"Young man," she said, in a low and passionate voice, "if you should prove to be making a mask of my sister for other designs, if it should be putting forward one to veil a deeper design upon another, then look you to yourself—for I'll neither forgive you, nor let you slip out of my hands."
Lewis met this unexpected address with sincere astonishment.
"Pardon me, but I do not know what deeper design I could have. What is it that I could do to make you angry?" he said.
She looked at him once more from head to foot, as if his shoes or the cut of his coat (which was somewhat foreign) could have enlightened her as to his real motives: and then she said,
"I will take upon me to give you useful information. In the mornings I am mostly occupied. You will find my sister Jean by herself before one o'clock, and nobody to interfere."
[CHAPTER XIII.]
It was with a mixture of indignation and somewhat grim humour that Miss Margaret gave the permission and sanction to Lewis's addresses which have been above recorded. There was a smile upon her face as she left him and went indoors, which burst forth in a short laugh as she entered—a laugh of derision and mockery, yet of anger as well, mingled with a sort of satisfaction in the idea of luring this presumptuous young man to his fate. Jean to be made love to at this time of day by a young man who might have been her son! (this, of course, was an exaggeration, but exaggeration is inevitable in such circumstances).
The purely comic light in which she had at first contemplated the idea gradually changed into an angry appreciation of the absurdity which seemed to involve her sister too, and a lively desire to punish the offender. That would be best done by giving him unlimited opportunity to compromise himself, she decided, and it was with this vindictive meaning, and not anything softer or more friendly, that she had so pointedly indicated to Lewis the best time and manner of approaching Miss Jean. He partially divined the satire and fierce gleam in her eyes, but only partially, for to him there was no absurdity in the matter.
Miss Margaret's heart almost smote her as he stood with his hat off, and his genial young countenance smiling and glowing, thanking her for what she had said; but this was only a momentary sensation, and when she went in she laughed with derision and the anticipation of a speedy end to a piece of folly which seemed to her beyond parallel. Such things had been heard of as that a young man who was poor, should basely and sordidly decide upon marrying, if he could, an old woman who was rich; but when there was no such motive possible—when, instead of being rich, the suitor was aware that the woman he sought was poor, then the matter was beyond comprehension altogether.