But Mrs. Stormont's visit was far from being destitute of results. It caused a great many discussions and much agitation at Murkley, where Lilias was in the greatest commotion all the evening, and could scarcely sleep the whole night through. If it was not necessary, as Mrs. Stormont had hinted, to be absolutely in a state of innocence, unacquainted with all balls and parties, and every sort of dissipation, before the Queen would admit you to the drawing-room, why then, oh! why might not she go to Philip's ball?
"I was sure the Queen would never mind," Lilias said. "If it was for nothing else, she is far too kind; unless she was obliged for etiquette; and if she is not obliged——"
"Oh, my dear, the Queen is the fountain-head—how could she be obliged? She is never obliged to do this or that. Whatever she does, that is the right thing," cried Jean, shocked by the girl's bold words. Margaret was quite as loyal, but not quite so confident. She shook her head.
"There is nobody that has a greater respect for her Majesty than me; but, nevertheless, I cannot but think there are things she has to make a point of just for the sake of good order. Mrs. Stormont is no judge—she is not in the position; her Majesty would be little likely to take any trouble about small gentry of that kind; but the Murrays are not small gentry, and your mother was Lady Lilias Abernethy—that makes all the difference. You would be inquired about where an ordinary person would not, and there's an interest about a motherless girl. The Queen, who, they say, forgets nothing, will remember your mother, and that you never had that advantage; her heart will be sore for you, poor thing: and if it comes to her ears that Lilias Murray has been seen by everybody dancing at all the small country balls and dances——"
"Now, Margaret!" cried Lilias, jumping to her feet, "how could the Queen hear that, when it would be only one, only one at the most?"
"One would be just the beginning," said Miss Margaret. "When you had been to Mrs. Stormont's ball (for it is nonsense to call it Philip's), everybody else that was going to give a dance would be after you, and they would say, with reason, if she went to Stormonts, you cannot refuse to let her come to me; or else if you go to no other place, worse will be said, and it will go through the country that there is Some Reason why you should go there and nowhere else."
"Some reason!—but what reason could there be?" cried Lilias, appalled by this solemnity, and, in spite of herself, growing pale.
"They would invent some story or other," said her sister. "You see, there is nothing stands by itself in this world—one thing is always connected with another, so that ye can never just do a simple action without taking into account what comes after and what has gone before."
Miss Margaret enunciated this alarming doctrine in the evening, with the light of the lamp falling upon her face and the widespread whiteness of her newspaper, and showing against the dark background the scared looks of her two companions, one of whom listened with a gasp of alarm, while the other made a mild remonstrance.
"Margaret! you will frighten the poor thing out of her life."