when you used first to do it—a tall little maid, even then, with such imperious ways! But you were always willing to do anything for your big boy cousin, and he has never forgotten you. All the time he was at college, and afterward, when he went abroad and travelled about in many strange and distant places, he carried with him always the image of that little maid, and when, at last, he turned homeward, one of his pleasantest visions was that of meeting her again.”
Margaret had changed her position and turned more directly toward him; she was looking straight into his eyes, with her direct and candid gaze, which his own met rather dreamily. She did not speak in answer to these fond assurances of his, but as she listened she smiled.
“And are you glad to hear that I have always had this tendre for my sweet cousin, which I somehow can’t get over, even yet?”
“Oh yes,” said Margaret, gently, “very glad,” and she looked at him with a deep and searching gaze, which he could not quite understand.
“Come nearer, dear,” he said, “and take your old place at my head, and try to twist my short locks into curls, as you used to do. You will discover a secret known only to myself and the discreet fraternity of barbers. Come and see!” and he extended a white hand, somewhat languidly, to draw her toward him.
“I think not,” said Margaret, drawing herself upright, into an attitude of buoyant self-possession. “You and the barbers may keep your secret, for the present. I won’t intrude.”
“Ah, but I want you. Come!” he said urgently, still holding out the delicate hand, on which a diamond sparkled.
But Margaret shook her head.
“Consider,” she said, with a little smile; “hadn’t I better stay where I am and pose for you, ‘talking platitudes in stained-glass attitudes,’ than put myself there, out of sight, encroaching upon the barbers’ privileges in more ways than one? As there is only one of me, I think you had better let me stay where I am. There ought to be five or six—one at your Sereneness’ head, and another at your feet. Two with jingling anklets and bangles, to dance in that space over yonder, and two just back of them, to discourse sweet music on their ’citherns and citoles’!”