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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ced5146 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #53744 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53744) diff --git a/old/53744-0.txt b/old/53744-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7710878..0000000 --- a/old/53744-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,16410 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Robert's Fortune, by Margaret Oliphant - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Sir Robert's Fortune - -Author: Margaret Oliphant - -Release Date: December 15, 2016 [EBook #53744] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - - SIR ROBERT’S FORTUNE - - A Novel - - BY - - MRS. OLIPHANT - - AUTHOR OF “CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD” “HARRY JOSCELYN” - “HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY” ETC. - - [Illustration: colophon] - - NEW YORK - - HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS - 1894 - - Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS. - - _All rights reserved._ - - - _Printed by the Mershon Company, Rahway, N.J._ - - - - -SIR ROBERT’S FORTUNE - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -“We are to see each other no more.” - -These words were breathed rather than spoken in the dim recess of a -window, hidden behind ample curtains, the deep recess in which the -window was set leaving room enough for two figures standing close -together. Without was a misty night, whitened rather than lighted by a -pale moon. - -“Who says so?” - -“Alas! my uncle,” said the white figure, which looked misty, like the -night, in undistinguishable whiteness amid the darkness round. - -The other figure was less distinguishable still, no more than a faint -solidity in the atmosphere, but from it came a deeper whisper, the low -sound of a man’s voice. “Your uncle!” it said. - -There was character in the voices enough to throw some light upon the -speakers, even though they were unseen. - -The woman’s had a faint accentuation of feeling, not of anxiety, yet -half defiance and half appeal. It seemed to announce a fact -unchangeable, yet to look and hope for a contradiction. The man’s had a -tone of acceptance and dismay. The fiat which had gone forth was more -real to him than to her, though she was in the position of asserting and -he of opposing it. - -“Yes,” she said, “Ronald, my uncle--who has the strings of the purse and -every thing else in his hands----” - -There was a moment’s pause, and then he said: “How does he mean to -manage that?” - -“I am to be sent off to-morrow--it’s all settled--and if I had not -contrived to get out to-night, you would never have known.” - -“But where? It all depends upon that,” he said with a little impatience. - -“To Dalrugas,” she answered, with a sigh; and then: “It is miles and -miles from anywhere--a moor and a lodge, and not even a cottage near. -Dougal and his wife live there, and take care of the place; not a soul -can come near it--it is the end of the world. Oh, Ronald, what shall I -do? what shall I do?” - -Once more in the passionate distress of the tone there was an appeal, -and a sort of feverish hope. - -“We must think; we must think,” he said. - -“What will thinking do? It will not change my uncle’s heart, nor the -distance, nor the dreadful solitude. What does he care if it kills me? -or any body?” The last words came from her with a shriller tone of -misery, as if it had become too much to bear. - -“Hush, hush, for Heaven’s sake; they will hear you!” he said. - -On the other side of the curtain there was a merry crowd in full career -of a reel, which in those days had not gone out of fashion as now. The -wild measure of the music, now quickening to lightning speed, now -dropping to sedater motion, with the feet of the dancers keeping time, -filled the atmosphere--a shriek would scarcely have been heard above -that mirthful din. - -“Oh, why do you tell me to hush?” cried the girl impetuously. “Why -should I mind who hears? It is not for duty or love that I obey him, but -only because he has the money. Am I caring for his money? I could get my -own living: it would not want much. Why do I let him do what he likes -with me?” - -“My darling,” said the man’s voice anxiously, “don’t do any thing rash, -for God’s sake! Think of our future. To displease him, to rebel, would -spoil every thing. I see hope in the loneliness, for my part. Be -patient, be patient, and let me work it out.” - -“Oh, your working out!” she cried. “What good has it done? I would cut -the knot. It would be strange if we two could not get enough to live -upon--or myself, if you are afraid.” - -He soothed her, coming closer, till the dark shadow and the white one -seemed but one, and murmured caressing words in her ears: “Let us wait -till the case is desperate, Lily. It is not desperate yet. I see chances -in the moor and the wilderness. He is playing into our hands if he only -knew it. Don’t, don’t spoil every thing by your impatience! Leave it to -me, and you’ll see good will come out of it.” - -“I would rather take it into my own hands!” she cried. - -“No, dearest, no! I see--I see all sorts of good in it. Go quite -cheerfully, as if you were pleased. No, your own way is best--don’t let -us awake any suspicions--go as if you were breaking your heart.” - -“There will be no feigning in that,” she said; “I shall be breaking my -heart.” - -“For a moment,” he said. “‘Weeping endureth for a night, but joy cometh -in the morning.’” - -“Don’t, Ronald! I can’t bear to hear you quoting Scripture.” - -“Why not? I am not the devil, I hope,” he said, with a low laugh. - -There was a question in the girl’s hot, impatient heart, and then a -quick revulsion of feeling. “I don’t know what to do, or to think; I -feel as if I could not bear it,” she said, the quick tears dropping from -her eyes. - -He wiped them tenderly away with the flourish of a white handkerchief in -the dark. “Trust to me,” he said soothingly. “Be sure it is for our -good, this. Listen: they are calling for you, Lily.” - -“Oh, what do I care? How can I go among them all, and dance as if I -were as gay as the rest, when my heart is broken?” - -“Not so badly broken but that it will mend,” he whispered, as with a -clever, swift movement he put aside the curtain and led her through. He -was so clever: where any other man would have been lost in perplexity, -or even despair, Ronald Lumsden always saw a way through. He was never -at a loss for an expedient: even that way of getting back to the room -out of the shadow of the curtains no one could have performed so easily, -so naturally as he did. He met and entered into the procession of -dancers going out of the room after the exertions of that reel as if he -and his partner formed part of it, and had been dancing too. People did -not “sit out” in those days, and Ronald was famous for his skill in the -national dance. Nobody doubted that he had been exerting himself with -the rest. Lily was half English--that is, she had been sent to England -for part of her education, and so far as reels were concerned, had lost -some of her native skill, and was not so clever. She was not, indeed, -supposed to be clever at all, though very nice, and pretty enough, and -an heiress--at least she was likely to be an heiress, if she continued -to please her uncle, who was not an easy man to please, and exacted -absolute obedience. There were people who shook their heads over her -chances, declaring that flesh and blood could not stand Sir Robert -Ramsay’s moods; but up to this time Lily had been more or less -successful, and the stake being so great, she had, people said, “every -encouragement” to persevere. - -But Lily was by no means so strong as her lover, who joined the throng -as if he had formed part of it, with a perfect air of enjoyment and -light-heartedness. Lily could not look happy. It may be said that in his -repeated assurance that all would be right, and that he would find a way -out of it, she ought to have taken comfort, feeling in that a pledge of -his fidelity and steadiness to his love. But there was something in this -readiness of resource which discouraged, she could not have told why, -instead of making her happy. It would have been so much simpler, so -much more satisfactory, to have given up all thoughts of Sir Robert’s -money, and trusted to Providence and their own exertions to bring them -through. Lily felt that she could make any sacrifice, live upon nothing, -live anywhere, work her fingers to the bone, only to be independent, to -be free of the bondage of the uncle and the consciousness that it was -not for love but for his money that she had to accept all his caprices -and yield him obedience. If Ronald would but have yielded, if he would -have been imprudent, as so many young men were, how thankful she would -have been! She would have been content with the poorest living anywhere -to be free, to be with him whom she loved. She would have undertaken the -conduct of their little _ménage_ herself, without even thinking of -servants; she would have cooked for him, cleaned the house for him, -shrunk from nothing. But that, alas, was not Ronald’s way of looking at -the matter. He believed in keeping up appearances, in being rich at -almost any cost, and, at best, in looking rich if he were not really so; -and, above all and beyond all, in keeping well with the uncle, and -retaining the fortune. He would not have any doubt thrown on the -necessity of that. He was confident of his own powers of cheating the -uncle, and managing so that Lily should have all she wanted, in spite of -him, by throwing dust in his eyes. But Lily’s soul revolted against -throwing dust in any one’s eyes. This was the great difference between -them. I do not say that there was any great sin in circumventing a harsh -old man, who never paused to think what he was doing, or admitted a -question as to whether he was or was not absolutely in the right. He was -one of the men who always know themselves to be absolutely right; -therefore he was, as may be said, fair game. But Lily did not like it. -She would have liked a lover who said: “Never mind, we shall be happy -without him and his fortune.” She had tried every thing she knew to -bring young Lumsden to this point. But she was not able to do so: his -opinion was that every thing must be done to preserve the fortune, and -that, however hard it might be, there was nothing so hard but that it -must be done to humor old Sir Robert, to prevent him from cutting his -niece out of his will. Was not this right? Was it not prudent, wise, the -best thing? If he, an advocate without a fee, a briefless barrister, -living as best he could on chance windfalls and bits of journalism, had -been as bold as she desired, and carried her off from the house in Moray -Place to some garret of his own up among the roofs, would not every-body -have said that he had taken advantage of her youth and inexperience, and -deprived her of all the comforts and luxuries she was used to? That Lily -cared nothing for those luxuries, and that she was of the mettle to -adapt herself to any circumstances, so long as she had somebody to love -and who loved her, was not a thing to reckon with public opinion about; -and, indeed, Ronald Lumsden would have thought himself quite unjustified -in reckoning with it at all. To tell the truth, he had no desire on his -own part to give up such modest luxuries for himself as were to be had. - -The day of clubs was not yet, at least in Edinburgh, to make life easy -for young men, but yet to get along, as he was doing precariously, was -easier for one than it would be for two. Even Lily, all hot for -sacrifice and for ministering with her own hands to all the needs of -life, had never contemplated the idea of doing without Robina, her maid, -who had been with her so many years that it was impossible for either of -them to realize what life would be if they were separated. Even if it -should be a necessary reality, Robina was included as a matter of -course. How it might be that Lily should require to scrub, and clean, -and cook with her own hands, while she was attended by a lady’s maid, -was a thing she had never reasoned out. You may think that a lady’s maid -would probably be of less use than her mistress had such service been -necessary; but this was not Robina’s case, who was a very capable person -all round, and prided herself on being able to “turn her hand” to any -thing. But then a runaway match was the last thing that was in -Lumsden’s thoughts. - -It was a dance which every-body enjoyed that evening in the big, -old-fashioned rooms in George Square. George Square has fallen out of -knowledge in all the expansions of new Edinburgh, the Edinburgh that -lies on the other side of the valley, and dates no farther back than -last century. It also is of last century, but earlier than the Moray -Places and Crescents; far earlier than the last developments, the -Belgravia of the town. There Sir Walter once lived, in, I think, his -father’s house; and these substantial, ample, homely houses were the -first outlet of the well-to-do, the upper classes, of Edinburgh out of -the closes and high-up apartments, approached through the atrocities of -a common stair, in which so refined and luxurious a sybarite as Lawyer -Pleydell still lived in Sir Walter’s own time. These mansions are -severely plain outside--“undemonstrative,” as Scotch pride arrogantly -declares itself to be, aping humility with a pretence to which I, for -one, feel disposed to allow no quarter; but they are large and pleasant -inside, and the big square rooms the very thing to dance in or to feast -in. They were full of a happy crowd, bright in color and lively in -movement, with a larger share of golden hair and rosy cheeks than is to -be seen in most assemblies, and, perhaps, a greater freedom of laughter -and talk than would have been appropriate to a solemn ball in other -localities. For Edinburgh was not so large then as now, and they all -knew each other, and called each other by their Christian names--boy and -girl alike--with a general sense of fraternity modified by almost as -many love affairs as there were pairs of boys and girls present. There -were mothers and aunts all round the wide walls, but this did not subdue -the hilarity of the young ones, who knew each other’s mothers and aunts -almost as well as they knew their own, and counted upon their -indulgence. Lily Ramsay was almost the only girl who had nobody of her -own to turn to; but this only made her the more protected and -surrounded, every-body feeling that the motherless girl had a special -claim. They were by no means angels, these old-fashioned Edinburgh folk: -sharper tongues could not be than were to be found among them, or more -wicked wits; but there was a great deal of kindness under the terrible -turbans which crowned the heads of the elder ladies and the scarfs which -fell from their bare shoulders, and they all knew every one, and every -one’s father and mother for generations back. Their dress was queer, or -rather, I should have said, it was queer before the present revival of -the early Victorian or late Georgian style began. They wore puffed-out -sleeves, with small feather pillows in them to keep them inflated; they -had bare shoulders and ringlets; they had scarfs of lace or silk, -carefully disposed so as not to cover any thing, but considered very -classical and graceful, drawn in over the elbows, by people who knew how -to wear them, making manifest the slender waist (or often the outlines -of a waist which had ceased to be slender) behind. And they had, as has -been said, a dreadful particular, which it is to be hoped the blind fury -of fashion will not bring up again--turbans upon their heads. Turbans -such as no Indian or Bedouin ever wore, of all colors and every kind of -savage decoration, such as may be seen in pictures of that alarming age. - -When young Lumsden left his Lily, it was in the midst of a group of -girls collected together in the interval between two dances, lamenting -that the programme was nearly exhausted, and that mamma had made a point -of not staying later than three o’clock. “Because it disturbs papa!” -said one of them indignantly, “though we all know he would go on snoring -if the Castle Rock were to fall!” They all said papa and mamma in those -days. - -“But mamma says there are so many parties going,” said another: “a ball -for almost every night next week; and what are we to do for dresses? -Tarlatan’s in rags with two, and even a silk slip is shameful to look at -at the end of a week.” - -“Lily has nothing to do but to get another whenever she wants it,” said -Jeanie Scott. - -“And throw away the old ones, she’s such a grand lady,” said Maggie -Lauder. - -“Hold all your tongues,” said Bella Rutherford; “it does her this good, -that she thinks less about it than any of us.” - -“She has other things to think of,” cried another; and there was a laugh -and a general chorus, “So have we all.” “But, Lily! is Sir Robert as -dour as ever?” one of the rosy creatures cried. - -“I don’t think I am going to any more of your balls,” said Lily; “I’m -tired of dancing. We just dance, dance, and think of nothing else.” - -“What else should we think about at our age?” said Mary Bell, opening -wide a pair of round blue eyes. - -“We’ll have plenty other things to think about, mamma says, and that -soon enough,” said Alison Murray, who was just going to be married, with -a sigh. “But there’s the music striking up again, and who’s my partner? -for I’m sure I don’t remember whether its Alick Scott, or Johnnie -Beatoun, or Bob Murray. Oh! is it you, Bob?” she said with relief, -putting her hand upon an outstretched arm. They were almost all in a -similar perplexity, except, indeed, such as had their own special -partner waiting. Lily was almost glad that it was not Ronald, but a big -young Macgregor, who led her off to the top of the room to a sedate -quadrille. The waltz existed in those days, but it was still an -indulgence, and looked upon with but scant favor by the mothers. The -elder folks were scandalized by the close contact, and even the girls -liked best that it should be an accepted lover, or at the least a -brother or cousin, whose arm encircled their waist. So they still -preferred dances in which there were “figures,” and took their pleasure -occasionally in a riotous “Lancers” or a merry reel with great relief. -Lily was young enough to forget herself and her troubles even in the -slow movement of the quadrilles, with every-body else round chattering -and beaming and forgetting when it was their turn to dance. But she said -to herself that it was the last. Of all these dances of which they spoke -she would see none. When the others gathered, delighted to enjoy -themselves, she would be gazing across the dark moor, hearing nothing -but the hum of insects and the cry of the curlew, or, perhaps, a -watchful blackbird in the little clump of trees. Well! for to-night she -would forget. - -I need not say it was Lumsden who saw her to her own door on the other -side of the square. No one there would have been such a spoil-sport as -to interfere with his right whatever old Sir Robert might say. They -stole out in a lull of the leave-taking, when the most of the people -were gone, and others lingered for just this “one more” for which the -girls pleaded. The misty moonlight filled the square, and made all the -waiting carriages look like ghostly equipages bent upon some mystic -journey in the middle of the night. They paused at the corner of the -square, where the road led down to the pleasant Meadows, all white and -indefinite in the mist, spreading out into the distance. Lumsden would -fain have drawn her away into a little further discussion, wandering -under the trees, where they would have met nobody at that hour; but Lily -was not bold enough to walk in the Meadows between two and three in the -morning. She was willing, however, to walk up and down a little on the -other side of the square before she said good-night. Nobody saw them -there, except some of the coachmen on the boxes, who were too sleepy to -mind who passed, and Robina, who had silently opened the door and was -waiting for her mistress. Robina was several years older than Lily, and -had relinquished all thoughts of a sweetheart in her own person. She -stood concealing herself in the doorway, ready, if any sound should be -made within which denoted wakefulness on the part of Sir Robert, to -snatch her young lady even from her lover’s arms; and watching, with -very mingled feelings, the pair half seen--the white figure congenial to -the moonlight, and the dark one just visible, like a prop to a flower. -“Lily’s her name and Lily’s her nature,” said Robina to herself, with a -little moisture in her kind eyes; “but, oh! is he worthy of her, is he -worthy of her?” This was too deep a question to be solved by any thing -but time and proof, which are the last things to satisfy the heart. At -last there was a lingering parting, and Lily stole, in her white wraps, -all white from top to toe, into the dark and silent house. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -Lily’s room was faintly illuminated by a couple of candles, which, as it -was a large room with gloomy furniture, made little more than darkness -visible, except about the table on which they stood, the white cover of -which, and the dressing-glass that stood upon it, diffused the light a -little. It was not one of those dainty chambers in which our Lilys of -the present day are housed. One side of the room was occupied by a large -wardrobe of almost black mahogany, polished and gleaming with many -years’ manipulation, but out of reach of these little lights. The bed -was a large four-post bed, which once had been hung with those moreen -curtains which were the triumph of the bad taste of our fathers, and had -their appropriate accompaniment in black hair-cloth sofas and chairs. -Lily had been allowed to substitute for the moreen white dimity, which -was almost as bad, and hung stiff as a board from the valance ornamented -with bobs of cotton tassels. She could not help it if that was the best -that could be done in her day. Every thing, except the bed, was dark, -and the distance of the large room was black as night, except for the -relief of an open door into a small dressing-room which Robina occupied, -and in which a weird little dip candle with a long wick unsnuffed was -burning feebly. Nobody can imagine nowadays what it was to have candles -which required snuffing, and which, if not attended to, soon began to -bend and topple over, with a small red column of consumed wick, in the -midst of a black and smoking crust. A silver snuffer tray is quite a -pretty article nowadays, and proves that its possessor had a -grandfather; but then! The candles on the dressing-table, however, were -carefully snuffed, and burned as brightly as was possible for them while -Robina took off her young mistress’s great white Indian mantle, with its -silken embroideries, and undid her little pearl necklace. Lily had the -milk-white skin of a Scotch girl, and the rose-tints; but she was brown -in hair and eyes, as most people are in all countries, and had no glow -of golden hair about her. She was tired and pale that night, and the -tears were very near her eyes. - -“Ye’ve been dancing more than ye should; these waltzes and new-fangled -things are real exhaustin’,” Robina said. - -“I have been dancing very little,” said Lily; “my heart was too heavy. -How can you dance when you have got your sentence in your pocket, and -the police coming for you to haul you away to the Grassmarket by skreigh -of day?” - -“Hoot, away with ye!” cried Robina, “what nonsense are ye talking? My -bonnie dear, ye’ll dance many a night yet at a’ the assemblies, and go -in on your ain man’s airm----” - -“It’s you that’s talking nonsense now. On whose arm? Have we not got our -sentence, you and me, to be banished to Dalrugas to-morrow, and never to -come back--unless----” - -“Ay, Miss Lily, unless! but that’s a big word.” - -“It is, perhaps, a big word; but it cannot touch me, that am not of the -kind that breaks my word or changes my mind,” said Lily, raising her -head with a gesture full of pride. - -“Oh, Miss Lily, my dear, I ken what the Ramsays are!” cried the faithful -maid; “but there might be two meanings till it,” and she breathed a half -sigh over her young mistress’s head. - -“You think, I know--and maybe I once thought, too; but you may dismiss -that from your mind, as I do,” said the girl, with a shake of the head -as if she were shaking something off. And then she added, clasping her -hands together: “Oh, if I were strong enough just to say, ‘I am not -caring about your money. I am not afraid to be poor. I can work for my -own living, and you can give your siller where you please!’ Oh, Beenie, -that is what I want to say!” - -“No, my darlin’, no; you must not say that. Oh, you must not say that!” -Robina cried. - -“And why? I must not do this or the other, and who are you that dares to -say so? I am my mother’s daughter as well as my father’s, and if that’s -not as good blood, it has a better heart. I might go there--they would -not refuse me.” - -“Without a penny,” said Robina. “Can you think o’t, Miss Lily? And is -that no banishment too?” - -Lily rose from her chair, shaking herself free from her maid, with her -pretty hair all hanging about her shoulders. It was pretty hair, though -it was brown like every-body else’s, full of incipient curl, the -crispness yet softness of much life. She shook it about her with her -rapid movement, bringing out all the undertones of color, and its wavy -freedom gave an additional sparkle to her eyes and animation to her -look. “Without a penny!” she cried. “And who is caring about your -pennies? You and the like of you, but not me, Beenie--not me! What do I -care for the money, the filthy siller, the pound notes, all black with -the hands they’ve come through! Am I minding about the grand dinners -that are never done, and the parties, where you never see those you want -to see, and the balls, where---- Just a little cottage, a drink of milk, -and a piece of cake off the girdle, and plenty to do: it’s that that -would please me!” - -“Oh, my bonnie Miss Lily!” was all that Beenie said. - -“And when I see,” said the girl, pacing up and down the room, her hair -swinging about her shoulders, her white under-garments all afloat about -her in the energy of her movements, “that other folk think of that -first. Whatever you do, you must not risk your fortune. Whatever you -have to bear, you must not offend your uncle, for he has the -purse-strings in his hand. Oh, my uncle, my uncle! It’s not,” she cried, -“that I wouldn’t be fond of him if he would let me, and care for what he -said, and do what he wanted as far as I was able: but his money! I -wish--oh, I wish his money--his money--was all at the bottom of the -sea!” - -“Whisht! whisht!” cried Beenie, with a movement of horror. “Oh, but -that’s a dreadful wish! You would, maybe, no like it yourself, Miss -Lily, for all you think now; but what would auld Sir Robert be without -his money? Instead of a grand gentleman, as he is, he would just be a -miserable auld man. He couldna bide it; he would be shootin’ himself or -something terrible. His fine dinners and his house, and his made dishes -and his wine that costs as much as would keep twa-three honest families! -Oh, ye dinna mean it, ye dinna mean it, Miss Lily! You dinna ken what -you are saying; ye wouldna like it yoursel’, and, oh, to think o’ him!” - -Lily threw herself down in the big chair, which rose above her head with -its high back and brought out all her whiteness against its sober cover. -She was silenced--obviously by the thought thus suggested of Sir Robert -as a poor man, which was an absurdity, and perhaps secretly, in that -innermost seclusion of the heart, which even its possessor does not -always realize, by a faint chill of wonder whether she would indeed and -really like to be poor, as she protested she should. It was quite true -that a drink of milk and a piece of oatcake appeared to her as much -nourishment as any person of refinement need care for. In the novels of -her day, which always affect the young mind, all the heroines lived upon -such fare, and were much superior to beef and mutton. But there were -undoubtedly other things--Robina, for instance; although no thought of -parting from Robina had ever crossed Lily’s mind as a necessary part of -poverty. But she was silenced by these thoughts. She had not, indeed, -ever confessed in so many words even to Robina, scarcely to herself, -that it was Ronald who cared for the money, and that it was the want of -any impulse on his part to do without it that carried so keen a pang to -her heart. Had he cried, “A fig for the money!” then it might have been -her part to temporize and be prudent. The impetuosity, the recklessness, -should not, she felt, be on her side. - -It was on the very next day that her decision was to be made, and it had -not been till all other means had failed that Sir Robert had thus put -the matter to the touch. He had opposed her in many gentler ways before -it came to that. Sir Robert was not a brute or a tyrant--very far from -it. He was an old gentleman of fine manners, pluming himself on his -successes with “the other sex,” and treating all women with a superfine -courtesy which only one here and there divined to conceal contempt. Few -men--one may say with confidence, no elderly man without wife or -daughters--has much respect for women in general. It is curious, it is -to some degree reciprocal, it is of course always subject to personal -exceptions; yet it is the rule between the two sections of humanity -which nevertheless have to live in such intimate intercourse with each -other. In an old bachelor like Sir Robert, and one, too, who was -conscious of having imposed upon many women, this prepossession was more -strong than among men of more natural relationships. And Lily, who was -only his niece, and had not lived with him until very lately, had not -overcome all prejudices in his mind, as it is sometimes given to a -daughter to do. He had thought first that he could easily separate her -from the young man who did not please him, and bestow her, as he had a -right to bestow his probable heiress, on whom he pleased. When this -proved ineffectual, he cursed her obstinacy, but reflected that it was a -feature in women, and therefore nothing to be surprised at. They were -always taken in by fictitious qualities--who could know it better than -he?--and considered it a glory to stick to a suitor unpalatable to -their belongings. And then he had threatened her with the loss of the -fortune which she had been brought up to expect. “See if this fine -fellow you think so much of will have you without your money,” he said. -Lily had never in so many words put Lumsden to the trial, never proposed -to him to defy Sir Robert; but she had made many an attempt to discover -his thoughts, and even to push him to this rash solution, and, with an -ache at her heart, had felt that there was at least a doubt whether the -fine fellow would think so much of her if she were penniless. She had -never put it to the test, partly because she dared not, though she had -not been able to refrain from an occasional burst of defiance and hot -entreaty to Sir Robert to keep his money to himself. And now she was to -decide for herself--to give Ronald over forever, or to give over -Edinburgh and the society in which she might meet him, and keep her love -at the cost of martyrdom in her uncle’s lonely shooting-box on the -moors. There was, of course, a second alternative--that which she had so -often thought of: to refuse, to leave Sir Robert’s house, to seek refuge -in some cottage, to live on milk and oatcake, and provide for herself. -If the alternative had been to run away with her lover, to be married to -him in humility and poverty, to keep his house and cook his dinners and -iron his linen, Lily would not have hesitated for a moment. But he had -not asked her to do this--had not dreamed of it, it seemed; and to run -away alone and work for herself would be, Lily felt, to expose him to -much animadversion as well as herself; and, most of all, it would betray -fully to herself and to her uncle, with that sneer on his face, the -certainty that Ronald would not risk having her without her money, that -discovery which she held at arm’s-length and would not consent to make -herself sure of. All these thoughts were tumultuous in her mind as she -opened her eyes to the light of a new day. This was the final moment, -the turning-point of her life. She thought at first when she woke that -it was still the same misty moonlight on which she had shut her eyes, -and that there must still be some hours between her and the day. But it -was only an easterly haar with which the air was full--a state of -atmosphere not unknown in Edinburgh, and which wraps the landscape in a -blinding shroud as of white wool, obliterating every feature in a place -which has so many. Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Craigs and the Castle -Rock had all disappeared in it from those who were in a position to see -them; and here, in George Square, even the brown houses opposite had -gone out of sight, and the trees in the garden loomed dimly like ghosts, -a branch thrust out here and there. Lily asked herself, was it still -night? And then her mind awoke to a state of the atmosphere not at all -unusual, and a sense that the moment of her fate had arrived, and that -every thing must be settled for her for good or for evil this day. - -She was very quiet, and said scarcely any thing even to Robina, who -dressed her young mistress with the greatest care, bringing out a dress -of which Sir Robert had expressed his approval, without consulting Lily, -who indeed paid little attention to this important matter. Considering -the visions of poverty and independence that ran in her mind, it was -wonderful how peaceably she resigned herself to Robina’s administration. -Sometimes, when a fit of that independence seized her, she would push -Robina away and do every thing for herself. Beenie much exaggerated the -misfortunes of the result in such moments. “Her hair just a’ come down -tumbling about her shoulders in five minutes,” she said, which was not -true: though Lily did not deny that she was not equal to the elaborate -braids which were in fashion at the moment, and could not herself plait -her hair in any thing more than three strands, while Beenie was capable -of seven, or any number more. - -But to-day she was quite passive, and took no interest in her -appearance. Her hair was dressed in a sort of coronet, which was a mode -only used on grand occasions. Ordinarily it was spread over the back of -the head in woven coils and circles. There was not any thing -extraordinary in Lily’s beauty. It was the beauty of youth and -freshness and health, a good complexion, good eyes, and features not -much to speak of. People did not follow her through the streets, nor -stand aside to make way for her when she entered a room. In Edinburgh -there were hundreds as pretty as she; and yet, when all was said, she -was a pretty creature, good enough and fair enough to be a delight and -pride to any one who loved her. She had innumerable faults, but she was -all the sweeter for them, and impulses of temper, swift wrath, and -indignation, and impatience, which proved her to be any thing but -perfect. Sometimes she would take you up at a word and misinterpret you -altogether. In all things she was apt to be too quick, to run away with -a meaning before you, if you were of slow movement, had got it half -expressed. And this and many other things about her were highly -provoking, and called forth answering impatience from others. But for -all this she was a very lovable, and, as other girls said, nice, girl. -She raised no jealousies; she entertained no spites. She was always -natural and spontaneous, and did nothing from calculation, not even so -much as the putting on of a dress. It did not occur to her even to -think, to enquire whether she was looking her best when the hour had -come at which she was to go to Sir Robert. Robina took her by the -shoulders and turned her slowly round before the glass; but Lily did not -know why. She gave her faithful servant a faint smile over her own -shoulder in the mirror, but it did not enter into her mind that it was -expedient to look her best when she went down stairs to her uncle. If -any one had put it into words, she would have asked, what did he care? -Would he so much as notice her dress? It was ridiculous to think of such -a thing--an old man like Sir Robert, with his head full of different -matters. Thus, without any thought on that subject, she went slowly down -stairs--not flying, as was her wont--very sedately, as if she were -counting every step; for was it not her fate and Ronald’s which was to -be settled to-day? - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -“So you are there, Lily,” Sir Robert said. - -“Yes, uncle, I am here.” - -“There is one thing about you,” he said, with a laugh: “you never shirk. -Now judicious shirking is not a bad thing. I might have forgotten all -about it----” - -“But I couldn’t forget,” said Lily firmly. These words, however, roused -her to sudden self-reproach. If she had not been so exact, perhaps the -crisis might have been tided over and nothing happened. It was just like -her! Supposing her little affairs were of more importance than any thing -else in the world! This roused her from the half-passive condition in -which she had spent the morning, the feeling that every thing depended -on her uncle, and nothing on herself. - -“Now that you are here,” he said, not at all unkindly, “you may as well -sit down. While you stand there I feel that you have come to scold me -for some fault of mine, which is a reversal of the just position, don’t -you think?” - -“No, uncle,” replied Lily, “of course I have not come to scold you--that -would be ridiculous; but I am not come to be scolded either, for I have -not done any thing wrong.” - -“We’ll come to that presently. Sit down, sit down,” he said with -impatience. Lily placed herself on the chair he pushed toward her, and -then there was a moment’s silence. Sir Robert was an old man (in Lily’s -opinion) and she was a young girl, but they were antagonists not badly -matched, and he had a certain respect for the pluck and firmness of this -little person who was not afraid of him. They were indeed so evenly -matched that there ensued a little pause as they both looked at each -other in the milky-white daylight, full of mist and cold, which filled -the great windows. Sir Robert had a fire, though fires had been given -up in the house. It burned with a little red point, sultry and -smouldering, as fires have a way of doing in summer. The room was large -and sombre, with pale green walls hung with some full-length portraits, -the furniture all large, heavy, and dark. A white bust of himself stood -stern upon a black pedestal in a corner--so white that amid all the -sober lines of the room it caught the eye constantly. And Sir Robert was -not a handsome man. His features were blunt and his air homely; his head -was not adapted for marble. In that hard material it looked frowning, -severe, and merciless. The bust had lived in this room longer than Sir -Robert had done, and Lily had derived her first impressions of him from -its unyielding face. The irregularities of the real countenance leaned -to humor and a shrewdness which was not unkindly; but there was no -relenting in the marble head. - -“Well,” he said at last, “now we’ve met to have it out, Lily. You take -me at my word, and it is best so. How old are you now?” - -“I don’t see,” said Lily breathlessly, “what that can have to do with -it, uncle! but I’m twenty-two--or at least I shall be on the 20th of -August, and that is not far away.” - -“No, it is not far away. Twenty-two--and I am--well, sixty-two, we may -say, with allowances. That is a great difference between people that -meet to discuss an important question--on quite an equal footing, Lily, -as you suppose.” - -“I never pretended--to be your equal, uncle!” - -“No, I don’t suppose so--not in words, not in experience, and such -like--but in intention and all that, and in knowing what suits -yourself.” - -Lily made no reply, but she looked at him--silent, not yielding, tapping -her foot unconsciously on the carpet, nervous, yet firm, not disposed to -give way a jot, though she recognized a certain truth in what he said. - -“This gives you, you must see, a certain advantage to begin with,” said -Sir Robert, “for you are firmly fixed upon one thing, whatever I say or -any one, and determined not to budge from your position; whereas I am -quite willing to hear reason, if there is any reason to show.” - -“Uncle!” Lily said, and then closed her lips and returned to her -silence. It was hard for her to keep silent with her disposition, and -yet she suddenly perceived, with one of those flashes of understanding -which sometimes came to her, that silence could not be controverted, -whereas words under Sir Robert’s skilful attack would probably topple -over at once, like a house of cards. - -“Well?” he said. While she, poor child, was panting and breathless, he -was quite cool and collected. At present he rather enjoyed the sight of -the little thing’s tricks and devices, and was amused to watch how far -her natural skill, and that intuitive cunning which such a man believes -every woman to possess, would carry her. He was a little provoked that -she did not follow that impetuous exclamation “Uncle!” with any thing -more. - -“Well,” he repeated, wooing her, as he hoped, to destruction, “what -more? Unless you state your case how am I to find out whether there is -any justice in it or not?” - -“Uncle,” said Lily, “I did not come to state my case, which would not -become me. I came because you objected to me, to hear what you wanted me -to do.” - -“By Jove!” said Sir Robert, with a laugh; and then he added, “To be so -young you are a very cool hand, my dear.” - -“How am I a cool hand? I am not cool at all. I am very anxious. It does -not matter much to you, Uncle Robert, what you do with me; but,” said -Lily, tears springing to her eyes, “it will matter a great deal to me.” - -“You little----” He could not find an epithet that suited, so left the -adjective by itself, in sheer disability to express himself. He would -have said hussy had he been an Englishman. He was tempted to say cutty, -being a Scot--innocent epithets enough, both, but sufficient to make -that little---- flare up. “You mean,” he said, “I suppose, that you have -nothing to do with it, and that the whole affair is in my hands.” - -“Yes, uncle, I think it is,” said Lily very sedately. - -He looked at her again with another ejaculation on his lips, and then he -laughed. - -“Well, my dear,” he said, “if that is the case, we can make short work -of it--as you are in such a submissive frame of mind and have no will or -intentions on your own part.” - -Here Lily’s impatient spirit got the better of the hasty impulse of -policy which she had taken up by sudden inspiration. “I never said -that!” she cried. - -“Then you will be so good as to explain to me what you did say, or -rather what you meant, which is more important still,” Sir Robert said. - -“I meant--just what I have always meant,” said Lily, drawing back her -chair a little and fixing her eyes upon her foot, which beat the floor -with a nervous movement. - -“And what is that?” he asked. - -Lily drew back a little more, her foot ceased to tap, her hands clasped -each other. She looked up into his face with half-reproachful eyes full -of meaning. “Oh, Uncle Robert, you know!” - -Sir Robert jumped up from his chair, and then sat down again. -Demonstrations of wrath were of no use. He felt inclined to cry, “You -little cutty!” again, but did not. He puffed out a quick breath, which -was a sign of great impatience, yet self-repression. “You mean, I -suppose, that things are exactly as they were--that you mean to pay no -attention to my representations, that you choose your own will above -mine--notwithstanding that I have complete power over you, and can do -with you what I will?” - -“Nobody can do that,” said Lily, only half aloud. “I am not a doll,” -she said, “Uncle Robert. You have the power--so that I don’t like to -disobey you.” - -“But do it all the same!” he cried. - -“Not if I can help it. I would like to do it. I would like to be -independent. It seems dreadful that one should be obliged to do, not -what one wishes, but what another person wills. But you have the -power----” - -“Of the ways and means,” he said; “I have the purse-strings in my hand.” - -It was Lily’s turn now to start to her feet. “Oh, how mean of you, how -base of you!” she said. “You, a great man and a soldier, and me only a -girl. To threaten me with your purse-strings! As if I cared for your -purse-strings. Give it all away from me; give it all--that’s what I -should like best. I will go away with Beenie, and we’ll sew, or do -something else for our living. I’m very fond of poultry--I could be a -henwife; or there are many other things that I could do. Give it all -away! Tie them up tight. I just hate your money and your purse-strings. -I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea!” - -“You would find things very different if they were, I can tell you,” he -said, with a snort. - -“Oh, yes, very different. I would be free. I would take my own way. I -would have nobody to tyrannize over me. Oh, uncle! forgive me! forgive -me! I did not mean to say that! If you were poor, I would take care of -you. I would remember you were next to my father, and I would do any -thing you could say.” - -He kept his eyes fixed on her as she stood thus, defiant yet -compunctious, before him. “I don’t doubt for a moment you would do every -thing that was most senseless and imprudent,” he said. - -Then Lily dropped into her chair and cried a little--partly that she -could not help it, partly that it was a weapon of war like another--and -gained a little time. But Sir Robert was not moved by her crying; she -had not, indeed, expected that he would be. - -“I don’t see what all this has to do with it,” he said. “Consider this -passage of arms over, and let us get to business, Lily. It was necessary -there should be a flash in the pan to begin.” - -Lily dried her eyes; she set her little mouth much as Sir Robert set -his, and then said in a small voice: “I am quite ready, Uncle Robert,” -looking not unlike the bust as she did so. He did not look at all like -the bust, for there was a great deal of humor in his face. He thought he -saw through all this little flash in the pan, and that it had been -intended from the beginning as a preface of operations and by way of -subduing him to her will. In all of which he was quite wrong. - -“I am glad to hear it, Lily. Now I want you to be reasonable: the -thunder is over and the air is clearer. You want to marry a man of whom -I don’t approve.” - -“One word,” she said with great dignity. “I am wanting to marry--nobody. -There is plenty of time.” - -“I accept the correction. You want to carry on a love affair which you -prefer at this moment. It is more fun than marrying, and in that way you -get all the advantages I can give you, and the advantage of a lover’s -attentions into the bargain. I congratulate you, my dear, on making the -best, as the preacher says, of both worlds.” - -Lily flushed and clasped her hands together, and there came from her -expanded nostrils what in Sir Robert’s case we have called a snort of -passion. Lily’s nostrils were small and pretty and delicate. This was a -puff of heated breath, and no more. - -“Eh?” he said; but she mastered herself and said nothing, which made it -more difficult for him to go on. Finally, however, he resumed. - -“You think,” he said, “that it will be more difficult for me to restrain -you if you or your lover have no immediate intention of marrying. And -probably he--for I do him the justice to say he is a very acute -fellow--sees the advantage of that. But it will not do for me. I must -have certainty one way or another. I am not going to give the comfort of -my life over into your silly hands. No, I don’t even say that you are -sillier than most of your age--on the contrary; but I don’t mean,” he -added deliberately, “to put my peace of mind into your hands. You will -give me your word to give up the lad Lumsden, or else you will pack off -without another word to Dalrugas. It is a comfortable house, and Dougal -and his wife will be very attentive to you. What’s in a locality? George -Square is pleasant enough, but it’s prose of the deepest dye for a lady -in love. You’ll find nothing but poetry on my moor. Poetry,” he added, -with a laugh, “sonnets such as you will rarely match, and moonlight -nights, and all the rest of it; just the very thing for a lovelorn -maiden: but very little else, I allow. And what do you want more? Plenty -of time to think upon the happy man.” - -His laugh was fiendish, Lily thought, who held herself with both her -hands to keep still and to retain command of herself. She made no -answer, though the self-restraint was almost more than she could bear. - -“Well,” he said, after a pause, “is this what you are going to decide -upon? There is something to balance all these advantages. While you are -thinking of him he will probably _not_ return the compliment. Out of -sight, out of mind. He will most likely find another Lily not so closely -guarded as you, and while you are out of the way he will transfer his -attention to her. It will be quite natural. There are few men in the -world that would not do the same. And while you are gazing over the -moor, thinking of him, he will be taking the usual means to indemnify -himself and forget you.” - -“I am not afraid,” said Lily tersely. - -“Oh, you are not afraid? It’s little you know of men, my dear. Lumsden’s -a clever, ambitious young fellow. He perhaps believes he’s fond of you. -He is fond of any thing that will help him on in the world and give him -what he wants--which is a helping hand in life, and ease of mind, and -money to tide him over till he makes himself known. Oh, he’ll succeed in -the end, there is little doubt of that; but he shall not succeed at my -expense. Now, Lily, do not sit and glare, like a waxen image, but give -me an answer like a sensible girl, as you can be if you like. Will you -throw away your happy life, and society and variety and pleasure, and -your balls and parties, all for the sake of a man that the moment your -back is turned will think no more of you?” - -“Uncle,” said Lily, clearing her throat. But she could not raise her -voice, which extreme irritation, indignation, and the strong effort of -self-restraint seemed to have stifled. She made an effort, but produced -nothing but a hoarse repetition of his name. - -“I hope I have touched you,” he said. “Come, my dear, be a sensible -lassie, and be sure I am speaking for your good. There are more fish in -the sea than ever came out in a net. I will find you a better man than -Lumsden, and one with a good house to take you home to, and not a -penniless----” - -“Stop!” she cried, with an angry gesture. “Stop! Do you think I am -wanting a man? Me! Just any man, perhaps, you think, no matter who? Oh, -if I were only a laddie instead of a useless girl you would never, never -dare, great man as you are, to speak like that to me!” - -“Certainly I should not,” he said, with a laugh, “for you would have -more sense, and would not think any woman was worth going into exile -for. But, girl as you are, Lily, the choice is in your own hands. You -can have, not love in a cottage, but love on a moor, which soon will be -unrequited love, and that, we all know, is the most tragic and -interesting of all.” - -“Uncle,” said Lily, slowly recovering herself, “do you think it is a -fine thing for a man like you, a grand gentleman, and old, and that -knows every thing, to make a jest and a mockery of one that is young -like me, and has no words to make reply? Is it a joke to think of me -breaking my heart, as you say, among all the bonnie sunsets and the -moonlight nights and the lonely, lonely moor? I may have to do it if -it’s your will; but it’s not for the like of you, that have your -freedom and can do what you choose, to make a mock at those that are -helpless like me.” - -“Helpless!” he said. “Nothing of the sort; it is all in your own hands.” - -And then there was again a pause. He thought she was making up her mind -to submit to his will. And she was bursting with the effort to contain -herself, and all her indignation and wrath. Her pride would not let her -burst forth into cries and tears, but it was with the greatest -watchfulness upon herself that she kept in these wild expressions of -emotion, and the hot refusals that pressed to her lips--refusals to obey -him, to be silenced by him, to be sentenced to unnatural confinement and -banishment and dreary exile. Why should one human creature have such -power of life and death over another? Her whole being revolted in a -passion of restrained impatience and rage and fear. - -“Well,” he said lightly, “which is it to be? Don’t trifle with your own -comfort, Lily. Just give me the answer that you will see no more of -young Lumsden. Give him no more encouragement; think of him no more. -That is all I ask. Only give me your promise--I put faith in you. Think -of him no more; that is all I ask.” - -“All you ask--only that!” said Lily in her fury. “Only that! Oh, it’s -not much, is it? not much--only that!” She laughed, too, with a sort of -echo of his laugh; but somehow he did not find it to his mind. - -“That is all,” he said gravely; “and I don’t think that it is very much -to ask, considering that you owe every thing to me.” - -“It would have been better for me if I had owed you nothing, uncle,” -said Lily. “Why did you ever take any heed of me? I would have been -earning my own bread and had my freedom and lived my own life if you had -left me as I was.” - -“This is what one gets,” he said, as if to himself, with a smile, “for -taking care of other people’s children. But we need not fall into -general reflections, nor yet into recriminations. I would probably not -do it again if I had it to do a second time; but the thing I want from -you at the present moment is merely a yes or no.” - -“No!” Lily said almost inaudibly; but her tightly closed lips, her -resolute face, said it for her without need of any sound. - -“No?” he repeated, half incredulous; then, with a nod, flinging back his -head: “Well, my dear, you must have your wilful way. Dalrugas will daily -be growing bonnier and bonnier at this season of the year; and to-morrow -you will get ready to go away.” - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -“I have been a fool,” said Lily. “I have not said any thing that I meant -to say. I had a great many good reasons all ready, and I did not say one -of them. I just said silly things. He played upon me like a fiddle; he -made me so angry I could not endure myself, and then I had either to -hold my tongue or say things that were silly and that I ought not to -have said.” - -“Oh, dear me, dear me,” cried Robina, “I just thought you would do that. -If I had only been behind the door to give ye a look, Miss Lily. Ye are -too impetuous when you are left to yourself.” - -“I was not impetuous; I was just silly,” Lily said. “He provoked me till -I did not know what I was saying, and then I held my tongue at the wrong -places. But it would just have come to the same whatever I had said. -He’ll not yield, and I’ll not yield, and what can we do but clash? We’re -to start off for Dalrugas to-morrow, and that’s all that we have to -think of now.” - -“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Robina. She wrung her hands, and, with a look of -awe, added: “It’s like thae poor Poles in ‘Elizabeth’ going off in -chains to that place they call Siberée, where there’s nothing but snow -and ice and wild, wild forests. Oh, my bonnie lamb! I mind the woods up -yonder where it’s dark i’ the mid of day. And are ye to be banished -there, you that are just in your bloom, and every body at your feet? Oh, -Miss Lily, it canna be, it canna be!” - -“It will have to be,” said Lily resolutely, “and we must make the best -of it. Take all the working things you can think of; I’ve been idle, and -spent my time in nothings. I’ll learn all your bonnie lace stitches, -Beenie, and how to make things and embroideries, like Mary, Queen of -Scots. We’ll be two prisoners, and Dougal will turn the key on us every -night, and we’ll make friends with somebody like Roland, the page, that -will make false keys and let us down from the window, with horses -waiting; and then we’ll career across the country in the dead of night, -and folk will take us for ghosts; and then--we’ll maybe ride on -broomsticks, and fly up to the moon!” cried Lily, with a burst of -laughter, which ended in a torrent of tears. - -“Oh, my bonnie dear! oh, my lamb!” cried Beenie, taking the girl’s head -upon her ample breast. It is not to be imagined that these were -hysterics, though hysterics were the fashion of the time, and the young -ladies of the day indulged in them freely at any contrariety. Lily was -over-excited and worn out, and she had broken down for the moment. But -in a few minutes she had raised her head, pushed Beenie away, and got up -with bright eyes to meet her fate. - -“Take books too,” she cried, “as many as you can, and perhaps he’ll let -us keep our subscription to the library, and they can send us things by -the coach. And take all my pencils and my colors. I’ll maybe turn into a -great artist on the moors that Uncle Robert says are so bonnie. He went -on about his sunsets and his moonlights till he nearly drove me mad,” -cried Lily, “mocking! Oh, Beenie, what hard hearts they have, these old -men!” - -“I would just like,” cried the faithful maid, “to have twa-three words -with him. Oh, I should like to have twa-three words with him, just him -and me by our twa sels!” - -“And much good that would do! He would just turn you outside in with his -little finger,” said Lily in high scorn. But naturally Robina was not of -that opinion. She was ready to go to the stake for her mistress, and -facing Sir Robert in his den was not a bad version of going to the -stake. It might procure her instant dismissal for any thing Beenie knew; -he might tell old Haygate, the old soldier-servant, who was now his -butler, and an Englishman, consequently devoid of sympathy, to put her -to the door; anyhow, he would scathe her with satirical words and that -look which even Lily interpreted as mocking, and which is the most -difficult of all things to bear. But Beenie had a great confidence that -there were “twa-three things” that nobody could press upon Sir Robert’s -attention but herself. She thought of it during the morning hours to the -exclusion of every thing else, and finally after luncheon was over, when -Lily was occupied with some youthful visitors, Beenie, with a beating -heart, put her plan into execution. Haygate was out of the way, too, the -Lord be praised. He had started out upon some mission connected with the -wine-cellar; and Thomas, the footman, was indigenous, had been Tommy to -Robina from his boyhood, and was so, she said, like a boy of her own. He -would never put her to the door, whatever Sir Robert might say. She went -down accordingly to the dining-room, after the master of the house had -enjoyed his good lunch and his moment of somnolence after it (which he -would not for the world have admitted to be a nap), and tapped lightly, -tremulously, with all her nerves in a twitter, at the door. To describe -what was in Beenie’s heart when she opened it in obedience to his call -to come in was more than words are capable of: it was like going to the -stake. - -“Oh, Beenie! so it is you,” the master said. - -“’Deed, it’s just me, Sir Robert. I thought if I might say a word----” - -“Oh, say a dozen words if you like; but, mind, I am going out, and I -have no time for more.” - -“Yes, Sir Robert.” Beenie came inside the door, and closed it softly -after her. She then took up the black silk apron which she wore, -denoting her rank as lady’s maid, to give her a countenance, and made an -imaginary frill upon it with her hands. “I just thought,” she said, with -her head bent and her eyes fixed on this useful occupation, “that I -would like to say twa-three words about Miss Lily, Sir Robert----” - -“Oh,” he said, “and what might you have to say about Miss Lily? You -should know more about her, it is true, than any of us. Has she sent you -to say that she has recovered her senses, and is going to behave like a -girl of sense, as I always took her to be?” - -Beenie raised her eyes from her fantastic occupation, and looked at Sir -Robert. She shook her head. She formed her lips into a round “No,” -pushing them forth to emphasize the syllable. “Eh, Sir Robert,” she said -at last, “you’re a clever man--you understand many a thing that’s just -Greek and Hebrew to the likes of us; but ye dinna understand a lassie’s -heart. How should ye?” said Beenie, compassionately shaking her head -again. - -Sir Robert’s luncheon had been good; he had enjoyed his nap; he was -altogether in a good humor. “Well,” he said, “if you can enlighten me on -that point, Beenie, fire away!” - -“Weel, Sir Robert, do ye no think you’re just forcing her more and more -into it, to make her suffer for her lad, and to have nothing to do but -think upon him and weary for him away yonder on yon solitary moor? Eh, -it’s like driving her to the wilderness, or away to Siberée, that awfu’ -place where they send the Poles, as ye will read in ‘Elizabeth,’ to make -them forget their country, and where they just learn to think upon it -more and more. Eh, Sir Robert, we’re awfu’ perverse in that way! I would -have praised him up to her, and said there was no man like him in the -world. I would have said he was just the one that cared nothing for -siller, that would have taken her in her shift--begging your pardon for -sic a common word; I would have hurried her on to fix the day, and made -every thing as smooth as velvet; and then just as keen as she is for it -now I would have looked to see her against it then.” - -“I allow,” said Sir Robert, with a laugh, “that you have a cloud of -witnesses on your side; but I am not quite sure that I put faith in -them. If I were to hurry her on to fix the day, as you say, I would get -rid, no doubt, of the trouble; but I am much afraid that Lily, instead -of starting off on the other tack, would take me at my word.” - -“Sir,” said Beenie in a lowered voice, coming a step nearer, “if we were -to leave it to him to show her the contrary, it would be more effectual -than any thing you could say.” - -“So,” said Sir Robert, with a long whistle of surprise, “you trust him -no more than I do? I always thought you were a woman of sense.” - -“I am saying nothing about that, Sir Robert,” Beenie replied. - -“But don’t ye see, you silly woman, that he would take my favor for -granted in that case, and would not show her to the contrary, but would -marry her in as great haste as we liked, feeling sure that I had -committed myself, and would not then draw back?” - -“He would do ye nae justice, Sir Robert, if he thought that.” - -“What do you mean, you libellous person? You think I would encourage her -in her folly in the hope of changing her mind, and then deceive and -abandon her when she had followed my advice? No,” he said, “I am not so -bad as that.” - -“You should ken best, Sir Robert,” said Beenie, “but for me, I would not -say. But if ye will just permit me one more word. Here she has plenty of -things to think of: her parties and her dress, and her friends and her -other partners--there’s three young leddies up the stair at this moment -talking a’ the nonsense that comes into their heads--but there she would -have no person----” - -“Not a soul, except Dougal and his wife,” said Sir Robert, with a -chuckle. - -“And nothing to think of but just--him. Oh, Sir Robert, think what ye -are driving the bairn to! No diversions and no distractions, but just to -think upon him night and day. There’s things she finds to object to in -him when he’s by her side--just like you and me. But when she’s there -she’ll think and think upon him till she makes him out to be an angel o’ -light. He will just get to be the only person in the world. He will -write to her----” - -“That he shall not do! Dougal shall have orders to stop every letter.” - -Beenie smiled a calm, superior smile. “And ye think Dougal--or any man -in the world--can keep a lad and lass from communication. Eh, Sir -Robert, you’re a clever man! but just as ignorant, as ignorant as any -bairn.” - -Sir Robert was much amused, but he began to get a little impatient. “If -they can find means of communicating in spite of the solitude and the -miles of moor and Dougal, then I really think they will deserve to be -permitted to ruin all their prospects,” he said. - -“Sir Robert!” - -“No more,” he said. “I have already heard you with great patience, -Beenie. I don’t think you have thrown any new light on the subject. Go -and pack your boxes; for the coach starts early to-morrow, and you -should have every thing ready both for her and yourself to-night.” - -Beenie turned away to the door, and then she turned round again. She -stood pinching the imaginary frill on her apron, with her head held on -one side, as if to judge the effect. “Will that be your last word, Sir -Robert?” she said. “She’s your brother’s bairn, and the only one in the -family--and a tender bit thing, no used to unkindness, nor to be left -all her lane as if there was naebody left in the world. Oh, think upon -the bit thing sent into the wilderness! It is prophets and great men -that are sent there in the way of Providence, and no a slip of a lassie. -Oh, Sir Robert, think again! that’s no your last word?” - -“Would you like me to ring for Haygate and have you turned out of the -house? If you stay another minute, that will be my last word.” - -“Na,” said Beenie, “Haygate’s out, Sir Robert, and Tommy’s not the -lad----” - -“Will you go, you vixen?” Sir Robert shouted at the top of his voice. - -“I’ll go, since I cannot help it; but if it comes to harm, oh, Sir -Robert! afore God the wyte will be on your head.” - -Beenie dried her eyes as she went sorrowfully upstairs. “The wyte will -be on his head; but, oh, the sufferin’ and the sorrow that will be on -hers!” Beenie said to herself. - -But it was evident there was no more to be said. As she went slowly -upstairs with a melancholy countenance, she met at the door of the -drawing-room the three young ladies who had been--according to her own -description--“talking a’ the nonsense that came into their heads,” with -Lily in the midst, who was taking leave of them. “Oh, there is Robina,” -they all cried out together. “Beenie will tell us what it means. What is -the meaning of it all? She says she is going away. Beenie, Beenie, -explain this moment! What does she mean about going away?” - -“Eh, my bonnie misses,” cried Beenie, “who am I that I should explain my -mistress’s dark sayings? I am just a servant, and ken nothing but what’s -said to me by the higher powers.” - -There was what Beenie afterward explained as “a cackle o’ laughing” over -these words, which were just like Beenie, the girls said. “But what do -you know from the higher powers? And why, why is Lily to be snatched -away?” they said. Robina softly pushed her way through them with the -superior weight of her bigness. “Ye must just ask herself, for it is -beyond me,” she said. - -Lily rushed after her as soon as the visitors were gone, pale with -expectation. “Oh, Beenie, what did he say?” she cried. - -“What did who say, Miss Lily? for I do not catch your meaning,” said the -faithful maid. - -“Do you mean to say that you did not go down stairs----” - -“Yes, Miss Lily, I went down the stairs.” - -“To see my uncle?” said the girl. “I know you saw my uncle. I heard your -voice murmuring, though they all talked at once. Oh, Beenie, Beenie, -what did he say?” - -“Since you will have it, Miss Lily, I did just see Sir Robert. There was -nobody but me in the way, and I saw your uncle. He was in a very good -key after that grand dish of Scots collops. So I thought I would just -ask him if it was true.” - -“And what did he say?” - -Beenie shook her head and said, “No,” in dumb show with her pursed-out -lips. “He just said it was your own doing, and not his,” she added, -after this impressive pantomime. - -“Oh, how did he dare to say so! It was none of my doing--how could he -say it was my doing? Was I likely to want to be banished away to -Dalrugas moor, and never see a living soul?” - -“He said you wouldna yield, and he wouldna yield; and in that case, Miss -Lily, I ask you what could the like of me do?” - -“_I_ would not yield,” said Lily. “Oh, what a story! what a story! What -have I got to yield? It was just him, him, his own self, and nobody -else. He thinks more of his own will than of all the world.” - -“He said you would not give up your love--I am meaning young Mr. -Lumsden--no, for any thing he could say.” - -“And what would I give him up for?” cried Lily, changing in a moment -from pale to red. “What do I ever see of Sir Robert, Beenie? He’s not up -in the morning, and he’s late at night. I have heard you say yourself -about that club---- I see him at his lunch, and that’s all, and how can -you talk and make great friends when your mouth is full, and him so -pleased with a good dish and angry when it’s not to his mind? Would I -give up Ronald, that is all I have, for Sir Robert with his mouth full? -And how does he dare to ask me--him that will not do a thing for me?” - -“That is just it,” said Beenie, shaking her head; “you think a’ the -reason’s on your side, and he thinks a’ the reason is on his; and he’ll -have his own gate and you’ll have your will, and there is no telling -what is to be done between you. Oh, Miss Lily, my bonnie dear, you are -but a young thing. It’s more reasonable Sir Robert should have his will -than you. He’s gone through a great deal of fighting and battles and -troubles, and what have you ever gone through but the measles and the -king-cough, that couldna be helped? It’s mair becoming that you should -yield to him than he should yield to you.” - -“And am I not yielding to him?” said Lily. “I just do whatever he tells -me. If he says, ‘You are to come out with me to dinner,’ though I know -how wearisome it will be, and though I had the nicest party in the world -and all my own friends, I just give in to him without a word. I wear -that yellow gown he gave me, though it’s terrible to behold, just to -please him. I sit and listen to all his old gentlemen grumbling, and to -him paying his compliments to all his old ladies, and never laugh. Oh, -Beenie, if you could hear him!” and here Lily burst into the laugh which -she had previously denied herself. “But when he comes and tells me to -give up Ronald for the sake of his nasty, filthy siller----” - -“Miss Lily, that’s no Mr. Ronald’s opinion.” - -“Oh!” cried Lily, stamping her foot upon the ground, while hot tears -rushed to her eyes, “as if that did not make it a hundred times worse!” -she cried. - -And then there was a pause, and Beenie, with great deliberation, began -to take out a pile of dresses from the wardrobe, which she opened out -and folded one after another, patting them with her plump hands upon the -bed. Lily watched her for some moments in silence, and then she said -with a faltering voice: “Do you really think, then, that there is no -hope?” - -Robina answered in her usual way, pursing out her lips to form the “No” -which she did not utter audibly. “Unless you will yield,” she said. - -“Yield--to give up Ronald? To meet him and never speak to him? To let -him think I’m a false woman, and mansworn? I will never do that,” Lily -said. - -“But you’ll no marry him, my lamb, without your uncle’s consent?” - -“He’ll not ask me!” cried Lily, desperate. “Why do you torment me when -you know that is just the worst of all? Oh, if he would try me! And who -is wanting to marry him--or any man? Certainly not me!” - -“If you were to give your uncle your word--if you were to say, ‘We’ll -just meet at kirk and market and say good-even and good-morrow,’ but nae -mair. Oh, Miss Lily, that is not much to yield to an old man.” - -“I said as good as that, but he made no answer. Beenie, pack up the -things and let us go quietly away, for there is no help for us in any -man.” - -“A’ the same, if I were you, I would try,” said Robina, taking the last -word. - -Lily said nothing in reply; but that night, when she was returning with -Sir Robert from a solemn party to which she had accompanied him, she -made in the darkness some faltering essay at submission. “I would have -to speak to him when we meet,” she said, “and I would have to tell him -there was to be no more--for the present. And I would not take any step -without asking you, Uncle Robert.” - -Sir Robert nearly sprang from his carriage in indignation at this -halting obedience. “If you call that giving up your will to mine, I -don’t call it so!” he cried. “‘Tell him there is to be no more--for the -present!’ That is a bonnie kind of submission to me, that will have none -of him at all.” - -“It is all I can give,” said Lily with spirit, drawing into her own -corner of the carriage. Her heart was very full, but not to save her -life could she have said more. - -“Very well,” said Sir Robert; “Haygate has his orders, and will see you -off to-morrow. Mind you are in good time, for a coach will wait for no -man, nor woman either; and I’ll bid you good-by now and a better -disposition to you, and a good journey. Good-night.” - -And at seven o’clock next morning, in the freshness of the new day, the -North mail sure enough carried Lily and Robina away. - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -A highland moor is in itself a beautiful thing. When it is in full bloom -of purple heather, with all those breaks and edges of emerald green -which betray the bog below, with the sweet-scented gale sending forth -its odor as it is crushed underfoot, and the yellow gorse rising in -broken lines of gold, and here and there a half-grown rowan, with its -red berries, and here and there a gleam of clear dark water, nothing can -be more full of variety and the charm of wild and abounding life. But -when the sky is gray and the weather bleak, and the heather is still in -the green, or dry with the gray and rustling husks of last year’s bloom; -when there is little color, and none of those effects of light and shade -which make a drama of shifting interest upon the Highland hills and -lochs, all this is very different, and the long sweep of wild and broken -ground, under a low and dark sky, becomes an image of desolation instead -of the fresh and blooming and fragrant moor of early autumn. Dalrugas -was a tall, pinched house, with a high gable cut in those rectangular -lines which are called crow steps in Scotland, rising straight up from -the edge of the moor. The height and form of this gave a parsimonious -and niggardly look--though the rooms were by no means contemptible -within--which was increased by the small windows pierced high up in the -wall. There was no garden on that side, not so much as the little plot -to which even a cottage has a right. Embedded within the high, -sharp-cornered walls behind was a kitchen-garden or kale-yard, where the -commonest vegetables were grown with a border of gooseberries and a few -plants of sweet-william and appleringie; but this was not visible to -give any softness to the prospect. The heather came up uncompromisingly, -with a little hillock of green turf here and there, to the very walls, -which had once been whitewashed, and still in their forlorn dinginess -lent a little variety to the landscape; but this did but add to the -cold, pinched, and resistant character of the house. It looked like a -prim ancient lady, very spare, and holding her skirts close round her in -the pride of penury and evil fortune. The door was in the outstanding -gable, and admitted directly into a low passage from which a spiral -stair mounted to the rooms above. On the ground-floor there was a low, -dark-pannelled dining-room and library full of ancient books, but these -rooms were used only when Sir Robert came for shooting, which happened -very rarely. The drawing-room upstairs was bare also, but yet had some -lingerings of old-fashioned grace. From the small, deep-set, high -windows there was a wide, unbroken view over the moor. The moor -stretched everywhere, miles of it, gray as the low sky which hung over -it, a canopy of clouds. The only relief was a bush of gorse here and -there half in blossom, for the gorse is never wholly out of blossom, as -every-body knows, and the dark gleam of the water in a cutting, black as -the bog which it was meant to drain. The dreary moorland road which -skirted the edge passed in front of the house, but was only visible from -these windows at a corner, where it emerged for a moment from a group of -blighted firs before disappearing between the banks of heather and whin, -which had been cut to give it passage. This was the only relief from the -monotony of the moor. - -It was in this house that Lily and her maid arrived after a journey -which had not been so uncheerful as they anticipated. A journey by -stage-coach through a beautiful country can scarcely be dreary in the -worst of circumstances. The arrivals, the changes, the villages and -towns passed through, the contact with one’s fellow-creatures which is -inevitable, shake off more or less the most sullen discontent; and Lily -was not sullen, while Beenie was one of the most open-hearted of human -creatures, ready to interest herself in every one she met, and to talk -to them and give her advice upon their circumstances. The pair met all -sorts of people on their journey, and they made almost as many -friendships, and thus partially forgot the penitential object of their -own travels, and that they were being sent off to the ends of the earth. - -It was only when “the gig” met them at the village, where the coach -stopped on its northern route, that their destination began to oppress -either the mistress or the maid. This was on the afternoon of a day -which had been partially bright and partially wet, the best development -of weather to be hoped for in the North. The village was a small -collection of cottages, partly with tiled roofs, making a welcome gleam -of color, but subdued by a number of those respectable stone houses with -blue tiles, which were and are the ideal of comfortable sobriety, which, -in defiance of all the necessities of the landscape, the Scotch middle -class has unfortunately fixed upon. The church stood in the midst--a -respectable oblong barn, with a sort of long extinguisher in the shape -of a steeple attached to it. On the outskirts the cottages became less -comfortable and more picturesque, thatched, and covered with lichens. It -was a well-to-do village. The “merchant,” as he was called, _i. e._, the -keeper of the “general” shop, was a Lowland Scot, very contemptuous of -“thae Highlanders,” and there was a writer or solicitor in the place, -and a doctor, besides the minister, who formed a little aristocracy. The -English minister so called, that is, the Episcopalian, came -occasionally--once in two or three Sundays--to officiate in a smaller -barn, without any extinguisher, which held itself a little apart in a -corner, not to mingle with the common people who did not possess -Apostolical Succession; though, indeed, in those days there was little -controversy, the Episcopalians being generally of that ritual by birth, -and unpolemical, making no pretensions to superiority over the native -Kirk. - -The gig that met the travellers at Kinloch-Rugas was a tall vehicle on -two wheels, which had once been painted yellow, but which was scarcely -trim enough to represent that type of respectability which a certain -young Thomas Carlyle, pursuing the vague trade of a literary man in -Edinburgh, had declared it to be. It was followed closely by a rough -cart, in which Beenie and the boxes were packed away. They were not -large boxes. One, called “the hair trunk,” contained Lily’s every-day -dresses, but no provision for any thing beyond the most ordinary needs, -for there was no society nor any occasion for decorative garments on the -moors. Beenie’s box was smaller, as became a serving-woman. These -accessories were all in the fashion of their time, which was (like -Waverley, yet, ah, so unlike!) sixty years since or thereabout--in the -age before railways, or at least before they had penetrated to the -distant portions of the country. The driver of the gig was a middle-aged -countryman, very decent in a suit of gray “plaidin”--what we now call -tweed--with a head of sandy hair grizzled and considerably blown about -by the wind across the moor. His face was ruddy and wrinkled, of the -color of a winter apple, in fine shades of red and brown, his shaggy -eyebrows a little drawn together--by the “knitting of his brows under -the glaring sun,” and the setting of his teeth against the breeze. He -said, “Hey, Beenie!” as his salutation to the party before he doffed his -bonnet to the young lady. Lily was not sure that it was quite -respectful, but Dougal meant no disrespect. He was a little shy of her, -being unfamiliar with her grown-up aspect, and reverential of her young -ladyhood; but he was at his ease with Robina, who was a native of the -parish, the daughter of the late blacksmith, and “weel connectit” among -the rustic folk. It would have been an ease to Dougal to have had the -maid beside him instead of the mistress, and it was to Beenie he -addressed his first remarks over his shoulder, from pure shyness and -want of confidence in his own powers of entertaining a lady. “Ye’ll have -had a long journey,” he said. “The coach she’s aye late. She’s like a -thriftless lass, Beenie, my woman. She just dallies, dallies at the -first, and is like to break her neck at the end.” - -“But she showed no desire to break her neck, I assure you,” said Lily. -“She was in no hurry. We have just taken it very easy up hill and down -dale.” - -“Ay, ay!” he said, “we ken the ways o’ them.” With a glance over his -shoulder: “Are you sure you’re weel happit up, Beenie, for there’s a -cauld wind crossing the moor?” - -“And how is Katrin, Dougal?” Lily asked, fastening her cloak up to her -throat. - -“Oh, she’s weel eneuch; you’ll see little differ since ye left us last. -We’re a wee dried up with the peat-reck, and a wee blawn aboot by the -wind. But ye’ll mind that fine, Beenie woman, and get used to’t like her -and me.” - -Lily laid impatient fingers on the reins, pulling Dougal’s hand, as if -he had been the unsteady rough pony he drove. “Speak to me,” she said, -“you rude person, and not to Beenie. Do you think I am nobody, or that I -cannot understand?” - -“Bless us all! No such a thought was in my head. Beenie, are ye sitting -straight? for when the powny’s first started whiles he lets out.” - -“Let me drive him!” Lily cried. “I’ll like it all the better if he lets -out; and you can go behind if you like and talk to Beenie at your ease.” - -“Na, na,” said Dougal, with a grin. “He kens wha’s driving him. A bit -light hand like yours would have very sma’ effect upon Rory. Hey, -laddies! get out of my powny’s way!” - -Rory carried out the prognostics of his driver by tossing his shaggy -head in the air, and making a dash forward, scattering the children who -had gathered about to stare at the new arrivals; though before he got to -the end of the village street he had settled into his steady pace, which -was quite uninfluenced by any skill in driving on Dougal’s part, but was -entirely the desire and meaning of that very characteristic member of -society--himself. The day had settled into an afternoon serenity and -unusual quietness of light. The mountains stood high in the even air, -without any dramatic changes, Schehallion, with his conical crest, -dominating the lesser hills, and wearing soberly his mantle of purple, -subdued by gray. The road lay for a few miles through broken ground, -diversified with clumps of wood, wind-blown firs, and beeches tossing -their feathery branches in the air, crossing by a little bridge a brown -and lively trout stream, which went brawling through the village, but -afterward fell into deeper shadows, penetrating between close fir-woods, -before it reached the edge of the moor, round which it ran its lonely -way. Lily’s spirits began to rise. The sense of novelty, the pleasant -feeling of arrival, and of all the possibilities which relieve the -unknown, rose in her breast. Something would surely happen; something -would certainly be found to make the exile less heavy, and to bring back -a little hope. The little river greeted her like an old friend. “Oh, I -remember the Rugas,” she cried. “What a cheery little water! Will they -let me fish in it, Dougal? Look how it sparkles! I think it must -remember me.” - -“It’s just a natural objick,” said Dougal. “It minds naebody; and what -would you do--a bit lady thing--fishing troot? Hoots! a crookit pin in a -burn would set ye better, a little miss like you.” - -In those days there were no ladies who were salmon fishers. Such a thing -would have seemed to Dougal an outrage upon every law. - -“Don’t be contemptuous,” said Lily, with a laugh. “You’ll find I am not -at all a little miss. Just give me the reins and let me wake Rory up. I -mean to ride him about the moor.” - -“I’m doubting if you’ll do that,” said Dougal, with politeness, but -reserve. - -“Why shouldn’t I do it? Perhaps you think I don’t know how to ride. Oh, -you can trust Rory to me, or a better than Rory.” - -“There’s few better in these parts,” said Dougal with some solemnity. -“He’s a beast that has a great deal of judgment. He kens well what’s his -duty in this life. I’m no thinking you’ll find it that easy to put him -to a new kind of work. He has plenty of his ain work to do.” - -“We’ll see about that,” said Lily. - -“Ah,” replied Dougal cautiously, “we’ll just see about that. We must na -come to any hasty judgment. Cheer up, lad! Yon’s the half of the road.” - -“Is this only the half of the road?” said Lily, with a shudder. They -were coming out of the deep shade of the woods, and now before them, in -its full width and silence, stretched the long levels of the moor. It -was even now, in these days before the heather, a beautiful sight, with -the mountains towering in the background, and the bushes of the ling, -which later in the year would be glorious with blossoms, coming down, -mingled with the feathery plumes of the seeding grass, to the very edge -of the road: beautiful, wild, alive with sounds of insects, and that -thrill of the air which we call silence--silence that could be heard. -The wide space, the boundless sky, the freedom of the pure air, gave a -certain exaltation to Lily’s soul, but at the same time overwhelmed her -with a sense of the great loneliness and separation from all human -interests which this great vacancy made. “Only half-way,” she repeated, -with a gasp. - -“It’s a gey lang road, but it’s a very good road, with few bad bits. An -accustomed person need have nae fear by night or day. There was an ill -place, where ye cross the Rugas again, at the head of the Black Scaur; -but it’s been mended up just uncommon careful, and ye need have nae -apprehension; besides that, there’s me that ken every step, and Rory -that is maist as clever as me.” - -“But it’s the end of the world,” Lily said. - -“No that, nor even the end of the parish, let alone the countryside,” -said Dougal. “It’s just ignorance, a’ that. It’s the end o’ naething but -your journey, and a bonnie place when you’re there; and a good dinner -waiting for ye; and a grand soft bed, and your grandmither’s ain -cha’lmer, that was one of the grandest leddies in the North Country. Na, -na, missy, it’s no the end of the world. If ye look far ahead, yonder by -the east, as soon as we come to the turn of the road, ye’ll maybe, if -it’s clear, see the tower. That’s just a landmark over half the parish. -Ye’ll mind it, Beenie? It’s lang or ye’ve seen so bonnie a sight.” - -“Oh, ay, I mind it,” said Beenie, subdued. She had once thought, with -Dougal, that the tower of Dalrugas was a fine sight. But she had tasted -the waters of civilization, and the long level of the moor filled her -breast, like that of her mistress, with dismay; though, indeed, it was -with the eyes of Lily, rather than her own, that the kind woman saw this -scene. For herself things would not be so bad. Dougal and Katrin in the -kitchen would form a not uncongenial society for Robina. She did not -anticipate for herself much difficulty in fitting in again to a familiar -place; and she would always have her young mistress to pet and console, -and to take care of. But Lily--where would Lily find anything to take -her out of herself? Beenie realized, by force of sympathy, the weary -gazing from the windows, the vacant landscape, through which no one ever -would come, the loneliness indescribable of the great solitary moor; not -one of her young companions to come lightly over the heather; neither a -lad nor lass in whom the girl would find a playfellow. “Ay, I mind it,” -said Beenie, shaking her head, with big tears filling her eyes. - -Lily, for her part, did not feel disposed to shed any tears; her mind -was full of indignation and harsher thoughts. Who could have any right -to banish her here beyond sight or meeting of her kind? And it was not -less but more bitter to reflect that the domestic tyrant who had -banished her was scarcely so much to blame as the lover who would risk -nothing to save her. If he had but stood by her--held out his hand--what -to Lily would have been poverty or humbleness? She would have been -content with any bare lodging in the old town, high among the roofs. She -would have worked her fingers to the bone--at least Beenie would have -done so, which was the same thing. That was a sacrifice she would have -made willingly; but this that was demanded--who had any right to exact -it? and for what was it to be exacted? For money, miserable money, the -penny siller that could never buy happiness. Lily’s eyes burned like -coal. Her cheeks scorched and blazed. Oh, how hard was fate, and how -undeserved! For what had she done? Nothing, nothing to bring it upon -herself. - -It was another long hour before the gig turned the corner by the trees, -where there was a momentary view of Dalrugas, and plunged again between -the rising banks, where the road ran in a deep cutting, ascending the -last slopes. “We’ll be at the house in five minutes,” Dougal said. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -Katrin stood under the doorway, looking out for the party: a spare, -little, active woman, in that native dress of the place, which consisted -of a dark woollen skirt and pink “shortgown,” a garment not unlike the -blouse of to-day, bound in by the band of her white apron round a -sufficiently trim waist. She was of an age when any vanity of personal -appearance, if ever sanctioned at all, is considered, by her grave race, -to be entirely out of place; but yet was trim and neat by effect of -nature, and wore the shortgown with a consciousness that it became her. -A gleam of sunshine had come out as the two vehicles approached in a -little procession; and Katrin had put up her hand to her eyes to shade -them from that faint gleam of sun as she looked down the road. The less -of sun there is the more particular people are in shielding themselves -from it; which is a mystery, like so many other things in life, small as -well as great. Katrin thought the dazzle was overwhelming as she stood -looking out under the shadow of her curved hand. The doorway was rather -small, and very dark behind her, and the strong gleam of light -concentrated in her pink shortgown, and made a brilliant spot of the -white cap on her head. And to Katrin the two vehicles climbing the road -were as a crowd, and the arrival an event of great excitement, making an -era in life. She was interested, perhaps, like her husband, most -particularly in Robina, who would be an acquisition to their own -society, with all her experience of the grand life of the South; but she -bore a warm heart also to the little lady who had been at Dalrugas as a -child, and of whose beauty, and specially of whose accomplishments, -there had been great reports from the servants in town to the servants -on the moor. She hastened forward to place a stool on which Miss Lily -could step down, and held out both her hands to help, an offer which was -made quite unnecessary by the sudden spring which the girl made, -alighting “like a bird” by Katrin’s side. “Eh, I didna mind how light a -lassie is at your age,” cried the housekeeper, startled by that quick -descent. “And are ye very wearied? and have ye had an awfu’ journey? -and, eh, yonder’s Beenie, just the same as ever! I’m as glad to see ye -as if I had come into a fortune. Let me take your bit bag, my bonnie -lady. Give the things to me.” - -“Yes, Beenie is just the same as ever--and you also, Katrin, and the -moor,” said Lily, with a look that embraced them all. She had subdued -herself, with a natural instinct of that politeness which comes from the -heart, not to show these humble people, on her first arrival, how little -she liked her banishment. It was not their fault; they were eager to do -their utmost for her, and welcomed her with a kindness which was as near -love as any inferior sentiment could be--if it was, indeed, an inferior -sentiment at all. But when she stood before the dark doorway, which -seemed the end of all things, it was impossible not to betray a little -of the loneliness she felt. “And the moor,” she repeated. But Katrin -heard the words in another sense. - -“Ay, my bonnie lamb! the moor, that is the finest sight of a’. It’s just -beautiful when there’s a fine sunset, as we’re going to have the night -to welcome ye hame. Come away ben, my dear; come away in to your ain -auld house. Oh! but I’m thankful and satisfied to have ye here!” - -“Not my house, Katrin. My uncle would not like to hear you say so.” - -“Hoot, away! Sir Robert’s bark is waur than his bite. What would he have -sent such orders for, to make every thing sae comfortable, if there had -been any doubt that it was your very ain house, and you his chosen heir? -If Dougal were to let ye see the letter, a’ full of loving kindness, and -that he wanted a safe hame for his bit lassie while he was away. Oh, -Miss Lily, he’s an auld man to be marching forth again at the head of -his troop to the wars.” - -“He is not going to the wars,” said Lily. She could not but laugh at the -droll supposition. Sir Robert, that lover of comfort and luxury, -marching forth on any expedition, unless it were an expedition of -pleasure! “There are no wars,” she added. “We are at peace with all the -world, so far as I can hear.” - -“Weel, I was wondering,” said Katrin. “Dougal, he says, that reads the -papers, that there’s nae fighting neither in France nor what they ca’ed -the Peninshula in our young days. But he says there are aye wars and -rumor of wars in India, and such like places. So we thought it might, -maybe, be that. Weel, I’m real content to hear that Sir Robert, that’s -an old man, is no driven to boot and saddle at his age.” - -“He is going, perhaps, to London,” Lily said. - -“Weel, weel, and that’s no muckle better than a fight, from a’ we -hear--an awfu’ place, full of a’ the scum of the earth. Puir auld -gentleman! It maun be the king’s business, or else something very -important of his ain, that takes him there. Anyway, he’s that particular -about you, my bonnie lady, as never was. You’re to have a riding-horse -when ye please, and Dougal to follow you whenever he can spare the time; -and there’s a new pianny-fortey come in from Perth, and a box full of -books, and I canna tell you all what. And here am I keeping you at the -door, havering all the time. You’ll mind the old stair, and the broken -step three from the top; or maybe you will like to come into the -dining-room first and have a morsel to stay your stomach till the -dinner’s served; or maybe you would like a drink of milk; or maybe---- -Lord bless us! she’s up the stair like a fire flaught and paying no -attention; and, oh, Beenie, my woman, is this you?” - -Beenie was more willing to be entertained than her mistress, whose -sudden flight upstairs left Katrin stranded in the full tide of her -eloquence. She was glad to be set down to a cup of tea and the nice -scones, fresh from the girdle, with which the housekeeper had intended -to tempt Lily. “I’ll cover them up with the napkin to keep them warm, -and when ye have ta’en your cup o’ tea, ye’ll carry some up to her on a -tray, or I’ll do it mysel’, with good will; but I mind ye are aye -fondest of taking care of your bonnie miss yoursel’.” - -“We’ll gie her a wee moment to settle down,” said Robina: “to take a -good greet,” was what she said to herself. She swallowed her tea, always -with an ear intent on the sounds upstairs. She had seen by Lily’s -countenance that she was able for no more, and that a moment’s interval -was necessary; and there she sat consuming her heart, yet perhaps -comforted a little by having the good scones to consume, too. “Oh,” she -said, “ye get nothing like this in Edinburgh; ae scone’s very different -from another. I have not tasted the like of this for many a year.” - -“Ye see,” said Katrin, with conscious success, “a drop of skim-milk like -what ye get in a town is very different from the haill cream of a -milking; and I’m no a woman to spare pains ony mair than stuff. She’s a -bonnie, bonnie creature, your young lady, Beenie--a wee like her -mother, as far as I mind, that was nothing very much in the way of -blood, ye ken, but a bonnie, bonnie young woman as ever stood. The auld -leddy and Sir Robert were real mad against Mr. Randall for making such a -poor match; but now there’s nobody but her bairn to stand atween the -house and its end. He’ll be rael fond of her, Sir Robert--his bonny wee -heir!” - -“Ay,” said Beenie, “in his ain way.” - -“Weel, it wasna likely to be in a woman’s way like yours or mine. The -men they’ve aye their ain ways of looking at things. I’ll warrant -there’s plenty of lads after her, a bonnie creature like that; and the -name of Sir Robert’s siller and a’.” - -“Oh, ay! she hasna wanted for lads,” Beenie said. - -“And what’ll be the reason, Beenie, since the auld gentleman’s no going -to the wars, as Dougal and me thought--what’ll be the reason, are ye -thinkin’, for the young leddy coming here? He said it was to be safe at -hame while he was away.” - -“Maybe he would be right if that’s what he says.” - -“Oh, Beenie, woman,” cried Katrin, “you’re secret, secret! Do you think -we are no just as keen as you to please our young leddy and make her -comfortable? or as taken up to ken why she’s been sent away from a’ her -parties and pleasurings to bide here?” - -“There’s no many parties nor pleasurings here for her,” said Dougal, -joining the two women in the low but airy kitchen, where the big fire -was pleasant to look upon, and the brick floor very red, and the -hearthstone very white. The door, which stood always open, afforded a -glimpse of the universal background, the everywhere-extending moor, and -the air came in keen, though the day was a day in June. Dougal pushed -his bonnet to one side to scratch his grizzled head. In these regions, -as indeed in many others, it is not necessary to take off one’s headgear -when one comes indoors. “There’s neither lad to run after her nor -leddies to keep her company. If she’s light-headed, or the like of -that, there canna be a better place than oor moor.” - -“Light-headed!” said Robina in high scorn. “It just shows how little you -ken. And where would I be, a discreet person, if my young leddy was -light-headed? She’s just as modest and as guid as ever set foot on the -heather. My bonnie wee woman! And as innocent as the babe new-born.” - -Dougal pushed his cap to the other side of his head, as if that might -afford enlightenment. “Then a’ I can say is that it’s very queer.” And -he added after an interval: “I never pretend to understand Sir Robert; -he’s an awfu’ funny man.” - -“He might play off his fun better than upon Miss Lily,” said his wife in -anxious tones. - -“And that minds me that I’m just havering here when I should be carrying -up the tray,” said Beenie. “Some of those cream scones--they’re the -nicest; and that fine apple jelly is the best I’ve tasted for long. And -now the wee bit teapot, and a good jug of your nice fresh milk that she -will, maybe, like better than the tea.” - -“And my fine eggs--with a yolk like gold, and white that is just like -curds and cream.” - -“Na,” said Beenie, waving them away, “that would just be too much; let -me alone with the scones, and the milk and the tea.” - -She went up the spiral stairs, making a cheerful noise with her cups and -her tray. A noise was pleasant in this quiet place. Beenie understood, -without knowing how, that the little clatter, the sound of some one -coming, was essential to this new life; and though her arm was very -steady by nature, she made every thing ring with a little tinkle of -cheerfulness and “company.” The drawing-room of the house, which opened -direct from the stairs with little more than a broadened step for a -landing, was a large room occupying all the breadth of the tall gable, -which was called the tower. It was not high, and the windows were small, -set in deep recesses, with spare and dingy curtains. The carpet was of -design unconjecturable, and of dark color worn by use to a deep -dinginess of mingled black and brown. The only cheerful thing in the -room was a rug before the fireplace, made of strips of colored cloth, -which was Katrin’s winter work to beguile the long evenings, and in -which the instinct of self-preservation had woven many bits of red, -relics or patterns of soldiers’ coats. The eye caught that one spot of -color instinctively. Beenie looked at it as she put down her tray, and -Lily had already turned to it a dozen times, as if there was something -good to be got there. The walls were painted in panels of dirty green, -and hung with a few pictures, which made the dinginess hideous--staring -portraits executed by some country artist, or, older relics still, faces -which had sunk altogether into the gloom. Three of the windows looked -out on the moor, one in a corner upon the yard, where Rory and his -companion were stabled, and where there was an audible cackle of fowls, -and sometimes Katrin’s voice coming and going “as if a door were shut -between you and the sound.” Lily had been roaming about, as was evident -by the cloak flung in one corner, the hat in another, the gloves on the -table, the little bag upon the floor. She had gravitated, however, as -imaginative creatures do, to the window, and sat there when Beenie -entered as if she had been sitting there all her life, gazing out upon -the monotonous blank of the landscape and already unconscious of what -she saw. - -“Well, Miss Lily,” said Robina cheerfully, “here we are at last; and -thankfu’ I am to think that I can sit still the day, and get up in peace -the morn without either coach or boat to make me jump. And here’s your -tea, my bonnie dear--and cream scones, Katrin’s best, that I have not -seen the like of since I left Kinloch-Rugas. Edinburgh’s a grand place, -and many a bonnie thing is there; and maybe we’ll whiles wish ourselves -back; but nothing like Katrin’s scones have ye put within your lips for -many a day. My dear bonnie bairn, come and sit down comfortable at this -nice little table and get your tea.” - -“Tea!” said Lily; her lips were quivering, so that a laugh was the only -escape--or else the other thing. “You mind nothing,” she cried, “so long -as you have your tea.” - -“Weel, it makes up for many things, that’s true,” said Beenie, eager to -adopt her young mistress’s tone. “Bless me, Miss Lily, it’s no the -moment to take to that weary window and just stare across the moor when -ye ken well there is nothing to be seen. It will be time enough when -we’re wearied waiting, or when there’s any reasonable prospect----” - -“What do you mean?” cried Lily, springing up from her seat. “Reasonable -prospect--of what, I would like to know? and weary waiting--for whom? -How dare you say such silly words to me? I am waiting for nobody!” cried -Lily, in her exasperation clapping her hands together, “and there is no -reasonable prospect--if it were not to fall from the top of the tower, -or sink into the peat-moss some lucky day.” - -“You’re awfu’ confident, Miss Lily,” said the maid, “but I’m a great -deal older than you are, and it would be a strange thing if I had not -mair sense. I just tell you there’s no saying; and if the Queen of Sheba -was here, she could utter no more.” - -“You would make a grand Queen of Sheba,” said Lily, with eyes sparkling -and cheeks burning; “and what is it your Majesty tells me? for I cannot -make head nor tail of it for my part.” - -“I just tell you, there’s no saying,” Beenie repeated very deliberately, -looking the young lady in the face. - -Poor Lily! her face was glowing with sudden hope, her slight fingers -trembled. What did the woman mean who knew every thing? “When we’re -wearied waiting--when there’s no reasonable prospect.” Oh, what, what -did the woman mean? Had there been something said to her that could not -be said to Lily? Were there feet already on the road, marching