Faithful Margaret: A Novel

by Mrs. J. M. Simpson

On the whole his visit did much to heighten Margaret's feverish impatience, and filled her with some of his own sanguine hopes.

When the young gentleman had gone, Margaret wandered through the wide, echoing rooms with a sense of freedom which she had never experienced before; a feeling of affection for these familiar chambers, for the sake of her who had owned them, and of him who should have now possessed them.

How she had loved the tender-hearted and freakish Madam Brand, no soul save herself and that dead woman had known; and loving her as she did, could she do else than lay a like sentiment at the feet of her only kinsman, the hapless St. Udo.

Pacing through these lofty rooms the lonely girl thought over her checkered past; she breathed a sigh over the pathetic memory of her fond and foolish patroness; she gave a smile of scorn to the man who had come like a curse in the noble St. Udo's stead; the hateful impostor, whose last abject depredation had been but the type of his crawling, insatiable nature, which, sleuth-hound like, held on to the prey to the very last, and made off with a miserable mouthful of it rather than nothing.

But when she came to the portrait of St. Udo Brand, in the long crimson dining-room, the fierce flicker softened in her yearning eyes, and a sacred, tender smile dawned on her lips.

She studied the grand, passionate-speaking countenance, whose features were cast in a mold fitted to express the noblest emotions, till the soulful eyes seemed to seek hers with a living beam of gratitude; till the fine lips seemed to thrill with a gentle smile, and the souls of St. Udo Brand and Margaret Walsingham appeared to have met face to face for the first time, and to hold sweet communion together.

Great tears slowly dropped from Margaret's passionate eyes and washed her cheeks, her tender lip quivered with the thoughts that were swaying her heart; for a quick wild pang of grief smote her to think that he was in his grave.

He had scorned her, he had trampled her under foot, and she forgave him all, and wept that he was dead.

For oh, the heart of such a woman is capable of a love, which, to love of softer women, is as glowing wine to water, as the towering, scorching flame of the red volcano to the chill pale ray of the winter morn.

In the afternoon of the same day, Mrs. Chetwode came into Margaret's room with the news that Mr. Davenport was below, inquiring for an immediate interview.