You're a good girl yourself, Maggie. I have
always said that. How Edward has turned out as he has done, I cannot
conceive. But now, Maggie, I've something to say to you." He moved uneasily
about, as if he did not know how to begin. Maggie was standing leaning her
head against the chimney-piece, longing for her visitor to go, dreading the
next minute, and wishing to shrink into some dark corner of oblivion where
she might forget all for a time, till she regained a small portion of the
bodily strength that had been sorely tried of late. Mr. Buxton saw her
white look of anguish, and read it in part, but not wholly. He was too
intent on what he was going to say.
"I've been lying awake all night, thinking. You see the disgrace it is to
you, though you are innocent; and I'm sure you can't think of involving
Frank in it."
Maggie went to the little sofa, and, kneeling down by it, hid her face in
the cushions. He did not go on, for he thought she was not listening to
him. At last he said:
"Come now, be a sensible girl, and face it out. I've a plan to propose."
"I hear," said she, in a dull veiled voice.
"Why, you know how against this engagement I have always been. Frank is but
three-and-twenty, and does not know his own mind, as I tell him. Besides,
he might marry any one he chose."
"He has chosen me," murmured Maggie.
"Of course, of course. But you'll not think of keeping him to it, after
what has passed.
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