“No one can be a lover of mine, Sir Andrew,” she replied, very shortly, “who is not a lover of honor also. In times like these, no lady should smile on any suitor but him who dares the furthest, and does the most for the king’s cause;” and refusing his offered hand, she walked by herself to her place, and did the honors of the coming meal, which passed in gloomy and unsocial silence.
When it was ended, however, and they had all retired into the withdrawing-room where the lamps were lighted, and a wood-fire sparkling cheerfully, Margaret possessed herself of the forgotten news-letter, while her father returned to his heraldic musings, and the baronet applied himself to seek consolation for his late rebuff, in the ample spiced posset, which was set, with wine and comfits and manchet-bread, on the board before him.
Suddenly, springing to her feet in great excitement, and letting the news-letter, which she yet held in her hand, fall by her side at arm’s length, Margaret cried out in shrill tones,
“Why, father, dearest father, why, I beseech you, did you not tell me this, for this is, indeed, great news”—and she burst into a flood of passionate tears; but they were tears of joy. Alas! alas! poor Margaret, the last tears of joy that she should thenceforth shed forever.
“What, what!” cried the old man, startled by her vehemence, and by her sudden fit of weeping, “what tidings? I did tell you, surely.”
“Not,” she returned, forgetting every thing in the joy of the moment, “not that our friend and neighbor, Colonel Thornhill, has been stricken a banneret by the king’s own hand, for his glorious deeds in the relief of Basing-House; not that he has been ennobled, and created a baronet—Thornhill of Thornhill-Royal. Oh, happy, happy day!”—and again she burst into tears, and clasped her hands to her heart, as if she were fearful that it would burst from the excess of happiness.
“And, I beseech you, what may it concern Mistress Margaret Clavering,” asked silly Andrew Acton, “that a beggerly gentleman, scarcely a gentleman, indeed, at all, should be rapped over the costard with the flat of an old rapier, under a rag of painted bunting?”
“What does it concern me, sir?” she burst forth, her eyes lightning glorious indignation as she spoke, “that my promised husband has won deathless honor, by his good sword, in a great and righteous cause? Whom should it, then, concern—or what should concern me more than such tidings?”
“Your promised husband, Mistress Margaret!”
“Your promised husband, minion!” thundered Sir Hugh, in almost inarticulate fury.