hither, -hither, bringing love and bringing joy? “There’s no saying.” A woman -like Robina would not say that without some reason. It was enigmatical; -but what could it mean but something good? and what good could happen -but one thing? Beenie, in fact, meant nothing but the vaguest of -consolations--she had no comfort to give; but it was not in a woman’s -heart to shut out imagination and confess that hope was over. Who would -venture to say that there was no hope, any day, any moment, in a young -life, of something happening which would make all right again? No oracle -could have said less; and yet it meant every thing. Lily, in the light -of possibility that suddenly sprang up around her, illuminating the moor -better than the pale sunshine, and making this bare and cold room into a -habitable place, took heart to return to the happy ordinary of -existence, and remembered that she was hungry and that Katrin’s scones -were very good and the apple jelly beautiful to behold. It was a prosaic -result, you may say, but yet it was a happy one, for she was very tired, -and had great need of refreshment and support. She took her simple meal -which was so pretty to look at--never an inconsiderable matter on a -woman’s table; the scones wrapped in their white napkin, the jug of -creamy milk, the glass dish with its clear pink jelly. She ate and drank -with much satisfaction, and then, with Beenie at her side, went -wandering over the house to see if there was any furniture to be found -more cheerful than the curtains and carpets in the drawing-room. The -days of “taste” had not arisen--no fans from Japan had yet been seen in -England, far less upon the moors; but yet the natural instinct existed -to attempt a little improvement in the stiff dulness of the place. Lily -was soon running over all the house with a song on her lips--commoner in -those days when music was not so carefully cultivated--and a skipping -measure in the patter of her feet. “Hear till her,” said Dougal to -Katrin; “our peace and quiet’s done.” “Hear till her indeed, ye auld -crabbit body! It’s the blessing o’ the Lord come to the house,” said -Katrin to Dougal. He pushed his cap now to one side, now to the other, -with a scratch of impartial consultation what was to come of it--but -also a secret pleasure that brought out a little moisture under his -shaggy eyebrows. The old pair sat up a full half-hour later, out of pure -pleasure in the consciousness of the new inmate under that roof where -they had so long abode in silence. And Lily rushed upstairs and -downstairs, and thrilled the old floor with her hurried feet, but kept -always saying over to herself those words which were the fountain of -contentment--or rather expectation, which is better: “There’s no -saying--there’s no saying!” If Beenie knew nothing in which there was a -reasonable hope, how could she have suffered herself to speak? - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -When Lily got up next morning, it was to the cheerful sounds of the -yard, the clucking of fowls, the voices of the kitchen calling to each -other, Katrin darting out a sentence as she came to the door, Dougal -growling a bass order to the boy, the sounds of whose hissing and -movement over his stable-work were as steady as if Rory were being -groomed like a racer till his coat shone. It is not pleasant to be -disturbed by Chanticleer and his handmaidens in the middle of one’s -morning sleep, nor to hear the swing of the stable pails, and the hoofs -of the horses, and the shouts to each other of the outdoor servants. I -should not like to have even one window of my bedchamber exposed to -these noises. But Lily sprang up and ran to the window, cheered by this -rustic Babel, and looked out with keen pleasure upon the rush of the -fowls to Katrin’s feet as she stood with her apron filled with grain, -flinging it out in handfuls, and upon the prospect through the stable of -the boy hissing and rubbing down Rory, who clattered with his impatient -hoofs and would not stand still to have his toilet made. Dougal was -engaged in the byre, in some more important operations with the cow, -whose present hope and representative--a weak-kneed, staggering -calf--looked out from the door with that solemn stare of wondering -imbecility which is often so pathetic. Lily did not think of pathos. She -was cheered beyond measure to look out on all this active life instead -of the silent moor. The world was continuing to go round all the same, -the creatures had to be fed, the new day had begun--notwithstanding that -she was banished to the end of the world; and this was no end of the -world after all, but just a corner of the country, where life kept going -on all the same, whether a foolish little girl had been to a ball -overnight, or had arrived in solitude and tears at the scene of her -exile. A healthful nature has always some spring in it at the opening of -a new day. - -She went over the place under Katrin’s guidance, when she had dressed -and breakfasted, and was as ready to be amused and diverted as if she -had found every thing going her own way; which shows that Lily was no -young lady heroine, but an honest girl of twenty-two following the -impulses of nature. The little establishment at Dalrugas was not a farm. -It had none of the fluctuations, none of the anxieties, which befall a -humble agriculturist who has to make his living out of a few not very -friendly acres, good year and bad year together. Dougal loved, indeed, -to grumble when any harm came over the potatoes, or when his hay was -spoiled, as it generally was, by the rain. He liked to pose as an -unfortunate farmer, persecuted by the elements; but the steady wages -which Sir Robert paid, with the utmost regularity, were as a rock at the -back of this careful couple, whose little harvest was for the sustenance -of their little household, and did not require to be sold to produce the -ready money of which they stood so very little in need. Therefore all -was prosperous in the little place. The eggs, indeed, produced so -plentifully, were not much profit in a place where every-body else -produced eggs in their own barnyards; but a sitting from Katrin’s fowls -was much esteemed in the countryside, and brought her honor and -sometimes a pleasant present in kind, which was to the advantage both of -her comfort and self-esteem. But a calf was a thing which brought in a -little money; and the milk formed a great part of the living of the -house in various forms, and when there was any over, did good to the -poor folk who are always with us, on the banks of the Rugas as in other -places. Dougal would talk big by times about his losses--a farmer, -however small, is nothing without them; but his loss sat very lightly on -his shoulders, and his comfort was great and his little gains very -secure. The little steading which lurked behind Sir Robert’s gray house, -and was a quite unthought-of adjunct to it, did very well in all its -small traffic and barter under such conditions. The mission of Dougal -and his wife was to be there, always ready to receive the master when he -chose to “come North,” as they called it, with the shooting-party, for -whom Katrin always kept her best sheets well aired. But Sir Robert had -no mind to trust himself in the chilly North: that was all very well -when a man was strong and active, and liked nothing so much as to tramp -the moor all day, and keep his friends at heck and manger. But a man’s -friends get fewer as he gets old, and other kinds of pleasure attract -him. It was perhaps a dozen years since he had visited his spare -paternal house. And Dougal and Katrin had come to think the place was -theirs, and the cocks and the hens, and the cows and ponies, the chief -interest in it. But they were no niggards; they would have been glad to -see Sir Robert himself had he come to pay them a visit; they were still -more glad to see Lily, and to make her feel herself the princess, or it -might be altogether more correct to say the suzerain, under whom they -reigned. They did not expect her to interfere, which made her welcome -all the more warm. As for Sir Robert, he might perhaps have interfered; -but even in the face of that doubt Dougal and Katrin would have acted as -became them, and received him with a kindly welcome. - -“Ye see, this is where I keep the fowls,” said Katrin. “It was a kind of -a gun-room once; but it’s a place where a shootin’ gentleman never sets -his fit, and there’s no a gun fired but Dougal’s auld carabeen. What’s -the use of keeping up thae empty places, gaun to rack and ruin, with -grand names till them? The sitting hens are just awfu’ comfortable in -here; and as for Cockmaleerie, he mairches in and mairches out, like Mr. -Smeaton, the school-master, that has five daughters, besides his wife, -and takes his walks at the head of them. A cock is wonderful like a man. -If you just saw the way auld Smeaton turns his head, and flings a word -now and then at the chattering creatures after him! We’ve put the -pig-sty out here. It’s no just the place, perhaps, so near the house; -but it’s real convenient; and as the wind is maistly from the east, ye -never get any smell to speak of. Besides, that’s no the kind of smell -that does harm. The black powny he’s away to the moor for peat; but -there’s Rory, aye taking another rug at his provender. He’s an auld -farrant beast. He’s just said to himself, as you or me might do: ‘Here’s -a stranger come, and I am the carriage-horse; and let’s just make the -most of it.’” - -“He must be very conceited if he thinks himself a carriage-horse,” said -Lily, with a laugh. - -“’Deed, and he’s the only ane; and no a bad substitute. As our auld -minister said the day yon young lad was preaching: ‘No a bad -substitute.’ I trow no, seeing he’s now the assistant and successor, and -very well likit; and if it could only be settled between him and Miss -Eelen there could be naething more to be desired. But that’s no the -question. About Rory, Miss Lily----” - -“I would much rather hear about Miss Helen. Who is Miss Helen? Is it the -minister’s little girl that used to come out to Dalrugas to play with -me?” - -“She’s a good ten years older than you, Miss Lily.” - -“I don’t think so. I was--how old?--nine; and I am sure she was not -grown up, nor any thing like it. And so she can’t make up her mind to -take the assistant and successor? Tell me, Katrin, tell me! I want to -hear all the story. It is something to find a story here.” - -“There are plenty of stories,” said Katrin; “and I’ll tell you every one -of them. But about Miss Eelen. She’s a very little thing. You at nine -were bigger than she was--let us say--at sixteen. There maun be five -years atween you, and now she’ll be six-and-twenty. No, it’s no auld, -and she’s but a bairn to look at, and she will just be a fine friend for -you, Miss Lily; for though they’re plain folk, she has been real well -brought up, and away at the school in Edinburgh, and plays the pianny, -and a’ that kind of thing. I have mair opinion mysel’ of a good seam; -but we canna expect every-body to have that sense.” - -“And why will she have nothing to say to the assistant and successor? -and what is his name?” - -“His name is Douglas, James Douglas, of a westland family, and no that -ill-looking, and well likit. Eh, but you’re keen of a story, Miss Lily, -like a’ your kind. But I never said she would have naething to say to -him. She is just great friends with him. They are aye plotting thegether -for the poor folk, as if there was nothing needed but a minister and -twa-three guid words to make heaven on earth. Oh, my bonnie lady, if it -could be done as easy as that! There’s that drunken body, Johnny Wright, -that keeps the merchant’s shop.” Katrin was a well-educated woman in her -way, and never put _f_ for _w_, which is the custom of her district; but -she said _chop_ for _shop_, an etymology which it is unnecessary to -follow here. “But it’s a good intention--a good intention. They are aye -plotting how they are to mend their neighbors; and the strange thing -is---- But, dear, bless us! what are we to be havering about other -folk’s weakness when nae doubt we have plenty of our ain?” - -“I am not to be cheated out of my story, Katrin. Do you mean that the -young minister is not a good man himself?” - -“Bless us, no! that’s not what I mean. He’s just as pious a lad and as -weel living---- It’s no that--it’s no that. It’s just one o’ thae -mysteries that you’re far o’er-young to understand. She’s been keen to -mend other folk, poor lass; and that the minister should speak to them, -and show them the error o’ their ways! But the dreadful thing is that -her poor bit heart is just bound up in a lad--a ne’er-do-weel, that is -the worst of them all. Oh, dinna speak of it, Miss Lily, dinna speak of -it! I’ll tell you anither time; or, maybe, I’ll no tell ye at all. Come -in and see the kye. They’re honest creatures. There’s nothing o’ the -deevil and his dreadful ways in them.” - -“I wouldna be ower sure of that,” said Dougal, who came to meet them to -the door of the byre, his cap hanging on to the side of his head, upon -one grizzled lock, so many pushes and scratches had it received in the -heat of his exertions. “There’s Crummie, just as little open to raison -as if she were a wuman. No a step will she budge, though it’s clean -strae and soft lying that I’m offering till her. Gang ben, and try what -ye can do. She’s just furious. I canna tell what she thinks, bucking at -me, and butting at me, as if I was gaun to carry her off to the butcher -instead of just setting her bed in comfort for her trouble. None of the -deil in them! What d’ye say to Rory? He’s a deil a’thegether, from the -crown of his head to his off leg, the little evil spirit! And what’s -that muckle cock ye’re so proud o’? Just Satan incarnate, that’s my -opinion, stampin’ out his ain progeny when they’re o’ the same sect as -himsel’. Dinna you trust to what she says, Miss Lily. There’s nae place -in this world where _he_ is not gaun about like a roarin’ lion, seekin’, -as the Scripture saith, whom he may devour.” - -“Eh, man,” said his wife, coming out a little red, yet triumphant, “but -you’re a poor hand with your doctrines and your opinions! A wheen soft -words in poor Crummie’s ear, and a clap upon her bonnie broad back, poor -woman, and she’s as quiet as a lamb. Ye’ve been tugging at her, and -swearing at her, though I aye tell ye no. Fleeching is aye better than -fechting, if ye would only believe me--whether it’s a woman or a bairn -or a poor timorsome coo.” - -“Ye’re a’ alike,” said Dougal, with a grunt, returning to his work. “I’m -thinking,” he said, pausing to deliver his broadside, “that, saving your -presence, Miss Lily, weemen are just what ye may call the head of the -irrational creation. It’s men that’s a little lower than the angels; -we’re them that are made in the image of God. But when ye speak o’ the -whole creation that groaneth and travaileth, I’m thinking----” - -“Ye’ll just think at your work, and haud your ill tongue before the -young lady,” cried his wife in high wrath. But she, too, added as he -swung away with a big laugh: “Onyway, by your ain comparison, we’re at -the head and you’re at the tail. Come away, Miss Lily, and see the -bonnie doos. There is nae ill speaking among them. I’m no so sure,” she -added, however, when out of hearing of her husband, “I’ve heard yon -muckle cushat, the one with the grand ruff about his neck, swearin’ at -his bonnie wifie, or else I’m sair mista’en. It’s just in the nature o’ -the men-kind. They like ye weel enough, but they maun aye be gibing at -ye, and jeerin’ at ye--but, bless me, a bit young thing like you, it’s -no to be expeckit ye could understand.” - -The pigeons were very tame, and alighted not only on Katrin’s capacious -shoulders, who “shoo’d” them off, but on Lily’s, who liked the -sentiment, and to find herself so familiarly accosted by creatures so -highly elevated above mere cocks and hens--“the bonnie creatures,” as -Katrin said, who sidl’d and bridl’d about her, with mincing steps and -graceful movements. “The doocot” was an old gray tower, standing apart -from the barnyard, in a small field, the traditional appendage of every -old Scotch house of any importance. To come upon Rory afterward, -dragging after him the boy, by name Sandy, and not unlike, either in -complexion or shape, to the superior animal whom he was supposed to be -taking out for exercise, brought back, if not the former discussion on -the prevalence of evil, at least a practical instance of “the deevil” -that was in the pony, and was an additional amusement. Lily made instant -trial of the feminine ministrations which had been so effective with the -cow, whispering in Rory’s ear, and stroking his impatient nose, without, -however, any marked effect. - -“He’ll soon get used to ye,” Katrin said consolingly, “and then you’ll -can ride him down to the town, and make your bit visits, and get any -thing that strikes your fancy at the shop. Oh, you’ll find there’s -plenty to divert ye, my bonnie leddy, when once ye are settled down.” - -Would it be so? Lily felt, in the courage of the morning, that it might -be possible. She resolved to be good, as a child resolves; there should -be no silly despair, no brooding nor making the worst of things. She -would interest herself in the beasts and the birds, in Rory, the pony, -and Crummie, the cow. She would always have something to do. Her little -school accomplishment of drawing, in which she had made some progress -according to the drawing-master, she would take that up again. The kind -of drawing Lily had learned consisted in little more than copying other -drawings; but that, when it had been carefully done, had been thought a -great deal of at school. And then there was the fine fancy-work which -had been taught her--the wonderful things in Berlin wool, which was -adapted to so many purposes, and occupied so large a share of feminine -lives. Miss Martineau, that strong-minded politician and philosopher, -amused her leisure with it, and why should not Lily? But Berlin -patterns, and all the beautiful shades of the wool, could not, alas! be -had on Dalrugas moor. Lily decided bravely that she would knit stockings -at least, and that practice would soon overcome that difficulty about -turning the heel which had damped her early efforts. She would knit warm -stockings for Sir Robert--warm and soft as he liked them--ribbed so as -to cling close to his handsome old leg, and show its proportions, and -so, perhaps, touch his heart. And then there would, no doubt, turn up, -from time to time, something to do for the poor folk. Surely, surely -there would be employment enough to “keep her heart.” Then she would go -to Kinloch-Rugas and see “Miss Eelen,” Helen Blythe, the minister’s -daughter, whom she remembered well, with the admiration of a little girl -for one much older than herself. Here was something that would interest -her and occupy her mind, and prevent her from thinking. And then there -were the old books in the library, in which she feared there would be -little amusement, but probably a great many good books that she had not -read, and what a fine opportunity for her to improve her mind! Her -present circumstances were quite usual features in the novels before the -age of Sir Walter: a residence in an old castle or other lonely house, -where a persecuted heroine had the best of reading, and emerged quite an -accomplished woman, was the commonest situation. She said to herself -that there would be plenty to do, that she would not leave a moment -without employment, that her life would be too busy and too full to -leave any time for gazing out at that window, watching the little bit of -road, and looking, looking for some one who never came. Having drawn up -this useful programme, and decided how she was to spend every day, Lily, -poor Lily, all alone--even Beenie having gone down stairs for a long -talk with Katrin--seated herself, quite unconsciously, at the window, -and gazed and gazed, without intermission, at the little corner of the -road that climbed the brae, and across the long level of the unbroken -moor. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -The days that succeeded were very much like this first day. In the -morning Lily went out “among the beasts,” and visited, with all the -interest she could manage to excite in herself, the byre and the stable, -the ponies and the cows. She persuaded herself into a certain amusement -in contrasting the very different characters of Rory, the spoiled and -superior, with that little sturdy performer of duty without vagary, who -had not even a name to bless himself with, but was to all and sundry the -black powny and no more. Poor little black powny, he supported Rory’s -airs without a word; he gave in to the fact that he was the servant and -his stable companion the gentleman. He went to the moor for peat, and to -the howe for potatoes, and to the town for whatever was wanted, without -so much as a toss of his shaggy head. Nothing tired the black powny, any -more than any thing ever tired the “buoy” who drove and fed and groomed -him, as much grooming as he ever had. Sandy was the “buoy,” just as his -charge was the black powny. They went everywhere together, lived -together, it was thought even slept together; and though the “buoy” in -reality occupied the room above the stable, which was entered by a -ladder--the loft, in common parlance--the two shaggy creatures were as -one. All these particulars Lily learned, and tried to find a little fun, -a little diversion in them. But it was a thin vein and soon exhausted, -at least by her preoccupied mind. - -The post came seldom to this place at the end of the world. It never -indeed came at all. When there were other errands to do in the village, -the buoy and the black powny called at the post-office to ask for -letters--when they remembered; but very often Sandy did not mind, _i. -e._, recollect, to do this, and it did not matter much. Sir Robert, -indeed, had made known his will that there were to be no letters, and -correspondence was sluggish in those days. Lily had not bowed her spirit -to the point of promising that she would not write to whomsoever she -pleased, but she was too proud to be the first to do so, and, save a few -girl epistles for which, poor child, she did not care, and which secured -her only a succession of disappointments, nothing came to lighten her -solitude. No, she would not write first, she would not tell him her -address. He could soon find that out if he wanted to find it. Sir Robert -Ramsay was not nobody, that there should be any trouble in finding out -where his house was, however far off it might be. Poor Lily, when she -said this to herself, did not really entertain a doubt that Ronald would -manage to write to her. But he did not do so. The post came in at -intervals, the powny and the boy went to the town, and minded or did -not mind to call for the letters: but what did it matter when no letters -ever came? Ah, one from Sir Robert, hoping she found the air of the moor -beneficial; one from a light-hearted school-fellow, narrating all the -dances there had been since Lily went away, and the last new fashion, -and how like Alice Scott it was to be the first to appear in it. But no -more. This foolish little epistle, at first dashed on the ground in her -disappointment, Lily went over again, through every line, to see whether -somewhere in a corner there did not lurk the name which she was sick -with longing to see. It might so easily have been here: “I danced with -Ronald Lumsden and he was telling me,” or, “Ronald Lumsden called and -was asking about you.” Such a crumb of refreshment as that Lily would -have been glad of; but it never came. - -Yet she struggled bravely to keep up her heart. One of those early days, -after sundry attempts on the moor, where she gradually vanquished him, -Lily rode Rory into Kinloch-Rugas with only a few controversies on the -way. She was light and she was quiet, making no clattering at his heels -as the gig did, and by degrees Rory habituated himself to the light -burden and the moderate amount of control which she exercised over him. -It amused him after a while to see the whisk of her habit, which proved -to be no unknown drag or other mechanism, but really a harmless thing, -not heavy at all, and as she gave him much of his own way and lumps of -sugar and no whip to speak of, he became very soon docile--as docile as -his nature permitted--and gave her only as much trouble as amused Lily. -They went all the way to the toun together, an incongruous but friendly -pair, he pausing occasionally when a very tempting mouthful of -emerald-green grass appeared among the bunches of ling, she addressing -him with amiable remonstrances as Dougal did, and eventually touching -his point of honor or sense of shame, so that he made a little burst of -unaccustomed speed, and got over a good deal of ground in the stimulus -thus applied. He was not like the trim and glossy steeds on which, with -her long habit reaching half-way to the ground, and a careful groom -behind, Lily had ridden out with Sir Robert in the days of her grandeur, -which already seemed so far off. But she was, perhaps, quite as -comfortable in the tweed skirt, in which she could spring unfettered -from Rory’s back and move about easily without yards of heavy cloth to -carry. The long habit and the sleek steed and the groom turned out to -perfection would have been out of place on the moor; but Rory, jogging -along with his rough coat, and his young mistress in homespun were -entirely appropriate to the landscape. - -It required a good many efforts, however, before the final code of amity -was established between them, the rule of bearing and forbearing, which -encouraged Lily to so long a ride. When she slipped off his back at the -Manse door, Rory tossed his shaggy head with an air of relief, and -looked as if he might have set off home immediately to save himself -further trouble; but he thought better of it after a moment and a few -lumps of sugar, and was soon in the careful hands of the minister’s man, -who was an old and intimate friend, and on the frankest terms of -remonstrance and advice. Lily was not by any means so familiar in the -minister’s house. She went through the little ragged shrubbery where the -big straggling lilac bushes were all bare and brown, and the berries of -the rowan-trees beginning to redden, but every thing unkempt and -ungracious, the stems burned, and the leaves blown away before their -time by an unfriendly wind. The monthly rose upon the house made a good -show with its delicate blossoms, looking far too fragile for such a -place, yet triumphant in its weakness over more robust flowers; and a -still more fragile-looking but tenacious and indestructible plant, the -great white bindweed or wild convolvulus, covered the little porch with -its graceful trails of green, and delicate flowers, which last so short -a time, yet form so common a decoration of the humblest Highland -cottages. Lily paused to look through the light lines of the climbing -verdure as she knocked at the Manse door. It was so unlike any thing -that could be expected to bloom and flourish in the keen northern air. -It gave her a sort of consoling sense that other things as unlike the -sternness of the surroundings might be awaiting her, even here, at the -end of the world. - -And nothing could have been more like the monthly rose on the dark gray -wall of the Manse than Helen Blythe, who came out of the homely parlor -to greet Lily when she heard who the visitor was. “Miss Eelen” was -Lily’s senior by even more than had been supposed, but she did not show -any sign of mature years. She was very light of figure and quick of -movement, with a clear little morning face extremely delicate in color, -mild brown eyes that looked full of dew and freshness, and soft brown -hair. She came out eagerly, her “seam” in her hand, a mass of whiteness -against her dark dress, saying, “Miss Ramsay, Dalrugas?” with a quick -interrogative note, and then Helen threw down her work and held out both -her hands. “Oh, my bonnie little Lily,” she cried in sweet familiar -tones. “And is it you? and is it really you?” - -“I think I should have known you anywhere,” said Lily. “You are not -changed, not changed a bit; but I am not little Lily any longer. I am a -great deal bigger than you.” - -“You always were, I think,” said Helen, “though you were only a bairn -and me a little, little woman, nearly a woman, when you were here last. -Come ben, my dear, come ben and see papa. He does not move about much or -he would have come to welcome you. But wait a moment till I get my seam, -and till I find my thimble; it’s fallen off my finger in the fulness of -my heart, for I could not bide to think about that when I saw it was -you. And, oh, stand still, my dear, or you’ll tramp upon it! and it’s my -silver thimble and not another nearer than Aberdeen.” - -“I’ve got one,” cried Lily, “and you shall have it, Helen, for I fear, I -fear it is not so very much use to me.” - -“Oh, whisht, my dear. You must not tell me you don’t like your seam. -How would the house go on, and what would folk do without somebody to -sew? For my part I could not live without my seam. Canny, canny, my -bonnie woman, there it is! They are just dreadful things for running -into corners--almost as bad as a ring. But there is a mischief about a -ring that is not in a thimble,” said Helen, rising, with her soft cheeks -flushed, having rescued the errant thimble from the floor. - -“And are you always at your seam,” said Lily, “just as you were when I -was little, and you used to come to Dalrugas to play?” - -“I don’t think you were ever so little as me,” said Helen with her -rustic idiom and accent, her low voice and her sweet look, both as fresh -as the air upon the moor. She did not reach much higher than Lily’s -shoulder. She had the most serene and smiling face, full, one would have -said, of genuine ease of heart. Was this so? or was her mind full, as -Katrin had said, of unhappy love and anxious thoughts? But it was -impossible to believe so, looking at this soft countenance, the mouth -which had not a line, and the eyes which had not a care. - -Nowadays the humblest dwelling which boasts two rooms to sit in -possesses a dining-room and drawing-room, but at that period -drawing-rooms were for grand houses only, and the parlor was the name of -the family dwelling-place. It was very dingy, if truth must be told. The -furniture was of heavy mahogany, with black hair-cloth. Though it was -still high summer, there was a fire in the old-fashioned black grate, -and close beside, in his black easy chair, was the minister, a heavy old -man with a bad leg, who was no longer able to get about, and indeed did -very little save criticise the actions of his assistant and successor, a -man of new-fangled ways and ideas unlike his own. He had an old plaid -over his shoulders, for he was chilly, and a good deal of snuff hanging -about the lapels of his coat. His countenance was large and -fresh-colored, and his hair white. In those days it was not the fashion -to wear a beard. - -“So that’s Miss Lily from the town,” he said. “Come away ben, come ben. -Set a chair by the fire for the young lady, Eelen, for she’ll be cold -coming off the moor. It’s always a cold bit, the moor. Many a cough I’ve -catched there when I was more about the countryside than I am now. Old -age and a meeserable body are sore hindrances to getting about. Ye know -neither of them, my young friend, and I hope you’ll never know.” - -“Well, papa, it is to be hoped Lily will live to be old, for most folk -desires it,” said Helen. _Papaw_, a harsh reporter would have considered -her to say, but it was not so broad as a _w_; it was more like two -_a’s_--_papaa_--which she really said. She smiled very benignantly upon -the old gentleman and the young creature whom he accosted. The name of -gout was never mentioned, was, indeed, considered an unholy thing, the -product of port-wine and made dishes, and not to be laid to the account -of a clergyman. But Mr. Blythe contemplated with emotion, supported on -his footstool, the dimensions of a much swollen toe. - -“Well,” said he, “I hope she’ll never live to have the rose in her foot, -or any other ailment of the kind. And how’s Sir Robert, my dear? Him and -me are neighbor-like; there is not very much between us. Is he coming -North this year to have a pop at the birds, or is he thinking like me, I -wonder, that a good easy chair by the fire is the best thing for an auld -man? and a brace of grouse well cooked and laid upon a toast more -admirable than any number of them on the moor?” - -“I don’t think he is coming for the shooting,” said Lily, doubtful. Sir -Robert was in many respects what was then called a dandy, and any thing -more unlike the exquisite arrangements for his comfort, carried out by -his valet, than the old clergyman’s black cushion and footstool and -smouldering fire could not be. - -“You’ll have had an illness yourself,” said the minister, “though you do -not look like it, I must say. Does she, now, Eelen, with a color like -that? But your uncle would have done better, my dear, to take you -travelling, or some place where ye would have seen a little society and -young persons like yourself, than to send you here. He’ll maybe have -forgotten what a quiet place it is, and no fit for the like of you. But -I’ll let him know, I’ll let him know as soon as he comes up among us, -which no doubt he will soon do now.” - -“Now, papa,” said Helen, “you will just let Sir Robert alone, and no -plot with him to carry Lily away from me: for I am counting very much -upon her for company, and it will do her no harm to get the air of the -moor for a while and forget all the dissipations of Edinburgh. You will -have to tell me all about them, Lily, for I’m the country mouse that has -never been away from home. Eh,” said Helen, “I have no doubt every thing -is far grander when you’re far off from it than when you’re near. I dare -say you were tired of the Edinburgh parties, and I would just give a -great deal to see one of them. And most likely you thought the Tower -would be delightful, while we are only thinking how dull it will be for -you. That is aye the way; what we have we think little of, and what we -have not we desire.” - -“I was not tired,” said Lily, “except sometimes of the grand dinners -that Uncle Robert is so fond of, and I cannot say that I expected the -Tower to be delightful; but you know I have no father of my own, and I -must just do what I am told.” - -“My dear,” said the old minister, “I see you have a fine judgment; for -if you had a father of your own, like Eelen there, you would just turn -him round your little finger; and I’m much surprised you don’t do the -same, a fine creature like you, with your uncle too.” - -“Whisht, papa,” said Helen; “we’ll have in the tea, which you know -you’re always fond of to get a cup when you can, and it’ll be a -refreshment to Lily after her ride. And in the meantime you can tell her -some of your stories to make her laugh, for a laugh’s a fine thing for a -young creature whatsoever it’s about, if it’s only havers.” - -“Which my auld stories are, ye think?” said the minister. “Go away, go -away