“I always went out alone before,” Margaret said, mechanically turning up-stairs again.
“Yes, my bonnie doo; but you hadna a bonnie young Miss, a cousin of your ain (for niece is but a jest), to keep ye company.”
Thus Margaret was held fast. And by-and-by her habit of wandering out would probably have been broken, and she might have been carried away by her sisters safe out of all contact or reach of her lover. For the lover, as will be seen, was not violently in Margaret’s mind. If she missed him, there were so many other things that she missed more! He was but part of the general privation, impoverishment of her life. She had lost everything, she thought--her father, her careless sweetness of living, her light heart, the sunshine of her morning. All these other happinesses being gone, how could Margaret make an effort for Rob only? She was not strong enough to do this. She was not even unwilling to let him go with all the rest. Perhaps there was ingratitude in the feeling. He had been very “kind” to her, had given her a little comfort of sweet sympathy in her trouble. It was ungrateful to forget that now; and she did not forget it, but was too languid, too weary, and had lost too much already to be able to make any effort for this. Meanwhile, while she sat in a kind of lethargy within, and followed the directions of all about her, and let him drop from her, Rob roamed about outside, gnashing his teeth, sometimes almost cursing her, sometimes almost praying for her, watching every door and window, holding the post of a most impatient sentinel under the great fir-tree.
It happened to Margaret, however, one evening to find herself alone. Mrs. Bellingham had a headache, a thing which was not generally regarded as a great calamity in places where Mrs. Bellingham paid visits. It confined her to her room, and it was, on the whole, not a disagreeable change for her friends. Her sister, who in weal and woe was inseparable from her, though she would have been glad enough to escape too, was, under Jean’s orders, writing letters for her in her room. And the new proprietors of Earl’s-hall were glad enough for once to be by themselves. They took a conjugal walk about the place, examining into everything--the ruined part to see if anything could be done to it; the stables, which had been made out of part of the ruin; even the pigsty, which was John’s favorite spot in the demesne. The subject of consideration in the mind of the pair was whether the old place, with all its associations, should be sold, or whether anything could be done with it, cheaply, to adapt it for the country residence of the family. In its present state, certainly, it did not take much to “keep up;” but, on the other hand, the rental of the little scraps of estate which old Sir Ludovic had left scarcely justified the new Sir Ludovic, with his large family, in “keeping up” any country place at all. To decide upon this subject was the reason of Lady Leslie’s presence here.