It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

Margaret was in no laughing mood. Dignity, which was almost tragical, was in her whole person. The pose of her head, the stateliness of her aspect, were enough to have dismayed any applicant for favour. She began to eye the groups about, not anxiously as she had done at first, but defiantly, as if she scorned them for their ignorance of her.

"I cannot say that I am surprised," she said; "for I counted the cost—and I thought you would be better pleased to come and just see what like it was. And then we can go away when we please." Margaret added this forlorn consolation with a sigh. "What are you saying, Jean?" she asked, somewhat sharply; for her sister's voice reached her ear, not tuned at all in harmony with her own, but with a tone of exultation in it. It would be the music that pleased her, or some dress that she was admiring! Margaret, in her vexation and disappointment—though indeed she had expected to be disappointed—turned round upon her sister with rage in her soul. Lilias had turned round too, with perhaps sharper ears, and, before Margaret had recovered her composure, she found herself addressed in tones whose blandishments she had rejected, but which now, against her will, her heart beat to hear. There was the little strange accent, the inflection not like any one else's, which had always hitherto moved her to impatience—for why should a man pretending to be an Englishman, and calling himself by a good Scots name, speak like a foreigner? All this passed through her mind like a sudden flash of a lantern, and then she found herself looking at Lewis with her most forbidding aspect, a frown under her brow, but the profoundest anxiety in her heart.

"You are not in a good position here," he was saying, "and soon there will be a great crowd. May I take you to a better place?"

"Oh! we are in a very good place for seeing, Mr. Murray, I am obliged to you. We are not like friends of the house to take the best places. We are just strangers, and enjoying," said Margaret, in her sternest tones, "the fine sight."

"We are all friends of the house who are here," said Lewis, "and there is no place that would be thought too good for Miss Murray. You would like to see your sister when she is dancing: let me take you into the other room," he said, offering his arm, with a smile which even Margaret felt to be almost irresistible. She said to herself that it was French and false, "like all these foreigners," but this was a secret protest of the pride which was about to yield to necessity. She made a little struggle, looking at him with a cloudy brow. "Your sister—will like to dance," said Lewis.

And then Margaret threw down her weapons; but only after a fashion. She took his arm with proud hesitation and reluctance.

"You just vanquish me," she said, "with that word; but I am not sure it is quite generous. And, if I take advantage of your present offer, you will remember it is in pure selfishness, and alters nothing of what has passed between us. You will make nothing by it," she said.

He had the audacity to press her hand a little closer to his side with something like a caress, and he laughed.

"In pure selfishness," he said. "I accept the bargain. Nothing is altered, only a truce for reasons of state. But I must be free to act according to the same rule of pure selfishness too."

Margaret gave him another keen look. She was not sure that he was clever enough to mean what he was saying; but she did not commit herself by any further explanation. She said, "We will just stay where we can see what is going on, Mr. Murray. Lilias, who is a stranger here, does not expect to dance."