East Angels Part 65

"Oh, I don't know what you really _were_, I only meant how you looked. I am glad, at least, that you acknowledge that it takes a great stock of vanity to go against all the fashions. Well, you don't look Quakerish now!"

"You like the dress, then?"

"It's _lovely_," said Aunt Katrina, scanning every detail from the hat to the shoe. "Expensive, of course?"

"Yes."

"And Lanse likes that?"

"He wishes me to dress richly; he says it's more becoming to me."

"I think that's so nice of him, he wants you to look, I suppose, as well as you _can_" said Aunt Katrina, magnanimously. "And certainly you do look a great deal better."

Whether Margaret looked better was a question whose answer depended upon the personal taste of those who saw her; she looked, at least, very different. The sumptuous wrap with its deep fringes, the lace of the scarf, the general impression of costly fabrics and of color in her attire, brought out the outlines of her face, as the curling waves of her hair over her forehead deepened the blue of her eyes. On her white arms now, at home in the evenings, bracelets gleamed, the flash of rings came from her little hands; her slender figure trailed behind it rich silks of various light hues.

"You are a beautiful object nowadays, Margaret," Lanse said more than once. "Fancy your having known how, all this time, without ever having used your talent!"

"It's my dress-maker's talent."

"Yes; she must have a great deal to carry out your orders."

He was especially pleased one evening. She came in, bringing his newspaper, which had just arrived by the steamer; she was dressed in a long gleaming gown of satin, with long tight sleeves; she wore a little ruff of Venetian lace, there was a golden comb in her dark-hair. A fan made of the bright plumage of some tropical bird lay against the satin of her skirt; it hung by a ribbon from the broad satin belt, which, fastened by a golden buckle, defined her slender waist.

"You look like a fine old engraving," he said.

She stood holding the paper towards him. But for a moment he did not take it, he was surveying her critically; then he lifted his eyes to her face, there was a smile in them. "You did it--do it--to please me?" he said.

She did not answer.

"Because you think it your duty to do what I wish. And because, too, you are a trifle afraid of me!" He laughed. "It would have an even better effect, though, if you wouldn't take it quite so seriously; couldn't you contrive to get a little pleasure out of it on your own account?--I mean the looking so handsome."

She gave him the paper, and went across to her work-table. "I am delighted to look handsome," she said.

"No, you're not. It was probably easier for you to dress as you used to--plainly; more in accordance with your feelings, women like to be in accordance. When they're completely satisfied, or very unhappy, they brush their hair straight back from their faces. Well, yours curls enough now!"

"The truth is, Madge, you're too yielding," he resumed after a short silence. "I take advantage of it, of course--I always shall; but you would get on a great deal better yourself, you might even have had more influence over me (if you care about that), if you had been, if you were now, a little less--patient."

"I suppose there's no use in my repeating that I'm not patient at all,"

answered Margaret. She was taking some b.a.l.l.s of silk from the drawer.

"You want me to think it's self-control. Well, perhaps it is. But then, you know, unbroken self-control--"

"Would you mind it if I should ask you not to discuss it--my self-control?" Her hands were beginning to tremble.

"Put your hands in your pocket if you don't want me to see them," said Lanse, laughing; "they always betray you--even when your voice is steady. What a temper you've got--though you do curb it so tightly! At least you're infinitely better off than you would have been if you had happened to care for me. That's been the enormous blessing of your life--your not caring; just supposing you _had_ cared! You ought to be very thankful; and you ought to reckon up your blessings every now and then, for fear of forgetting some of them; we ought all to do that, I think."

He said this with great gravity. Not that he felt in the least grave; but it was a way Lanse had of amusing himself, once in a while,--to make remarks of this sort with a very solemn face.

He looked at her for a moment or two longer as she sat with her eyes bent upon her knitting. "You're in the right chair," he said at length, "but you're sitting too straight. Won't you please take that footstool, put your feet on it, and then lean back more? You long lithe women look better that way."

She did not move.

"Come," he said, "you're furious; but you know you ought to humor me.

It's only that I want my picture more complete--that's all."

And then, with nervous quickness, she did what he asked.

It was upon the morning following this little conversation that Dr.

Kirby made his appearance at the house on the river and declared that he could not "explain."

"Tell me without explaining," Margaret suggested.

But this at first seemed to the Doctor even more difficult than the other alternative; it would have been so much more in accordance with his sense of the fitness of things to ascend this stumbling-block which had fallen in their path by means of a proper staircase, carpeted steps of probabilities, things he had foreseen--intuitions. But in fact he had foreseen nothing; he felt that he could not make a staircase. So he gave one great hard bound.

"Garda is engaged," he announced. "To Lucian Spenser."

Margaret was greatly astonished. "I didn't know he was back," she said.

"He has only just come. She went up to Norfolk with my cousin, Sally Lowndes"--here the Doctor stopped, gazing at Margaret inquiringly.

"Yes, I left it to you to decide about her going--don't you remember?"

"I decided wrongly. Sally was obliged to go, and anxious to take Garda--I was in Charleston, and I allowed it. I had no business to!"

said the Doctor, slapping his knee suddenly and fiercely. "I distinctly disapprove of much travelling for young girls--mere aimless gadding about. But I have been corrupted, to a certain degree, by the new nor--the new modern ideas that are making their way everywhere at present; I could bury my head in a hay-stack! When did you hear from her last?"

"I had a letter from Norfolk immediately after her arrival."

"Before she had met him. And nothing since?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, she said she should rather have me tell you than write herself."

"She thought you would be on her side."

"No, madam, no; she couldn't have thought that--that would be impossible. But she was good enough to say that I should, in the telling, be certain to make you laugh. And that was what she wanted."

Moisture glittered suddenly in his eyes as he brought this out. He pretended it was not there, and searching for his handkerchief, he coughed gruffly, complaining of "a cold."

"I certainly don't laugh," said Margaret. "But perhaps we need not be so--so troubled about it, Doctor. The first thing now is to have her come home."

"She's back in Charleston."

"Oh!"

"Yes. As soon as I received Sally's letter--she wrote at once--I started immediately for Norfolk. I saw Mr. Spenser--in my quality of guardian it was proper that I should see him. And I brought the two ladies home."

"And not Mr. Spenser too?"