Chapter 11

Margery's face flushed up, and her neck and arms glowed in sympathy.
The quickness of youthful imagination, and the assumptiveness of
woman's reason, sent her straight as an arrow this thought: 'He
wants to marry me!'

She had heard of similar strange proceedings, in which the orange-
flower and the sad cypress were intertwined. People sometimes wished
on their death-beds, from motives of esteem, to form a legal tie
which they had not cared to establish as a domestic one during their
active life.

For a few minutes Margery could hardly be called excited; she was
excitement itself. Between surprise and modesty she blushed and
trembled by turns. She became grave, sat down in the solitary room,
and looked into the fire. At seven o'clock she rose resolved, and
went quite tranquilly upstairs, where she speedily began to dress.

In making this hasty toilet nine-tenths of her care were given to her
hands. The summer had left them slightly brown, and she held them up
and looked at them with some misgiving, the fourth finger of her left
hand more especially. Hot washings and cold washings, certain
products from bee and flower known only to country girls, everything
she could think of, were used upon those little sunburnt hands, till
she persuaded herself that they were really as white as could be
wished by a husband with a hundred titles. Her dressing completed,
she left word with Edy that she was going for a long walk, and set
out in the direction of Mount Lodge.

She no longer tripped like a girl, but walked like a woman. While
crossing the park she murmured 'Baroness von Xanten' in a
pronunciation of her own. The sound of that title caused her such
agitation that she was obliged to pause, with her hand upon her
heart.

The house was so closely neighboured by shrubberies on three of its
sides that it was not till she had gone nearly round it that she
found the little door. The resolution she had been an hour in
forming failed her when she stood at the portal. While pausing for
courage to tap, a carriage drove up to the front entrance a little
way off, and peeping round the corner she saw alight a clergyman, and
a gentleman in whom Margery fancied that she recognized a well-known
solicitor from the neighbouring town. She had no longer any doubt of
the nature of the ceremony proposed. 'It is sudden but I must obey
him!' she murmured: and tapped four times.

The door was opened so quickly that the servant must have been
standing immediately inside. She thought him the man who had driven
them to the ball--the silent man who could be trusted. Without a
word he conducted her up the back staircase, and through a door at
the top, into a wide corridor. She was asked to wait in a