There are moments which leave their impress upon one’s lifetime, changing instantaneously, as it were, our thoughts and feelings, and such an one had come to Maggie Lee, who was roused from a deep reverie by the shrill voice of her aunt, exclaimed, ‘Well, I’ve been on a Tom-fool’s errand once in my life. Here I’ve waited in that hot depot over two trains, and heard at the last minute that Mrs. Thornton and her son came up last night, and I hain’t seen them after all. It’s too bad.’
Very quiet Maggie told of the judge’s call, repeating all the particulars of the interview; then stealing away to her chamber, she thought again, wondering where and what she would be three years from that day.
A year had passed away, and Graham Thornton, grown weary of his duties, has resigned the office of judge, and turned schoolteacher, so the gossipping villagers say, and with some degree of truth, for regularly each day Maggie Lee and Ben go up to Greystone Hall, where they recite their lessons to its owner, though always in the presence of its lady mistress, who has taken a strange fancy to Maggie Lee, and whose white hands have more than once rested caressingly on the dark, glossy hair of the young girl. To a casual observer, the Maggie of sixteen is little changed from the Maggie of fifteen years; but to him, her teacher, she is not the same, for while in some respects she is more a woman and less a child, in everything pertaining to himself she is far more a child than when first he met her one short year ago. Then there was about her a certain self-reliance, which is now all gone, and he who has looked so often into the thoughts and feelings of the childish heart knows he can sway her at his will.
‘But ’tis only a girlish friendship she feels for him,’ he says; ‘only a brotherly interest he entertains for her;’ and so day after day she comes to his library, and on a low stool, her accustomed seat at his side, she drinks in new inspirations with which to feed that girlish friendship, while he, gazing down into her soft, brown, dreamy eyes, feels more and more how necessary to his happiness is her daily presence there. And if sometimes the man of the world asks himself ‘where all this will end?’ his conscience is quieted by the answer that Maggie Lee merely feels toward him as she would any person who had done her a like favour. So all through the bright summer days and through the hazy autumn time, Maggie dreams on, perfectly happy, though she knows not why, for never yet has a thought of love for him entered her soul. She only knows that he to her is the dearest, best of friends, and Greystone Hall the loveliest spot on earth, but the wish that she might ever be its mistress has never been conceived.
With the coming of the holidays the lessons were suspended for a time, for there was to be company at the hall, and its master would need all his leisure.
‘I shall miss you so much,’ he said to Maggie, as he walked with her across the fields which led to her humble home. ‘I shall miss you, but the claims of society must be met, and these ladies have long talked of visiting us.’
‘Are they young and handsome?’ Maggie asked involuntarily.
‘Only one—Miss Helen Deane is accounted a beauty. She is an heiress, too, and the best match in all the city of L——,’ answered Mr. Thornton, more to himself than Maggie, who at the mention of Helen Deane felt a cold shadow folding itself around her heart.
Alas poor Maggie Lee. The world has long since selected the proud Helen as the future bride of Graham Thornton, who, as he walks slowly back across the snow-clad field, tramples upon the delicate footprints you have made, and wishes it were thus easy to blot out from his heart all memory of you! Poor, poor Maggie Lee, Helen Deane is beautiful, far more beautiful than you, and when in her robes of purple velvet, with her locks of golden hair shading her soft eyes of blue, she flits like a sunbeam through the spacious rooms of Greystone Hall, waking their echoes with her voice of the richest melody, what marvel if Graham Thornton does pay her homage, and reserves all thoughts of you for the midnight hour, when the hall is still and Helen’s voice no longer heard? He is but a man—a man, too, of the world, and so, though you, Maggie Lee, are very dear to him, he does not think it possible that he can raise you to his rank—make you the honoured mistress of his home, and still lower himself not an iota from the station he has ever filled. And though his mother loves you, too, ’tis not with a mother’s love, and should children ever climb her knee calling her son their sire, she would deem you a governess befitting such as they, and nothing more. But all this Maggie does not know, and when the visiting is over and Helen Deane is gone, she goes back to her old place and sits again at the feet of Graham Thornton, never wondering why he looks so oft into her eyes of brown, trying to read there that he has not wronged her.