The New Magdalen

'Ring the bell!' she repeated. 'I have left my work upstairs. If you want me to be in good spirits, I must have my work.'

Still looking at her, Horace put his hand mechanically to the bell and rang. One of the men-servants came in.

'Go upstairs and ask my maid for my work,' she said, sharply. Even the man was taken by surprise: it was her habit to speak to the servants with a gentleness and consideration which had long since won all their hearts. 'Do you hear me?' she asked, impatiently. The servant bowed, and went out on his errand. She turned to Horace with flashing eyes and fevered cheeks.

'What a comfort it is,' she said, 'to belong to the upper classes! A poor woman has no maid to dress her, and no footman to send upstairs. Is life worth having, Horace, on less than five thousand a year?'

The servant returned with a strip of embroidery. She took it with an insolent grace, and told him to bring her a footstool. The man obeyed. She tossed the embroidery away from her on the sofa. 'On second thoughts, I don't care about my work,' she said. 'Take it upstairs again.' The perfectly trained servant, marveling privately, obeyed once more. Horace, in silent astonishment, advanced to the sofa to observe her more nearly. 'How grave you look!' she exclaimed, with an air of flippant unconcern. 'You don't approve of my sitting idle, perhaps? Anything to please you! I haven't got to go up and downstairs. Ring the bell again.'

'My dear Grace,' Horace remonstrated, gravely, 'you are quite mistaken. I never even thought of your work.'

'Never mind; it's inconsistent to send for my work, and then send it away again. Ring the bell.'

Horace looked at her without moving. 'Grace,' he said, 'what has come to you?'

'How should I know?' she retorted, carelessly. 'Didn't you tell me to rally my spirits? Will you ring the bell, or must I?'

Horace submitted. He frowned as he walked back to the bell. He was one of the many people who instinctively resent anything that is new to them. This strange outbreak was quite new to him. For the first time in his life he felt sympathy for a servant, when the much-enduring man appeared once more.

'Bring my work back; I have changed my mind.' With that brief explanation she reclined luxuriously on the soft sofa-cushions, swinging one of her balls of wool to and fro above her head, and looking at it lazily as she lay back. 'I have a remark to make, Horace,' she went on, when the door had closed on her messenger. 'It is only people in our rank of life who get good servants. Did you notice? Nothing upsets that man's temper. A servant in a poor family should have been impudent; a maid-of-all-work would have wondered when I was going to know my own mind.' The man returned with the embroidery. This time she received him graciously; she dismissed him with her thanks. 'Have you seen your mother lately, Horace?' she asked, suddenly sitting up and busying herself with her work.

'I saw her yesterday,' Horace answered.

'She understands, I hope, that I am not well enough to call on her? She is not offended with me?'

Horace recovered his serenity. The deference to his mother implied in Mercy's questions gently flattered his self-esteem. He resumed his place on the sofa.

'Offended with you!' he answered, smiling. 'My dear Grace, she sends you her love. And, more than that, she has a wedding present for you.'

Mercy became absorbed in her work; she stooped close over the embroidery—so close that Horace could not see her face. 'Do you know what the present is?' she asked, in lowered tones, speaking absently.

'No. I only know it is waiting for you. Shall I go and get it to-day?'

She neither accepted nor refused the proposal—she went on with her work more industriously than ever.

'There is plenty of time,' Horace persisted. 'I can go before dinner.'

Still she took no notice: still she never looked up. 'Your mother is very kind to me,' she said, abruptly. 'I was afraid, at one time, that she would think me hardly good enough to be your wife.'

Horace laughed indulgently: his self-esteem was more gently flattered than ever.

'Absurd!' he exclaimed. 'My darling, you are connected with Lady Janet Roy. Your family is almost as good as ours.'

'Almost?' she repeated. 'Only almost?'

The momentary levity of expression vanished from Horace's face. The family question was far too serious a question to be lightly treated A becoming shadow of solemnity stole over his manner. He looked as if it was Sunday, and he was just stepping into church.

'In OUR family,' he said, 'we trace back—by my father, to the Saxons; by my mother, to the Normans. Lady Janet's family is an old family—on her side only.'

Mercy dropped her embroidery, and looked Horace full in the face. She, too, attached no common importance to what she had next to say.

'If I had not been connected with Lady Janet,' she began, 'would you ever have thought of marrying me?'

'My love! what is the use of asking? You are connected with Lady Janet.'

She refused to let him escape answering her in that way.

'Suppose I had not been connected with Lady Janet?' she persisted. 'Suppose I had only been a good girl, with nothing but my own merits to speak for me. What would your mother have said then?'

Horace still parried the question—only to find the point of it pressed home on him once more.

'Why do you ask?' he said.

'I ask to be answered,' she rejoined. 'Would your mother have liked you to marry a poor girl, of no family—with nothing but her own virtues to speak for her?'

Horace was fairly pressed back to the wall.