Faithful Margaret Part 56

"I would have regretted deeply missing this pleasure," she said, meeting the brother and sister half way. "You have both been so kind to me--so kind!"--with a look of deep and gentle grat.i.tude toward his grace--"that I can scarcely express my sense and appreciation of it."

A mortal pallor had overspread the young man's face. His hand trembled as it touched hers, and his tongue trembled, too, when he essayed to speak.

"I would have known Miss Walsingham among a thousand, and yet illness and trials have robbed her even of the delicate roses she possessed.

I--I think she is more frail than, perhaps, she is apt to imagine."

"Your grace is considerably changed, too. Have you been ill?"

He turned and looked imploringly at his sister, who was wringing Margaret's hand, and patting it in a very ardent manner.

"You don't deserve me to speak to you," said Lady Dora, in a vehement _sotto voce_. "So I'll be looking for my opera-gla.s.s down below, while you have a chat with the boy."

Away she tripped with all haste, leaving Margaret standing silent by the side of her admirer.

"Will you honor me with a word or two?" faltered his grace. "Perhaps you will not object to walking with me where there is less of a crowd."

"I pray you not to enter again upon a subject which I thought was at an end," murmured Margaret, reluctantly pacing the long deck with him, followed by the chevalier's jealous eyes.

"Circ.u.mstances have thrown us together again so strangely," returned the young man, leaning in a dejected att.i.tude across the taffrail, "that I could not resist the hope that entered my mind of being more successful this time. You wished me not to seek you out, and I have been firm in obeying you, hard as it was to avoid your vicinity while all these extraordinary trials were besetting you. Oh, Miss Walsingham, how I have longed to take you away from the miserable position in which that will has plunged you, and to guard you with my name and love from what you have suffered! But I did not seek you because you had exacted from me a promise to leave you unmolested. But, now, has not heaven thrown us together in the most marked manner by sending us three thousand miles across the sea in the same steamer? It seems as if we were destined for each other, does it not? And that Providence is pointing out, for the second time, the path we ought to pursue?"

"There is one obstacle to your grace's rather superst.i.tious fancy,"

rejoined Margaret, "one which Providence is not likely to overlook. I do not entertain for your grace that regard which Heaven has decreed should be between husband and wife, and if Lady Dora has rightly reported our interview of yesterday, you know that such a regard is out of the question."

Piermont bowed his head on his hands and bore his disappointment in silence.

"I am glad that I have had this opportunity," resumed Margaret, in a gentle voice, "of thanking you again for the generous love you offer me--a love which the n.o.blest lady would be richly honored in receiving, and though I must refuse it, it is with a keen appreciation of its value. I shall always remember your grace with grat.i.tude--ay, with affectionate solicitude, and your whole-souled sister also."

"I wish you every happiness," muttered the young man, lifting his haggard face and trying to smile; "and may your love be placed upon a man worthy to receive it. But, beloved Miss Walsingham, if ever circ.u.mstances throw you free and untrammeled upon the world, and if you can send one thought of affection to me, give me a chance to try my fate a third time."

He pressed her hand for a moment to his fond and foolish heart, which was throbbing like to burst for the simple girl before him, and then he went away.

"By gar!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the chevalier, plucking Davenport's sleeve, "the _tete-a-tete_ has broken its neck off short--so, in the middle. Here comes a man all ready for a dose of prussic acid, or a duel with his rival. Bravo, mademoiselle! You are one trump to stick to the colonel, and to send the coronet away. And there is the _charmante_ demoiselle with the black eyes; see how she does pounce upon our duke and walk him away. Aha, you don't like it, _miladi_, do you? Would you not love to pull the eyes out of Mademoiselle Marguerite with those pretty _leetle_ nails?"

CHAPTER XXVII.

A NEW ACQUAINTANCE.

Arrived in New York, the three travelers speedily were located in a hotel, and the chevalier proposed going to the military hospital in which he left Colonel Brand, for news of him.

"There will not be the shadow of a doubt, my dear mademoiselle," said the sanguine little man, "that our hero is still in the same domicile, convalescing, we shall say, by this time, but still unable to resume his deeds of valor, as six weeks only have pa.s.sed since I parted from him."

But Margaret by this time was in such a state of excitement and suspense, that they decided that all three should repair to the hospital with as little delay as possible.

Das.h.i.+ng rapidly through the snow-beaten streets, they paused at last before a stately building, and Margaret lifted her famished eyes in a long, a yearning gaze, from window to window, as if, perchance, she might see the man whose face had never beamed upon her the smile of kindness.

