Margaret, with increasing indignation--"even the right
_height_! It is absurd. I am not to have any will of my own in the
matter, because it is all so beautifully suitable. I am to be disposed
of like a slave!"

Here was indeed a new note of rebellion.

"Your father and mother would never make you marry a man whom you did
not like," said Janetta, a little doubtfully.

"I don't know. Papa would not; but mamma!----I am afraid mamma will try.
And it is very hard to do what mamma does not like."

"But you could explain to her----"

"I have nothing to explain," said Margaret, arching her delicate brows.
"I like Sir Philip very well. I respect him very much. I think his house
and his position would suit me exceedingly well; and yet I do not want
to marry him. It is so unreasonable of me, mamma says. And I feel that
it is; and yet--what can I do?"

"There is--nobody--else?" hazarded Janetta.

Margaret opened her lovely eyes to their fullest extent.

"Dearest Janetta, who else could there be? Who else have I seen? I have
been kept in the schoolroom until now--when I am to be married to this
most suitable man! Now, confess, Janetta, would you like it? Do your
people want to marry you to anybody?"

"No, indeed," said Janetta, smiling. "Nobody has expressed any desire
that way. But really I don't know what to say, Margaret; because Sir
Philip does seem so perfectly suitable--and you say you like him?"

"Yes, but I only like him; I don't love him." Margaret leaned back in
her chair, crossed her hands behind her golden head, and looked dreamily
at the opposite wall. "You know I think one ought to love the man one
marries--don't you think so? I have always thought of loving once and
once only--like Paul and Virginia, you know, or even Romeo and
Juliet--and of giving _all_ for love! That would be beautiful!"

"Yes, it would. But it would be very hard too," said Janetta, thinking
how lovely Margaret looked, and what a heroine of romance--what a
princess of dreams--she would surely be some day. And she, poor, plain,
brown, little Janetta! There was probably no romance in store for her at
all.

But Life holds many secrets in her hand; and perhaps it was Janetta and
not Margaret for whom a romance was yet in store.

"Hard? Do you call it hard?" Margaret asked, with a curiously exalted
expression, like that of a saint absorbed in mystic joys. "It would be
most easy, Janetta, to give up everything for love."

"I don't know