“Yes, I will remember,” Margaret said, meekly, and there fluttered a little forlorn warmth and sweetness about her heart; and then he would release her, and, more like a shadow than ever, would stand and watch while she flitted along the wall to the great door. And what thoughts were in Rob’s mind when she was gone! That almost innocence, and nobleness and truth, which had existed in the emotion of their meeting, disappeared with Margaret, leaving him in a tumult of other and less noble thoughts. He knew very well that he had beguiled her, though he meant nothing but love and devotion to her. He had betrayed her, in the moment of her sorrow, into a tacit acceptance of him, and committal of herself from which there was no escape. Rob knew very well--no one better--that there were girls who took such love passages lightly enough; but to a delicate little maiden, “a lady,” like Margaret, he knew there could be but one meaning in this. Though she had scarcely responded at all, she had accepted his tenderness, and committed herself forever. And he knew he had betrayed her into this, and was glad with a bounding sense of delight and triumph such as made him almost spurn the earth. This occurrence gave him, not only Margaret, whom he was in love with, and whose society was for the time sweeter to him than anything in the world, but with her such a dazzling flood of advantages as might well have turned any young man’s head: a position such as he might toil all his life for, and never be able to reach: money, such as would make him admired and looked up to by everybody he knew: a life of intoxicating happiness and advancement, with no need to do anything he did not care to do, or take any further trouble about his living, one way or another. Rob’s organization was not so fine as to make him unwilling to accept all these advantages from his wife; in practical life there are indeed very few men who are thus delicately organized; neither were his principles so high or so honorable as to give him very much trouble about the manner in which he had won all this, by surprise. He just felt it, just had a sense that there was something here to be slurred over as much as possible--but it did not spoil his pleasure. It was, however, terribly difficult to know what it would be best to do in the circumstances, what step he should next take: whether he should boldly face the family, on the chance that Sir Ludovic would be glad before he died to see his daughter with a protector and companion of her own, or whether it was wise to keep in the background, and watch the progress of events, keeping that sure hold upon Margaret herself, which he felt he could now trust to. He had done her good; he had been more to her than any one else, and had helped her to bear her burden; and he had thus woven himself in with every association of her life, at its, as yet, most important period, and made himself inseparable from her.