"I hope we shall have no scenes from Madge," said she to one of the friends who graced the drawing-room the day previous to their departure, "for anything I hate is a crowd gathered around with faces all gotten up for a funeral."
Here Mrs. Verne shrugged her shoulders and assumed a look of abhorrence.
Marguerite was leaving the conservatory as she overheard the remark, and she pressed more firmly the sprays of heliotrope and azalea which she held in her hand.
"Heaven help me," murmured the girl; "am I always expected to go through life with my feelings put away far out of sight-far away—
"Deeply buried from human eyes?"
Looking upwards she remained motionless as the marble statue of Psyche that adorned the recess in which she stood. Then the lips moved and the words "Put your trust in God," came forth soft and bewitching as the strain of an aeolian harp, and leaving, as it were, a holy hushed spell, subduing the soul of her who uttered it.
It was well for Marguerite that she had those precious moments of communion, and at no other time in her life did she need them more. They were the only beacon lights to guide her through the treacherous shoals into which she must inevitably steer her course.
It was with such feelings that the girl stood at the station and shook each friend by the hand without the least tremor in her voice or tear in her eye.
It did, indeed, cost a struggle to keep the pallid lips firm as Marguerite returned her father's parting embrace; but strength had been given her.
And the manly form beside him, Phillip Lawson, stood unmoved and erect, his face quiet in expression and not the least betrayal of the passion within his breast.