Chapter introduction

"Then you have spoken to Margaret?" said her father.

"The moment before I came to you," he answered.

"And she loves you?" he continued.

"Yes," said Sidney.

"God bless my Margaret!" cried Colonel Cleveland, in tremulous tones.

"Amen!" said Sidney. "God make me worthy of her love!"

There was a slight pause before Colonel Cleveland spoke again.

"I think it may be as you wish," he said. "Most young men have some folly to confess; and this, though it seems more serious, was only a folly, not a crime. The worst part of it is keeping it a secret all these years. Seven years, did you say? But it is all over now, and Margaret, dear child, need never know."

CHAPTER XIII.

to the widow and children of his unfortunate clerk, but he could not grieve over an unforeseen death so convenient for his own peace of mind.

There was nothing now to hinder his marriage with Margaret. There were settlements to make, of course—Apley being settled on Margaret and her second son. The eldest son would inherit the estates and the large fortune entailed by Sir John Martin's will. On Colonel Cleveland's death Margaret herself would become possessor of her mother's dowry.

The feeling of freedom with which Sidney could now live was too new and too unfamiliar to be altogether a happy one. He had scarcely realized how oppressive had been the burden of Sophy's possible claim upon him. It had weighed down his spirit with a constant, yet almost unconscious, repression. He was like a man who had worn fetters until he drags his foot along the ground, unable to believe that he can walk like other men.

But he was free now; and he resolved to live such a life as would atone for all his early delinquencies. There should be nothing underhand or contemptible in all his future. His ambition could have free course, and he would prove himself worthy of high fortune. With a wife and companion like Margaret there would be nothing to hinder him from making his way into the foremost ranks of the men of his time.

On the eve of his marriage he brought Margaret a splendid set of diamonds, expecting to see her delight in ornaments so magnificent. She took the case from him with a pleased and happy smile, and looked at them closely for a few minutes, but she shut the case and laid it aside, almost indifferently, he thought.

"You do not care for them?" he said, in some disappointment.

"I care for anything you give to me," she answered softly, "but I do not much value ornaments for themselves. I never can care for them."

"That is because you do not see other girls who wear them," he replied. "When you go out into society as my wife you will see women sparkling with jewelry, and then you will learn to care for it."

"Shall I?" she asked doubtfully; "but it seems to me childish. You men do not adorn yourselves with jewels, and we should despise you if you did. It seems like a relic of barbarism, akin to the love of savages for glass beads. What man could strut about in diamonds and not look ridiculous?"

"But you are a woman," he said, laughing.

"Though surely not more childish than a man," she answered, rising from her low seat, and standing beside him with her serious eyes shining into his. "O Sidney, I wish we were poorer people.

I should like to work for you, as Laura does for George, because they are not rich. I shall never have any real work to do for you; that would be my idea of happiness. I will wear your diamonds. Oh, yes!

But you must not make a child of me."

"You are not a child, but an angel," he said.

"Ah! if you think me an angel," she replied gayly, "it will be very bitter to find out your mistake.

But still angels are ministering spirits. Don't you think I would rather use my hands in sewing for you than have you load them with rings? And my feet would be less weary moving up and down on errands for you, than dancing through tedious dances with some other man. I am sure poor people have ways of happiness that we know nothing of."

"Margaret," he said, "you have grown up too much alone. You have missed the wholesome companionship of girls of your own rank."

"Ah!" she cried, "I'm no longer an angel."

She turned away from him rather shyly and sadly, he thought, and touched the bell.

"If you had been a poorer man," she said, "you would have bought me a beautiful flower, and I should have worn it now, at once; and perhaps, I might have kissed it when it was faded, and put it away as something sacred. But now my maid must take charge of these costly things, and I cannot keep them for no one else to see."

"Margaret," he cried, "I would have brought you the loveliest flower in England, if I had known!"

As she stood a little way apart from him, with downcast eyes, he noticed for the first time that she was wearing no flowers. Was it for this reason? Had she waited for him to bring one that she might carry in her bosom this memorable evening, and put it away as something sacred, which no one should see but herself? And it would have been so if he had been a poor man. For a moment he caught a glimpse, through Margaret's eyes, of a happiness simpler, more natural, and nobler in the married life than that which lay before him and her. He could almost have wished himself as poor a man as his cousin George, for the sake of it.

But the door opened in answer to Margaret's ring, and a middle-aged woman entered, whom he fancied he knew by sight. Her face was pleasant, with traces of prettiness, which had become refined by thought and by some sadness. Margaret put her hand affectionately on her arm.

"I can never tell you how much I owe to this dear friend of mine," she said, looking up into Sidney's face, "and I want you to be a friend to Rachel Goldsmith."

Rachel Goldsmith! The shock was utterly unexpected; but his nature possessed an instinctive kindly consideration for his inferiors which impelled him to stretch out his hand and shake hands with Margaret's favorite maid.

"Since my mother died she has been almost a mother to me," said Margaret.

"I love my young lady as much as I could love a child of my own, sir," said Rachel, looking at him with eyes so much like Sophy's he felt that she must read the secret so jealously guarded in his heart. There was a keen reproach to him in her gaze, and in the air of sadness which rested on her face. She took up the case of diamonds and left them again alone.

"I must tell you something about Rachel," said Margaret, as soon as she was gone. "Her people live at Apley; and her brother is my father's saddler. He had one daughter, about six years older than me; a very pretty girl; quite a lovely face she had. But you may some time have seen her when you were a boy, and came to Apley."

"No," he answered, hardly knowing what he said.

"Everybody admired her," Margaret went on, "and her two aunts doted on her. They sent her to a boarding-school; and then she went out as a nursery governess. But just after she was twenty she disappeared."

Margaret paused, but Sidney said nothing.

"They never found her; they have not found her yet," she continued. "O Sidney! think how dreadful it is to lose anyone you love in such a way! A thousand times worse than dying, for then we lay the body in the quiet grave, and the soul is in the hands of God; but what misery and degradation she may be suffering."

"It is a sad history for you to know, my darling," said Sidney.

"Sad for me to know!" she repeated. "I suppose so; it has often made me sad. But what must it be to those who love her as much as my father loves me? Since we came to London, Rachel has spent many hours in the streets, with a faint, very faint hope of coming across her. And Rachel is such a good woman; so wise and upright. She could not be a better woman if she was a queen."

"Do you take her with us to-morrow?" he asked; for he felt as if her presence would cloud all his happiness, and become an insupportable burden to him. Yet it was too late to make any change in the arrangements for their journey.

"No," she answered, "I could not leave my father without Rachel. Since his accident she has been his nurse; and I do not want a maid. Rachel has taught me to be independent of her in almost every way. Didn't I say she was a wise woman?"

"Very wise!" he agreed absently.

CHAPTER XIV.