The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

"Mr. Raleigh"–

"Well?"

"I wish–please–you must not say Mademoiselle. Nobody will address me so, shortly. Give me my name,–call me Marguerite. Je vous en prie."

And she looked up with a blush deepening the apple-bloom of her cheek.

"Marguerite? Does it answer for pearl or for daisy with you?"

"Oh, they called me so because I was such a little round white baby. I couldn't have been very precious, though, or she never would have parted with me. Yes, I wish we might drift on some lazy current for years. I hate to shorten the distance. I stand in awe of my father, and I do not remember my mother."

"Do not remember?"

"She is so perfect, so superb, so different from me! But she ought to love her own child!"

"Her own child?"

"And then I do not know the customs of this strange land. Shall I be obliged to keep an establishment?"

"Keep an establishment?"

"It is very rude to repeat my words so! You oughtn't! Yes, keep an establishment!"

"I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle."

"No, it is I who am rude."

"Not at all,–but mysterious. I am quite in the dark concerning you."

"Concerning me?"

"Ah, Miss Marguerite, it is my turn now."

"Oh! It must be–This is your mystery, n'est ce pas? Mamma was my grandmamma. My own mother was far too young when mamma gave her in marriage; and, to make amends, mamma adopted me and left me her name and her fortune. So that I am very wealthy. And now shall I keep an establishment?"

"I should think not," said Mr. Raleigh, with a smile.

"Do you know, you constantly reassure me? Home grows less and less a bugbear when you speak of it. How strange! It seems as if I had known you a year, instead of a week."

"It would probably take that period of time to make us as well acquainted under other circumstances."

"I wish you were going to be with us always. Shall you stay in America, Mr. Raleigh?"

"Only till the fall. But I will leave you at your father's door"–

And then Mr. Raleigh ceased suddenly, as if he had promised an impossibility.

"How long before we reach New York?" she asked.

"In about nine hours," he replied,–adding, in unconscious undertone, "if ever."

"What was that you said to yourself?" she asked, in a light and gayly inquisitive voice, as she looked around and over the ship. "Why, how many there are on deck! It is such a beautiful night, I suppose. Eh, Mr. Raleigh?"

"Are you not tired of your position?" he asked. "Sit down beside me here." And he took a seat.

"No, I would rather stand. Tell me what you said."

"Sit, then, to please me, Marguerite, and I will tell you what I said."

She hesitated a moment, standing before him, the hood of her capote, with its rich purple, dropping from the fluttering yellow hair that the moonlight deepened into gold, and the fire-opal clasp rising and falling with her breath, like an imprisoned flame. He touched her hand, still warm and soft, with his own, which was icy. She withdrew it, turned her eyes, whose fair, faint lustre, the pale forget-me-not blue, was darkened by the antagonistic light to an amethystine shadow, inquiringly upon him.

"There is some danger," she murmured.

"Yes. When you are not a mark for general observation, you shall hear it."

"I would rather hear it standing."

"I told you the condition."

"Then I shall go and ask Captain Tarbell."

"And come sobbing back to me for 'reassurance.'"

"No," she said, quickly, "I should go down to Ursule."

"Ursule has a mattress on deck; I assisted her up."

"There is the captain! Now"–

He seized her hand and drew her down beside him. For an instant she would have resisted, as the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks attested,–and then, with the instinctive feminine baseness that compels every woman, when once she has met her master, she submitted.

"I am sorry, if you are offended," said he. "But the captain cannot attend to you now, and it is necessary to be guarded in movement; for a slight thing on such occasions may produce a panic."

"You should not have forced me to sit," said she, in a smothered voice, without heeding him; "you had no right."

"This right, that I assume the care of you."

"Monsieur, you see that I am quite competent to the care of myself."

"Marguerite, I see that you are determined to quarrel."

She paused a moment, ere replying; then drew a little nearer and turned her face toward him, though without looking up.

"Forgive me, then!" said she. "But I would rather be naughty and froward, it lets me stay a child, and so you can take me in keeping, and I need not think for myself at all. But if I act like a woman grown, then comes all the responsibility, and I must rely on myself, which is such trouble now, though I never felt it so before,–I don't know why. Don't you see?" And she glanced at him with her head on one side, and laughing archly.

"You were right," he replied, after surveying her a moment; "my proffered protection is entirely superfluous."

She thought he was about to go, and placed her hand on his, as it lay along the side. "Don't leave me," she murmured.