“You forget how little I know Sir Ludovic. I have not seen him since I was a boy. But very often the hand is like the owner of it, in little, as you say. Your own is, I have noticed that.”
“Mine?” Margaret raised the hand referred to, and looked at it, then laughed softly. “Mine is a brown thin thing, all fingers.”
“May I stop to look at it?” said Rob.
She laughed still more, and blushed, and held it out with a little tremor.
“It is nothing to look at—unless you know about the lines or can tell any one’s fortune. Can you tell any one’s fortune by their hand, Mr. Glen? Mine is as brown as a toad, and not soft and round like Jean’s, nor like papa’s. Oh, there is nothing to look at in my hand. It is so brown. I think shame when I see a lady’s; but then I always lose my gloves, or at least one of them,” said Margaret, half penitent, half laughing. While this dialogue was going on, a change had begun; Sir Ludovic had not stirred when she went to call him, but the subdued sound of the voices, and that sense of being looked at which is so sure a spell against sleep, began at last to affect him; he stirred slightly, then made a little change of position; then he said, drowsily, “Little Peggy! are you there, my little girl?”
She sprang away from Rob in a moment, leaving him somehow dazzled, disappointed, and impoverished, he could scarcely tell how. He would have caught at her dress to detain her, but dared not. He tried one whisper, however, very earnest and urgent.
“Stay, stay, Miss Margaret! He must not move till I have done. Do not answer, and he will doze again.”
She only shook her head in reply, and went to her father’s side lightly and rapidly like a bird.
“Yes,” she said, “I am here, papa; but keep still, you are not to move;” and she put her arms round him, standing behind, her pretty hands—still pretty, though they were brown—upon his breast. “Now, quick, quick, Mr. Glen,” she cried, not thinking how she had changed the group and the entire sentiment of the scene. All at once it became dramatic, and utterly beyond Rob, who had no gifts that way. He sat for a few moments vaguely gazing at her, lost in admiration and pleasure; but he shook his head. He could do no more.
“Eh, my Peggy? what has happened?” said Sir Ludovic, faintly struggling to wake himself. “Not to—move?—why am I not to move? I am—living, I think, still.”