Chapter 15 - Page 2

together, and how they parted, Margery knew
not. She might have known some of these things by waiting; but the
presence of Jim had bred in her heart a sudden disgust for the widow,
and a general sense of discomfiture. She went away in an opposite
direction, turning her head and saying to the unconscious Jim,
'There's a fine rod in pickle for you, my gentleman, if you carry out
that pretty scheme!'

Jim's military coup had decidedly astonished her. What he might do
next she could not conjecture. The idea of his doing anything
sufficiently brilliant to arrest her attention would have seemed
ludicrous, had not Jim, by entering the Yeomanry, revealed a capacity
for dazzling exploits which made it unsafe to predict any limitation
to his powers.

Margery was now excited. The daring of the wretched Jim in bursting
into scarlet amazed her as much as his doubtful acquaintanceship with
the demonstrative Mrs. Peach. To go to that Review, to watch the
pair, to eclipse Mrs. Peach in brilliancy, to meet and pass them in
withering contempt--if she only could do it! But, alas! she was a
forsaken woman.

'If the Baron were alive, or in England,' she said to herself (for
sometimes she thought he might possibly be alive), 'and he were to
take me to this Review, wouldn't I show that forward Mrs. Peach what
a lady is like, and keep among the select company, and not mix with
the common people at all!'

It might at first sight be thought that the best course for Margery
at this juncture would have been to go to Jim, and nip the intrigue
in the bud without further scruple. But her own declaration in after
days was that whoever could say that was far from realizing her
situation. It was hard to break such ice as divided their two lives
now, and to attempt it at that moment was a too humiliating
proclamation of defeat. The only plan she could think of--perhaps
not a wise one in the circumstances--was to go to the Review herself;
and be the gayest there.

A method of doing this with some propriety soon occurred to her. She
dared not ask her father, who scorned to waste time in sight-seeing,
and whose animosity towards Jim knew no abatement; but she might call
on her old acquaintance, Mr. Vine, Jim's partner, who would probably
be going with the rest of the holiday-folk, and ask if she might
accompany him in his spring-trap. She had no sooner perceived the
feasibility of this, through her being at her grandmother's, than she
decided to meet with the old man early the next morning.

In the meantime Jim and Mrs. Peach had walked slowly along the road
together, Jim leading the horse, and Mrs. Peach informing him that
her father, the gardener, was at Jim's village further on, and that
she had come to