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'Privy Seal hath sent a man to hasten thy cousin back to here, he said at last, after his eyes had steadily surveyed her face. She sat back in her chair, and the strip of sewing fell to wreathe, white and red and green, round her skirts on the floor. 'I have sent a botcher to stay his coming, he said slowly. 'Thy maid Margot's brother.
'The like of thee, uncle? the boy retorted, with a good-humoured insolence. 'My father was a gentleman. 'Who married my sister for her small money, and died leaving thee and thy sister to starve. 'Nay, I starve not, the boy said. 'And Margot's a plump faggot. 'A very Cynthia among willow-trees, the magister said. 'Why, your magistership shall have her, the boy said.
The meeting between the two had been cool and unnatural. They persistently avoided speaking to or looking at each other, and it seemed to Mollie's critical ear as if even Lady Margot's voice had altered in tone since she had turned the corner of the terrace. She chatted away as easily as before, but the friendly manner was replaced by something colder and more formal.
"Some day," thought Margot dismally to herself, "some day I shall laugh over this!" For the present, however, her sense of humour was strangely blunted, and the handkerchiefs were needed for a very different purpose. Margot's recovery was somewhat tedious, so that it was quite three weeks after the departure of the brothers Elgood before she was strong enough to face the journey home.
Reine Allix, in the fashion of her country and her breeding, was about to confer with the master and mistress ere saying a word to the girl, but there was that in Margot's face and in her timid greeting that lured speech out of her. She looked long and keenly into the child's downcast countenance, then touched her with a tender smile. "Petite Margot, the birds told me a little secret to-day.
" open your door, Peirrot " Oh Margot! with your translation that should not offend your atheistic master by telling his granddaughter what Dieu really means! The tired man, who'd known the song when he was a boy, was already laughing at Margot's version.
Was she, too, growing feverish and ill? But Margot's outburst had worked off some of her own uncomprehended terror, and she grew calm again. Though it had not been put into so many words, she knew from both Angelique's and Joseph's manner that they anticipated but one end to her guardian's illness.
There was a train standing, glowing and breathing upon the lines, and the driver called to her as she ran round the buffers of the engine. Soon she was down by the riverside and looking for Margot. Though there was moonlight far above her the river banks were wrapped in fog that smelt of water, and Margot's face at the hut window was white, and her wool dress white, too.
Ignorant why his simple question should have had such strange results, that piercing look made Adrian feel the veriest culprit, and he hastened to leave the room and the cabin. Hurrying to the beach he appropriated Margot's little canvas canoe and pushed out upon the lake.
Even so, disaster awaited her, for in the interest of an animated discussion some of the filmy folds slipped from the hand which held the parasol, dragged along the ground, and finally caught with a rip and a jerk, leaving a long jagged tear at the hem. Of the two exclamations, Margot's was far the most distressed. "Oh, my poor Berengaria! How thoughtless of me to bring you here!
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