and mask your tea. Miss Lily and me will get on very well without -you. I’ll tell ye no stories. They are all very old, and the most of -them are printed. If I were to entertain ye with my anecdotes of auld -ministers and beadles and the like, ye would perhaps find them again in -a book, and ye would say to yourself, ‘Eh, there’s the story Mr. Blythe -told me, as if it was out of his own head,’ and you would never believe -in me more. But for all that it’s no test being in a book; most of mine -are in books, and yet they are mine, and it was me that put them -together all the same. But I have remarked that our own concerns are -more interesting to us than the best of stories, and I’m a kind of -spiritual father to you, my dear. If I did not christen you, I -christened your father. Tell me, now that Eelen’s out of the way, what -is it that brought ye here? Is it something about a bonnie lad, my -bonnie young lass? for that’s the commonest cause of banishment, and as -it cannot be carried out with the young man, it’s the poor wee lassies -that have the brunt to bear----” - -“I never said,” cried Lily, angry tears coming to her eyes, “that there -was any reason or that it was for punishment. I just came here -because--because Uncle Robert wanted me to come,” she added in a little -burst of indignation, yet dignity; “and nobody that I know has a right -to say a word.” - -“Just so,” said Mr. Blythe; “he wanted you, no doubt, to give an eye to -Dougal and Katrin, who might be taking in lodgers or shooting the moors -for their own profit for any thing that he can tell. He’s an -auld-farrant chield, Sir Robert. He would not say a word to you, but he -would reckon that you would find out.” - -“Mr. Blythe,” cried Lily with fresh indignation, “if you think my uncle -sent me here for a spy, to find out things that do not exist----” - -“No, my dear, I don’t, I don’t,” said the minister. “I am satisfied he -has a mind above that, and you too. But he’s not without a thread of -suspicion in him; indeed, he’s like most men of his years and -experience, and believes in nobody. No, no, Dougal does not put the moor -to profit, which might be a temptation to many men; but he has plenty of -sport himself in a canny way, and there’s a great deal of good game just -wasted. You may tell Sir Robert that from his old friend. Just a great -deal of good game wasted. He should come and bring a few nice lads to -divert you, and shoot the moor himself.” - -“That’s just one of papa’s crazes,” said Helen, returning with her -teapot in her hand, the tray, with all its jingling cups and saucers, -having been put on the table in the meantime. “He thinks the gentlemen -should come back from wherever they are, or whatever they may be doing, -to shoot the moors. It would certainly be far more cheery for the -countryside, but very likely Sir Robert cares nothing about the moor, -and is just content with the few brace of grouse that Dougal sends him. -I believe it’s considered a luxury and something grand to put on the -table in other places, but we have just too much of it here. Now draw to -the table and take your tea. The scones are just made, and I can -recommend the shortbread, and you must be wanting something after your -ride. I have told John to give the powny a feed, and you will feel all -the better, the two of you, for a little rest and refreshment. Draw in -to the table, my bonnie dear.” - -These were before the days of afternoon tea; but the institution existed -more or less, though not in name, and “the tea” was administered before -its proper time or repeated with a sense of guilt in many houses, where -the long afternoon was the portion of the day which it was least easy to -get through--when life was most languid, and occupation at a lull. Lily -ate her shortbread with a girl’s appetite, and took pleasure in her -visit. When she mounted Rory again and set forth on her return, she -asked herself with great wonder whether it was possible that there could -be any thing under that soft aspect of Helen Blythe, her serene -countenance and delicate color, which could in any way correspond with -the trouble and commotion in her own young bosom? Helen had, indeed, her -father to care for, she was at home, and had, no doubt, friends; but was -it possible that a thought of some one who was not there lay at the -bottom of all? - -Lily confessed to Robina when she got home that she had been much -enlivened by her visit, and that Helen was coming to see her, and that -all would go well; but when Beenie, much cheered, went down stairs to -her tea, Lily unconsciously drew once more to that window, that -watchtower, from which nobody was ever visible. The moor lay in all the -glory of the evening, already beginning to warm and glow with the -heather, every bud of which awoke to brightness in the long rays of the -setting sun. It was as if it came to life as the summer days wore toward -autumn. The mountains stood round, blue and purple, in their unbroken -veil of distance and visionary greatness, but the moor was becoming -alive and full of color, warming out of all bleakness and grayness into -life and light. The corner of the road under the trees showed like a -peep into a real world, not a dreary vacancy from which no one came. -There was a cart slowly toiling its way up the slope, its homely sound -as it came on informing the silence of something moving, neighborly, -living. Lily smiled unconsciously as if it had been a friend. And when -the cart had passed, there appeared a figure, alone, walking quickly, -not with the slow wading, as if among the heather, of the rare, ordinary -passer-by. Lily’s interest quickened in spite of herself as she saw the -wayfarer breasting the hill. Who could he be, she wondered. Some -sportsman, come for the grouse--some gentleman, trained not only to -moorland walking, but to quick progress over smoother roads. He skimmed -along under the fir-trees at the corner, up the little visible ascent. -Lily almost thought she could hear his steps sounding so lightly, like a -half-forgotten music that she was glad, glad to hear again; but he -disappeared soon under the rising bank, as every thing did, and she was -once more alone in the world. The sun sank, the horizon turned gray, -the moor became once more a wilderness in which no life or movement was. - -No!--what a jump her heart gave!--it was no wilderness: there was the -same figure again, stepping out on the moor. It had left the road, it -was coming on with springs and leaps over the heather toward the house. -Who was it? Who was it? And then he, he! held up his hand and beckoned, -beckoned to Lily in the wilderness. Who was he? Nobody--a wandering -traveller, a sportsman, a stranger. Her heart beat so wildly that the -whole house seemed to shake with it. And there he stood among the -heather, his hat off, waving it, and beckoning to her with his hand. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -The situation of Ronald Lumsden, for whom Lily felt herself to have -sacrificed so much, and who showed, as she felt at the bottom of her -heart, so little inclination to sacrifice any thing for her, was, in -reality, a difficult one. It would have been false to say that he did -not love her, that her loss was no grief to him, or that he could make -himself comfortable without her--which was what various persons thought -and said, and he was not unaware of the fact. Neither was he unaware -that Lily herself had a half grudge, a whole consciousness, that the way -out of the difficulty was a simple one; and that he should have been -ready to offer her a home, even though it would not be wealthy, and the -protection of a husband’s name and care against all or any uncles in the -world. He knew that she was quite willing to share his poverty, that she -had no objection to what is metaphorically called a garret--and would -really have resembled one more than is common in such cases: a little -flat, high up under the roofs of an Edinburgh house--and to make it into -a happy and smiling little home. And as a matter of fact that garret -would not have been inappropriate, or have involved any social downfall -either on his side or Lily’s. Young Edinburgh advocates in those days -set up their household gods in such lofty habitations without either -shame or reluctance. Not so very long before the man whom we and all the -world know as Lord Jeffrey set out in the world on that elevation and -made his garret the centre of a new kind of empire. There was nothing -derogatory in it: invitations from the best houses in Edinburgh would -have found their way there as freely as to George Square; and Lily’s -friends and his own friends would have filled the rooms as much as if -the young pair had been lodged in a palace. He could not even say to -himself that there would have been privations which she did not -comprehend in such a life; for, little though they had, it would have -been enough for their modest wants, and there was a prospect of more if -he continued to succeed as he had begun to do. Many a young man in -Edinburgh had married rashly on as little and had done very well indeed. -All this Ronald knew as well as any one, and the truth of it rankled in -his mind and made him unhappy. And yet on the other side there was, he -felt, so much to be said! Sir Robert Ramsay’s fortune was not a thing to -be thrown away, and to compare the interest, weight, and importance of -that with the suffering involved to young people who were sure of each -other in merely waiting for a year or two was absurd. According to all -laws of experience and life it was absurd. Lily was very little over -twenty; there was surely no hurry, no need to bring affairs to a climax, -to insist on marrying when it would no doubt be better even for her to -wait. This was what Lumsden said to himself. He would rather, as a -matter of preference, marry at once, secure the girl he loved for his -life-companion, and do the best he could for her. But when all things -were considered, would it be sensible, would it be right, would it be -fair? - -This was how he conversed with himself during many a lonely walk, and -the discussion would break out in the midst of very different thoughts, -even on the pavement of the Parliament House as he paced up and down. -Sir Robert’s fortune--that was a tangible thing. It meant in the future, -probably in the near future, for Sir Robert was a self-indulgent old -man, a most excellent position in the world, safety from all pecuniary -disasters, every comfort and luxury for Lily, who would then be a great -lady in comparison with the struggling Edinburgh advocate. And the cost -of this was nothing but a year’s, a few years’, waiting for a girl of -twenty-two and a young man of twenty-eight. How preposterous, indeed, to -discuss the question at all! If Lily had any feeling of wrong in that -her lover did not carry her off, did not in a moment arrange some -makeshift of a poor life, the prelude to a continual, never-ending -struggle, it could only be girlish folly on Lily’s part, want of power -to perceive the differences and the expediencies. Could any thing be -more just than this reasoning? There is no one in his senses who would -not agree in it. To wait a year or two at Lily’s age--what more natural, -more beneficial? He would have felt that he was taking advantage of her -inexperience if he had urged her to marry him at such a cost. And -waiting cost nothing, at least to him. - -Not very long after Lily left Edinburgh Lumsden had encountered Sir -Robert one evening at one of the big dinner-parties which were the old -gentleman’s chief pleasure, and he had taken an opportunity to address -the young fellow on the subject which could not be forgotten between -them. He warned Lumsden that he would permit no nonsense, no clandestine -correspondence, and that it was a thing which could not be done, as his -faithful servants at Dalrugas kept him acquainted with every thing that -passed, and he would rather carry his niece away to England or even -abroad (that word of fear and mystery) than allow her to make a silly -and unequal marriage. “You are sensible enough to understand the -position,” the old man had said. “From all I hear of you you are no -hot-headed young fool. What you would gain yourself would be only a wife -quite unused to shifts and stress of weather, and probably a mere -burden upon you, with her waiting-woman serving her hand and foot, and -her fine-lady ways--not the useful helpmate a struggling man requires.” - -“I should not be afraid of that,” said Lumsden, with a pale smile, for -no lover, however feeble-hearted, likes to hear such an account of his -love, and no youth on the verge of successful life can be any thing but -impatient to hear himself described as a struggling man. “I expect to -make my way in my profession, and I have reason to expect so. And -Lily----” - -“Miss Ramsay, if you please. She is a fine lady to the tips of her -fingers. She can neither dress nor eat nor move a step without Robina at -her tail. She is not fitted, I tell you, for the wife of a struggling -man.” - -“But suppose I tell you,” cried Lumsden with spirit, “that I shall be a -struggling man only for a little while, and that she is in every way -fitted to be _my_ wife?” - -“Dismiss it from your mind, sir; dismiss it from your mind,” said Sir -Robert. “What will the world say? and what the world says is of great -consequence to a man that has to struggle, even if it is only at the -beginning. They will say that you’ve worked upon a girl’s inexperience -and beguiled her to poverty. They will say that she did not know what -she was doing, but you did. They will say you were a fool for your own -sake, and they will say you took advantage of her.” - -“All which things will be untrue,” said Lumsden hotly. - -But then they were disturbed and no more was said. This conversation, -though so brief, was enough to fill a man’s mind with misgivings, at -least a reasonable man’s, prone to think before and not after the event. -Lumsden was not one that is carried away by impulse. The first effect -was that he did not write, as he had intended, to Lily. What was the use -of writing if Sir Robert’s faithful servants would intercept the -letters? Why run any risk when there lay behind the greater danger of -having her carried off to England or “abroad,” where she might be lost -and never heard of more? Ronald pondered all these things much, but his -pondering was in different circumstances from Lily’s. She had nothing to -divert her mind; he had a great deal. Society had ended for her, but it -was in full circulation, and he had his full share in every thing, where -he was. The pressure is very different in cases so unlike. The girl had -nothing to break the monotony of hour after hour, and day after day. The -young man had a full and busy life: so long in the Parliament House, so -long in his chambers; a consultation; a hard piece of mental work to -make out a case; a cheerful dinner in the evening with some one; a -wavering circle of other men always more or less surrounding him. The -difficulty was not having too much time to think, but how to have time -enough; and the season of occupation and company and events hurried on -so that when he looked back upon a week it appeared to him like a day. -And he had no way of knowing how it lingered with Lily. He wondered a -little and felt it a grievance that she did not write to him, which -would have been so very easy. There were no faithful servants on his -side to intercept letters. She might have at least sent him a line to -announce her safe arrival, and tell him how the land lay. He on his side -could quite endure till the Vacation, when he had made up his mind to do -something, to have news of her somehow. Even this determination made it -more easy for him to defer writing, to make no attempt at communication; -for why warn Sir Robert’s servants and himself of what he intended to -do, so that they might concert means to balk him? whereas it was so very -doubtful whether any thing he sent would reach Lily. Thus he reasoned -with himself, with always the refrain that a year or two of waiting at -his own age and Lily’s could do no one any harm. - -Yet Ronald was but mortal, though he was so wise. Sir Robert left -Edinburgh, going to pay his round of visits before he went abroad, which -he invariably did every autumn. There was no Monte Carlo in those days, -and old gentlemen had not acquired the habit of sunning themselves on -the Riviera; but, on the other hand, there was much more to attract them -at the German baths, which had many of the attractions now concentrated -at Monte Carlo; and Florence possessed a court and society where life -went on in that round of entertainment and congregation which is -essential to old persons of the world. Sir Robert disappeared some time -before the circles of the Parliament House broke up, and young Lumsden -was thus freed from the disagreeable consciousness of being more or less -under the personal observation of his enemy. And he loved Lily, though -he was willing to wait and to be temporarily separated from her in the -interests of their future comfort and Sir Robert’s fortune. So that, -when he was released from his work, and free to direct his movements for -a time as he pleased, an attraction which he could not resist led him to -the place of his lady’s exile. All the good reasons which his -ever-working mind brought forth against this were, I am happy to say, -ineffectual. He said to himself that it was a foolish thing; that if -reported to Sir Robert--and how could it fail to be reported to Sir -Robert, since his servants were so faithful, and it would be impossible -to keep them in the dark?--would only precipitate every thing and lead -to Lily’s transfer to a safer hiding-place. He repeated to himself that -to wait for a year or two at twenty-two and at twenty-eight was no real -hardship: it was rather an advantage. But none of these wise -considerations affected his mind as they ought to have done. He had a -hunger and thirst upon him to see the girl he loved. He wanted to make -sure that she was there, that there was a Lily in the world, that -eventually she would be his and share his life. It was _plus fort que -lui_. - -He went home, however, as in duty bound, to the spare old house on the -edge of the Highlands, where he and all his brothers and sisters had -been born and bred; where there was a little shooting, soon exhausted by -reason of the many guns brought to bear upon it, and a good deal of -company in a homely way, impromptu dances almost every night, as is the -fashion in a large family, which attracts young people round it far and -near. But in all this simple jollity Ronald only felt more the absence -of his love, and the vacant place in the world which could only be -filled by her; though what, perhaps, had as great an effect upon him as -any thing else was that his favorite sister, whom, next to her, perhaps -he liked best in the world, knew about Lily, having been taken into his -confidence before he had realized all the difficulties, and talked to -him perpetually about her, disapproving of his inactivity and much -compassionating the lonely girl. “Oh, if I were only near enough, I -would go and see her and keep up her heart!” Janet Lumsden would cry, -while her brother was fast getting into the condition of mind in which -to see her, to make sure of her existence, was a necessity. In this -condition the old house at home, with all its simple gayeties and -tumult, became intolerable to him. He could have kicked the brother who -demanded his sympathy in his engagement to a young lady with a fortune, -neither the young lady nor the fortune being worthy to be compared to -Lily, though the family was delighted by such a piece of good luck for -Rob. And it set all his nerves wrong to see the flirtations that went on -around him, though they were frank and simple affairs, the inevitable -preferences which one boy and girl among so many would naturally show -for each other. All this seemed vulgar, common, intolerable, and in the -worst taste to Ronald. It was not that he was really more refined than -his brothers, but that his own affairs had gone (temporarily) so wrong, -and his own chosen one was so far out of the way. All the jolly, hearty -winter life at home jarred on him and upset his nerves, those artificial -things which did not exist in Perthshire at that period, whatever they -may do now. - -At last, when he could not endure it any longer, he announced that he -was going a-fishing up toward the North. He was not a great fisherman, -and the brothers laughed at Ronald setting out with his rod; but he had -the natural gift, common to all Scotsmen of good blood, of knowing most -people throughout his native country, or at least one part of his native -country, and being sure of a welcome in a hundred houses in which a son -of Lumsden of Pontalloch was a known and recognizable person, though -Lumsden of Pontalloch himself was by no means a rich or important man. -This is an advantage which the _roturier_ never acquires until at least -he has passed through three or four generations. Ronald Lumsden knew -that he would never be at a loss, that if rejected in one city he could -flee into another, and that if any impertinent questions were put to him -by Sir Robert’s own faithful servants, he could always say that he was -going to stay at any of the known houses within twenty miles. This -hospitality perhaps exists no longer, for many of these houses now, -probably the greater part of them, are let to strangers and foreigners, -to whom even the native names are strange and the condition of the -country means nothing. But it was so still in those days. - -He set out thus, more or less at his ease, and lingered a little on his -way. Then he bethought himself, or so he said, of the Rugas, in which he -had fished once as a boy, and which justified him in getting off the -coach at the little inn, not much better than a village public-house, -where a bare room and a hard bed were to be had, and a right to fish -could be negotiated for. He had a day’s fishing to give himself a -countenance, enquiring into the history generally of the country, and -which houses were occupied, and which lairds “up for the shooting.” - -“Sir Robert here? Na, Sir Robert’s not here. Bless us a’, what would -bring him here, an auld man like that, that just adores his creature -comforts, and never touches a gun, good season or bad. No, he’s no here, -nor he hasna been here this dozen years. But I’ll tell you wha’s here, -and that’s a greater ferlie: his bonnie wee niece, Maister James’s -daughter, Miss Lily, as they call her. And it’s no for the shooting, -there’s nae need to say, nor for the fishing either, poor bit thing. -But what it is for is more than I can tell ye. It’s just a black, -burning shame----” - -“Why is it a shame? Is the house haunted, or what’s the matter?” Ronald -said, averting his face. - -“Haunted! that’s a pack of havers. I’m not minding about haunted. But I -tell ye what, sir, that bit lassie (and a bonnie bit lassie she is) is -all her lane there, like a lily flower in the wilderness; for Lily she’s -called, and Lily she is--a bit willowy slender creature, bowing her head -like a flower on the stalk.” The landlord, who was short and red and -stout, leaned his own head to one side to simulate the young lady’s -attitude. “She’s there and never sees a single soul, and it’s mair than -her life’s worth if ye take my opinion. If there was any body to keep -her company, or even a lot of sportsmen coming and going, it would be -something; but there she is, all her lane.” - -“Miss Ramsay! I have met her in Edinburgh,” Ronald said. - -“Then, if I were you, I would just take my foot in my hand and gang ower -the moor and pay her a visit. She will have a grand tocher and she is a -bonnie lass, and nowadays ye canna pick up an heiress at every roadside. -It would be just a charity to give the poor thing a little diversion and -make a fool o’ yon old sneck-drawer to his very beard. Lord! but I -wouldna waste a meenit if I were a young man.” - -Ronald laughed, but put on a virtuous mien. He said he had come for the -fishing, not to pay visits, and to the fishing he would go. But when he -had spent the morning on the river, it occurred to him that he might -take “a look at the moor”; and this was how it was that he stole under -the shadow of the bank when the last rays of the sunset were fading, and -suddenly came out upon the heather under Dalrugas Tower. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -Lily could not believe her eyes. That it was Ronald who approached the -house, leaping over the big bushes of ling, seeking none of the little -paths that ran here and there across the moor, did not occur to her. She -was afraid that it was some stranger or traveller, probably an -Englishman, who, seeing a woman’s head at a window, thought it an -appropriate occasion for impertinently attempting to attract her -attention. It was considered in those days that Englishmen and wanderers -unknown in the district were disposed to be jocularly uncivil when they -had a chance, and indeed the excellent Beenie, who had but few personal -attractions, had rarely gone out alone in Edinburgh, as Lily had often -been told, without being followed by some adventurous person eager to -make her acquaintance. Lily’s first thought was that here must be one of -Beenie’s many anonymous admirers, and after having watched breathlessly -up to a certain point she withdrew with a sense of offence, somewhat -haughtily, surprised that she, even at this height and distance, could -be taken for Beenie, or that any such methods should be adopted to -approach herself. But her heart had begun to beat, she knew not why, and -after a few minutes’ interval she returned cautiously to the window. She -did not see any one at first, and with a sigh of relief but -disappointment said to herself that it was nobody, not even a lover of -Beenie, who might have furnished her with a laugh, but only some -passer-by pursuing his indifferent way. Then she ventured to put out her -head to see where the passing figure had gone; and lo, at the foot of -the tower, immediately below the window, stood he whom she believed to -be so far away. There was a mutual cry of “Ronald” and “Lily,” and then -he cried, “Hush, hush!” in a thrilling whisper, and begged her to come -out. “Only for a moment, only for a word,” he cried through the pale air -of the twilight. “Has any thing happened?” cried Lily, bewildered. She -had no habit of the clandestine. She forgot that there was any sentence -against their meeting, and felt only that when he did not come to her, -but called to her to go to him, there must be something wrong. - -But presently the sense of the position came back to her. Dougal and -Katrin had given no sign of consciousness that any restraint was to be -exercised, they had not opposed any desire of hers, or attempted to -prevent her from going out as she pleased; therefore the thought that -they were now themselves at supper and fully occupied, though it came -into her mind, did not affect her, nor did she feel it necessary to -whisper back in return. But he beckoned so eagerly that Lily yielded to -his urgency. She ran down stairs, catching up a plaid as she went, and -in a moment was on the moor and by Ronald’s side. “At last,” he said, -“at last!” when the first emotion of the meeting was over. - -“Oh, it is me that should say ‘at last,’” said the girl; “it is not you -that have been alone for weeks and weeks, banished from every thing you -know: not a kent face, not a kind word, and not a letter by the post.” - -“I gave a promise I would not write. Indeed, I wanted to give them no -handle against us, but to come the first moment I could without exciting -suspicion.” - -“You are very feared of exciting suspicion,” she said, shaking her head. - -“Have I not cause? Your uncle upbraided me that I was taking advantage -of your inexperience, persuading you to do things you would repent -after. Can I do this, Lily? Can I lay myself open to such a reproach? -Indeed, I do know the facts of things better than you.” - -“I don’t know what you call the facts of things,” she said. “Do you know -the facts of this--the moor and nothing but the moor, and the two-three -servants, and the beasts? Could you contrive to get your diversion out -of the ways of a pony, and the cackle of the cocks and hens? Not but -they are very diverting sometimes,” said Lily, her heart rising. She was -impatient with him. She was even angry with him. He it was who was to -blame for her banishment, and he had been long, long in doing any thing -to enliven it; but still he was here, and the world was changed. Her -heart rose instinctively; even while she complained the things she -complained of grew attractive in her eyes. The pony’s humors brought -smiles to her face, the moor grew fair, the diversion which she had -almost resented when it was all she had now appeared to her in a happy -glow of amusement; though she was complaining in this same breath of the -colorlessness of her life, it now seemed to her colorless no more. - -He drew her arm more closely through his. “And do you think I had more -diversion?” he asked, “feeling every street a desert and my rooms more -vacant than the moor? But that’s over, my Lily, Heaven be praised. I’m -thought to be fishing, and fish I will, hereaway and thereaway, to give -myself a countenance, but always within reach. And the moor will be -paradise when you and I meet here every day.” - -“Oh, Ronald, if we can keep it up,” Lily murmured in spite of herself. - -“Why shouldn’t we keep it up, as long, at least, as the Vacation lasts? -After that, it is true, I’ll have to go back to work; but it is a long -time before that, and I will go back with a light heart to do my best, -to make it possible to carry you off one day and laugh at Sir Robert, -for that is what it must come to, Lily. You may have objections, but you -must learn to get over them. If he stands out and will not give in to -us, we must just take it in our own hands. It must come to that. I would -not hurry or press a thing so displeasing if other means will do. And in -the meantime we’ll be very patient and try to get over your uncle by -fair means. But if he is obstinate, dear, that’s what it will have to -come to. No need to hurry you; we’re young enough. But you must prepare -your mind for it, Lily, for that is what will have to come if he does -not give way.” - -Lily clung to her lover’s arm in a bewilderment of pleasure which was -yet confusion of thought, as if the world had suddenly turned upside -down. This was her own sentiment, which Ronald had never shared: how in -a moment had it become his, changing every thing, making the present -delightful and the future all hope and light? Sir Robert’s fortune had, -then, begun to appear to him what it had been to her, so secondary a -matter! and Sir Robert himself only a relative worthy of consideration -and deference, but not a tyrant obstructing all the developments of -life. She could not say: “This is how I have felt all through,” for, -indeed, it had never been possible to her to say to him: “Take me; let -us live poorly, but together,” as she had always felt. Was it he who had -felt this all through and not she at all? Lily was bewildered, her -standing-ground seemed to have changed, the whole position was -transformed. Surely it must have been she who held back, who wanted to -delay and temporize, not the lover, to whom the bolder way was more -natural. She did not seem to feel the ground beneath her, all had so -twisted and changed. “That is what it must come to; you must prepare -your mind for it, Lily.” Had that solid ground been cut from under her? -was she walking upon air? Her head felt a little giddy and sick in the -change of the world; yet what a change! all blessedness and happiness -and consolation, with no trouble in it at all. - -“I have thought so sometimes myself,” she said in the great bewilderment -of her mind. - -“But in the meantime we must be patient a little,” he said. “Of course I -am going to take my vacation here where we can be together. What kind of -people are those servants? Do they send him word about every thing and -spy upon all your movements? Never mind, I’ll find a way to baffle them; -I am here for the fishing, you know, and after a little while I’ll find -a lodging nearer, so that we may be the most of the time together while -pretending to fish. If we keep up in this direction, we will be out of -the reach of the windows, and you can set Beenie to keep watch and ward. -For I suppose you still tell Beenie every thing, and she is as faithful -to you as Sir Robert’s servants are to him?” - -“I have no doubt they are faithful,” said Lily, a little chilled by this -speech, “but they are not spies at all. They never meddle with me. I am -sure they never write to him about what I am doing; besides, Sir Robert -is a gentleman; he would never spy upon a girl like me.” - -“We must not be too sure of that. He sent you here to be spied upon, at -least to be kept out of every-body’s sight. I would not trust him, nor -yet his servants. And I am nearer to you than Sir Robert, Lily. I am -your husband that is going to be. It might be wrong for you to meet any -other man, which you would never think of doing, but there’s nothing -wrong in meeting me.” - -“I never thought so,” said Lily, subdued. “I am very, very glad to have -you here. It will make every thing different. Only there is no need to -be alarmed about Dougal and Katrin. I think they are fonder of me than -of Uncle Robert. They are not hard upon me, they are sorry for me. But -never mind about that. Will you really, really give up your vacation and -your shooting, and all your pleasure at home, to come here and bide with -me?” - -“That and a great deal more,” said Ronald fervently. He felt at that -moment that he could give every thing up for Lily. He was very much -pleased, elevated, gratified by what he himself had said. He had taken -the burden of the matter on his own shoulders, as it was fit that a man -should do. He had felt when they last parted that in some way, he could -not exactly say what, he had not come up to what was expected of him. He -had not reached the height of Lily’s ideal. But now every thing was -different. He had spoken out, he had assumed a virtue of which he had -not been quite sure whether he had it or not; but now he was sure. He -would not forsake her, he would never ask her to wait unduly or to -suffer for him now. To be sure, they would have to wait--they were young -enough, there was no harm in that--but not longer than was fit, not to -make her suffer. He drew her arm within his, leading her along through -the intricacies of the firm turf that formed a green network of softness -amid the heather. It was not for her to stumble among the big bushes of -ling or spring over the tufts. His business was to guard her from all -that, to lead her by the grassy paths, where her soft footsteps should -find no obstacle. There is a moment in a young man’s life when he thinks -of this mission of his with a certain enthusiasm. Whatever else he might -do, this was certainly his, to keep a woman’s foot from stumbling, to -smooth the way for her, to find