第99章

"Indeed I do love him, my lady. If ever anything looks beautiful or lovely to me, then I know at once that God is that.""But, then, what right have we to take the good of that, however true it is, when we are not beautiful ourselves?""That only makes God the more beautiful--in that he will pour out the more of his beauty upon us to make us beautiful. If we care for his glory, we shall be glad to believe all this about him. But we are too anxious about feeling good ourselves, to rejoice in his perfect goodness. I think we should find that enough, my lady.

For, if he be good, are not we his children, and sure of having it, not merely feeling it, some day?"Here Margaret repeated a little poem of George Herbert's. She had found his poems amongst Mrs. Elton's books, who, coming upon her absorbed in it one day, had made her a present of the volume. Then indeed Margaret had found a friend.

The poem is called Dialogue:

"Sweetest Saviour, if my soul Were but worth the having--""Oh, what a comfort you are to me, Margaret!" Lady Emily said, after a short silence. Where did you learn such things?""From my father, and from Jesus Christ, and from God himself, showing them to me in my heart.""Ah! that is why, as often as you come into my room, even if I am very troubled, I feel as if the sun shone, and the wind blew, and the birds sang, and the tree-tops went waving in the wind, as they used to do before I was taken ill--I mean before they thought I must go abroad. You seem to make everything clear, and right, and plain.

I wish I were you, Margaret."

"If I were you, my lady, I would rather be what God chose to make me, than the most glorious creature that I could think of. For to have been thought about--born in God's thoughts--and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, most precious thing in all thinking.

Is it not, my lady?"

"It is," said Lady Emily, and was silent.

The shadows of evening came on. As soon as it was dark, Margaret took her place at one of the windows hidden from Lady Emily by a bed-curtain. She raised the blind, and pulled aside one curtain, to let her have a view of the trees outside. She had placed the one candle so as not to shine either on the window or on her own eyes.

Lady Emily was asleep. One hour and another passed, and still she sat there--motionless, watching.

Margaret did not know, that at another window--the one, indeed, next to her own--stood a second watcher. It was Hugh, in Harry's room:

Harry was asleep in Hugh's. He had no light. He stood with his face close against the windowpane, on which the moon shone brightly.

All below him the woods were half dissolved away in the moonlight.

The Ghost's Walk lay full before him, like a tunnel through the trees. He could see a great way down, by the light that fell into it, at various intervals, from between the boughs overhead. He stood thus for a long time, gazing somewhat listlessly. Suddenly he became all eyes, as he caught the white glimmer of something passing up the avenue. He stole out of the room, down to the library by the back-stair, and so through the library window into the wood. He reached the avenue sideways, at some distance from the house, and peeped from behind a tree, up and down. At first he saw nothing.

But, a moment after, while he was looking down the avenue, that is, away from the house, a veiled figure in white passed him noiselessly from the other direction. From the way in which he was looking at the moment, it had passed him before he saw it. It made no sound.

Only some early-fallen leaves rustled as they hurried away in uncertain eddies, startled by the sweep of its trailing garments, which yet were held up by hands hidden within them. On it went.

Hugh's eyes were fixed on its course. He could not move, and his heart laboured so frightfully that he could hardly breathe. The figure had not advanced far, however, before he heard a repressed cry of agony, and it sank to the earth, and vanished; while from where it disappeared, down the path, came, silently too, turning neither to the right nor the left, a second figure, veiled in black from head to foot.

"It is the nun in Lady Euphrasia's room," said Hugh to himself.

This passed him too, and, walking slowly towards the house, disappeared somewhere, near the end of the avenue. Turning once more, with reviving courage--for his blood had begun to flow more equably--Hugh ventured to approach the spot where the white figure had vanished. He found nothing there but the shadow of a huge tree.

He walked through the avenue to the end, and then back to the house, but saw nothing; though he often started at fancied appearances. Sorely bewildered, he returned to his own room. After speculating till thought was weary, he lay down beside Harry, whom he was thankful to find in a still repose, and fell fast asleep.

Margaret lay on a couch in Lady Emily's room, and slept likewise;but she started wide awake at every moan of the invalid, who often moaned in her sleep.