CHAPTER XIII. "Love is enough; it grew up without heeding, In the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure; W W. MORRIS. HEN Cornelius woke on the morning after he had met Margie in the Ladyground, his thoughts were not altogether of a pleasurable description. The dream of exquisite happiness upon which he had closed his eyes last night did not appear in quite the same rosied colours by daylight as it had done then. At the least there were difficulties in the way, and all his life Cornelius had been in the habit of avoiding difficulties rather than of facing them. In the first place, he was conscious of having done rather a foolish thing on the impulse of the moment. Yesterday afternoon, when he took his gun to go in search of the rabbits which molested his corn in the field by the spinny, nothing had been farther from his thoughts than the intention of asking Margery Chaplin to be his wife. It was true that he was in love with her, and that a vague hope of some day making her his bride had begun. to take a shape in his mind of late; but it was only this unexpected meeting with her in the wood, which had surprised him into his sudden declaration of love. He did not exactly repent of his action in this respect. Margie had been too perfect, too absolutely charming for that; but he felt he had committed himself irrevocably, and could not escape the consequences of the step which he had taken. And there were more reasons than one to make him fearful of these. First of all, there was his dread of Miss Fairbairn's displeasure. Secondly, there was his conviction that if he did marry Margie he would be looked down upon by many of his friends, Above all, his brother who, having himself made what was considered an excellent marriage, would despise Cornelius for allying himself with a tradesman's family, and marrying a girl without a penny -King's Marden, as has been already said, thought poorly of the carpenter's fortune and position--all for the sake of a pretty face. He had taken care to impress upon Margie, even in the warmth of his first confession, that their engagement must of necessity be kept secret for the present, and in his own mind had resolved that this must last during Miss Fairbairn's lifetime, although there was no need to tell Margie so. In the same way he hoped his brother might be left in ignorance of his intention for the present, and if ever the time came when he found himself his own master and the express owner of the Manor-house, it would be easy to take an independent line in the matter. Besides, no one who really knew Margie Chaplin could take objection to his choice. Of that he was convinced; so the best thing was to keep their happiness to themselves for the present, and await a more auspicious time to proclaim it to the world. This was the resolution to which the young man came as he looked out of his window in the early morning, and turned over the events of yesterday in his mind. An unexpected interruption came in the shape of Abigail's voice calling him from the passage. "Please to come directly, sir; the missus is taken very bad, and Molly she feels all nohow, and daren't stop alone with her, and hadn't Dicky better run for the doctor?" Cornelius started to his feet, and hastened to give the necessary orders with something of a pang of remorse. Was the poor old lady going to take her final leave of the stage so rapidly? and this event which he had been anticipating as a distant probability, was it about to happen now? Doctor Hockin came and confirmed Abigail's opinion that Miss Fairbairn was very bad, so bad that for a couple of hours that day no one knew whether the stupor into which she had sunk was not the last sleep. It was a similar attack of illness to the one which had suddenly excited her relative's interest last spring, and Mrs. Plaskitt had not been far wrong when she pronounced it to be a stroke. Dr. Hockin was mysterious after the fashion of country doctors, and shrank from giving a name to the attack, but he made no scruple of showing his sense of its gravity, and shook his head over the precarious condition of the patient. A busy time of it Cornelius had that day. In the general consternation which prevailed at the Manor-house, he and Abigail Turvey were the only people who kept their heads, and they had enough to do to see the doctor's orders carried out, and to answer the host of inquiries which arrived from all parts of the village. It was late in the afternoon before he found time to slip out, and then only for half an hour, through the meadows to Luke Chaplin's house, just to get one glimpse of Margie. He found her at the gate of the paddock, looking out anxiously in hopes of some messenger from the Manor-house, and that it should prove to be Cornelius himself was more than she had dared to expect. "How is Miss Fairbairn ?" was her first inquiry, and all the warmth of her affectionate nature seemed to go out in a flood of sympathy towards the poor old lady who had been so kind to Cornelius. "Very ill, I am afraid," replied Cornelius, thinking less, however, of what he was saying than of the pleasure it was to see Margie again, and once more take her hand in his. "You may imagine what a morning I have had; and now I must only stop a few minutes, for old Hockin is coming again at six, and I must be back by then." "I scarcely expected you would be able to come at all," said Margie, with a smile which more than repaid Cornelius for any effort he might have made to obtain this glimpse of her. "And I am glad to think you are there to see that all is done that can be done for poor Miss Fairbairn. It would have seemed so sad if the poor old lady had died without a friend near her." Cornelius made no reply. He saw figures moving in the yard, and began to get a little uneasy. |