Margaret Mildred had not failed to note the impression which had been made upon the warm and youthful heart of Michael; she was not displeased to note it; and from her couch she rose, the following morning, delighted with her dreams, and benevolently disposed towards mankind in general. She lingered at her toilet, grew hypercritical in articles of taste, and found defects in beauty without the shadow of a blemish. Had some wicked sprite but whispered in her ear one thought injurious to the memory of her departed husband, Margaret would have shrunk from its reception, and would have scorned to acknowledge it as her own. Time, she felt and owned with gratitude, had assuaged her sorrows—had removed the sting from her calamity, but had not rendered her one jot less sensible to the great claims he held, even now, on her affection. From the hour of Mildred's decease up to the present moment, the widow had considered herself strictly bound by the vow which she had proposed to take, and would have taken, but for the dying man's earnest prohibition. Her conscience told her that that prohibition, so far from setting her free from the engagement, did but render her more liable to fulfill it. Her feelings coincided with the judgment of her understanding. Both pronounced upon her the self-inflicted verdict of eternal widowhood. How long this sentence would have been respected, had Michael never interfered to argue its repeal, it is impossible to say; as a general remark it may be stated, that nothing is so delusive as the heroic declarations we make in seasons of excitement—no resolution is in such danger of becoming forfeited as that which Nature never sanctioned and which depends for its existence only upon a state of feeling which every passing hour serves to enfeeble and suppress.
When Margaret reached her breakfast-room, she found a nosegay on the table, and Mr Michael Allcraft's card. He had called to make enquiries at a very early hour of the morning, and had signified his intention of returning on affairs of business later in the day. Margaret blushed deeper than the rose on which her eyes were bent, and took alarm; her first determination was to be denied to him; the second—far more rational—to receive him as the partner in the banking-house, to transact the necessary business, and then dismiss him as a stranger, distantly, but most politely. This was as it should be. Michael came. He was more bashful than he had been the night before, and he stammered an apology for his father's absence without venturing to look towards the individual he addressed. He drew two chairs to the table—one for Margaret, another for himself. He placed them at a distance from each other, and, taking some papers from his pocket with a nervous hand, he sat down without a minute's loss of time to look over and arrange them. Margaret was pleased with his behaviour; she took her seat composedly, and waited for his statement. There were a few select and favourite volumes on the table, and one of these the lady involuntarily took up and ran through, whilst Michael still continued busy with his documents, and apparently perplexed by them. Nothing can be more ill advised than to disturb a man immersed in business with literary or any other observations foreign to his subject.
"You were speaking of Wordsworth yesterday evening, Mr Allcraft," said Margaret suddenly—Allcraft pushed every paper from him in a paroxysm of delight, and looked up—"and I think we were agreed in our opinion of that great poet. What a sweet thing is this! Did you ever read it? It is the sonnet on the Sonnet."
"A gem, madam. None but he could have written it. The finest writer of sonnets in the world has spoken the poem's praise with a tenderness and pathos that are inimitable. There is the true philosophy of the heart in all he says—a reconciliation of suffering humanity to its hard but necessary lot. How exquisite and full of meaning are those lines—
'Bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells;'
and then the touching close—
'In truth, the prison unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is; and hence to me,