Philip took my hint; and he and Margaret laughed, and stretched arms across the paling tops; and I lost sight of their faces.  I sought refuge in turning to Fanny, who was nearer to me than they were.  To my surprise, she was watching me with the most kindly, pitying face in the world.  Who would have thought she had known my heart regarding her sister?

“Poor Bert!” she murmured gently, scarce for my hearing.

And I, who had felt very solitary the moment before, now seemed not quite so lonely; and I continued to look into the soft, compassionate eyes of Fanny, so steadily that in a moment, with the sweetest of blushes, she lowered them to the roses in her hand.

CHAPTER V.

We Hear Startling News, Which Brings about a Family “Scene".

I have characterised Margaret’s behaviour in the matter of this marriage proposal as forward; though I have admitted that it scarce looked so, so graceful and womanlike was her manner of carrying it off, which had in it nothing worse than the privileged air of a spoiled beauty.  Now that writing of it has set me thinking of it, I see that ’twas a more natural act than it appears in the cold recital.  For years she had been our queen, and Phil and I her humble subjects, and the making of the overtures appeared as proper in her, as it would have seemed presumption in either of us.  And over Phil, from that bygone day when she had gone across the street to his rescue, she had assumed an air of authority, nay of proprietorship, that bade him wait upon her will ere ever he acted or spoke.  And, again, though out of consideration for his rival he had been purposely silent while awaiting a sign from her, she had read his heart from the first.  His every look and tone for years had been an unconscious act of wooing, and so when she brought matters to a point as she did, ’twas on her part not so much an overture as a consent.  As for marriage proposal in general, all men with whom I have discussed it have confessed their own scenes thereof to have been, in the mere words, quite simple and unpoetical, whether enacted in confusion or in confidence; and to have been such as would not read at all finely in books.

The less easy ordeal awaited Philip, of asking her father.  But he was glad this stood yet in his way, and that ’twas not easy; for ’twould make upon his courage that demand which every man’s courage ought to undergo in such an affair, and which Margaret’s conduct had precluded in his coming to an understanding with her.

But however disquieting the task was to approach, it could be only successful at the end; for indeed Mr. Faringfield, with all his external frigidity, could refuse Phil nothing.  In giving his consent, which perhaps he had been ready to do long before Phil had been ready to ask it, he made no allusion to Phil’s going to England.  He purposely ignored the circumstance, I fancy, that in consenting to the marriage, he knowingly opened the way for his daughter’s visiting that hated country.  Doubtless the late conduct of Ned, and the intended defection of Philip, amicable though that defection was, had shaken him in his resolution of imposing his avoidance of England upon his family.  He resigned himself to the inevitable; but he grew more taciturn, sank deeper into himself, became more icy in his manner, than ever.