“I couldn’t marry him, I couldn’t, for he is my cousin!” she said; “and I do not love him that way, but he was so much to me, how can I live without him?”
And then there began to creep into her heart hot, resentful feelings toward Mr. Beresford, who had put it into her mind to taunt Phil with his idleness.
“I hate him—I hate him!” she said, stamping her little feet by way of emphasis, but when she remembered that Phil had forgiven him, and still held him as his friend, and wished her to do so, she grew more calm and less resentful toward him, but declined to see him, when, next morning, he rode over to Hetherton Place and asked for her.
“Tell him I am sick,” she said to Pierre, “and can see no one, unless it is Margery. Ask him, please, to call at her door, and tell her to come to me, for I am in great trouble.”
With a suspicion as to the nature of Queenie’s trouble, Mr. Beresford rode back to town and delivered the message to Margery, who went at once to her friend and tried to comfort her. But Queenie refused to be comforted. Phil was gone, and what was there now for her?
“You can bring him back. The ship does not sail for some days you say, and a word from you will change his mind,” Margery said, caressing the bowed head resting on her lap.
“Do you think—do you believe he would come back, if I were to write and beg him?” Queenie asked, quickly, lifting up her tear-stained face.
“I’ve no doubt of it,” Margery said; “but, darling, if you do that he will have a right to expect you to marry him. Sending for him to come back would mean nothing else, nor would anything else satisfy him.”
“Then he must go,” Queenie answered, with a rain of tears. “I cannot marry my cousin; that is a part of my religion. It would be hideous to do it. Phil must go; but my whole life goes with him. Oh, Phil, I am nothing, nothing without you. Why were you so silly as to fall in love and so spoil everything?”
That night, as Margery sat with her mother over their tea talking of Queenie, Mrs. La Rue said to her;