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10 | WILD MARGARET. —
of common kindness, and make my money of some use to
one deserving it? Hitherto it has passed, through Blair’s
__ hands to blacklegs and scoundrels.”’ . ve
He drew the paper toward him and took up the pen with
an air of resolution and wrote a note to Messrs. Tyler &
Driver, the family solicitors. GS
‘*Gentlemen,’’ he wrote, ‘‘add a codicil to my will, be-
queathing five thousand pounds to Margaret Hale, the
granddaughter of Mrs. Hale, who acts as the Court house-
keeper. _ Very truly yours, FERRERS.”
It was an important letter for Margaret, but it bore upon
rre
her future to an extent far greater than would be infe:
even by the gift of so large a sum of money. ,
CHAPTER IX.
noticed how kind and gracious he had been. He had not
only bought the copy of the Guido, and commissioned an-
other picture of her, but had walked by her side and
smiled upon her, treating her almost as an equal, witha
gentleness and deference indeed which seemed to indicate
that he thought her a superior.
‘Tl go into the woods and find a subject at once,” she °
said to herself. ‘‘ And it shall be my very best picture, or
—Tll know the reason why. No wonder people are fon
of lords and ladies, if they are all like the great Karl of
Ferrers,”’ .
No doubt, if she had known the contents of the letter he
had just written .to Messrs. Tyler & Driver, she would have
thought still more highly of him.
She had a sketch-block and pencil in her hand, and
‘she went through to the woods that fringed the Court
lawns on three sides.
They were lovely woods: there was no more beautiful
place in England than Leyton Court, and Margaret almost
forgot the purpose for which she had come, as she sat in a
Jittle bushy dell, through which ran a tiny stream, tumb-
ling in silvery cascades over the bowlders rounded by the
/
hand of Time.
But presently, when she had drank deep of its beauty,
she began to make a. sketch of the dell. .
What a lucky girl she was! The possessor of the silver
medal, an exhibitor in the Academy, and now commis-
sioned by no less a personage than the Earl of Ferrers.
“I shall be really famous if I go on like this,’? she said’
to herself, with a soft laugh.
Then the laugh died out on her lips, for, with a sudden
of}
_ Irwas only when she had left the earl that Margaret
. . . ,
amen Te meer et cuasiut es cng eee aan : . : -—_—e
° was ant joe ha iremmerernenrrse te