From the first Margery’s great beauty attracted unusual attention but upon no one did it produce so great an effect as upon Grandma Ferguson, who first saw the girl the Sunday after her arrival in Merrivale. Reinette had told the sexton to give Miss and Mrs. La Rue a seat with her in the Hetherton pew, describing the two ladies to him so there could be no mistaking them. But Margery came alone, and whether it was that the old sexton’s mind was intent upon a short woman in black, or whether something about Margery herself carried him back to the Sundays of long ago, when a girlish figure used to glide up the aisle to John Ferguson’s pew, he made a mistake and Grandma Ferguson had just settled herself on her cushion and adjusted her wide skirts about her, when a rustling sound caught her ear, and turning her head she saw a face which made her start suddenly with a great throb of something like fear as a tall young girl, simply but elegantly attired in black silk and white chip bonnet, with a wreath of lilacs around it, took a seat beside her. Mrs. Rossiter had seen something in the French girl’s face which puzzled and bewildered her. And grandma saw it, too, and defined it at once, and drew a long breath as she gazed at the face so like the face of her Margaret dead over the sea. Who was she, grandma asked herself and forgot to say her prayers or listen to the sermon, as she wondered and watched. Others had seen only a likeness to Margaret Ferguson, but the mother who could never forget saw more than that; she saw her dead child repeated in this beautiful young girl, who grew restless and nervous under the scrutiny of the eyes she knew were fastened so constantly upon her, and was glad when the sermon was over and she could thus escape them.
Reinette, who occupied the Hetherton pew, had turned once, and seeing where Margery was, had nodded to her, and the moment church was over she came down the aisle, tossing her head airily, and with the strange witchery and magnetism of her smile and wonderful eyes, throwing into the shade the fair blonde whose beauty had been noted by the people as something remarkable. And how unlike they were to each other, golden-haired, blue-eyed, rose-tinted Margery, so tall, and quiet, and self-possessed, and dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-faced Reinette, petite and playful, and restless as a bird, with a flash in her brilliant eyes, before which even Margery’s charms were, for the time, forgotten.
“Who is she, Rennet?” grandma whispered, catching her granddaughter’s arm as she came near, and pointing toward Margery. “Who is she, with a face so like your mother’s that for a minute I thought it was my Margaret come back again.”
“Like my mother? Oh, I am so glad, for now I shall love her more than ever,” Reinette replied; then, touching Margery, she presented her to her grandmother, saying, as she did so: “She thinks you look like my mother, and perhaps you do, for I am sure you are more like a Ferguson than I am.”
The next day grandma went to the cottage, ostensibly to make some inquiries with regard to a dress, but really to see again the girl who was so like her daughter, and who was very kind and gentle with her, and said to her so sweetly:
“I am glad if I am like Mrs. Hetherton, for she was Reinette’s mother, and I am sure you will like me for it. I want people to like me.”
And in this wish Margery was gratified, for from the first she became very popular and took her place among the best young ladies in town. For this she was in part indebted to Reinette, who insisted that she should be noticed, and who, if she saw any signs of rebellion or indifference on the part of the people, opened her batteries upon the delinquents, and brought them to terms at once.
When the grounds were completed at Hetherton Place, she gave a garden party to which all the desirable people in Merrivale were bidden. It was in honor of Margery, she said, and she treated the young girl as a subject would treat a queen, and made so much of her, and talked of her so much, that Mr. Beresford said to her as they were standing a little apart from the others, and she was asking if he ever saw any one as beautiful as Margery:
“Yes, she is very pretty and graceful and all that, but she cannot have had the training which you did. Her early associates must have been very different from yours, and I am somewhat surprised at your violent fancy for her.”
Then Reinette turned upon him hotly, and he never forgot the look of scorn in her blazing eyes, as she said: