The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fair Margaret, by Francis Marion Crawford

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Title: Fair Margaret
A Portrait

Author: Francis Marion Crawford

Illustrator: Horace T. Carpenter

Release Date: June 19, 2008 [EBook #25838]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: "He pressed the handsome chalked hand in his own and
then to his lips in a very un-English way."]

FAIR MARGARET

_A PORTRAIT_

By

F. MARION CRAWFORD

AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "SANT' ILARIO," "WHOSOEVER
SHALL OFFEND," ETC., ETC.

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HORACE T. CARPENTER_

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.

COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1905. Reprinted
November, December, 1905; April, 1906; July, September, 1908;
July, 1909; February, twice, 1910.

_Thirty-seventh Thousand_

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

FAIR MARGARET

CHAPTER I

'I am a realist,' said Mr. Edmund Lushington, as if that explained
everything. 'We could hardly expect to agree,' he added.

It sounded very much as if he had said: 'As you are not a realist, my
poor young lady, I can of course hardly expect you to know anything.'

Margaret Donne looked at him quietly and smiled. She was not very
sensitive to other people's opinions; few idealists are, for they
generally think more of their ideas than of themselves. Mr. Lushington
had said that he could not agree with her, that was all, and she was
quite indifferent. She had known that he would not share her opinion,
when the discussion had begun, for he never did, and she was glad of
it. She also knew that her smile irritated him, for he did not resemble
her in the very least. He was slightly aggressive, as shy persons often
are: and yet, like a good many men who profess 'realism,' b