"Maisrie!" said Mr. Thompson, with a return of his former impatience. "That is another of his fantasticalities. I tell you her name is Margaret——."
"But she has been Maisrie to me, and Maisrie she will be to me always," Vincent made answer stoutly—for surely he had some right to speak on this matter too. "As I said this morning, it is only a pet name for Margaret; and if she chooses to use it, to please her grandfather, or to please herself even——"
"Stay a moment: I want to show you something."
The banker put his hand into his breast-pocket; and pulled out an envelope.
"Not the photograph?" said Vincent, rather breathlessly.
Mr. Thompson smiled in his quiet, sagacious way.
"When I mentioned this portrait to you to-day," said he, "I saw something in your eyes—though you were too modest to put your request into words. Well, I have brought it; here it is; and if you'll look at the foot you'll see that the little Omahussy signs herself, as she ought to sign herself, 'Margaret Bethune.'"
And what a revelation was this, of what Maisrie had been in the years before he had known her! The quaint, prim, small miss!—he could have laughed, with a kind of delight: only that here were those calm, grave, earnest eyes, that seemed to know him, that seemed to speak to him. Full of wistfulness they were, and dreams: they said to him, 'I am looking forward; I am waiting till I meet you—my friend; life has that in store—for you and me.'
"I thought you would be interested," said Mr. Thompson, blandly. "And I know you would like me to give you that photograph: perhaps you think you have some right to it, having won the young lady herself——"
"Won her?" said Vincent, still contemplating this strange, quaint portrait that seemed to speak to him somehow. "It hardly looks like it."