"What has distressed you?" he said, noting with quick sympathy her tearful face.
How could she tell him? He was here, and the look in his eyes, the whole expression of his face, told her that he had come to seek _her_. Grace's story was true, why had she made herself miserable? How stupid she was! Blushing, she answered part of his question, and he was content.
"I thought that you would never come again."
Margaret thought the day brighter, softer, more enchanting than ever before known. She moved as in a dream, outwardly quiet, a whole world of passion, and love, and gratitude, swelling her heart.
"I am afraid of my happiness," she said that evening to Mrs. Dorriman, when Sir Albert had gone out with his cigar, and the two friends had gone upstairs to bed. "I am so intensely, so perfectly, happy! God is very good to me!"
"My dear," said Mrs. Dorriman, "I am nearly as happy about you as I am about myself, and I think Mr. Stevens is right (he is always right). He says we need not question why we are happy, but enjoy it, and be thankful for it. I like Sir Albert very much indeed, and if he cannot quite compare with ... older men just now, I dare say when he comes to be older----"
"He will be a second Mr. Stevens," said Margaret, laughing, as she said good-night.
Next day brought Mrs. Dorriman a letter from her brother, the contents of which puzzled her and bewildered her very nearly as much as the famous letter had done more than two years and a half ago, when we first made her acquaintance.
She was to come to Renton with Margaret, and she was also to bring Christie with her. Jean of course would be welcome, but he wished to see Christie particularly.
Mr. Stevens not having arrived, Mrs. Dorriman took her perplexities to Margaret.
"Why he should want to see Christie is so very remarkable," said she, in something of the old puzzled and plaintive tone.
"Of course he must have seen her, as a young man he must have known her, because she lived on the place, and it was our way to know everybody; but all these years she has been here and he has never taken any notice of her. I believe she would hardly know him by sight now."
"Perhaps she is connected with some memory of his youth."
Mrs. Dorriman went herself to tell Christie about it; wishing to prepare the old woman, doubtful as to her consenting to go on a railway for the first time in all her life.