UNDER the pressure of recent experiences Margaret had taken up her music again, with great and determination. Mr. Gaston had encouraged her to believe that she might yet make a good performer, and had managed to into her some of his own spirit of thinking it worth while to achieve the best , even though great might be out of reach. There was so little time during the day when she could count upon remaining in undisturbed possession of the piano that, for some time before leaving Washington, she had been in the habit of rising earlier and practising for an hour before breakfast, and she was resolved that her visit to Baltimore should not with this routine. Indeed, she would have felt its interruption to be a serious moral retrogression, and so, with Mrs. Guion’s sanction, she kept up her morning , and when the family met at breakfast every day, she had already her period of practising. Alan used to laugh at her about it, and tell her she was becoming Yankeeized. He was apt to be late for breakfast himself, and Mrs. Guion took a great deal of trouble in having things kept hot for him, and would arrange little for him, much as if he had been an lady, as Margaret more than once remarked with a certain degree of . It quite irritated her to see how his sister and indulged him and how carelessly, and as a matter of course, he accepted it all.
The Guions had only recently come to Baltimore from the South. Their old home had been very near to Margaret’s, and she had consequently seen much more of Mrs. Guion, of late years, than of Alan. The children, of whom there were three, ranging from two to seven years of age, were cherished acquaintances of Margaret’s, and hailed her arrival with a enthusiasm, that she responded to with much cordiality. Ethel, the , had been taught by her mother, long ago, to call Miss Trevennon “Auntie Margaret,” and Amy and Decourcy had, of course, adopted the title. They were charming children, rather delicate in health, and watched and guarded with such care by their anxious mother, that they had the air of exotics. Mr. Guion had died when Decourcy was a baby, and it was because Alan had to settle in Baltimore for the practise of his profession, the law, that Mrs. Guion had moved her little family there. She was enthusiastically attached to her only brother, and never wearied of upon his perfections and displaying the numberless useful and presents that he upon her children and herself.
“Wasn’t it good of Alan to insist upon our coming to Baltimore, that he might make his home with us?” said Mrs. Guion, talking to her young cousin, the day after the latter’s arrival. “So many young men would have thought it a nuisance to be by a woman and three children; but he insisted on our coming.”
“I can hardly see how he could regard you in the light of a nuisance,” said Margaret, smiling; “your chief object in life seems to be to humor his and caprices. He could certainly not secure such comfort as you administer to him, in any bachelor-quarters on earth.”
This view of the case had never occurred to Mrs. Guion, and she rejected it almost indignantly, and argued long to convince her cousin that she was, in all respects, the favored one; but without much success.
It was by a accident that Margaret discovered, a day or two after her arrival, that Alan’s sleeping-apartment, just above the front drawing-room, had been exchanged for one on the other side of the hall. In an instant it flashed upon her that her morning performance on the piano had been the cause of it. To be quite certain, however, she went to Mrs. Guion and asked her directly if it was not so.
“How did you find it out?” said Mrs. Guion; “you were not to know anything about it. The other room is quite as convenient for Alan. He says he likes it just as well, and he wouldn’t for the world have you know that he moved on that account. But, you know, he never could bear noise. Even the children understand that they must be quiet when he is here.”
“Is he an invalid, in any way?” asked Margaret.
“Oh, dear no! but he always had that objection to noise, and I think he is more set in his ways now than ever. I tell him he ought to marry.”
“If he values his personal ease so much, it might be a mistake to imperil it by matrimony,” said Margaret, with a touch of contempt in her voice not discernible to her unsuspecting cousin.
“Affluence and idleness have made him luxurious,” said Margaret to herself, reflectively, when Mrs. Guion had left her alone. “I suppose those two things are apt to go together. And yet Cousin Eugenia says Mr. Gaston has always been well off, and certainly the veriest could not work harder! And still——”
The sentence ended in a little sigh. There was no denying the fact that Louis Gaston’s descent from the pedestal upon which she had mentally placed him, had been a great blow.
Miss Trevennon’s time passed very agreeably in Baltimore. Mrs. Guion, as yet, had only a small circle of friends, but most of these called upon her cousin, and several invitations resulted from these visits. As to Alan, the number of invitations he received was quite amusing. He had been twice to the club, and had delivered only one or two of his various letters, and made only one or two visits, when the cards of invitation began to pour in. He happened to have a few desirable acquaintances in Baltimore, his appearance was , and he was known to be rich, and these three facts, taken together, account for the degree of popularity of which he found himself .
One thing that rather surprised Margaret was the readiness with which her cousin would throw aside other engagements in order to drive her out, or take her to the theatre, or contribute, in any way, to her . He even stayed at home one whole rainy evening, when Mrs. Guion was engaged up-stairs with one of the children, who was unwell, in order, as he distinctly , to have a long talk with her.
When Miss Trevennon and Mr. Decourcy found themselves alone in the drawing-room, the latter threw himself, at full length, upon a low lounge, up before the fire, and, fixing his eyes enjoyingly on Margaret, as she sat opposite, he drew a long breath of restful satisfaction, saying:
“Now this is real enjoyment. You don’t know it, perhaps, but it is just what I have longed for. Amy has really done this room charmingly, and has to get the atmosphere I like in it. The confusion of sweet and odors from those plants yonder is just faint enough to be agreeable; and, far above all, my fair cousin, with her silken draperies and beautiful pose, puts a to my happiness. You have a talent for attitude, my Marguerite—do you know it? You always place yourself to advantage. I don’t know whether it is nature or art, but it is equally admirable, in either case.”
Margaret, who sat in a deep chair with her arms laid along its padded sides, and her hands lightly clasping the rounded ends, her long silk gown falling away to the left, while her figure was slightly turned toward her cousin at her right, her eyes upon the points of her little , crossed before her, and remained profoundly still.
For a moment the young man looked at her in silence, and then he said:
“Why are you so quiet, dear Daisy?”
“I am to alter the pose that has won your approbation,” she said . “Don’t you think if I retained it long enough I might ‘be struck so,’ as the man in Patience says?”
“I should be inclined to discourage that idea,” said Alan, “as I was about to ask you to draw your seat a little nearer, and transfer your hands from the chair’s arms to my head. You know I always liked you to run your long fingers through and through my hair. Have you forgotten how you used to do it? I can assure you I have not.”
As Margaret made no answer, he went on:
“You were quite a child when you used first to do it—a tall little maid, even then, with such imperious ways! But you were always willing to do anything for your big boy cousin, and he has never forgotten you. All the time he was at college, and , when he went abroad and travelled about in many strange and distant places, he carried with him always the image of that little maid, and when, at last, he turned homeward, one of his pleasantest visions was that of meeting her again.”
Margaret had changed her position and turned more directly toward him; she was looking straight into his eyes, with her direct and gaze, which his own met rather dreamily. She did not speak in answer to these fond assurances of his, but as she listened she smiled.
“And are you glad to hear that I have always had this tendre for my sweet cousin, which I somehow can’t get over, even yet?”
“Oh yes,” said Margaret, gently, “very glad,” and she looked at him with a deep and searching gaze, which he could not quite ............