out the easiest road. The more he did it -the more he felt sure that it was his to do, and should be, through all -the following years. - -Lily was a long time out of doors that night. Robina came upstairs from -the lengthened supper, which was one of the pleasantest moments of the -day down stairs, when all the work was done, and all were free to talk -and linger without any thought of the beasts or the poultry. The cows -and the ponies were all suppered and put to bed. All the chickens, -mothers and children, had their heads under their wings. The -watchfullest of cocks was buried in sleep, the dogs were quiet on the -hearthstone. Then was the time for those “cracks” which the little party -loved. Beenie told her thrice-told tale of the wonders of Sir Robert’s -kitchen, and the goings on of Edinburgh servants, while Katrin gave -forth the chronicles of the countryside, and Dougal, not to be outdone, -poured forth rival recollections of things which he had seen when the -laird’s man, following his master afar, and of the tragedy of Mr. James, -Lily’s father, who had died far from home. They would sometimes talk all -together without observing it, carrying on each in his various strain. -And as there was nobody to interrupt, supper-time was long, and full of -varied interest. Sandy, the boy, sat at the foot of the table with -round and wondering eyes. But though he laid up many an image for future -admiration, his interest flagged after a while, and an oft-repeated -access of sleep made him the safest of listeners. “G’y way to your bed, -laddie,” Katrin would say, not without kindness. “Lord bless us!” cried -Dougal, giving his kick of dismissal under the table. “D’ye no hear what -the mistress tells ye?” But this was the only thing that disturbed the -little party. And Beenie usually came upstairs to find Lily with her -pale face, she who had no cronies, nor any one with whom to forget -herself in talk, “wearying” for her sole attendant. - -But on this night Beenie found no one there when she came upstairs, -running, and a little guilty to think of the solitude of her little -mistress. For a moment Beenie had a great throb of terror in her breast: -the window was open, a faint and misty moon was shining forlorn over the -moor, there were no candles lighted, nor sign of any living thing. -Beenie coming in with her light was like a searcher for some dreadful -thing, entering a place of mystery to find she knew not what. She held -up her candle and cast a wild glance round the room, as if Lily might -have been lying in a heap in some corner; then, with a suppressed -scream, rushed into the adjacent bedroom, where the door stood open and -all was emptiness. Not there, not there! The distracted woman flew to -the open window with a wild apprehension that Lily, in her despair, -might have thrown herself over. “Oh, Miss Lily, Miss Lily!” she cried, -setting down her light and wringing her hands. Every horrible thing that -could have happened rushed through Beenie’s mind. “And what will they -say to me, that let her bide her lane and break her heart?” she moaned -within herself. And so strong was the certainty in her mind that -something dreadful had happened that when a sound struck her ear, and -she turned sharp round to see the little mistress, whom she had in -imagination seen laid out white and still upon her last bed, standing -all radiant in life and happiness behind her, the scream which burst -forth from Beenie’s lips was wilder than ever. Was it Lily who stood -there, smiling and shining, her eyes full of the dew of light, and every -line of her countenance beaming? or was it rather Lily’s glorified -ghost, the spirit that had overcome all troubles of the flesh? It was -the mischievous look in Lily’s eyes that convinced her faithful servant -that this last hypothesis could not be the explanation. For mischief -surely will not shine in glorified eyes, or the blessed amuse themselves -with the consternation of mortals. And Beenie’s soul, so suddenly -relieved of its terrors, burst out in an “Oh, Miss Lily!” the perennial -remonstrance with which the elder woman had all her life protested -against, yet condoned and permitted, the wayward humors of the girl. - -“Well, Beenie! and how long do you think you will take to your supper -another time?” Lily said. - -“Oh, Miss Lily, and where have you been? I’ve had a fright that will -make me need no more suppers as long as I live. Supper, did ye say? Me -that thought that you were out of the window, lying cauld and stark at -the foot of the tower. Oh, my bonnie dear, my heart’s beating like a -muckle drum. Where have ye been?” - -“I have been on the moor,” said Lily dreamily. “I’ve had a fine walk, -half the way to the town, while you have been taken up with your -bannocks and your cheese and your cracks. I had a great mind to come -round to the window and put something white over my head and give you a -good fright, sitting there telling stories and thinking nothing of me.” - -“Eh, I wasna telling stories--no me!” - -Why Beenie made this asseveration I cannot tell, for she did nothing but -tell stories all the time that Dougal, Katrin, and she were together; -but it was natural to deny instinctively whatever accusation of neglect -was brought against her. “And eh,” she cried, with natural art, turning -the tables, “what a time of night to be out on that weary moor, a young -lady like you. Your feet will be wet with the dew, and no a thing upon -your shoulders to keep you from the cold. Eh, Miss Lily, Miss Lily!” -cried Robina, with all the fictitious indignation of a counter -accusation, “them that has to look after you and keep you out of -mischief has hard ado.” - -“Perhaps you will get me a little supper now that you have had plenty -for yourself,” said Lily, keeping up the advantage on her side. But she -was another Lily from that pale flower which had looked so sadly over -the moor before Robina went down stairs to her prolonged meal, a radiant -creature with joy in every movement. What could it be that had happened -to Lily while her faithful woman was down stairs? - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -Lily kept the secret to herself as long as it was in mortal power to do -so. She sent Beenie off to bed, entirely mystified and unable to explain -to herself the transformation which had taken place, while she herself -lay down under the canopies of the “best bed” and watched the misty -moonlight on the moor, and pictured to herself that Ronald would be only -now arriving, after his long walk, at his homely lodging. But what did -it matter to him to be late, to walk so far, to traverse, mile after -mile in the dark, that lonesome road? He was a man, and it was right and -fit for him. If he had been walking half the night, it would have been -just what the rural lads do, proud of their sweethearts, for whom they -sacrifice half their rest. - - “I’ll take my plaid and out I’ll steal, - And o’er the hills to Nannie O.” - -That was the sentiment for the man, and Lily felt her heart swell with -the pride of it and the satisfaction. She had thought--had she really -thought it?--that he was too careful, too prudent, more concerned about -her fortune than her happiness, but how false that had all been! or how -different he was now! “To carry you off some day and laugh at Sir -Robert, for that is what it must come to, Lily.” Ah, she had always -known that this was what it must come to; but he had not seen it, or at -least she had thought he did not see it in the Edinburgh days. He had -learned it, however, since then, or else, which was most likely, it had -always been in him, only mistaken by her or undeveloped; for it takes -some time, she said to herself, before a man like Ronald, full of faith -in his fellow-creatures, could believe in a tyranny like Sir Robert’s, -or think that it was any thing but momentary. To think that the -heartless old man should send a girl here, and then go away and probably -forget all about her, leaving her to pine away in the wilderness--that -was a thing that never would have entered into Ronald’s young and -wholesome mind. But now he saw it all, and that passiveness which had -chilled and disappointed Lily was gone. That was what it must come to. -Ah, yes, it was this it must come to: independence, no waiting on an old -man’s caprices, no dreadful calculations about a fortune which was not -theirs, which Lily did not grudge Sir Robert, which she was willing, -contemptuously, that he should do what he pleased with, which she would -never buy at the cost of the happiness of her young life. And now Ronald -thought so too. The little flat high up under the tiles of a tall old -Edinburgh house began to appear again, looming in the air over the wild -moor. What a home it would be, what a nest of love and happiness! Ronald -never should repent, oh, never, never should he repent that he had -chosen Lily’s love rather than Sir Robert’s fortune. How happy they -would be, looking out over all the lights and shadows with the great -town at their feet and all their friends around! Lily fell asleep in -this beatitude of thought, and in the same awakened, wondering at -herself for one moment why she should feel so happy, and then -remembering with a rush of delightful retrospection. Was it possible -that all the world had thus changed in a moment, that the clouds had -all fled away, that these moors were no longer the wilderness, but a -little outlying land of paradise, where happiness was, and every thing -that was good was yet to be? - -Beenie found her young mistress radiant in the morning as she had left -her radiant when she went to bed. The young girl’s countenance could not -contain her smiles; they seemed to ripple over, to mingle with the -light, to make sunshine where there was none. What could have happened -to her in that social hour when Robina was at supper with her friends, -usually one of the dullest of the twenty-four to lonely Lily? Whom could -she have seen, what could she have heard, to light those lamps of -happiness in her eyes? But Robina could not divine what it was, and Lily -laughed and flouted, and reproached her with smiles always running over. -“You were so busy with your supper you never looked what might be -happening to me. You and Katrin and Dougal were so full of your cracks -you had no eyes for a poor lassie. I might have been lost upon the moor -and you would never have found it out. But I was not lost, you see, only -wonderfully diverted, and spent a happy evening, and you never knew.” - -“Miss Lily,” said Beenie, with tears, “never more, if I should starve, -will I go down to my supper again!” - -“You will just go down to your supper to-night and every night, and have -your cracks with Dougal and Katrin, and be as happy as you can, for I am -happy too. I am lonely no more. I am just the Lily I used to be before -trouble came--oh, better! for it’s finer to be happy again after trouble -than when you are just innocent and never have learned what it is.” - -“The Lord bless us all!” cried Beenie solemnly, “the bairn speaks as if -she had gone, like Eve, into the thickest of the gairden and eaten of -the tree----” - -“So I have,” said Lily. “I once was just happy like the bairn you call -me, and then I was miserable. And now I know the difference, for I’m -happy again, and so I will always be.” - -“Oh, Miss Lily,” said Beenie, “to say you will always be is just flying -in the face of Providence, for there is nobody in this world that is -always happy. We would be mair than mortal if we could be sure of that.” - -“But I am sure of it,” said Lily, “for what made me miserable was just -misjudging a person. I thought I understood, and I didn’t understand. -And now I do; and if I were to live to a hundred, I would never make -that mistake again. And it lies at the bottom of every thing. I may be -ill, I may be poor, I may have other troubles, but I can never, never,” -said Lily, placing piously her hands together, “have that unhappiness -which is the one that gives bitterness to all the rest--again.” - -“My bonnie lady! I wish I knew what you were meaning,” Beenie said. - -Lily kept her hands clasped and her head raised a little, as if she were -saying a prayer. And then she turned with a graver countenance to her -wondering maid. “Do you think,” she said, “that Dougal or Katrin--but I -don’t think Katrin--writes to Uncle Robert and tells him every thing I -do?” - -“Dougal or Katrin write to Sir Robert? But what would they do that for?” -said Beenie, with wide-open eyes. - -“Well, I don’t know--yes, I do know. I know what has been said, but I -don’t believe it. They say that Sir Robert’s servants write every thing -to him and tell all I do.” - -“You do nothing, Miss Lily. What should they write? What do they ken? -They ken nothing. Miss Lily, Sir Robert, he’s a gentleman. Do you think -he would set a watch on a bit young creature like you? He may be a hard -man, and no considerate, but he is not a man like that.” - -“That’s what I said!” cried Lily; “but tell me one thing more. Do they -know--did he tell them why--what for he sent me here?” - -A blush and a cloud came over her sensitive face, and then a smile -broke forth like the sunshine, and chased the momentary trouble away. - -“Not a word, Miss Lily, not a word. Was he likely to expose himsel’ and -you, that are his nearest kin? No such thing. Many, many a wonder they -have taken, and many a time they have tried to get it out of me; but I -say it was just because of having no fit home for a young lady, and him -aye going away to take his waters, and to play himself at divers places -that were not fit for the like of you. They dinna just believe me, but -they just give each other a bit look and never say a word. And it’s my -opinion, Miss Lily, that they’re just far fonder of you, Mr. James’s -daughter, than they are of Sir Robert, for Dougal was Mr. James’s ain -man, and to betray you to your uncle, even if there was any thing to -tell--which there is not, and I’m hoping never will be--is what they -would not do. You said yourself you did not believe that Katrin would -ever tell upon you; and I’m just as sure of Dougal, that is very fond of -you, though he mayna show it. And then there’s the grand security of a’, -Miss Lily, that there is nothing to tell.” - -“To be sure, that is, as you say, the grand security of all!” Then -Lily’s face burst into smiles, and she flung discretion to the winds. -“Beenie,” she said, “you would never guess. I was very lonely at the -window last night, wondering and wondering if I would just bide there -all my life, and never see any body coming over the moor, when, in a -moment, I saw somebody! He was standing among the heather at the foot of -the tower.” - -“Miss Lily!” - -“Just so,” said the girl, nodding her head in the delight of her heart, -“it was just--him. When every thing was at the darkest, and my heart was -broken. Oh, Beenie! and it’s quite different from what I thought. I -thought he was more for saving Uncle Robert’s fortune than for making me -happy. I was just a fool for my pains. ‘If he stands out, we must just -take it in our own hands; it must come to that; you must just prepare -your mind for it, Lily.’ That was what he said, and me misjudging and -making myself miserable all the time. That is why I say I will never be -miserable again, for I will misjudge Ronald no more.” - -“Eh, Miss Lily!” Beenie said again. Her mind was in a confusion even -greater than that of her young mistress; and she did not know what to -say. If Lily had misjudged him, so had she, and worse, and worse, she -said to herself! Beenie had not been made miserable, however, by the -mistake as Lily had been, and she was not uplifted by the discovery, if -it was a discovery; a cold doubt still hovered about her heart. - -“I will tell you the truth. I will not hide any thing from you,” said -Lily. “He is at Kinloch-Rugas; he is staying in the very town itself. He -has come here for the fishing. He’ll maybe not catch many fish, but -we’ll both be happy, which is of more importance. Be as long as you like -at your supper, Beenie, for then I will slip out and take my walk upon -the moor, and Dougal and Katrin need never know any thing except that I -am, as they think already, a silly lassie keeping daft-like hours. If -they write that to Uncle Robert, what will it matter? To go out on the -moor at the sunset is not silly; it is the right thing to do. And the -weather is just like heaven, you know it is, one day rising after -another, and never a cloud.” - -“’Deed, there are plenty of clouds,” said Beenie, “and soon we’ll have -rain, and you cannot wander upon the moor then, not if he were the -finest man in all the world.” - -“We’ll wait till that time comes, and then we’ll think what’s best to -do; but at present it is just the loveliest weather that ever was seen. -Look at that sky,” said Lily, pointing to the vault of heavenly blue, -which, indeed, was not cloudless, but better, flushed with beatific -specks of white like the wings of angels. And then the girl sprang out -of bed and threw herself into Robina’s arms. “Oh, I’ve been faithless, -faithless!” she cried; “I’ve thought nothing but harm and ill. And I was -mistaken, mistaken all the time! I could hide my face in the dust for -shame, and then I could lift it up to the skies for joy. For there’s -nothing matters in this world so long as them you care for are good and -true and care for you. Nothing, nothing, whether it’s wealth or poverty, -whether it’s parting or meeting. I thought he was thinking more of the -siller than of true love. The more shame to me in my ignorance, the -silly, silly thing I was. And all the time it was just the contrary, and -true love was what he was thinking of, though it was only for an -unworthy creature like me.” - -“I wouldna be so humble as that, my bonnie dear. Ye are nane unworthy; -you’re one that any person might be proud of to have for their ain. I’m -saying nothing against Mr. Ronald, wha is a fine young man and just -suits ye very well if every thing was according. Weel, weel, you need -not take off my head. Ye can say what you like, but he would just be -very suitable if he had a little more siller or a little more heart. Oh, -I am not undoubting his heart in that kind of a way. He’s fond enough of -you, I make no doubt of that. It’s courage is what he wants, and the -heart to take things into his own hands.” - -“Beenie,” said the young mistress with dignity, “when the like of you -takes a stupid fit, there is nothing like your stupidity. Oh! it’s worse -than that--it is a determination not to understand that takes the -patience out of one. But I will not argue; I might have held my tongue -and kept it all to myself, but I would not, for I’ve got a bad habit of -telling you every thing. Ah! it’s a very bad habit, when you set -yourself like a stone wall, and refuse to understand. Go away now, you -dull woman, and leave me alone; and if you like to betray me and him to -those folk in the kitchen, you will just have to do it, for I cannot -stop you; but it will be the death of me.” - -“_I_ betray you!” said Beenie with such a tone of injured feeling as all -Lily’s caresses, suddenly bestowed in a flood, could not calm; but peace -was made after a while, and Robina went forth to the world as -represented by Katrin and Dougal with an increase of dignity and -self-importance which these simple people could not understand. - -“Bless me, you will have been hearing some grand news or other,” said -Katrin. - -“Me! How could I hear any news, good or bad, and me the same as in -prison?” said Beenie, upon which both her companions burst into derisive -laughter. - -“An easy prison,” said Katrin, “where you can come and gang at your -pleasure and nobody to say, ‘Where are ye gaun?’” - -“You’re on your parole, Beenie,” said Dougal, “like one of the officers -in the time of the war.” - -“That is just it,” said Robina; “you never said a truer word. I’m just -on my parole. I can go where I please, but no go away. And I can do what -I please, but no what I want to do. That’s harder than stone walls and -iron bars.” - -“But what can ye be wanting to do sae out of the ordinary?” said Katrin. -“Me, I thought we were such good friends just living very peaceable, and -you content, Beenie, more or less, as weel as a middle-aged woman with -nothing happening to her is like to be.” - -“I wasna consulting you about my age or what I expected,” Beenie replied -with quick indignation. It was a taunt that made the tears steal to her -eyes. If Katrin thought it was such a great thing to be married, and -that she, Robina, had not had her chance like another! But she drew -herself up and added grandly: “It is my young lady that is in prison, -poor thing, shut out from all her own kind. And how do I ken that you -two are not just two jailers over her, keeping the poor thing fast that -she should never make a step, nor see a face, but what Sir Robert would -have to know?” - -The two guardians of Dalrugas consulted each other with a glance. “Oh, -is that hit?” said Katrin. It is seldom, very seldom, that a Scotch -speaker makes any havoc with the letter _h_, but there is an occasional -exception to this rule for the sake of emphasis. “Is that hit” is a -stronger expression than “is that it.” It isolates the pronoun and gives -it force. Dougal for his part pushed his cap off his head till it hung -on by one hair. It had been Robina’s object to keep them in the dark; -but her attempt was not successful. It diverted rather a stream of light -upon a point which they had not yet taken into consideration at all. -Many had been the wonderings at first over Lily’s arrival, and Sir -Robert’s reason for sending her here, but no guidance had been afforded -to the curious couple, and their speculations had died a natural death. - -But Robina’s unguarded speech woke again all the echoes. “It will just -be a lad, after a’,” Katrin said to her spouse, when Robina, perceiving -her mistake, retired. - -“I wouldna say but what it was,” answered Dougal. - -“And eh, man,” said his wife, “you and me, that just stable our beasts -real peaceable together, would not be the ones to make any outcry if it -was a bonnie lad and one that was well meaning.” - -“If the lad’s bonnie or not is naething to you or me,” said the husband. - -“I’m no speaking of features, you coof, and that ye ken weel; but one -that means weel and would take the poor bit motherless lassie to a hame -of her ain: eh, Dougal man!” said Katrin, with the moisture in her eyes. - -“How do we ken,” said Dougal, “if there is a lad--which is no way -proved, but weemen’s thoughts are aye upon that kind of thing--that he -is no just after Sir Robert’s fortune, and thinking very little of the -bonnie lass herself?” - -“Eh, but men are ill-thinking creatures,” said Katrin. “Ye ken by -yourselves, and mind all the worldly meanings ye had, when a poor lass -was thinking but of love and kindness. And what for should the gentleman -be thinking of Sir Robert’s fortune? He has, maybe, as good a one of his -ain.” - -“No likely,” said Dougal, shaking his head. But he added: “I’ll no play -false to Maister James’s daughter whatever, and you’ll no let me hear -any clashes out of your head,” he said, with magisterial action striding -away. - -“When it was me that was standing up for her a’ the time!” Katrin cried -with an indignation that was not without justice. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -Next night the supper was much prolonged in the kitchen at Dalrugas. The -three _convives_--for Sandy tumbled off to sleep and was hustled off to -bed at an early hour--told stories against each other with devotion, -Katrin adding notes and elucidations to every anecdote slowly worked out -by her husband, and meeting every wonder of Beenie’s by a more -extraordinary tale. But while they thus occupied themselves with a -strong intention and meaning that Lily’s freedom should be complete, the -thrill of consciousness about all three was unmistakable. How it came -about that they knew this to be the moment when Lily desired to be -unwatched and free neither Dougal nor Katrin could have told. Lily had -been roaming about the moor for a great part of the day, sometimes with -Beenie, sometimes alone; but they had taken no more notice than usual. -Perhaps they thought of the country custom which brings the wooer at -nightfall; perhaps something magnetic was in the air. At all events this -was the effect produced. They sat down in the early twilight, which had -not yet quite lost its prolonged midsummer sweetness, and the moon was -shining, whitening the great breadth of the moor, before they rose. They -had neither heard nor seen any thing of Lily on the previous evening, -though she had gone out with more haste and less precaution than now; -but her movements to-night seemed to send the thrill of a pulse beating -all through the gaunt, high house. Each of them heard her flit down -stairs, though her step was so light. The husband and wife gave each -other a glance when they heard the sound, though it was no more than the -softest touch, of the big hall-door as she drew it behind her; and -Beenie raised her voice instinctively to drown the noise, as if it had -been something loud and violent. They all thought they heard her step -upon the grass, which was impossible, and the sound of another step -meeting hers. They were all conscious to their finger-tips of what poor -little Lily was about, or what they thought she was about; though, -indeed, Lily had flown forth like a dove, making no noise at all, even -in her own excited ears. - -And as for any sound of their steps upon the mossy greenness of the -grass that intersected the heather, and made so soft a background for -the big hummocks of the ling, there was no such thing that any but fairy -ears could have heard. Ronald was standing in the same place, at the -foot of the tower, when Lily flew out noiseless, with the plaid over her -arm. He had brought a basket of fish, which he placed softly within the -hall-door. - -“You see, I am not, after all, a fisher for nothing,” he whispered, as -he put the soft plaid about her shoulders. - -“Whisht! don’t say any thing,” said Lily, “till we are further off the -house.” - -“You don’t trust them, then?” he said. - -“Oh, I trust them! but it’s a little dreadful to think one has to trust -any body and to be afraid of what a servant will say.” - -“So it is,” he agreed, “but that is one of the minor evils we must just -put up with, Lily. We would not if we could help it. Still, when your -uncle compels you and me to proceedings like this, he must bear the -guilt of it, if there is any guilt.” - -“‘Guilt’ is a big word,” said Lily; and then she added: “I suppose it is -what a great many do and think no shame.” - -“Shame!” he said, “for two lovers to meet that are kept apart for no -reason in the world! If we were to meet Sir Robert face to face, I hope -my Lily would not blush, and certainly there would be no shame in me. He -dared us to it when he sent you away, and I don’t see how he can expect -any thing different. I would be a poor creature if, when I was free -myself, I let my bonnie Lily droop alone.” - -“A poor Lily you would have found me if it had lasted much longer,” she -said, “but, oh, Ronald! never think of that now. Here we are together, -and we believe in each other, which is all we want. To doubt, that is -the dreadful thing--to think that perhaps there are other thoughts not -like your own in his mind, and that however you may meet, and however -near you may be, you never know what he may be thinking.” Lily shuddered -a little, notwithstanding that he had put the plaid so closely round -her, and that her arm was within his. - -“Yes,” said Ronald, “and don’t you think there might be the same dread -in him? that his Lily was doubting him, not trusting, perhaps turning -away to other----” - -“Don’t say that, Ronald, for it is not possible. You could not ever have -doubted me. Don’t say that, or I’ll never speak to you again.” - -“And why not I as well as you?” said Ronald. “There is just as much -occasion. I believe there is no occasion, Lily. Don’t mistake me again, -but just as much occasion.” - -She looked at him for a moment with her face changing as he repeated: -“Just as much occasion.” And then, with a happy sigh: “Which is none,” -she said. - -“On either side. The one the same as the other. Promise me you will -always keep to that, and never change your mind.” - -She only smiled in reply; words did not seem necessary. They understood -each other without any such foolish formula. And how was it possible she -should change her mind? how ever go beyond that moment, which was -eternity, which held all time within the bliss of its content? The -entreaty to keep to that seemed to Lily to be without meaning. This was -always; this was forever. Her mind could no more change than the great -blue peak of Schiehallion could change, standing up against the lovely -evening sky. She had recognized her mistake, with what pride and joy! -and that was over forever. It was a chapter never to be opened again. - -The lingering sunset died over the moor, with every shade of color that -the imagination could conceive. The heather flamed now pink, now rose, -now crimson, now purple; little clouds of light detached themselves from -the pageant of the sunset and floated all over the blue, like -rose-leaves scattered and floating on a heavenly breeze; the air over -the hills thrilled with a vibration more delicate than that of the heat, -but in a similar confusion, like water, above the blue edges of the -mountains. Then the evening slowly dimmed, the colors going out upon the -moor, tint by tint, though they still lingered in the sky; then in the -east, which had grown gray and wistful, came up all at once the white -glory of the moon. It was such an evening as only belongs to the North, -an enchanted hour, neither night nor day, bound by no vulgar conditions, -lasting forever, like Lily’s mood, no limits or boundaries to it, -floating in infinite vastness and stillness between heaven and earth. -The two who, being together, perfected this spotless period, wandered -over all the moor, not thinking where they were going, winding out and -in among the bushes of the heather, wherever the spongy turf would bear -a footstep. They forgot that they were afraid of being seen: but, -indeed, there was nobody to see them, not a soul on the high-road nor on -the moor. They forgot all chances of betrayal, all doubts about Sir -Robert’s servants, every thing, indeed, except that they were together -and had a thousand things to say to each other, or nothing at all to say -to each other, as happened, the silence being as sweet as the talk, and -the pair changing from one to the other as caprice dictated: now all -still breathing like one being, now garrulous as the morning birds. They -forgot themselves so far that, after two or three false partings, -Ronald taking Lily home, then Lily accompanying Ronald back again to the -edge of the moor, he walked with her at last to the very foot of the -tower, from whence he had first called her, though there were audible -voices just round the corner, clearly denoting that the other inmates -were taking a breath of air after their supper at the ha’-door. There -was almost a pleasure in the risk, in coming close up to those -by-standers, yet unseen, and whispering the last good-night almost -within reach of their ears. - -“I do not see why I should carry on the farce of fishing all day long,” -said Ronald, “and see you only in the evening. You can get out as easily -in the afternoon as in the evening, Lily.” - -“Oh, yes, quite as easy. Nobody minds me where I go.” - -“Then come down to the waterside. It is not too far for you to walk. I -will be by way of fishing up the stream; and I will bring my lunch in my -pocket and we will have a little picnic together, you and me.” - -“I will do that, Ronald; but the evening is the bonnie time. The -afternoon is just vulgar day, and this is the enchanted time. It is all -poetry now.” - -“It is you that are the poetry, Lily. Me, I’m only common flesh and -blood.” - -“It is the two of us that make the poetry,” said Lily; “but the -afternoon will be fine, too, and I will come. I will allow you to catch -no fish--little bonnie things, why should they not be happy in the -water, like us on the bank?” - -“I like very well to see them in the basket, and to feel I have been so -clever as to catch them,” said Ronald. - -“And so do I,” cried Lily, with a laugh so frank that they were both -startled into silence, feeling that the audience round the corner had -stopped their talk to listen. This, the reader will see not all -protestations, not all sighs of sentiment, was the manner of their talk -before they finally parted, Ronald making a long circuit so as to -emerge unseen and lower down upon the high-road, on the other side of -the moor. Was it necessary to make any such make-believe? Lily walked -round the corner, with a blush yet a smile, holding her head high, -looking her possible critics in the face. It was Dougal and Katrin, who -had come out of doors to breathe the air after their supper, and to see -the bonnie moor. Within, in the shadow of the stairs, was a vision of -Beenie, very nervous, her eyes round and shining with eagerness and -suspense. Lily coming in view, all radiant in the glory of her youth, -full of happiness, full of life, too completely inspired and lighted up -with the occasion to take any precautions of concealment, was like a -revelation. She was youth and joy and love impersonified, coming out -upon the lower level of common life, which was all these good people -knew, like a star out of the sky. Katrin, arrested in the question on -her lips, gazed at her with a woman’s ready perception of the new and -wonderful atmosphere about her. Dougal, half as much impressed, but not -knowing why, pushed his cap on one side as usual, inserting an -interrogative finger among the masses of his grizzled hair. - -“So you’ve been taking your walk, Miss Lily,” said Katrin, subdued out -of the greater vigor of remark which she had been about to use. - -“Yes, Katrin, while you have been having your supper. Your voices sound -very nice down stairs when you are having your cracks, but they make me -feel all the more lonely by myself. It’s more company on the moor,” Lily -said, with an irrestrainable laugh. She meant, I suppose, to -deceive--that is, she had no desire to betray herself to those people -who might betray her--but she was so unused to any kind of falsehood -that she brought out her ambiguous phrase so as to make it imply, if not -express, the truth. - -“I am glad you should find it company, Miss Lily. It’s awfu’ bonnie and -fresh and full of fine smells, the gale under your foot, and the -wholesome heather, and a’ thae bonnie little flowers.” - -“Losh me! I would find them puir company for my part,” said Dougal; “but -there is, maybe----” - -“Hold your peace, you coof. Do ye think the like of you can faddom a -young leddy that is just close kin to every thing that’s bonnie? You, an -auld gillie, a Highland tyke, a----” - -“Don’t abuse Dougal, though you have paid me the prettiest compliment. -Could I have the powny to-morrow, Dougal, to go down the water a bit? -and I will take a piece with me, Katrin, in