“Dearest Margaret!” he exclaimed. “My own love!” And there he stood, with his arms open, as though he expected Miss Mackenzie to rush into them. He was certainly a man of very great courage.

“Mr Maguire!” said she, and she stood still near the door. Then she looked at her aunt, and saw that Lady Ball’s eyes were keenly fixed upon her. Something like the truth, some approximation to the facts as they were, flashed upon her in a moment, and she knew that she had to bear herself in this difficulty with all her discretion and all her fortitude.

“Margaret,” exclaimed Mr Maguire, “will you not come to me?”

“What do you mean, Mr Maguire?” said she, still standing aloof from him, and retreating somewhat nearer to the door.

“The gentleman says that you are engaged to marry him,” said Lady Ball.

Margaret, looking again into her aunt’s face, saw the smile of triumph that sat there, and resolved at once to make good her ground.

“If he has said that, he has told an untruth,—an untruth both unmanly and unmannerly. You hear, sir, what Lady Ball has stated. Is it true that you have made such an assertion?”

“And will you contradict it, Margaret? Oh, Margaret! Margaret! you cannot contradict it.”

The reader must remember that this clergyman no doubt thought and felt that he had a good deal of truth on his side. Gentlemen when they make offers to ladies, and are told by ladies that they may come again, and that time is required for consideration, are always disposed to think that the difficulties of the siege are over. And in nine cases out of ten it is so. Mr Maguire, no doubt, since the interview in question, had received letters from the lady which should at any rate have prevented him from uttering any such assertion as that which he had now made; but he looked upon those letters as the work of the enemy, and chose to go back for his authority to the last words which Margaret had spoken to him. He knew that he was playing an intricate game,—that all was not quite on the square; but he thought that the enemy was playing him false, and that falsehood in return was therefore fair. This that was going on was a robbery of the Church, a spoiling of Israel, a touching with profane hands of things that had already been made sacred.

“But I do contradict it,” said Margaret, stepping forward into the room, and almost exciting admiration in Lady Ball’s breast by her demeanour. “Aunt,” said she, “as this gentleman has chosen to come here with such a story as this, I must tell you all the facts.”

“Has he ever been engaged to you?” asked Lady Ball.

“Never.”

“Oh, Margaret!” again exclaimed Mr Maguire.

“Sir, I will ask you to let me tell my aunt the truth. When I was at Littlebath, before I knew that my fortune was not my own,”—as she said this she looked hard into Mr Maguire’s face—“before I had become penniless, as I am now,”—then she paused again, and still looking at him, saw with inward pleasure the elongation of her suitor’s face, “this gentleman asked me to marry him.”