Thus it was with Margaret, and to her the shroud of melancholy in which she was now wrapped brought an added boon--arrayed in it she was best able to make her verses. Not of necessity sad little verses; many of her brightest were conceived in profoundest gloom. With a pang at the heart she could be most merry--tinkling out her laughing little lines just as martyrs could breathe a calm because, rather than spite of, they were devilishly racked.
But this was no hour for tinkling lines. A manuscript returned by the last post emphasised her gloom.
Kissing her father good-night, Margaret crept to her room, aching with desire to write.
She undressed, read a portion of the _Imitation_, then to her table by the open window.
Two hours brought relief. Margaret placed her poem in an envelope against its presentation to George in the morning, then from her window leaned.
From her thoughts at once George sped; they rushed across the sleeping fields to cling about the person of that Mr. William Wyvern who had spoken of Mr. Marrapit as reminding him of a minor prophet--shaved. This was Margaret's nightly practice, but to-night this girl was most exquisitely melancholy, and with melancholy her thoughts of her William were tinged. She had not seen him that day; and now she brooded upon the bitter happening that had forced all her meetings with her lover to be snatched--fugitive, secret.
For Mr. William Wyvern was not allowed at Herons' Holt. When love first sent its herald curiosity into William's heart, the young man had sought to relieve its restlessness by a visit ostensibly on George, really upon Margaret, and extremely ill-advised in that at his heels gambolled his three bull-terriers.
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram these were named, and they were abrupt dogs to a point reaching brusqueness.
At the door, as William had approached, beamed Mr. Marrapit; upon the drive the queenly Rose of Sharon sat; and immediately tragedy swooped.
The dogs sighted the Rose. Red-mouthed the shining pack flew at her. Dignity fell before terror: wildly, with streaming tail, she fled.
Orange was the cat, white the dogs: like some orange and snow-white ribbon magically inspired, thrice at enormous speed they set a belt about the house. With tremendous bounds the Rose kept before her pursuers--heavily labouring, horrid with thirsty glee. Impotent in the doorway moaned Mr. Marrapit, his dirge rushing up to a wail of grief each time the parti-coloured ribbon flashed before his eyes.