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142 - WILD MARGARET,
‘*Yes, yes,’’ gasped Margaret, as if she were choking,
‘‘he is.your husband-—he is nothing tome. I have no
right to stay here now. I will go.”’ os
‘Perhaps you’d like to see him again, like to see us
face to face and have it out with him?” suggested Lottie,
doubtfully, and watching Margaret’s face covertly. |
‘‘ No, no,’ she said, instantly, and with a shudder, ‘‘I:
_—I never wish to see him again.” a .
‘‘He has behaved cruelly, shamefully to you, miss,’’ said
Lottie; ‘‘to both of us, in fact, and he isn’t worth fretting .
about, though he is a lord.” SO
Margaret sat staring at the gayly patterned carpet, al-
. most as if she had not heard the last words, then she
looked round the room in a kind of bewildered fashion.
Lottie rose and let down her veil. .
‘‘ There is a train in an hour,” she said, with a sympa-.
thetic sigh, ‘* if you’d like to go to London, or perhaps you’d.
like to go abroad. If there should be money wanted——”
She had almost gone too far.
Margaret rose and looked at her with wild eyes.
_ **Y will go,”’ she panted, ‘‘donot beafraid. Iwill never
see your—your husband again. But leave me alone! Do
not offer me money ’—then her face changed, and with a
sob she cried—-‘‘ forgive me. It is you who have been
wronged as well as me. I—I did not mean to speak so—
but, ah, if you would only go and leave me to fight against
my misery.” ~
Lottie turned pale again under her paint, and moved to-
ward the door. There she paused, and a strange look.
came into her face. It was the shadow of coming remorse
casting itself before its steps. Even then there was & |
chance for Margaret, for at that moment Lottie’s womanly
heart was beginning to assert itself, and the impulse to
fling herself at Margaret’s feet and tell her the truth—the
real truth—was making itself felt; but at that instant she
caught sight of a man’s figure coming up the winding path,
and with a quick step she came toward Margaret.
“Tam going,” she said, in her ear; ‘‘ you will not see
me again. Go to London—abroad—somewhere away from
Blair, and—from Mr. Austin Ambrose !”
These last words were not in her part, but for the life o
her, though she lost all, Lottie could not have helped whis-
pering them. Then, without waiting for any response, she
went out and turned down the path. A hundred yards
prom the gate, on the narrow path, she met Austin Am-
rose.
** Well,’ he said, quickly, ‘is it over?’ .
** Yes, it’s done,” she said, looking at him with anything :,
cere eI SiN roemnngere rere