A FEW days after Christmas, as Margaret was in her room, writing one of her frequent long letters home, Mr. Decourcy’s card was brought to her. It was with a strong feeling of that she went down to him, and she stopped at Mrs. Gaston’s door, hoping her cousin would accompany her. Mrs. Gaston, however, was lying on the lounge, reading a novel, and she declared herself to be too tired to stir; so Margaret was obliged to go down alone.
After her first impulse had died away, she had concluded to keep the locket, as she felt she had no reason to take so extreme a step as to return it. Nothing, however, would induce her to wear Alan Decourcy’s picture, and that she meant to let him know.
It was the first time that Margaret had spoken to her cousin since witnessing the scene with Mrs. Vere in the , and the recollection of that scene necessarily threw a certain amount of into her manner.
Not observing this, however, Mr. Decourcy came toward her, with some words of greeting, and when she extended her hand he made a motion to raise it to his lips. With a movement that was almost rough in its suddenness, Margaret snatched her hand away.
“Margaret! What can this mean?” said Decourcy, in a tone of surprised reproach.
Miss Trevennon gave a little, laugh.
“I don’t like that sort of thing,” she said, lightly. “Don’t do it again. It’s unpleasant to me.”
“Forgive me,” he answered, with the utmost gentleness, untinged by any shade of . “I beg your pardon. I am very sorry.”
“Oh, never mind! It doesn’t matter,” said Margaret, hurriedly. “Thank you so much for the locket, Alan. It is lovely—far lovelier than I have any idea of, I dare say, for I am so ignorant about such things.”
“I hoped it would please you,” he said. “You saw the picture I ventured to put in it? And will you consent to wear it?”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, somewhat uneasily. “It was very kind of you to put it in, but I never have worn any one’s picture. I know you’re a cousin, and all that, but I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll take the picture out and put it——”
But he interrupted her.
“It isn’t because I am your cousin, Margaret, that I want you to wear my picture,” he said. “On the contrary, I hope for the time when you will forget that relationship in a nearer and tenderer one——”
“Alan! Stop. You must not go on,” said Margaret, with sudden . “There can be no thought of a nearer relationship between us at any time. If we are to be friends at all, this subject must not be mentioned again.”
“Forgive me; I have startled you,” he said. “I meant not to do that. I do not want to you or to force this hope of mine upon you too suddenly, but I cannot lightly give it up. It has been with me, during all my wanderings to and fro—if not the definite hope, at least an of the fact that my sweet cousin was endowed, more than any woman whom I had known, with all the attributes and qualities a man could desire in his companion for life. I cannot, even yet, quite abandon the hope that I may yet induce you to accept my devotion.”
Margaret might have borne the rest, but this word her.
“Devotion!” she said mockingly, with a little scornful laugh. “Oh, Alan!”
“What do you mean? Why should you speak to me in that tone? It is unfair, Margaret. It is not like you.”
“I mean,” she said, growing grave, and speaking with a sudden, earnest vehemence, “that you degrade the word devotion, when you call the feeling you have to offer me by that name. I know too well what real devotion means. I have too just an estimate of its goodness and strength to call the cool regard you have for me devotion! A cool regard between cousins does well enough, but that feeling in connection with marriage is another thing, and I had better tell you, here and now, that I would live my life out unloved and alone, sooner than I would wrong myself by accepting such a devotion as this that you offer me.”
Decourcy, who was, of course, ignorant of the ground on which Margaret’s strong feeling was based, heard her with . The only explanation that suggested itself was that some one, who happened to be aware of his rather well-known affair with Mrs. Vere, had informed his cousin. It was, therefore, with a tone of injured gentleness, that he said:
“Margaret, you surprise and grieve me inexpressibly by such words as those. I can only account for them by the possibility of some one’s having given you false ideas about me. There are always people to do these things, unfortunately,” he went on, with a little sigh of patient resignation; “but you should have hesitated before believing a story to my disadvantage. I would have been more just to you.”
“There has been no story told,” said Margaret. “If there were any stories to tell, they have been kept from me. Do not let us pursue this topic, Alan, and when we drop it now, let it be forever. It is quite out of the question that we can ever be more to each other than we are now.”
“As you have said it,” he replied, “my only course is a silent . Painful and disappointing as such a decision is to me, since it is your decision I have no word to say agains............