'A dull rotation, never at a stay,

Yesterday's face twin image of to-day.'

COWPER.

'Of what each one should be, he sees the form and rule,

And till he reach to that, his joy can ne'er be full.'

RUCKERT.

It was very well for Margaret that the extreme quiet of the

Harley Street house, during Edith's recovery from her

confinement, gave her the natural rest which she needed. It gave

her time to comprehend the sudden change which had taken place in

her circumstances within the last two months. She found herself

at once an inmate of a luxurious house, where the bare knowledge

of the existence of every trouble or care seemed scarcely to have

penetrated.

The wheels of the machinery of daily life were well

oiled, and went along with delicious smoothness. Mrs. Shaw and

Edith could hardly make enough of Margaret, on her return to what

they persisted in calling her home. And she felt that it was

almost ungrateful in her to have a secret feeling that the

Helstone vicarage--nay, even the poor little house at Milton,

with her anxious father and her invalid mother, and all the small

household cares of comparative poverty, composed her idea of

home. Edith was impatient to get well, in order to fill

Margaret's bed-room with all the soft comforts, and pretty

nick-knacks, with which her own abounded. Mrs. Shaw and her maid

found plenty of occupation in restoring Margaret's wardrobe to a

state of elegant variety.

Captain Lennox was easy, kind, and

gentlemanly; sate with his wife in her dressing-room an hour or

two every day; played with his little boy for another hour, and

lounged away the rest of his time at his club, when he was not

engaged out to dinner. Just before Margaret had recovered from

her necessity for quiet and repose--before she had begun to feel

her life wanting and dull--Edith came down-stairs and resumed her

usual part in the household; and Margaret fell into the old habit

of watching, and admiring, and ministering to her cousin.

She gladly took all charge of the semblances of duties off Edith's

hands; answered notes, reminded her of engagements, tended her

when no gaiety was in prospect, and she was consequently rather

inclined to fancy herself ill. But all the rest of the family

were in the full business of the London season, and Margaret was

often left alone. Then her thoughts went back to Milton, with a

strange sense of the contrast between the life there, and here.

She was getting surfeited of the eventless ease in which no

struggle or endeavour was required. She was afraid lest she

should even become sleepily deadened into forgetfulness of

anything beyond the life which was lapping her round with luxury.

There might be toilers and moilers there in London, but she never

saw them; the very servants lived in an underground world of

their own, of which she knew neither the hopes nor the fears;

they only seemed to start into existence when some want or whim

of their master and mistress needed them. There was a strange

unsatisfied vacuum in Margaret's heart and mode of life; and,

once when she had dimly hinted this to Edith, the latter, wearied

with dancing the night before, languidly stroked Margaret's cheek

as she sat by her in the old attitude,--she on a footstool by the

sofa where Edith lay.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024