"Nothing of consequence, I think. She is tired with all that has been going on, lately. And then she's the shyest little thing!"
"It's a sort of shyness that don't look so happy as it might, it seems to me. And what has become of Paul's diamonds, I wonder? I went with him to choose some, last week. I thought I should see them next upon her finger."
Margaret opened her eyes widely. Of course, this was the first she had heard of the diamonds. Where could they be, indeed? Was anything wrong? They had not surely quarreled!
Faith came in with the paper. Thomas brought up breakfast. And presently, these three, with all their thoughts of and for each other, that reached into the long years to come, and had their roots in all that had gone by, were gathered at the table, seemingly with no further anxiety than to know whether one or another would have toast or muffins--eggs or raspberries.
Do we not--and most strangely and incomprehensively--live two lives?
"I must write to my mother, to-day," said Margaret, when her father had driven away to the mills, and they had brought in a few fresh flowers from the terrace for the vases, and had had a little morning music, which Margaret always craved, "as an overture," she said, "to the day."
"I must write to my mother; and you, I suppose, will be busy with answering Paul?"
A little consciousness kept her from looking straight in Faith's face, as she spoke. Had she done so, she might have seen that a paleness came over it, and that the lips trembled.
"I don't know," was the answer. "Perhaps not, to-day."
"Not to-day? Won't he be watching every mail? I don't know much about it, to be sure; but I fancied lovers were such uneasy, exacting creatures!"
"Paul is very patient," said Faith--not lightly, as Margaret had spoken, but as one self-reproached, almost, for abusing patience--"and they go to-morrow to Lake George. He won't look for a letter until he gets to Saratoga."
She had calculated her time as if it were the minutes of a reprieve.
When Paul Rushleigh, with his mother, reached Saratoga, he found two letters there, for him. One kind, simple, but reticent, from Faith--a mere answer to that which she could answer, of his own. The other was from his father.