Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/53

Rh to speak in a natural voice, as if it were an every-day gift, and making room for them on a little stand by the window. Then, while Karl was arranging the box and the saucer, she went on talking with a forced rapidity and earnestness of manner.

Karl listened as one who only partly heard the words. When she stopped he said in his old, grave, calm tone, lifting his eyes to hers steadily as usual: "Thank you, Miss Margaret," and left the room.

Margaret burst into tears. She was very unhappy and utterly perplexed.

"Whoever heard of a man's thanking a woman like that, and going away looking so content and glad when she had just told him she could not marry him!" said Margaret to herself, "and what is to become of me now? I cannot live in the house with him any longer; it will not be kind; I must go away. Oh, I wish he had never come home," and Margaret threw herself on the bed and cried herself to sleep.

When Annette knocked at the door to ask why she did not come down to tea, Margaret roused herself from her heavy sleep, and looked into Annette's face with a bewildered expression of distress. She could not remember at first what had happened. In a second it all flashed into her mind, and burying her face in the pillow she groaned aloud. Annette was frightened. She had never