All this passed in a very low voice, but Margaret listened with all her might, and caught nearly the whole of the discourse. The iniquitous conversation of a boarding-school had rendered her no stranger to histories like the present; but she had rather considered them in the light of improper fictions, which it was very naughty in the girls to talk about, than as some of the actual occurrences of life, such as might be discussed by two grave old men like those before her. She looked at the music-book which she held in her hand, and seeing the name of Claude Haveloc on the title-page, she laid it aside, and resolved to play from her own music in future. She was in many respects a remarkable little creature. It might be reckoned one of the greatest advantages of her earlier life, that she had not been sent to school until the death of her mother, which took place when she was fourteen years old. Until that time she had been well and delicately brought up. Her father, a Colonel in the Company's service, had sent her to a highly respectable school, intending at the end of three years to return to England, and place her at the head of his house; but not long afterwards, he was killed in an engagement under circumstances that in Europe would have exalted his name to the stars, but which never transpired beyond the confines of the distant province in which it took place; if we except a brief and inaccurate statement in the papers, coupled with a hasty regret that the Company should have lost an efficient servant. The school he had chosen for his daughter was a religious and remarkably select academy; but there were plenty of spare minutes during the day, when the young ladies could tell each other who had looked at them at church, and who they could not help smiling at when they took their daily walk. While the girls were discussing the eyes and waistcoats of the young men they knew by sight, Saint Margaret, as she was called, would steal away to her books, and endeavour by study to drive from her head the trifling conversations that went on around her. Still, histories like the one hinted at, possessed to her imagination a fearful interest. She regarded Love as a mysterious agency which swept into its vortex all those who suffered themselves to approach its enchanted confines. She imagined that the first steps to this delusion might be avoided; but that once entranced, the helpless victim followed the steps of the blind leader through danger, or neglect, or guilt, without the will or the power to shake off its deadly influence. She had much to learn and to unlearn. "But what was that affair in Calabria? Not another entanglement, I hope," said Mr. Warde, content in seeing Margaret still at the window arranging her books. "Oh! that was a harmless affair enough," said Mr. Grey; "if you mean that encounter with the brigands?" "I heard something of brigands," said Mr. Warde, "and something about a lady and her daughter."