“You are lovely in everything you wear. You need never trouble to change. Think what a fatigue it will be. I want you to rest.” “How serious you are! I was not in earnest, not quite in earnest. But I can’t wait to show you a teagown, all lacy and transparent, made of chiffon and mist....” “Grey mist?” “Yes.” “I love you in grey.” She laughed: “You have had no opportunity of loving me in any other colour. Not indoors at least. But you will. I could not have a one-coloured trousseau. I’ve a wonderful beige walking-dress; one in blue serge, lined with chiffon....” “Tell me of your wedding-dress. Only a week today....” Before she had told him her stepmother bustled in, her arms full of parcels that Margaret must unpack, investigate, try on immediately after dinner, or before. Dinner could wait. Margaret had already been tried on and tried on until her head swam. She yielded again and Gabriel and her father waited for dinner. Nothing was as they had planned it. So, although they were too happy to complain, and too grateful to resent what was being done for them, the scheme that Margaret should return to Carbies without again announcing her intention was hurriedly confirmed between them and carried out. * * * * * This time Margaret did not complain that the place was remote, the garden desolate, the furniture ill-sorted and ill-suited. She was glad to find herself anchored as it were in a quiet back-water, out of the hurly-burly, able to hear herself breathe. Wednesday she spent in resting, dreaming. She went to bed early. Thursday found her at her writing-desk, sorting, re-sorting, reading those early letters of hers, and of his; recapturing a mood. She recognised that in those early days she had not been quite genuine, that her letters did not ring as true as his. She saw there was a literary quality in them that detracted from their value. Yet, taking herself seriously, as always, and remembering the Brownings, she put them all in orderly sequence, made attempts at a title, in the event of their ever being published, wrote up her disingenuous diary. All that day, all Thursday and part of Friday, she rediscovered her fine style, her gift of phrase. The thing that held her was her own wonderful and beautiful love story. And it was of that she wrote. She knew she would make her mark upon the literature of the nineteenth century, had no doubt of it at all. She had done much already. She rated highly her three or four novels, her two plays. Unhappiness had dulled her gift, but today she felt how wondrously it would be revived. There are epigrams among her MS. notes. “All his life he had kept his emotions soldered up in tin boxes, now he was surprised that they were like little fish, compressed and without life.” This was tried in half a dozen ways but never seemed to please her. “Happiness, true happiness, holds the senses in solution, it requires matrimony to diffuse them.”