North and South Page #3

								

softly upstairs with Mr. Hale to show him his little sleeping daughter.
Then the little Margaret had hushed her sobs, and tried to lie quiet as
if asleep, for fear of making her father unhappy by her grief, which she
dared not express before her aunt, and which she rather thought it was
wrong to feel at all after the long hoping, and planning, and contriving
they had gone through at home, before her wardrobe could be arranged to
suit her grander circumstances, and before papa could leave his parish
to come up to London, even for a few days.

Now she had got to love the old nursery, though it was but a dismantled
place; and she looked all round with a kind of cat-like regret, at the
idea of leaving it for ever in three days.

“Ah Newton!” said she, “I think we shall all be sorry to leave this dear
old room.”

“Indeed, miss, I shan’t for one. My eyes are not so good as they were,
and the light here is so bad that I can’t see to mend laces except just
at the window, where there’s always a shocking draught--enough to give
one one’s death of cold.”

“Well, I dare say you will have both good light and plenty of warmth at
Naples. You must keep as much of your darning as you can till then.
Thank you, Newton, I can take them down--you’re busy.”

So Margaret went down laden with shawls, and snuffing up their spicy
Eastern smell. Her aunt asked her to stand as a sort of lay figure on
which to display them, as Edith was still asleep. No one thought about
it; but Margaret’s tall, finely made figure, in the black silk dress
which she was wearing as mourning for some distant relative of her
father’s, set off the long beautiful folds of the gorgeous shawls that
would have half-smothered Edith. Margaret stood right under the
chandelier, quite silent and passive, while her aunt adjusted the
draperies. Occasionally, as she was turned round, she caught a glimpse
of herself in the mirror over the chimney-piece, and smiled at her own
appearance there--the familiar features in the usual garb of a princess.
She touched the shawls gently as they hung around her, and took a
pleasure in their soft feel and their brilliant colours, and rather
liked to be dressed in such splendour--enjoying it much as a child would
do, with a quiet pleased smile on her lips. Just then the door opened,
and Mr. Henry Lennox was suddenly announced. Some of the ladies started
back, as if half-ashamed of their feminine interest in dress. Mrs. Shaw
held out her hand to the new-comer; Margaret stood perfectly still,
thinking she might be yet wanted as a sort of block for the shawls; but
looking at Mr. Lennox with a bright, amused face, as if sure of his
sympathy in her sense of the ludicrousness at being thus surprised.

Her aunt was so much absorbed in asking Mr. Henry Lennox--who had not
been able to come to dinner--all sorts of questions about his brother
the bridegroom, his sister the bridesmaid (coming with the Captain from
Scotland for the occasion), and various other members of the Lennox
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