“Probably she will accept you,” said Lady Augusta, pale and grand. “I do not understand the modes of action of such people. You will have had your way, in any case—and then you will hear what your father has to say.”
Harry flung out of the house furious. He was very unhappy, poor fellow! He was chilled and cast down, in spite of himself, by his mother’s speech. Why should he follow Margaret as if he suspected her? What right had he to interfere with her actions? If he went he might be supposed to insult her—if he stayed he should lose her. What was he to do? Poor Harry!—if Dr. Murray had not been so obnoxious to him, I think he would have confided his troubles to, and asked advice from, Margaret’s brother; but Dr. Charles had replied to his inquiry with a confidential look, and a smile which made him furious.
“She will be back in a week or two. I am not afraid just now, in present circumstances, that she will forsake me for long,” he had said. “We shall soon have her back again.”
We!—whom did the fellow mean by we? Harry resolved on the spot that, if she ever became his wife, she should give up this cad of a brother. Which I am glad to say, for her credit, was a thing that Margaret would never have consented to do.
But the Thornleigh family was not happy that day. Gussy, though she had never doubted Edgar before, yet felt cold shivers of uncertainty shoot through her heart now. Margaret was beautiful, and almost all women exaggerate the power of beauty. They give up instinctively before it, with a conviction, which is so general as to be part of the feminine creed, that no man can resist that magic power. No doubt Edgar meant to do what was best; no doubt, she said to herself, that in his heart he was true—but with a lovely woman there, so lovely, and with claims upon his kindness, who could wonder if he went astray? And this poor little scanty note which advised Gussy of his necessary absence, said not a word about Margaret. She read it over and over again, finding it each time less satisfactory. At the first reading it had been disappointing, but nothing more; now it seemed cold, unnecessarily hurried, careless. She contrasted it with a former one he had written to her, and it seemed to her that no impartial eye could mistake the difference. She sympathized with her brother, and yet she envied him, for he was a man, and could go and discover what was false and what was true; but she had to wait and be patient, and betray to no one what was the matter, though her heart might be breaking—yes, though her heart might be breaking! For, after all, might it not be said that it was she who made the first overtures to Edgar, not he to her? It might be pity only for her long constancy that had drawn him to her, and the sight of this woman’s beautiful face might have melted away that false sentiment. When the thoughts once fall to such a catastrophe as this, the velocity with which they go (does not science say so?) doubles moment by moment. I cannot tell you to what a pitch of misery Gussy had worn herself before the end of that long—terribly long, silent, and hopeless Spring day.
CHAPTER XX.
Loch Arroch once more.
Edgar and Margaret (accompanied, as she always was, by her child) arrived at Loch Arroch early on the morning of the second day. They were compelled to stay in Glasgow all night—she with friends she had there, he in an inn. It was a rainy, melancholy morning when they got into the steamer, and crossed the broad Clyde, and wound upward among the hills to Loch Arroch Head, where Robert Campbell, with an aspect of formal solemnity, waited with his gig to drive them to the farm.
“You’re in time—oh ay, you’re in time; but little more,” he said, and went on at intervals in a somewhat solemn monologue, as they drove down the side of the grey and misty loch, under dripping cloaks and umbrellas. “She’s been failing ever since the new year,” he said. “It’s not to be wondered at, at her age; neither should we sorrow, as them that are without hope. She’s lived a good and useful life, and them that she brought into the world have been enabled to smooth her path out of it. We’ve nothing to murmur at; she’ll be real glad to see you both—you, Marg’ret, and you, Mr. Edgar. Often does she speak of you. It’s a blessing of Providence that her life has been spared since the time last Autumn when we all thought she was going. She’s had a real comfortable evening time, with the light in it, poor old granny, as she had a right to, if any erring mortal can be said to have a right. And now, there’s Willie restored, that was thought to be dead and gone.”
“Has Willie come back?” asked Margaret hastily.
“He’s expected,” said Robert Campbell, with a curious dryness, changing the lugubrious tone of his voice; “and I hope he’ll turn out an altered man; but it’s no everyone going down to the sea in ships that sees the wisdom o’ the Lord in the great waters, as might be hoped.”