She sat immovable while Davenport and Calembours were in the hospital, and her heart rose in the wild triumph of conviction that he was there, they staid so long.

When they reappeared Margaret clutched her hands tightly, and waited until they should come close--something had happened; the chevalier never wore a grave face when a smiling one would do better.

"Do not tell me," gasped Margaret, with white lips, "do not tell me that he is dead!"

"No, no, _m'amie_, it is not so bad as that; but it is almost as bad. He has gone away from the hospital a week ago, recruited they say, but not quite; and whither he has gone, not one of the doctors or attendants can tell, with their skulls empty as their own skeletons."

Margaret set her teeth hard, that she should utter no cry, and sank back in her seat. All the light of tenderness died out of her eyes; all the bloom of hope faded from her cheeks; a pitiful grayish pallor deadened the brilliance which joy had lent to her; the pale, fixed look of melancholy stole into her eyes and hardened her mouth.

It came to her with a dull sense of conviction that this thing was not to be; that she was never to install St. Udo Brand within his rights; that she was truly the Marplot who had ruined him. They would meet never more on the golden sands of time, that she might point to him the better way, and be his joy. Oh! vain dream, and harshly wakened from.

She uttered not a word, but turned from her now silent companions, and covered her face.

When they reached the hotel Margaret retired to her room, and the lawyer and the ill.u.s.trious chevalier commenced a systematic search for the English colonel, which, to judge from its success, seemed likely to last forever.

And poor Margaret wore the days away in sick dismay over her suddenly clouded fairy-dream; and her strange face grew thinner, sharper, more unearthly in its transparency than ever; and her superb form pa.s.sing so often drearily to and fro in the walled-up hotel garden among the snow-laden shrubs and trees, arrested many a curious eye at the hotel windows to dwell upon the lonely British lady, with compa.s.sionate interest.

Some weeks after their arrival, Margaret noted a new face at the hotel table.

Not that new faces were much of a novelty in that everchanging scene, but the face of this woman was so attractive that every eye round the lunch-table fastened on her as she sauntered in, dressed in a driving habit, and seated herself _vis a vis_ to Margaret.

"_Mon Dieu!_ that's a fine creature!" muttered the chevalier in his beard; "what a glorious head she has--by gar!"

"Humph," grumbled Davenport, at Margaret's other side; "bad egg."

Margaret met the full gaze of a pair of fascinating eyes, green-tinged, and yet chameleon-like, changing with every ripple of the soul from green to flas.h.i.+ng black, or tender gray, or handsome brown.

The small and well-shaped head which had awakened such rapturous admiration from the chevalier, was poised delicately upon a neck round and white and bending as a swan's. The hair, a light, gold-brown, shone sometimes molten in the sunlight, sometimes flaxen. It seemed to possess the chameleon-powers of the eyes, and took to itself all shapes and tinges, as the bird-like creature flashed a look from side to side; and one long snake-like tress floated carelessly beneath her vail down her back, and was suffered to ripple and twist itself into tiny ringlets, or waves, or coils, just as its willful nature impelled it.

Margaret looked once and fully into the beautiful stranger's face, and she was forced to admit to herself that with all her fascinating blithesomeness and would-be innocence and frankness--she did not like it.

"She hides a history!" was her conclusion.

But the chevalier seemed actually entranced; he bowed profoundly, the instant their eyes met, and listened with eagerness to every low-toned direction she gave to the waiter, and with great gallantry pa.s.sed whatever she required over to her, for which attention the fair woman only bowed with the most distant, though the prettiest air imaginable.

She often looked at Margaret, however, as if anxious to make her out, and paused in her dainty nibbling whenever Davenport spoke to his ward, with her ear bent to catch the reply; and at the last she contrived to meet Margaret's eyes, and to smile in a sweet, engaging manner, as if she longed to make her acquaintance; and Margaret, without in the least knowing why, crimsoned and dropped her eyes instead of responding to the overture.

The lady did not finish her lobster-salad, but soon rose and swept to the door, which the gallant chevalier sprang to open.

Scarcely acknowledging his politeness, she cast a glance over her shoulder at Margaret which haunted her all the afternoon.

It seemed to say as plainly as if the lady had spoken it:

"You do not like me, but I am determined to win you over in spite of yourself."

And in spite of herself, her thoughts wandered toward the lovely stranger for hours, and she grew quite impatient for the dinner hour to arrive, that she might see her again.

When it came, Mr. Davenport being absent, receiving or sending some telegrams to a village near the seat of war, in which there seemed some reason to believe the missing colonel was with a detachment of Vermonters, the chevalier, with great politeness, appeared at Margaret's door to escort her to the dining-room.