just on the hither verge of marriage. Meanwhile Paul grew conscious of he hardly knew what delicate change in his own emotions. The exquisite feeling of pity, the sense of her appealing weakness, her heavenly dependence, which had lent its tender strain to swell the concert of his affections, had died away, and given place to a vague, profound instinct of respect. Margaret was, after all, no such simple body; her nature, too, had its mysteries. In truth, thought Paul, tenderness, gentleness, is its own reward. He had bent to pluck this pallid flower of sunless household growth; he had dipped its slender stem in the living waters of his love, and lo! it had lifted its head, and spread its petals, and brightened into splendid purple and green. This glowing potency of loveliness filled him with a tremor which was almost a foreboding. He longed to possess her; he watched her with covetous eyes; he wished to call her utterly his own.
"Margaret," he said to her, "you fill me with a dreadful delight. You grow more beautiful every day. We must be married immediately, or, at this rate, by our wedding-day, I shall have grown mortally afraid of you. By the soul of my father, I didn't bargain for this! Look at yourself in that glass." And he turned her about to a long mirror; it was in his mother's dressing-room; Mrs De Grey had gone into the adjoining chamber.
Margaret saw herself reflected from head to foot in the glassy depths, and perceived the change in her appearance. Her head rose with a sort of proud serenity from the full curve of her shoulders; her eyes were brilliant, her lips trembled, her bosom rose and fell with all the insolence of her deep devotion. "Blanche Ferrars, of Castle Ferrars," she silently repeated, "Isabel Stirling, Magdalen Scrope,—poor foolish women! You were not women, you were children. It's your fault, Paul," she cried, aloud, "if I look other than I should! Why is there such a love between us?" And then, seeing the young man's face beside her own, she fancied he looked pale. "My Paul," she said, taking his hands, "you're pale. What a face for a happy
