It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

"What do you mean by 'Oh, Margaret'?—is it not true that I say? What did it advantage us, I ask you, that this young lad had everybody, as you say, at his beck and call?"

Jean gave a deprecatory, wistful glance at her sister, and said nothing—but it was the look of one that had a great deal to say: and there was that mixture of pity in it by which Margaret had been moved to a passing wonder before.

"What did he ever do," she repeated, scornfully, "when he saw us, as you say, forlorn in London, and knowing few folk? It is a pretty description, but I cannot recognize it as a picture of me," Margaret said, with a laugh of resentment. The conviction that had flashed upon her concerning their life in London had been intolerable, and she had pushed it from her. She was ready now to resist to desperation any suggestion that Lewis had served them in society, or been instrumental in opening to them so many fashionable houses. The consciousness in her mind that this was so, gave heat and passion to her determination to ignore it, and gave a bravado of denial to her tone. "All this," she added, "is nothing, nothing to the main subject; but, as we are on it, let us be done with it. What has your friend done for us I—I am at a loss to know."

Jean was in a terrible strait, and knew not what to do. She was divided between her desire to do justice to Lewis and her desire to save Margaret pain. She hesitated, almost prevaricated in her anxiety, but at last the story burst forth. The Greek ball, the beginning of all, Margaret had firmly believed all along, was a homage to the importance of the Miss Murrays of Murkley, a natural acknowledgment of their claims to be considered. She could not help remembering the change that had occurred in the aspect of affairs from the moment that Lewis had appeared on the scene, but the invitation for which she had wished so much, and the others that flowed from it, Margaret had endeavoured to believe were natural: at least the first—she had always clung to that. But when Jean's story, extracted in fragments, with many a protestation and many an unintended admission, fell upon her ears, the sudden disenchantment was terrible. To think that everything was his doing from beginning to end, that he, this upstart, this minion, this foreign favourite, should have been able to open the doors of fashion to those whom he had so injured and supplanted, whose chief enemy he was! Was it to humiliate them still more, to smite them down into deeper abasement, to triumph over them in every way? The pang which it gave Margaret was too bitter for speech. There had been an appeal made to him, and in his magnanimity—that easy magnanimity of the conqueror—he had responded to the appeal, and had taken compassion upon them. It was a bitter pill for a proud woman to swallow. Jean had appealed to him, and he had been kind—oh! these were the words. He had been kind to the poor country ladies, and no doubt presented them as originals, out of whom a little amusement could be had, to his fine friends. Margaret would not even tell her sister, with whom she was indignant beyond all possibility (she thought) of forgiveness, what she had heard this morning. Her mortification, her sense of having been tricked and cheated, was too great: the only thing she could think of was to turn her back upon this hated place with all its delusions.

"I am just sick of London," she said; "my very heart is sick. Get your packing done this afternoon. I will not spend another day here. I think we will go home to-night."

"To-night!" cried Jean, with dismay. To oppose a decision of Margaret was impossible, and she felt guilty, and wounded, and miserable, out of favour, out of heart. But yet to be obliged to cut off her little leave-takings, and not to see him, the cause of all this, the friend who had been so kind, so tender, so eager to carry out all her wishes, was very hard. And even to travel at night was alarming and terrible to Miss Jean: she thought the dangers of the way were doubled by the darkness, and that very likely there would be a railway accident. "It is very sudden," she said. "Oh! Margaret, I know you are ill-pleased at me. I am sorry—sorry! if I have done what was foolish, it was with a good intention; but will you change all our plans just for that, only for that?"

"Only for that!" said Margaret. "Only for what is burnt in on me in shame, and should on you still more, if you had the heart—to have been indebted to our enemy, to have sought the help of him, if there had not been another man in the world, that should have been the last——"

"Oh! Margaret," cried poor Miss Jean, "you are unjust. You are cruel. He is nobody's enemy. You may think him not good enough for Lilias,—for who would seem good enough for Lilias to you and me?—but an enemy he is none. Oh, no enemy, but a friend: or more like a son, a brother."

Margaret rose with a stern intensity of tone and look that made her sister tremble.

"Do you know who this friend is," she said, grimly, "this brother, this lover, this benefactor? His name is not Murray, but Lewis Grantley, a name you have heard before. He is your grandfather's heir. He has gotten the inheritance of Lilias. And now, seeing she is a lovelier thing even than the inheritance, this creature of nothing, this subtile serpent, this practiser upon an old man's weakness, would have her too."