It is not necessary, because one is born poor, that one should like the conditions of that lowly estate, or have no taste for better things. On the contrary, Margaret was born with a love of all that was soft, and warm, and easy, and luxurious. She loved these things and prized them; she felt it in her to be a great lady; her gentle mind was such that she would have made an excellent princess, all the more sweet, gracious, and good the less she was crossed, and the more she had her own way.
I am disposed to think, for my own part, that for every individual who is mellowed and softened by adversity, there are at least ten in the world whom prosperity would mollify and bring to perfection; but then that latter process of development is more difficult to attain to. Margaret felt that it was within her reach. She would have done nothing unwomanly to secure her lover; nay, has it not been already said that she had made up her mind to be doubly prudent, and to put it in no one’s power to say that she had “given him encouragement?” But with that modest reserve, she had made up her mind to Harry’s happiness and her own. In her heart she had already consented, and regarded the bargain as concluded. She would have made him a very sweet wife, and Harry would have been happy. No doubt he was sufficiently a man of the world to have felt a sharp twinge sometimes, when his wife’s family was brought in question; but he thought nothing of that in his hot love, and I believe she would have made him so good a wife, and been so sweet to Harry, that this drawback would have detracted very little from his happiness.
So things were going on, ripening pleasantly towards a dénouement which could not be very far off, when that unlucky letter arrived from Loch Arroch, touching the re-appearance of Jeanie’s brother, the lost sailor, who had been Margaret’s first love. This letter upset her, poor soul, amid all her plans and hopes. If it had not, however, unluckily happened that the arrival of Edgar coincided with her receipt of the letter, and that both together were followed by the expedition to Loch Arroch, to the grandmother’s deathbed, I believe the sailor’s return would only have caused a little tremulousness in Margaret’s resolution, a momentary shadow upon her sweet reception of Harry, but that nothing more would have followed, and all would have gone well. Dear reader, forgive me if I say all would have gone well; for, to tell the truth, though it was so much against Edgar’s interests, and though it partook of the character of a mercenary match, and of everything that is most repugnant to romance, I cannot help feeling a little pang of regret that any untoward accident should have come in Margaret’s way. Probably the infusion of her good, wholesome Scotch blood, her good sense, and her unusual beauty, would have done a great deal more good to the Thornleigh race than a Right Honourable grandfather; and she would have made such a lovely great lady, and would have enjoyed her greatness so much (far more than any Lady Mary ever could enjoy it), and been so good a wife, and so sweet a mother! That she should give up all this at the first returning thrill of an old love, is perhaps very much more poetical and elevating; but I who write am not so young or so romantic as I once was, and I confess that I look upon the interruption of the story, which was so clearly tending towards another end, with a great deal of regret. Even Edgar, when he found her ready to accompany him to Scotland, felt a certain excitement which was not unmingled with regret. He felt by instinct that Harry’s hopes were over, and this thought gave him a great sense of personal comfort and relief. It chased away the difficulties out of his own way; but at the same time he could not but ask himself what was the inducement for which she was throwing away all the advantages that Harry Thornleigh could give her?—the love of a rough sailor, captain at the best, of a merchant-ship, who had been so little thoughtful of his friends as to leave them three or four years without any news of him, and who probably loved her no longer, if he had ever loved her. It was all to Edgar’s advantage that she should come away at this crisis, and what was it to him if she threw her life away for a fancy? But Edgar had never been in the way of thinking of himself only, and the mingled feelings in his mind found utterance in a vague warning. He did not know either her or her circumstances well enough to venture upon more plain speech.
“Do you think you are right to leave your brother just at this moment, when he is settling down?” Edgar said.
A little cloud rose upon Margaret’s face. Did not she know better than anyone how foolish it was?
“Ah!” she said, “but if granny is dying, as they say, I must see her,” and the ready tears sprung to her eyes.
Edgar was so touched by her looks, that, though it was dreadfully against his own interest, he tried again.
“Of all the women in the world,” he said, “she is the most considerate, the most understanding. It is a long and an expensive journey, and your life, she would say, is of more importance than her dying.”
He ventured to look her in the face as he spoke these words, and Margaret grew crimson under his gaze.
“I do not see how it can affect my life, if I am away for a week or two,” she said lightly, yet with a tone which showed him that her mind was made up. Perhaps he thought she was prudently retiring to be quit of Harry—perhaps withdrawing from a position which became untenable; or why might it not be pure gratitude and love to the only mother she had known in her life? Anyhow, whatever might be the reason, there was no more to be said.