ay, there had been a somewhat noticeable change
in his demeanor: he wore a trifle of quite novel assurance; his supreme
bearing was not mitigated by the restless sparkle of his eye; and in
addressing her his compliments, he spoke as one having authority.

Mrs. Laudersdale, so long and so entirely accustomed to the reception
of homage that it cost her no more reflection than an imperial princess
bestows on the taxes that produce her tiara, turned slowly from the
apparent apathy thus induced on her modes of thought, passivity lost in
a gulf of anxious speculation, while she watched the theatre of events
with a glow, like wine in lamplight, that burned behind her dusky eyes
till they had the steady penetration of some wild creature's. She may
have wondered if Mr. Raleigh's former feeling were yet alive; she may
have wondered if Marguerite had found the spell that once she found,
herself; she may have been kept in thrall by ignorance if he had ever
read that old confessing note of hers: whatever she thought or hoped or
dreaded, she said nothing, and did nothing.

Of all those who concerned themselves in the affair of Marguerite's
health and spirits, Mr. Raleigh was the only one who might have solved
their mystery. Perhaps the thought of wooing the child whose mother
he had once loved was sufficiently repugnant to him to overcome the
tenderness which every one was forced to feel for so beautiful a
creation. I have not said that Marguerite was this, before, because,
until brought into contrast with her mother, her extreme loveliness was
too little positive to be felt; now it was the evanescent shimmer of
pearl to the deep perpetual fire of the carbuncle. Softened, as she
became, from her versatile cheeriness, she moved round like a moonbeam,
and frequently had a bewildered grace, as if she knew not what to make
of herself. Mr. Raleigh, from the moment in which he perceived that she
no longer sought his company, retreated into his own apartments, and was
less seen by the others than ever.

Returning from the drive on the morning of Mrs. McLean's last recorded
remark, Mr. Raleigh, who had remained to give the horses in charge to a
servant, was about to pass, when the _tableau_ within the drawing-room
caught his attention and altered his course. He entered, and flung his
gloves down on a table, and threw himself on the floor beside Marguerite
and the children. She appeared to be revisited by a ray of her old
sunshine, and had