She looked up at him with eyes wistful, yet candid, fearing nothing still. The character of Margaret’s face seemed to have changed within the last month. What she was in June was not like what she was in July. The trouble she had gone through had not seemed to develop, but to subdue her. She had been full of variety, animation, and energy before. Now the life seemed to have sunk to so low an ebb in her paled being, exhausted with tears, that there was little remaining but simple consciousness and intelligence. She did not seem able to originate anything on her own side, not even a question. A half smile, the reflection of a smile, came to her face, and she looked up, without any alarm, for what her brother had to say.
“Margaret,” he said (how hard it was! harder even than he thought. He cleared his throat, and a rush of uncomfortable color came to his middle-aged countenance, though she took it so calmly, and did not blush at all)—“Margaret, I have found out something, my dear, that gives me a great deal of pain—something about you.”
But even this solemn preamble seemed to convey no thrill of conscious guilt to Margaret’s mind. She only looked at him again a little more earnestly. “Have I lost my—money?” she said.
“No, it is not that. What made you think of losing your money?”
“It often happens, does it not?” she said. “I am sure I should not care.”
“Oh yes, you would care—we should all care; but your money is safe enough. I wish you yourself were as safe. Margaret, my dear, give me your full attention; you were seen last night in the wood.”
“Yes!” she said, a little alarmed.
“With a—gentleman; or at least, let us hope he was a gentleman,” said Ludovic. “You know that it is not—usual, nor perhaps—right. I want you to tell me all about it: and first of all, who was the man?”
Margaret was taken entirely by surprise. It had not occurred to her to think of Rob Glen as one about whom she could be questioned. He had grown so familiar while her father lived, and he had been so kind. There was no sort of novelty about it—nothing to be thus solemnly questioned about. But she looked up at her brother with startled eyes.
“Oh, Ludovic, the gentleman—”