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Page 9
"You forgot that I do not love him--that he does not love me."
"Love! tush! Don't let me hear anything about that. I loath the name.
Margie, love ruined my only son! For love he disobeyed me and I disowned
him, I have not spoken his name for years! Your father approved of Mr.
Linmere, and while you were yet a child you were betrothed. And when your
father died, what did you promise him on his deathbed?"
Margie grew white as the ribbons at her throat.
"I promised him that I would _try_ and fulfil his requirements."
"That you would _try_! Yes. And that was equal to giving an unqualified
assent. You know the conditions of the will, I believe?"
"I do. If I marry without your consent under the age of twenty-one, I
forfeit my patrimony. And I am nineteen now. And I shall not marry
without your consent."
"Margie, you must marry Mr. Linmere. Do not hope to do differently. It
is your duty. He has lived single all these years waiting for you. He
will be kind to you, and you will be happy. Prepare to receive him with
becoming respect."
Mr. Trevlyn considered his duty performed, and went out for his customary
walk.
At dinner Mr. Linmere arrived. Margie met him with cold composure. He
scanned her fair face and almost faultless form, with the eye of a
connoisseur, and congratulated himself on the fortune which was to give
him, such a bride without the perplexity of a wooing. She was beautiful
and attractive, and he had feared she might be ugly, which would have
been a dampener on his satisfaction. True, her wealth would have
counter-balanced any degree of personal deformity; but Mr. Paul Linmere
admired beauty, and liked to have pretty things around him.
To tell the truth, he was sadly in need of money. It was fortunate that
his old friend, Mr. Harrison, Margie's dead father, had taken it into his
head to plight his daughter's troth to him while she was yet a child. Mr.
Harrison had been an eccentric man; and from the fact that in many points
of religious belief he and Mr. Paul Linmere agreed, (for both were
miserable skeptics,) he valued him above all other men, and thought his
daughter's happiness would be secured by the union he had planned.
Linmere had been abroad several years, and had led a very reckless,
dissipated life. Luxurious by nature, lacking in moral rectitude, and
having wealth at his command, he indulged himself unrestrained; and when
at last he left the gay French capital and returned to America, his whole
fortune, with exception of a few thousands, was dissipated. So he needed
a rich wife sorely, and was not disposed to defer his happiness.
He met Margie with _empressement_, and bowed his tall head to kiss the
white hand she extended to him. She drew it away coldly--something about
the man made her shrink from him.
"I am so happy to meet you again. Margie, and after ten years of
separation! I have thought so much and so often of you."
"Thank you, Mr. Linmere."
"Will you not call me Paul?" he asked, in a subdued voice, letting his
dangerous eyes, full of light and softness, rest on her.
An expression of haughty surprise swept her face. She drew back a pace.
"I am not accustomed to address gentlemen--mere acquaintances--by
their Christian names, sir."
"But in this case, Margie? Surely the relations existing between us
will admit of such a familiarity," he said, seating himself, while she
remained standing coldly near.
"There are no relations existing between us at present, Mr. Linmere," she
answered, haughtily; "and if, in obedience to the wishes of the dead, we
should ever become connected in name, I beg leave to assure you in the
beginning that you will always be Mr. Linmere to me."
A flush of anger mounted to his cheek; he set his teeth, but outwardly he
was calm and subdued. Anger, just at present, was impolitic.
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