The men turned to bow as Mrs. Penn stepped aside, and left to view a startling vision of innocence and youth and loveliness. The girl swept a curtsey, the practice when dreams of the world were teasing her had not been in vain. Then she rose and moved into the room. For a moment there was silence. Except Schmidt, no one knew her. The Governor, bowing, cried, "By George! Margaret, you beat them all! What fairies have metamorphosed you?"
"We, we," cried the chorus. The men paid her compliments after the downright fashion of their set. She was gay, quick to reply, amazingly at ease. Schmidt watched her, comprehending as no one else did the sudden revelation to the young woman of the power and charm of her beauty and the primal joy of unused weapons. To the younger men she was a little reserved and quiet, to the elder men all grace and sweetness, to the trickster cousins, disconcertingly cool.
"Where on earth did she learn it all?" said Mrs. Byrd, as she went out to dinner with Mr. Penn.
"Heaven knows. But it was a saucy trick and she will pay for it, I fear, at home."
"Will she tell?" said Morris, the master of the rolls, as he followed behind them with Mrs. Wayne.
"Yes," said Mrs. Byrd, "she will tell; but whether or not, the town will ring with it, in a day or two. A pity, too, for the child is brought up in the straightest way of Friends. None of Madame Logan's fine gowns and half-way naughtiness for her."
At dinner Margaret quietly amused Mr. Morris with Schmidt's terror of June, the cat, and with Mr. Jefferson's bout with Hamilton, and the tale of the sad lapse of De Forest, which greatly pleased General Wayne, her right-hand neighbor. When they left the men to their Madeira, she insisted on changing her dress. A not duly penitent bevy of maids assisted, and by and by it was a demure Quaker moth who replaced the gay butterfly and in the drawing-room helped Madame Penn to make tea. They paid her fair compliments, and she smiled, saying: "I, dear Mrs. Penn—was I here? Thou must be mistaken. That was Grandmama Plumstead thou didst have here. Oh, a hundred years ago."
"Ask her to come again," said Mrs. Penn.
"And to stay," said Mrs. Wayne; "a charming creature."