North and South | Page 3

the wedding. While Newton went (not without a muttered grumbling)
to undo the shawls, which had already been exhibited four or five times
that day, Margaret looked round upon the nursery; the first room in that
house with which she had become familiar nine years ago, when she
was brought, all untamed from the forest, to share the home, the play,
and the lessons of her cousin Edith. She remembered the dark, dim look
of the London nursery, presided over by an austere and ceremonious
nurse, who was terribly particular about clean hands and torn frocks.
She recollected the first tea up there--separate from her father and aunt,
who were dining somewhere down below an infinite depth of stairs; for
unless she were up in the sky (the child thought), they must be deep
down in the bowels of the earth. At home--before she came to live in
Harley Street--her mother's dressing-room had been her nursery; and,
as they kept early hours in the country parsonage, Margaret had always
had her meals with her father and mother. Oh! well did the tall stately
girl of eighteen remember the tears shed with such wild passion of grief
by the little girl of nine, as she hid her face under the bed-clothes, in
that first night; and how she was bidden not to cry by the nurse,
because it would disturb Miss Edith; and how she had cried as bitterly,
but more quietly, till her newly-seen, grand, pretty aunt had come softly
upstairs with Mr. Hale to show him his little sleeping daughter. Then
the little Margaret had hushed her sobs, and tried to lie quiet as if
asleep, for fear of making her father unhappy by her grief, which she
dared not express before her aunt, and which she rather thought it was
wrong to feel at all after the long hoping, and planning, and contriving
they had gone through at home, before her wardrobe could be arranged
so as to suit her grander circumstances, and before papa could leave his

parish to come up to London, even for a few days.
Now she had got to love the old nursery, though it was but a dismantled
place; and she looked all round, with a kind of cat-like regret, at the
idea of leaving it for ever in three days.
'Ah Newton!' said she, 'I think we shall all be sorry to leave this dear
old room.'
'Indeed, miss, I shan't for one. My eyes are not so good as they were,
and the light here is so bad that I can't see to mend laces except just at
the window, where there's always a shocking draught--enough to give
one one's death of cold.'
Well, I dare say you will have both good light and plenty of warmth at
Naples. You must keep as much of your darning as you can till then.
Thank you, Newton, I can take them down--you're busy.'
So Margaret went down laden with shawls, and snuffing up their spicy
Eastern smell. Her aunt asked her to stand as a sort of lay figure on
which to display them, as Edith was still asleep. No one thought about
it; but Margaret's tall, finely made figure, in the black silk dress which
she was wearing as mourning for some distant relative of her father's,
set off the long beautiful folds of the gorgeous shawls that would have
half-smothered Edith. Margaret stood right under the chandelier, quite
silent and passive, while her aunt adjusted the draperies. Occasionally,
as she was turned round, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror
over the chimney-piece, and smiled at her own appearance there-the
familiar features in the usual garb of a princess. She touched the shawls
gently as they hung around her, and took a pleasure in their soft feel
and their brilliant colours, and rather liked to be dressed in such
splendour--enjoying it much as a child would do, with a quiet pleased
smile on her lips. Just then the door opened, and Mr. Henry Lennox
was suddenly announced. Some of the ladies started back, as if
half-ashamed of their feminine interest in dress. Mrs. Shaw held out her
hand to the new-comer; Margaret stood perfectly still, thinking she
might be yet wanted as a sort of block for the shawls; but looking at Mr.
Lennox with a bright, amused face, as if sure of his sympathy in her

sense of the ludicrousness at being thus surprised.
Her aunt was so much absorbed in asking Mr. Henry Lennox--who had
not been able to come to dinner--all sorts of questions about his brother
the bridegroom, his sister the bridesmaid (coming with the Captain
from Scotland for the occasion), and various other members of the
Lennox family, that Margaret saw she was no more