friend.

If I played this part but stumblingly; if at times the madness of my
passion would not be denied the look or word or hand-clasp not of poor
cool friendship; I have this to comfort me: that in after time, when my
dear lad came to know, he forgave me freely--nay, held me altogether
blameless, as I was not.

Of what these looks and words and hand-clasps meant to Margery I had no
hint. But in my hours of sanity, when I would pass these slippings in
review, I could recall no answering flash of hers to salt the woundings
of the conscience-whip. So far from it, it seemed, as this sweet
comradeship budded and blossomed on the stock of a better acquaintance,
she came to hold me more as if I were some cross between a father or an
elder brother, and some closer confidant of her own sex.

You are not to understand that she was always thus, nor over-often. More
frequently that side of her which I soon came to call the mother's was
turned to me, and I was made to stand a target for her wit and raillery.
But she was ever changeful as a child, and in the midst of some light
jesting mood would sober instantly and give my age its due.

In some of these, her soberer times, I felt her lean upon me as my
sister might, had I had one; at others she would frankly set me in her
father's place, declaring I must tell her what to say or do in this or
that entanglement. Again, and this came oftener as our friendship grew,
she would talk to me as surely woman never talked to any but a kinsman,
telling me naïvely of her conquests, and sparing no gallant of them all
save only Richard Jennifer.