case I should be late; and -then you need never fash your heads about me whether I come in to dinner -or not.” - -“My bonnie leddy, I like every-body to come in to their denner,” said -Katrin, with a cloud upon her face. - -“So do I, in a usual way. But I have been here a long time. How long, -Beenie? A whole month, fancy that! and they tell me there is a very -bonnie glen down by the old bridge that people go to see.” - -“So there is, a real bonnie bit. I’ll take ye there some day mysel’, and -Beenie, she can come in the cairt with the black powny gin she likes. -She’ll mind it well; a’ the bairns are keen to gang in the vacance to -the Fairy Glen.” - -“I’ll not wait for Beenie this time, or you either, Dougal,” said Lily, -again with a laugh. “I will just take Rory for my guide and find it out -for myself. I think,” she added, with a deeper blush and a faltering -voice, “that Miss Helen from the Manse----” - -She did not get far enough to tell that faltering fib. “Oh, if you are -to be with Miss Eelen! Miss Eelen knows every corner of the Fairy Glen. -I will be very easy in my mind,” said Katrin, “if Miss Eelen’s there; -and I’ll put up that cold chicken in a basket, and ye shall have a nice -lunch as ever two such nice creatures could sit down to. But ye’ll mind -not to wet your feet, nor climb up the broken arch of the auld brig -yonder. Eh, but that’s an exploit for a stirring boy, and no a diversion -for leddies. And ye’ll just give the powny a good feed, and take him -out a while in the morning, Dougal, that he mayna be too fresh.” - -“I’m just thinking,” said Dougal, “there’s a dale to do the morn; but if -ye were to wait till the day after, I could spare the time, Miss Lily, -to take you mysel’.” - -“And if it’s just preceesely the morn that Miss Eelen’s coming!” cried -Katrin, with great and solid effect, while Lily, alarmed, began to -explain and deprecate, pleading that she could find the way herself so -easily, and would not disturb Dougal for the world. She hurried in after -this little episode to avoid any further dangers, to be met by Beenie’s -round eyes and troubled face in the dark under the stair. “Oh, Miss -Lily!” Beenie cried, putting a hand of remonstrance on her arm, which -Lily shook off and flew upstairs, very happy, it must be allowed, in her -first attempt at deceit. Robina looked more scared and serious than ever -when she appeared with a lighted candle in the drawing-room, shaking her -solemn head. Her eyes were so round, and her look so solemn, that she -looked not unlike a large white owl in the imperfect light, and so Lily -told her with a tremulous laugh, to avert, if possible, the coming -storm. But Beenie’s storm, though confused and full of much vague rumble -of ineffectual thunder, was not to be averted. She repeated her -undefined but powerful remonstrance, “Oh, Miss Lily!” as she set down -the one small candle in the midst of the darkness, with much shaking of -her head. - -“Well, what is it? Stop shaking your head, or you will shake it off, and -you and me will break our backs looking for it on the floor, and speak -out your mind and be done with it!” cried Lily, stamping her foot upon -the carpet. Robina made a solemn pause, before she repeated, still more -emphatically, her “Oh, Miss Lily!” again. - -“To bring in Miss Eelen’s name, puir thing, puir thing, that has nothing -to do with such vanities, just to give ye a countenance and be a screen -to you, and you going to meet your lad, and no leddy near ye at a’.” - -“Don’t speak so loud!” cried Lily with an affectation of alarm; and -then she added: “I never said Helen was coming; I only----” - -“Put it so that Katrin thought that was what you meant. Oh, I ken fine! -It’s no a falsehood, you say, but it’s a falsehood you put into folk’s -heads. And, ’deed, Katrin was a great fool to take heed for a moment of -what you said, when it was just written plain in your eyes and every -line of your countenance, and the very gown on your back, that you had -come from a meeting with your lad!” - -“I wish you would not use such common words, Beenie! as if I were the -house-maid meeting my lad!” - -“I fail to see where the difference lies,” said Beenie with dignity; -“the thing’s just the same. You’re maybe no running the risks a poor -lass runs, that has naebody to take care of her. But this is no more -than the second time he’s come, and lo! there’s a wall of lees rising -round your feet already, trippin’ ye up at every step. What will ye say -to Katrin, Miss Lily, the morn’s night when ye come hame? Will ye keep -it up and pretend till her that Miss Eelen’s met ye at the auld brig? or -will ye invent some waur story to account for her no coming? or what, I -ask ye, will ye do?” - -“Katrin,” said Lily, with burning cheeks, but a haughty elevation of the -head, “has no right to cross-question me.” - -“Nor me either, Miss Lily, ye will be thinking?” - -“It does not matter what I’m thinking. She is one thing and you are -another. I have told you---- Oh, Beenie, Beenie,” cried the girl -suddenly, “why do you begin to make objections so soon? What am I doing -more than other girls do? Who is it I am deceiving? Nobody! Uncle Robert -wanted to make me promise I would give him up, but I would not promise. -I never said I would not see him and speak to him and make him welcome -if he came to me; there was never a word of that between us. And as for -Katrin!” cried Lily with scorn. “Why, Grace Scott met Robbie Burns out -at Duddingston, and told her mother she had only been walking with her -cousin, and you just laughed when you told me. And her mother! very -different, very different from Katrin. You said what an ill lassie! but -you laughed and you said Mrs. Scott was wrong to force them to it. That -was all the remark you made, Robina, my dear woman,” said Lily, -recovering her spirit; “so I am not going to put up with any criticism -from you.” - -“Oh, Miss Lily!” Robina said. But what could she add to this mild -remonstrance, having thus been convicted of a sympathy with the vagaries -of lovers which she did not, indeed, deny? And it cannot be said that -poor Lily’s suggested falsehood did much harm. Katrin, for her part, had -very little faith in Miss Eelen as the companion of the young lady’s -ramble. She too shook her head as she packed her basket. “I see now,” -she said, “the meaning o’t, which is aye a satisfaction. It’s some fine -lad that hasna siller enough to please Sir Robert. And he’s come after -her, and they’re counting on a wheen walks and cracks together, poor -young things. Maybe if she had had a mother it would have been -different, or if poor Mr. James had lived, poor man, to take care of his -ain bit bairn. Sir Robert’s a dour auld carl; he’s not one I would put -such a charge upon. What does he ken about a young leddy’s heart, poor -thing? But they shall have a good lunch whatever,” the good woman said. - -And when the sun was high over the moor and every thing shining, not too -hot nor too bright, the tempered and still-breathing noon of the North, -Lily set out upon her pony with the basket by her saddle, and all the -world smiling and inviting before her. Never had such a daring and -delightful holiday dawned upon her before. Almost a whole day to spend -together, Ronald all that she dreamed, and not an inquisitive or -unkindly eye to look upon them, not even Beenie to disturb their -absorption in each other. She waved her whip in salutation to the others -behind as they stood watching her set out. “A bonnie day to ye, Miss -Lily,” cried Katrin. “And you’ll no be late?” said anxious Beenie. -“’Od,” cried Dougal, with his cap on his ear, “I wish I had just put -off thae potataies and gone with her mysel’----” “Ye fuil!” said his -wife, and said no further word. And Lily rode away in heavenly content -and expectation over the moor. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -The day was one of those Highland days which are a dream of freshness -and beauty and delight. I do not claim that they are very frequent, but -sometimes they will occur in a cluster, two or three together, like a -special benediction out of heaven. The sun has a purity, a clearness, an -ecstasy of light which it has nowhere else. It looks, as it were, with a -heavenly compunction upon earth and sky, as if to make up for the many -days when it is absent, expanding over mountain and moor with a smiling -which seems personal and full of intention. The air is life itself, -uncontaminated with any evil emanation, full of the warmth of the sun, -and the odor of the fir-trees and heather, and the murmur of all the -living things about. The damp and dew which linger in the shady places -disappear as if by magic. No unkindly creature, no venomous thing, is -abroad; no noise, no jar of living, though every thing lives and grows -and makes progress with such silent and smiling vigor. The two lovers in -the midst of this incense-breathing nature, so still, yet so strong, so -peaceful, yet so vigorous, felt that the scene was made for them, that -no surroundings could have been more fitly prepared and tempered for the -group which was as the group in Eden before trouble came. They wandered -about together through the glen, and by the side of the shining brown -trout stream, which glowed and smiled among the rocks, reflecting every -ray and every cloud as it hurried and sparkled along, always in haste, -yet always at leisure. They lingered here and there, in a spot which was -still more beautiful than all the others, though not so beautiful as -the next, which tempted them a little further on. Sometimes Ronald’s rod -was taken out and screwed together; sometimes even flung over a dark -pool, where there were driftings and leapings of trout, but pulled in -again before, as Lily said, any harm was done. “For why should any -peaceful creature get a sharp hook in its jaw because you and me are -happy?” she said. “That’s no reason.” Ronald, but for the pride of -having something to carry back in his basket, was much of her opinion. -He was not a devoted fisherman. Their happiness was no reason, clearly, -for interfering with that of the meanest thing that lived. And they -talked about every thing in heaven and earth, not only of their own -affairs, though they were interesting enough. Lily, who for a month had -spoken to nobody except Beenie, save for that one visit to the Manse, -had such an accumulation of remark and observation to get through on her -side, and so much to demand from him, that the moments, and, indeed, the -hours, flew. It is astonishing, even without the impulse of a long -parting and sudden meeting, what wells of conversation flow forth -between two young persons in their circumstances. Perhaps it would not -sound very wise or witty if any cool spectator listened, but it is -always delightful to the people concerned, and Lily was not the first -comer, so to speak. She was full of variety, full of whim and fancy, no -heaviness or monotony in her. Perhaps this matters less at such a moment -of life than at any other. The dullest pair find the art of entertaining -each other, of keeping up their mutual interest. And now that the cold -chill of doubt in respect to Ronald was removed from her mind Lily -flowed like the trout stream, as dauntless and as gay, reflecting every -gleam of light. - -“The worst thing is,” Ronald said, “that the Vacation will come to an -end, not now or soon, Heaven be praised; but the time will come when I -shall have to go back and pace the Parliament House, as of old, and my -Lily will be left alone in the wilderness.” - -“Not alone, as I was before,” said Lily--“never that any more; for now -I have something to remember, and something to look forward to. You’ve -been here, Ronald; nothing can take that from us. I will come and sit on -this stone, and say to myself: ‘Here we spent the day; and here we had -our picnic; and this was what he said.’ And I will laugh at all your -jokes over again.” - -“Ah!” he said, “it’s but a grim entertainment that. I went and stood -behind those curtains in that window, do you remember? in George Square, -and said to myself: ‘Here my Lily was; and here she said----’ But, -instead of laughing, I was much more near crying. You will not find much -good in that.” - -“You crying!” she said, with the water in her eyes, and a little soft -reproving blow of her fingers upon his cheek. “I do not believe it. But -I dare say I shall cry and then laugh. What does it matter which? They -are just the same for a girl. And then I shall say to myself: ‘At the -New Year he is coming back again, and then----’” - -“What shall we do at the New Year?” he said. “No days like this then. -How can I take my Lily out on the moor among the snow?” - -“If I am a Lily, I am one that can bloom anywhere--in the snow as well -as the sun.” - -“And so you are, my dearest, making a sunshine in a shady place. But -still we must think of that. Winter and summer are two different things. -Cannot we find a friend to take us in?” - -“I will tell you where we shall find a friend. You’ll come to the Tower -with your boldest face as if it was the first time you had been near. -And you will ask: ‘Does Miss Ramsay live here?’ And Katrin will say: -‘’Deed does she, sir. Here and no other place.’ And you will smite your -thigh in your surprise, and say: ‘I thought I had heard that! I am a -friend from Edinburgh, and I just stopped on the road to [here say any -name you please] to say “Good-day” to the young lady, if she was here.’ -And then you will look about, and you will say: ‘It is rather a lonesome -place.’” - -“Go on,” said Ronald, laughing; “I like the dialogue--though whether we -should trust your keepers so far as that----” - -“My keepers! They are my best of friends! Well, Katrin will look round -too, and she will say, as if considering the subject for the first time: -‘In winter it is, maybe, a wee lonesome--for a young leddy. Ye’ll maybe -be a friend of Sir Robert’s, too?’ And you will say: ‘Oh, yes, I am a -great friend of Sir Robert’s.’ And she will open the door wide and say: -‘Come ben, sir, come ben. It will be a great divert to our young leddy -to see a visitor. And you’re kindly welcome.’ That’s what she will say.” - -“Will she say all that, and shall I say all that? Perhaps I shall, -including that specious phrase about being a friend of Sir Robert’s, -which would surprise Sir Robert very much.” - -“Well, you know him, surely, and you are not unfriends. It strikes me -that, to be a lawyer, Ronald, you are full of scruples.” - -“What a testimonial to my virtue!” he said, with a laugh. “But it is not -scruples; it is pure cowardice, Lily. Are they to be trusted? If Sir -Robert were to be written to, and I to be forbidden the door, and my -Lily carried off to a worse wilderness, abroad, as he threatened!” - -“I will tell you one thing: I will not go!” said Lily, “not if Sir -Robert were ten times my uncle. But you need not fear for Katrin. She -likes me better than Sir Robert. You may think that singular, but so it -is. And I am much more fun,” cried Lily, “far more interesting! I -include you, and you and me together, we are a story, we are a romance! -And Katrin will like us better than one of the Waverley novels, and she -will be true to us to the last drop of her blood.” - -“These Highlanders, you never can be sure of them,” said Ronald, shaking -his head. He spoke the sentiment of his time and district, which was -too near the Highland line to put much confidence in the Celt. - -“But she is not a Highlander. She is Aberdeen,” cried Lily. “Beenie is a -Highlander, if you call Kinloch-Rugas Highland, and she is as true as -steel. Oh, you are a person of prejudices, Ronald; but I trust all the -world,” she cried, lifting her fine and shining face to the shining sky. - -“And so do I,” he cried, “to-day!” And they paused amid all -considerations of the past and future to remember the glory of the -present hour, and how sweet it was above every thing that it should be -to-day. - -Thus the afternoon fled. They made their little table in the sunshine, -for shade is not as desirable in a Highland glen as in a Southern -valley, and ate their luncheon merrily together, Lily recounting, with a -little shame, how it had been intended for Helen Blythe instead of -Ronald Lumsden. “I was very near telling a fib,” she said -compunctiously, “but I did not do it. I left it to Katrin’s -imagination.” - -“Helen Blythe must have a robust appetite if all this was for her,” he -said. “Is this an effort of imagination too? But come, Lily, we must do -our duty by the view. There is the old brig to climb, and all the Fairy -Glen to see.” - -“I promised not to climb the old brig,” she said. “But that promise, I -suppose, was only to hold in case it was Helen Blythe that was with me, -for she could give little help if I slipped, whereas you----” - -“I? I hope I can take care of my Lily,” said the young man; and after -they had packed their basket, and put it ready to be tied once more to -Rory’s saddle, who was picnicking too on the grass in one continuous and -delicate meal, they wandered off together to make the necessary -pilgrimage, though the old brig and the Fairy Glen attracted but little -of the attention of the pair, so fully engrossed in each other. They -climbed the broken arch, however, which was half embedded in the slope -of the bank, and overgrown with every kind of green and flourishing -thing, arm in arm, Ronald swinging his companion lightly over the -dangerous bits, for love, while Lily, for love, consented to be aided, -though little needing the aid. And how it happened will never be known, -but their happy progress came to a sudden pause on an innocent bit of -turf where no peril was. If it were Ronald who stepped false, or Lily, -neither of them could tell, but in a moment calamity came. He disengaged -himself from her, almost roughly, pushing her away, and thus, instead of -dragging her with him, crashed down alone through the briers and bushes, -with a noise which, to Lily, filled the air like thunder. When she had -slipped and stumbled in her fright and anxiety after him, she found him -lying, trying to laugh, but with his face contorted with pain, among the -nettles and weeds at the bottom. “What has happened? What has happened?” -she cried. - -“What an ass I am,” said he, “and what a nuisance for you, Lily! I -believe I have sprained my ankle, of all the silly things to do! and at -this time, of all others, betraying you!” - -Lily, I need not say, was for a moment at her wit’s end. There were no -ambulance classes in those days, nor attempts to train young ladies in -the means of first help. But there is always the light of nature, a -thing much to be trusted to, all the same. Lily took his handkerchief, -because it was the largest, and bound up his foot, as far as that was -possible, cutting open the boot with his knife; and then they held a -brief council of war. Ronald wished to be left there while she went for -help, but there was no likelihood of obtaining help nearer than -Kinloch-Rugas, and finally it was decided that, in some way or other, he -should struggle on to Rory’s back, and so be led to the Manse, where a -welcome and aid were sure to be found. It was a terrible business -getting this accomplished, but with patience, and a good deal of pain, -it was done at last, the injured foot supported _tant bien que mal_ in -the stirrup, and a woful little group set forth on the way to the -village. But I do wrong to say it was a woful group, for, though the -pain made Ronald faint, and though Lily’s heart was full of anguish and -anxiety, they both exerted themselves to the utmost, each for the sake -of the other. Lily led the reluctant pony along, sometimes running by -his side, sometimes dragging him with both her hands, too much occupied -for thought. What would people think did not occur to her yet. People -might think what they liked so long as she got him safe to the Manse. -She knew that they would be kind to him there. But what an end it was to -the loveliest of days: and the sun was beginning to get low, and the -road so long. - -“Oh, Rory, man!” cried poor Lily, apostrophizing the pony after the -manner of Dougal. “If you would only go steady and go soft to-day! -To-morrow you may throw me if you like, and I will never mind; but, oh, -go canny, if there is any heart in you, to-day!” I think that Rory felt -the appeal by some magnetism in her touch if not by her words, on which -point I cannot say any thing positively; but he did at least overcome -his flightiness, and accomplished the last half of the road at a steady -trot, which gave Ronald exquisite pain, and kept Lily running, but -shortened considerably the period of their suffering. They were received -with a great outcry of sympathy and compassion at the Manse, where -Ronald was laid out at once on the big hair-cloth sofa, and his foot -relieved as much as Helen’s skill, which was not inconsiderable, could -do. It was he who made the necessary explanations, Lily, in her trouble, -having quite forgot the necessity for them. - -“I was so happy,” he said, “so fortunate as to be seen by Miss Ramsay, -who knew me--the only creature hereabouts who does; and you see what she -has done for me: helped me to struggle up, put me on her pony, and -brought me here--a perfect good Samaritan.” - -“Oh, don’t, don’t speak like that!” said Lily in her distress. She felt -she could not at this moment bear the lie. Nobody had ever seen Lily -Ramsay so dishevelled before: her hair shaken out by her run, her skirt -torn where she had caught her foot in it in her struggles to help -Ronald, and covered with the dust of the road. - -“She would just be that,” said Helen Blythe, receiving the narrative -with faith undoubting, “and what a good thing it was you, my dear, that -knew the gentleman, and not a strange person! And what a grand thing -that you were riding upon Rory! Just lie as quiet as you can; the hot -bathing will relieve the pain, and now the boot’s off ye’ll be easier; -and the doctor will come in to see you as soon as he comes home. Don’t -ye make a movement, sir, that ye can help. Just lie quiet, lie quiet! -that is the chief remedy of all.” - -“He is Mr. Lumsden, Helen,” said Lily, composed, “a friend of my -uncle’s, from Edinburgh. Oh, I am glad he is in your hands. He had -slipped down the broken arch at the old brig, where all the tourists go; -and I had ridden there to-day just to see it.” - -“Eh, my dear, how thankful you must be,” was all Helen’s reply; but it -seemed to Lily that the old minister in his big chair by the fireside -gave her a glance which was not so all-believing as Helen’s. - -“It was just an extraordinary piece of good luck for the young man,” the -minister said. “Things seldom happen so pat in real life. But a young -lady like you, Miss Lily, likes the part of the good Samaritan.” - -She could not look him full in the face, and the laugh with which he -ended his speech seemed the most cruel of mocking sounds to poor Lily. -She put up her hands to her tumbled hair. - -“May I go to your room and make myself tidy?” she said to Helen. “I had -to run most of the way with Rory, and my skirt so long for riding. I -don’t know what sort of dreadful person they must have thought me in the -town.” - -“Nobody but will think all the better of you for your kindness,” said -Helen, “and we’ll soon mend your skirt, for there’s really little harm -done. And I think you should have the gig from the inn to drive you -back, my dear, for your nerves are shaken, and the afternoon’s getting -late, and you must not stir from here till you have got a good rest and -a cup of tea.” - -“The gig may perhaps take me back to the inn first,” said Ronald, “for -it is there I am staying--for the fishing,” he added, unable to keep out -of his eyes a half-comic glance at the companion of his trouble. - -“Indeed, you are going back to no inn,” said Helen; “you are just going -to stay at the Manse, where you will be much better attended to; and -Lily, my dear, you’ll come and see Mr. Lumsden, that owes so much to you -already, and that will help to make him feel at home here.” - -But when Lily came down stairs, smoothed and brushed, with her hair -trim, and the flush dying off her cheeks, and her skirt mended, though -in many ways the accident had ended most fortunately, she could not meet -the smile in the old minister’s eyes. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -There was great excitement in the Tower when the gig from “the toun” was -seen slowly climbing the brae. Almost every-body in the house was in -commotion, and Beenie, half crazy with anxiety, had been at the window -for hours watching for Lily’s return, and indulging in visions and -conjectures which her companions knew nothing of. All that Dougal and -Katrin thought of was an accident. Though, as they assured each other, -Rory’s bark was worse than his bite, it was yet quite possible that in -one of his cantrips he might have thrown the inexperienced rider in her -long skirt; and even if she was not hurt, she might have found it -impossible to catch him again and might have to toil home on foot, which -would account for the lateness of the hour. Or she might have sprained -her ankle or even broken her arm as she fell, and been unable to move. -When these fears began to take shape, the boy had been sent off flying -on the black pony to the scene of the picnic, the only argument against -this hypothesis being that, had any such accident happened, Rory by this -time would in all probability have reached home by himself. Beenie, I -need not say, was tormented by other fears. Was it possible that they -had fled together, these two who had now fully discovered that they -could not live without each other? Had he carried her away, as it had -been on the cards he should have done three months ago? and a far better -solution than any other of the problem. These ideas alternated in -Robina’s mind with the suggestion of an accident. She did not believe in -an accident. Lily had always been masterful, able to manage any thing -that came in her way, “beast or bird,” as Beenie said, and was it likely -she would be beaten by Rory, a little Highland pony, when she had ridden -big horses by Sir Robert’s side, and never stumbled? Na. “She’ll just -have gone away with him,” Beenie said to herself, and though she felt -wounded that the plan had not been revealed to her, she was not sorry, -only very anxious, feeling that Lily would certainly find some -opportunity of sending her a word, and telling her where to join them. -“It is, maybe, the best way out of it,” she said over and over again to -herself, and accordingly she was less moved by Katrin’s wailings than -that good woman could understand. Katrin and Dougal were out upon the -road, while Beenie kept her station at the window. And Dougal’s fears -for the young lady were increased by alarms about his pony, an older and -dearer friend than Lily. “If the poor beast has broken his knees, I’ll -ne’er forgive myself for letting that bit lassie have the charge of him -alone.” - -“The charge of him!” said his wife in high indignation, “and her that -has, maybe, twisted her ankle, or broken her bonnie airm, the darlin’, -and a’ the fault of that ill-willy beast. And it’s us that has the -chairge of her.” - -This argument silenced Dougal for the moment, but he still continued to -think quite as much of Rory as of the young lady, whichever of the two -was responsible for the trouble which had occurred. When the boy came -back to report that there was nothing to be found at the old brig but -great marks on the ruin, as if somebody had “slithered down,” branches -torn away, and the herbage crushed at the bottom, the alarm in the house -rose high. And Dougal had fixed his cap firmly on the top of his head, -as a man prepared for any emergency, and taken his staff in his hand to -take the short cut across the moor, and find out for himself what the -catastrophe had been, when a shout from Sandy on the top of the bank, -and Beenie at the window, stopped further proceedings. There was Lily, -pale, but smiling, in the gig from the inn, and Rory, tossing his red -head, very indignant at the undignified position in which he found -himself, tied to that shabby equipage. “The puir beast, just nickering -with joy at the sight of home, but red with rage to be trailed at the -tail of an inn geeg,” Dougal said, hurrying to loose the rope and lead -the sufferer in. He was not without concern for Lily, but she was -evidently none the worse, and he asked no more. - -“I have had such an adventure,” she said, as soon as she was within -hearing, “but I am not hurt, and nothing has happened to me. Such an -adventure! What do you think, Beenie? A gentleman climbed up the old -brig while we were there, and slipped and fell; and when I ran to see, -who should it be but Mr. Lumsden, Ronald Lumsden, whom we used to see so -much in Edinburgh.” Here Lily’s countenance bloomed so suddenly red out -of her paleness that Katrin had a shock of understanding, and saw it all -in a moment, if not more than there was to see. “And he had sprained his -ankle,” Lily said, a paleness following the flush; “he couldn’t move. -You may fancy what a state we were in.” - -“Eh,” said Katrin, with her eyes fixed on Lily’s face, “what a good -thing Miss Eelen was with you, for she kens as much about that sort o’ -thing as the doctor himsel’.” - -“I got him on the pony at last,” said Lily, “and we bound up his foot, -and then we took him to the Manse. It was the nearest, and the doctor -just at their door. But, oh, what a race I had with the pony, leading -him, and sometimes he led me till I had to run; and I put my foot -through my skirt, see? We mended it up a little at the Manse, and drew -it out of the gathers. But look here: a job for you, Beenie. And my hair -came down about my shoulders, and if you had seen the figure I was, -running along the road----” - -“But Miss Eelen with ye made a’ right,” said Katrin. “Ah, what a -blessing that Miss Eelen was with ye.” - -Lily was getting out of the gig, from the high seat of which she had -hastened to make her first explanations. It was not an easy thing -getting out of a high gig in those days, and “the geeg from the inn” -was, naturally, without any of the latest improvements. She had to turn -her back to the spectators as she clambered down, and if her laugh -sounded a little unsteady, that was quite natural. “She is, indeed, as -good as the doctor,” she said; “if you had seen how she cut open the -boot and made him comfortable! And Rory behaved very well, too,” she -said. “I spoke to him in his ear as you do, Dougal. I said: ‘Rory, Rory, -my bonnie man, go canny to-day; you can throw me to-morrow, if you like, -an I’ll never mind, but, oh, go canny to-day.’ And you did, Rory, you -dear little fellow, and dragged me, with my hair flying like a wild -creature, along the road,” she added, with a laugh, taking the rough and -tossing head into her hands, and aiming a kiss at Rory’s shaggy -forehead. But the pony was not used to such dainties and tossed himself -out of her hands. - -“You’re awfu’ tired, Miss Lily, though you’re putting so good a face -upon it, and awfu’ shaken with the excitement, and a’ that. And to think -o’ you being the one to find him--just the right person, the one that -knew him--and to think of him being here, Maister Lumsden, touring or -shooting or something, I suppose.” - -Beenie’s speech ended spasmodically in a fierce grip of the arm with -which Lily checked her as she went upstairs. - -“What need have you,” said the young lady in an angry whisper, “to -burden your mind with lies? Say I have to do it, and, oh, I hate it! but -you have no need. Hold your tongue and keep your conscience free.” - -“Eh, Miss Lily,” said Beenie in the same tone, “I’m no wanting to be -better than you. If ye tell a lee, and it’s but an innocent lee, I’ll -tell one too. If you’re punished for it, what am I that I shouldna take -my share with my mistress? But about the spraining o’ the ankle, my -bonnie dear: that’s a’ true?” - -Lily answered with a laugh to the sudden doubt in Robina’s eyes. She was -very much excited, too much so to feel how tired she was, and capable of -nothing without either laughter or tears. “Oh, yes, it’s quite true; -and, oh, Beenie, he is badly hurt and suffering a great deal of pain. -Poor Ronald! But he will be safe in Helen’s hands. If he were only out -of pain! Perhaps it is a good thing, Beenie. That is what he whispered -when I came away. Oh, how hard it was to come away and leave him there -ill, and his foot so bad! but I am to go down to-morrow, and it will be -a duty to stay as long as I can to cheer him up and to save Helen -trouble, who has so many other things to do. I am not hard-hearted; but -he says himself, if he were only out of pain, perhaps it’s a good -thing.” - -Here Lily stopped and cried, and murmured among her tears: “If it had -only been me! It’s easier for a girl to bear pain than a man.” - -“But if it had been you, Miss Lily, it would have been no advantage. You -can go to him at the Manse, but he could not have come to you here.” - -“That is true,” cried Lily, laughing; “you are a clever Beenie to think -of that. But how am I to live till to-morrow, all the long night -through, and all the morning without news?” - -“A young gentleman doesna die of a sprained ankle,” said Beenie -sedately, “and if you are a good bairn, and will go early to bed, and -take care of yourself, I’ll see that the boy goes into the toun the -first thing in the morning to hear how he is.” - -“You are a kind Beenie,” cried Lily, clasping her arms about her maid’s -neck. But it was a long time before Robina succeeded in quieting the -girl’s excitement. She had to hear the story again half-a-dozen times -over, now in its full reality, now in the form which it had to bear for -the outside world, with all the tears and laughter which accompanied it. -“And he grew so white, so white, I thought he was going to faint,” said -Lily, herself growing pale. - -“I’m thankful ye were spared that. It is very distressing to see a -person faint, Miss Lily.” - -“And then he cheered up and gave a grin in the middle of his pain: I -will not call it a smile, for it was no more than a grin, half fun and -half torture. Poor Ronald! oh, my poor lad, my poor lad!” - -“He was a lucky lad to get you to do all that for him, Miss Lily.” - -“Me! What did it matter if it was me or you or a fishwife,” said Lily, -“when a man is in such dreadful pain?” - -They discussed it over and over again from every point of view, until -Lily fell asleep from sheer weariness in the hundredth repetition of the -story. Beenie, for her part, was exceedingly discreet at supper that -evening. Indeed, she was altogether too discreet to be successful with a -quick observer like Katrin, who saw, by the extreme precautions of her -friend, and the close-shut lips with which Beenie minced and bridled, -and made little remarks about nothing in particular, that there was -something to conceal. Katrin was very near to penetrating the mystery -even now, but she said nothing except those somewhat ostentatious -congratulations to all parties on the fact that Miss Eelen was there, -which were designed to show the growing conviction that Miss Eelen was -not there at all. Beenie was quite quick enough to perceive this, but -she exercised much control over herself, and made no signs before -Dougal. He was chiefly occupied by the address to Rory which Lily had -made, which struck him as an excellent joke, and which he repeated to -himself from time to time, with a laugh which came from the depths of -his being. “She said till him: ‘Ye can throw me the morn, and welcome, -if ye’ll go canny the day.’ Losh, what a spirit she has, that lassie, -and the fun in her! ‘Go canny the day, and ye can throw me, if ye like, -the morn.’ And Rory to take it a’ in like a Christian!” He laughed till -he held his sides, and then he said feebly: “It’ll be the death of me.” - -The joke did not strike the women as so brilliant. “I hope he’ll no take -her at her word,” said Beenie. - -“Na, na, he’ll no take her at her word: he’s ower much of a gentleman; -but if he does, you’ll see she’ll stand it and never a word in her head. -That’s what I call real spirit, feared at nothing. ‘Go canny the day, -and you can throw me, if you like, the morn.’ I think I never heard any -thing so funny in a’ my born days.” - -“You’re easy pleased,” said his wife, though she was quite inclined to -consider Lily’s speeches as brilliant, and herself as the flower of -human kind, but to let a man suppose that he was the discoverer of all -this was not to be thought of. She communicated, however, some of her -suspicions to Dougal, for want of any other confidant, when they were -alone in the stillness of their chamber. “I have my doubts,” said -Katrin, “that it was nae surprise to her at a’ to find the gentleman, -and that it was him that was the Miss Eelen that met her at the auld -brig.” - -“Him that was Miss Eelen? And how could he be Miss Eelen, a muckle man?” -said Dougal. - -“Oh, ye gowk!” said his wife, and she put back her discoveries into her -bosom, and said no more. - -Lily was very restless next day until she was able to get away on her -charitable mission. “I must go now,” she said, “to help to take care of -him, or Helen will have no time for her other business, and she has so -much to do.” - -“You maun take care and no find another gentleman with a broken foot,” -said Katrin; “you mightn’t be able to manage Rory so well a second -time.” - -“Oh, I am not afraid of Rory,” the girl cried. “I just speak to him, as -Dougal does, in his ear.” - -“Mind you what you’ve promised him, Miss Lily,” said that authority, -chuckling; “he is to cowp you over his head, if he likes, the day.” - -“He’ll not do that!” cried Lily confidently, waving her hand to the -assembled household, who were standing outside the door to see her -start. What a diversion she was, with her comings and goings, her -adventures and mishaps, to that good pair! How dull it must have been -for them before Lily came to excite their curiosity and brighten their -sense of humor. Dougal returned to his work, shaking once more with a -laugh that went down to his boots and thrilled him all over, saying to -himself: “He’s ower much of a gentleman to take her at her word;” while -Katrin stood shading her eyes with her hand, and looking wistfully after -the young creature in her confidence and gayety of youth. “Eh, but I -hope the lad’s worthy of her,” was what Katrin said. - -Ronald was lying once more upon the big hair-cloth sofa, as she had left -him. He would not stay in bed, Helen lamented, though it would have been -so much better for him. “But a simple sprain,” she said, “no -complication. If I could have persuaded him to bide quiet in his bed, he -would have been well at the end of the week; but nothing would please -him but to be down here, limping down stairs, at the risk of a fall, -with two sticks and only one foot. My heart was in my mouth at every -step.” - -“But he is none the worse,” cried Lily, “and I can understand Mr. -Lumsden, Helen. It is far, far more cheery here, where he can see every -thing that is going on, and have you and Mr. Blythe to talk to. A sprain -makes your ankle bad, but not your mind.” - -“That is true,” said Ronald, “and what I have been laboring to say, but -had not the wit. My ankle is bad, but not my mind. I am in no such -hurry to get well as Miss Blythe thinks. Don’t you see,” he said, -looking up in Lily’s face, as she stood beside him, “in what clover I am -here?” - -Lily answered the look, but not the words. A tremulous sense of ease and -happiness arose in her being. The moor was sweet when he was there, and -to look for that hour in the evening had been enough for the first days -to make her happy. But to start out to meet him, nobody knowing, glad as -she had been to do it, cost Lily a pang. There are some people to whom -the stolen joys are the most sweet, but Lily was not one of these. The -clandestine wounded her sense of delicacy, if not her conscience. She -was doing no wrong, she had said to herself, but yet it felt like wrong -so long as it was secret, so long as a certain amount of deception was -necessary to procure it. She was like the house-maid, stealing out to -meet her lover. To the house-maid there was nothing unbecoming in that, -but there was to Lily. She had suffered even while she was happy. But -now the clandestine was all over. The constant presence of the old -minister, who regarded them with eyes in which there was too much -insight and satire for Lily’s peace of mind, was troublesome, but it was -protection; it set her heart at rest. The accident restored all at once -the ease of nature. “It is the best thing that could have happened,” -Ronald said, when Helen left them alone, and Mr. Blythe had hidden -himself behind the large, broad sheet of _The Scotsman_, the new clever -Whig paper which had lately begun to bring the luxury of news twice a -week to the most distant corners of the land. “I don’t mean to get -better at the end of the week. It was a dreadful business yesterday, but -I see the advantage of it now.” - -“Was it so dreadful yesterday, poor Ronald?” she said in the voice of a -dove, cooing at his ear. - -“It was not delightful yesterday, though I had the sweetest Lily. But -now I warn you, Lily, I mean to keep ill as long as I can. You will come -and stay with me; it is your duty, for nobody knows me at Kinloch-Rugas -but only you, and you are the good Samaritan. You put me on your own -beast, and brought me to the inn.” - -“Oh, do not speak like that, do not put me in mind that we are both -deceivers! I have forgotten it, now that we are here.” - -“We are no deceivers,” he said. “It is all quite true; you put me on -your own beast. And where did you get all that strength, Lily? You must -have almost lifted me in your arms, you slender little thing, a heavy -fellow like me!” - -“Oh, you did very well on your one foot,” said Lily, trying to laugh; -but she shuddered and the tears came into her eyes. She was aching still -with the strain that necessity had put upon her, but he did not think of -that--he only thought how strong she was. - -“Here, you two,” said the minister, “I’m going to read you a bit out of -the paper. It is just full of stories, as good as if I had told them -myself.” - -“Oh, never heed with your stories, father,” said Helen; “keep them till -Lily goes away, for she has a wonderful way with her, and keeps things -going. Our patient will not be dull while Lily is here.” - -Was that all she meant, or did Helen, too, suspect something? The two -lovers interchanged a glance, half of alarm, half of laughter, but Helen -went and came, unconscious, sometimes pausing to turn the cushion under -the bad foot, or to suggest a more comfortable position, with nothing -but kindness in her mild eyes. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -Ronald was, as he had prophesied, a long time getting well. Even Helen -was a little puzzled, she who thought no evil, at the persistency of his -suffering; at the end of the second week he could, indeed, stumble about -with his two sticks, but still complained of great pain when he tried -to walk. The prolonged presence of the visitor began at last to become a -little trouble, even to the hospitable Manse, where strangers were -entertained so kindly, but where there was but one maid-of-all-work, -with the occasional services, chiefly outdoors, of the minister’s man; -and an invalid of Ronald’s robust character, whose presence necessitated -better fare and gave a great deal of additional work, was a serious -addition both to the expenses and labors of the house. It would have -been much against the traditions of the Manse to betray this in any way; -but there was no doubt that the minister was a little more sharp in his -speeches, and apt to throw a secret dart, in the disguise of a jest, at -the guest whose convalescence was so prolonged. Lily rode down from -Dalrugas every day to help to nurse the patient, that Helen might not -have the whole burden of his helplessness on her shoulders; but Lily, -too, became aware that, delightful though this freedom of meeting was, -and the long hours of intercourse which were made legitimate as being a -form of duty, they were beginning to last too long and awaken uneasy -thoughts. Helen, who was so tender to her at first, became a little -wistful as the days went on. The gentle creature could think no harm, -but perhaps it was her father’s remarks which put it into her head that -the two young people were making a convenience of her hospitality, and -that all was not honest in the tale which had brought so unlooked-for a -visitor under the shelter of her roof. And then the village, as was -inevitable, made many remarks. “Bless me, but the young leddy at -Dalrugas is an awfu’ constant visitor, Miss Eelen. She comes just as if -she was coming to her lessons every morning at the same hour.” “She is -the kindest heart in the world,” said Helen. “You see, this gentleman -that sprained his foot is a friend of her uncle’s, and she could not -take him to Dalrugas, where there is nobody but servants; and she will -not let me have all the trouble of him. A man, when he is ill, takes a -great deal of attendance,” said the minister’s daughter, with a smile. - -“Losh! I would just let him attend upon himsel’,” said one. - -“He should send for a sister, or somebody belonging to him,” said -another. - -“Oh, not that,” said Helen--“I could not put up a lady, there is but -little room in the Manse--and with Miss Lily’s help we can pull -through.” - -“He should get an easy post-chaise from Aberdeen--there’s plenty easy -carriages to be got there nowadays--and go back to his ain folk. He’s a -son of Lumsden of Pontalloch, they tell me; that’s not so far but that -he might get there in a day.” - -“I have no doubt he will do that as soon as he is well enough,” said -Helen; but all these remarks made her uneasy. Impossible for Scotch -hospitality to give a hint, to intimate a thought, that the visitor had -overstayed his welcome--and a man that had been hurt and was, perhaps, -still suffering! “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. But it troubled -her gentle mind that Lily’s visits should be so remarked, and it was -strange--or was it only the village gossip that made her feel that it -was strange? Lily perceived all this with an uneasy perception of new -elements in the air. - -“Ronald,” she said one day, when they were alone for a few minutes, “you -could put your foot to the ground without hurting when you try. You will -have to go away.” - -“Why should I go away?” he said, with a laugh. “I am very comfortable. -It is not luxury, but it does very well when I see my Lily every -day----” - -“But, oh,” she cried, the color coming to her cheeks, which had been -growing pale these few days, “there are things of more consequence than -Lily! The Manse people are not rich----” - -“You need not tell me that,” he said, looking round at the shabby -furniture with a smile. - -“But, oh, Ronald, you don’t see! They try to get nice things for you, -they spend a great deal of trouble upon you, and they were glad at -first--but it is now a fortnight.” - -“Lily, my love,” he said quickly, “if you have ceased to care for this -chance of meeting every day--if you want me to go away, of course I will -go.” - -“Do you think it likely I should have ceased to care?” she said, with -tears in her eyes. “But we must think of other people, too.” - -“Thinking of other people is generally a mistake. We all know how to -take care of ourselves best--unless it is here and there some one like -you, if there is any one like my Lily. But, dear, I give very little -trouble. What is there to do for me? Another bed to make, another knife -and fork--or spoon, I should say, for we have broth, broth, and nothing -but broth--and a little grouse now and then, sent to them by somebody, -and therefore costing nothing.” - -“It is ungenerous to say that!” Lily cried. - -“My dearest, you will tell me what present I can send them when at last -I am forced to tear myself away. A good present that will make up to -them--a chest of tea, or a barrel of wine, or---- But I don’t want to go -away, Lily; I would rather stay here and see you every day until I am -forced to go back to my work.” - -“Oh, and so would I!” cried Lily; “but,” she added, with a sigh, “we -must think of them. Mr. Blythe sits always, always in this room. It is -the sunny room in the house, and he likes it best. But you see he has -gone into his little study this day or two--which is very dreary--all -because we are here.” - -“Very considerate of him,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “if that is a -reason for going away, that they now leave us sometimes alone. I fear it -will not move me, Lily; you must find a better than that.” - -“Oh, Ronald, will you not see?” cried Lily in distress. But what could a -girl do? She could not put understanding into his eyes nor consideration -into his heart. He was willing to take advantage of these good people, -and the inducement was strong. She spoke against her own heart when she -urged him to go away, and she was glad to be laughed out of her -scruples, to be told of the “good present” that would make up for every -thing, of the gratitude that he would always feel, and his conviction -that he gave very little trouble, and added next to nothing to their -expenses. “Broth is not expensive,” he said, “and the grouse, you know, -Lily, the grouse!” Lily turned her head away, sick at heart. Oh, it was -not how he should speak of the people who were so kind to him; but -still, when she mounted Rory--now quite docile and accustomed to trot -every day into Kinloch-Rugas--in the afternoon, she could not but be -glad to think that she might still come to-morrow, that there was at -least another day. - -One of these afternoons the parlor was full of people, under whose eyes -Lily could not continue to sit by the side of the sofa and minister to -the robust invalid’s wants. There was the doctor, who gave him a little -slap on his leg and said: “I congratulate ye on a perfect cure. You can -get up and walk when you like, like the man in the Bible.” And the -school-master’s wife, who said: “Eh, what a good thing for you, Mr. -Lumsden, and you been on your back so long.” And there was the assistant -and successor, Mr. Douglas, who was visibly anxious to get rid of all -interlopers and speak a word to Helen. Oh, why did he not follow Helen -when she went out to open the door for her visitors, and leave Lily free -to say once more to Ronald, but more energetically: “You must go!” - -“I was wanting to say, sir,” said Mr. Douglas, “and I may add that I -have Miss Eelen’s opinion all on my side, that I would like very much if -you would say a parting word to the lads that are going out to Canada. -We have taken a great deal of trouble with them, and a word from the -minister----” - -“You are the minister yourself, Douglas; they know more of you than they -do of me.” - -“Not so, Mr. Blythe. I am your assistant, and Miss Eelen she is your -daughter and the best friend they ever had; but it’s your blessing the -callants want, and a word from you----” - -“My blessing!” the old man said, with an uneasy laugh. “You’re -forgetting, my young man, that there’s no sacerdotal pretensions in the -auld Kirk.” - -“You blessed them when they were christened, sir, and you blessed them -and gave them the right hand of fellowship when they came to the Lord’s -table. I’m thinking nothing of sacerdotalism. I’m thinking of human -nature. We have no bishops, but while we have ordained ministers we must -always have fathers in God.” - -Mr. Blythe had never been of this new-fangled type of devotion. He had -been an old Moderate, very shy of overmuch religion, and relying upon -habit and tradition and a good deal of wholesome neglect. But the young -man’s earnestness, backed as it was by the serious light in Helen’s -eyes, brought a color to his old face. He was a little ashamed of the -importance given to him, and half angry at the young people’s high-flown -notions. “I am not sure,” he said, “that I go with you, Douglas, nor -with Eelen either, in your dealings with these lads. You just cultivate -a kind of forced religion in them, that makes a fine show for a moment; -it’s the seed that fell by the wayside and sprang up quickly, but had no -root in itself.” - -“We can never tell that, sir,” said the assistant; “it may help them -when they have no ordinances to mind them of their duty. If they -remember their Creator in the days of their youth----” - -“’Deed,” said the old minister, “it is just as often as not to forget -every thing all the quicker when they come to man’s estate. Solomon knew -mainy things, but not the lads in a parish so near the Highlant line.” - -“Anyway, father, it will be kindly like, and them going so far, far -away.” - -“That is just it,” said Mr. Blythe: “why should they go far, far away? -Why couldn’t ye let them jog on as their fathers did before them? I’m -not an advocate for emigration. There are plenty of things the lads -could do without leaving their own country. Let them go to Glasgow, -where there’s work for every-body, or to the South. You think you can do -every thing with your arrangements and your exhortations, and looking -after more than ye were ever asked to look after. I have never approved -of all these meetings and things, and your classes and your lessons, and -all the fyke you make about a few country callants. Let them alone to -their fathers’ advice and their mothers’. You may be sure the women will -all warn them to keep off the drink--and much good it will do, whatever -you may say, either them or you.” - -“But just a word of farewell, sir,” pleaded the assistant; “we ask no -more.” - -“And that is just a great deal too much in present circumstances,” cried -the old minister. “Where would ye have me speak to them--a dozen big -country lads, like colts out of the stable? I cannot go out to the cold -vestry at night, me that seldom leaves the house at all. And the -dining-room is too small, and what other room have we free? Eelen, you -know that as well as me. I cannot have them up in my bedchalmer, and the -kitchen, with lasses in it, would be no place for such a ceremonial. No, -no; we have no room, that is true.” - -“I hope, sir,” said Ronald from his sofa, “you are not saying this from -consideration for me. I’d like nothing better than to see the boys, and -hear your address to them. It would be good, I am sure, and I am as much -in need of good advice as any of them can be.” - -“You are very considerate, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, after a -pause. “It is a great thing to have an inmate that takes so much -thought. But how can I tell that it would not be bad for you in your -delicate state, with your nurses at your side all the day?” - -“Delicate! I am not delicate!” cried Ronald, with a flush. “It is only, -you know, this confounded foot.” - -“Well, Douglas,” said the minister, “between Mr. Lumsden’s confoondit -foot and your confoondit pertinacity, what am I to do? Since your -patient, Eelen, is so kind and permits the use of our best parlor, have -them in, have ben your callants. I must not be less gracious than my own -guest,” the old man said. - -Lily went away trembling after this scene, giving Ronald a beseeching -glance, but she had no opportunity for a word. Next day, still -tremulous, she returned, to find him still there, a little defiant, not -to be driven out. But a short time after, when she was again preparing -to go into the “toun”--without any pleasant looks now from her -household, or complaisance on the part of Dougal, who openly bemoaned -his pony--the whole population of Dalrugas turned out to see the inn -“geeg” once more climbing the brae. It contained Ronald and his -portmanteau, speeding off to catch the coach, but incapable, as he said, -in the hearing of every-body, of going away without thanking and saying -farewell to his kind nurse. “Do you know what this young lady did for -me?” he said to the little company, which included Rory, ready saddled, -and the black pony harnessed, with the boy at his head. “She lifted me, -I think, from where I lay, and put me on her own beast, like the good -Samaritan. She was more than the good Samaritan to me. Look at her, like -a fairy princess, and me a heavy lump, almost fainting, and with but one -foot. That is what charity can do.” - -“Well, it was a wonderful thing,” Katrin allowed, “but maist more than -that was riding down ance errand to the town to take care of ye every -day.” - -“Ah, that was for Miss Blythe’s sake and not mine,” he said. “May I come -in, Miss Ramsay, to give you her message? Oh, Robina, I am glad to see -you here. I can carry the last news to Sir Robert, and tell him how both -mistress and maid are thriving on the moor.” - -It was all false, false, as false as words that were true enough in -themselves could be. Lily ran up the spiral stair, while Beenie helped -him to follow. The girl’s heart was beating high with more sensations -than she could discriminate. This was the parting, then, after so long a -time together; the farewell, which was more dreadful than words could -say--and yet she was glad he was going. He was her own true-love, and -nobody was like him in the world, and yet Lily’s mind revolted against -every word he said. - -“Why did you say all that?” she cried, breathless, when they were alone. -“It was not wanted, surely, here!” - -“Necessary fibs,” he said. “You are too particular, Lily, for me that am -only carrying out my rôle. You see, I am obeying you and going away at -last.” - -“Oh, Ronald, it was not that I wanted you to go away.” - -“No, if I could have gone away, yet stayed all the same. But one can’t -do two opposite things at the same time. And, Lily, it must be good-by -now--for a little while. You will look out for me at the New Year.” - -“Do you call it just a little while to the New Year?” she cried, with -the tears in her eyes. - -“Three months, or a little more. I shall not come to Kinloch-Rugas; I’ll -find a lodging in some little farm. And in the meantime you will write -to me, Lily, and I will write to you.” - -“Yes, Ronald,” she said, giving him both her hands. Was this to be all? -It was not for her to ask; it was for him to say: - -“My bonnie Lily! If I could but carry you off, never to part more! But -if nothing happens to release you, if Sir Robert does not relent, mind, -my dearest, we must make up our minds and take it into our own hands. He -is not to keep us apart forever. You will let me know all that goes on, -and whether those people down stairs have reported the matter; and I, -for my part, will take my measures. When we meet again, every thing will -be clearer. And, Lily, on your side, you will tell me every thing, that -we may see our way.” - -“There will be nothing to tell you, Ronald. There will be no report -sent; Uncle Robert, I think, has forgotten my existence. There will be -nothing, nothing to say but that it is weary living alone here on the -moor.” - -“Not more weary than my life in Edinburgh, pacing up and down the -Parliament House, and looking out for work. But we’ll see what is going -to happen before the New Year; and I will send the present to those good -Manse folk, and you will keep up with them, for they may be very useful -friends. Is it time for me to go? Well, I will go if I must; and good-by -for the present, my darling, good-by till the New Year!” - -Was it possible that he was gone, that it was all over, and Lily left -again alone on the moor? She ran to Beenie’s room, which was on the -other side of the house, to watch the inn “geeg” as long as it was in -sight. Nothing is ever said of what is intended to be said in a hasty -last meeting like this. It was worse than no meeting at all, leaving all -the ravelled ends of parting. And was it true that all was over, and -Ronald gone and nothing more to be done or said? - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -The dead calm into which Lily fell after all the agitations of this -wonderful period was like death itself, she thought, after the tumult -and commotion of a climax of life. Those days during which she had -trotted down to the village on Rory, the mountain breezes in her face, -and all the warmest emotions stirred in her breast, days full of anxiety -and expectation, sometimes of more painful feelings, agitations of all -kinds, but threaded through and through with the consciousness that for -hours to come she would be with her lover, ministering to his wants, -hearing him speak, going over and over with him, in the low-voiced talk -to which the old minister behind his newspaper gave, or was supposed to -give, no heed, their own prospects and hopes, their plans for the -future--all those things that are more engrossing and delightful to talk -of than any other subjects in heaven or earth--were different from all -the days that had passed over her before. Her youthful existence was -like a dream, thrown back into the distance by the superior force and -meaning of all that had happened since: both the loneliness and the -society, the bitter time of self-experience and solitude, the joy of the -reunion, the love so crossed and mingled which had grown with greater -intensity with every chance. The little simple Lily who had “fallen in -love,” as she thought, with Ronald Lumsden, as she might have fallen in -love with any one of a half-dozen of young men, was very, very different -from the Lily who had been torn out of her natural life on his account, -who had doubted him and found him wanting, who had been converted into -the faith of an enthusiast in him, and conviction that it was she, and -not he, that was in the wrong. Their stolen meetings on the moor, which -had startled her back into the joy of existence, which had been so few, -yet so sweet; their little meal together, which was like a high ceremony -and sacrament of a deeper love and union; the tremendous excitement of -the accident, and the agitated chapter of constant yet disturbed -intercourse which followed (disturbed at last by a renewed creeping in -of the old doubts, and anxiety to push him forward, to make him act, to -make him think not always of himself, as he was so apt to do)--all these -things had formed an epoch in her life, behind which every thing was -childish and vague. She herself was not the same. It happens often in a -woman’s life that the change from youth and its lighter atmosphere of -natural, simple things comes before the mind is developed, before the -character is able to bear that wonderful transformation. Lily at first -had been essentially in this condition. Her trial came to her before she -had strength for it, and every new point of progress was marked, so to -speak, with a new wound, quickly healed over, as became her youth, yet -leaving a scar, as all internal wounds do. Even when the thrill of -happiness had been in her young frame and mind it had been intensified -by a thrill of pain: the pang of secrecy, the sharp sting of -falsehood--falsehood which was abhorrent to Lily’s nature. She had -laughed as other girls laugh at the stratagems of lovers, their devices -to escape the observation of jealous parents, the evils that are said to -be legitimate in love and war. Nobody is so severe as to judge harshly -these aberrations from duty. Even the sternest parent smiles at them -when they are not directed against himself. But when it came to -inventing a story day by day; when it came to deceiving Katrin, with her -sharp eyes, at one end, and Helen’s unsuspicious soul at the other--then -Lily could not bear the tangled web in which she had wound herself. She -had to go on; it was too late to tell the truth now, she had said to -herself, day by day, her heart aching from those thanks which Helen -showered upon her for her kind attendance upon the unexpected guest. “If -it had not been for you, Lily, what could I have done?” the minister’s -daughter had said, again and again; and Lily’s heart had grown sick in -the midst of her strained and painful happiness at Ronald’s side. - -Now this was over and another phase come. She had urged him to go, -feeling the position untenable any longer in a way which his robust -self-confidence had not felt; but when suddenly he had taken the step -she urged, Lily felt herself flung back upon herself, the words taken -out of her mouth, and the meaning from her mind. All her little fabric -of life tumbled down about her. Those habits which are formed so -quickly, which a few days suffice to bind upon the soul like iron, -dropped from her, and she felt as if the framework by which she was -sustained had broken down, and she could no longer hold herself erect. -Her life seemed suddenly to have lost all its meaning, all its -occupations. There was no sense in going on, no reason for its -continuance merely to eat meals, to take walks, to go to bed and to get -up again. She looked behind her, to the immediate past, with a pang, and -before her, to the immediate future, with a blank sense of vacancy which -was almost despair. When the “geeg” that carried him away was gone quite -out of sight, Lily went slowly back to the drawing-room, and seated -herself at the window from which she had first seen him appearing across -the moor. It had been then all ablaze with the heather, which now had -died away into rustling bunches of dead flowers, all dried like husks -upon the stalks, gray and dreary, like the dull evening of a glowing -day. Her heart beat dull with the reverberation of all those -convulsions that had gone through it. And now they were all over, like -the glow of the heather--and what was before her? The winter creeping -on, with its short days and long nights; storm and rain, when even Rory -would not face the keen wind; solitude unbroken for weeks and months; -and beyond that what was there to look forward to? Oh, if it had been -but poverty--the little flat under the roofs in a tall Edinburgh house, -and to work her fingers to the bone! Poor Lily, who knew so little what -working your fingers to the bone meant! who thought that would be -blessedness beside one you loved, and in the world where you were born! -So, no doubt, it would have been; but yet, in all probability, though -she did not intend it so, it would have been Robina’s fingers, not hers, -that were worked to the bone. - -I would not have the reader think that, translated into ordinary -parlance, all this meant the vulgar fact that Lily was longing to be -married, and would not accept the counsels of patience and wait, though -she was only twenty-three, and had so many, many years before her. Had -Ronald been an eager lover, ready to brave fortune for her sake, and -consider that, for love, the world were well lost, she would no doubt -have taken the other side of the question, and preached patience to him, -and borne her own part of the burden with a smile. But it is very -different when it is the lover who is prudent, and when the girl, with -an unsatisfied heart, has to wait and know that her happiness, her -society, her life, are of less value to him than the fortune which he -hopes, by patience, to secure along with her; also that she can do -nothing to emancipate herself, nothing to escape from whatever painful -circumstances may surround her, till he gives the word, which he shows -no inclination to give, and which womanly pride and feeling forbid her -even to suggest; also, and above all, that in his hesitation, in his -prudence and delay, he is falling short of the ideal which every lover -should fulfil or lose his place and power. This was the worst of all: -not only that Ronald was acting so, but that it was so far, far -different from the manner in which Ronald, had he been the Ronald she -thought, would have acted. This gave the bitterness under which Lily’s -heart sank. Again, she did not know what he meant to do, or if he meant -to do any thing, or if she were to remain as she was, perhaps for long -years, consuming her heart in loneliness and vacancy, diversified by -moments of clandestine meeting and unlovely happiness, bought by deceit. -She could not again yield to that, she said to herself, with passionate -tears. Though her heart were to break, she would not heal it at the cost -of lies. It might not have given Lily many compunctions, perhaps, to -have deceived her uncle; but to deceive Helen, to deceive kind Katrin -and Dougal, to give false accounts of the simplest circumstances--oh! -no, no; never again, never again! She said this to herself, with -passionate tears falling like rain, as she sat at her lonely window on -many a dreary day, straining her eyes across the moor, where the rain so -often fell to double the effect of those tears. Let them give each other -up mutually; let them part and be done with it if he chose; but to -deceive every-body and meet secretly, or meet openly upon the falsest of -pretences--oh! no, no, Lily said to herself, never more! - -But how these decisions melted when, in the heart of the winter, there -began to dawn the promise of the New Year, it is easy to imagine, and I -do not need to say. Lily, it must be remembered, had no one but Ronald -to represent to her happiness and life. She had never had many people to -love. Her father and mother had both died before she was old enough to -know them. She had no aunt, though that is often an unsatisfactory -relation, not even cousins whom she knew, which is strange to think of -in Scotland--nobody to take her part or whom she could repose her heart -upon but Beenie, her maid, to whom Lily’s concerns were her own -sublimated, and who could only agree in and intensify Lily’s own natural -impulses and thoughts. Ronald was all she had, the only one who could -help her, the sole deliverer possible, and opener to her of the gates of -life. To be sure, she might have renounced him and so returned to her -uncle, to be dragged about in a back seat of his chariot, if not at its -wheels; though, indeed, even this was problematical, for Sir Robert was -a selfish old man, who was, on the whole, very glad to have got rid of -the burden of a young woman to take about with him, and considered that -she would do very well at the old Tower, and might be quite content with -such a quiet and comfortable home, a good cook (which Katrin was), a -pony to ride upon, and the run of the moor. He had half forgotten her -existence by this time, as Lily divined, and was absent “abroad” in that -vague and wide world of which stayers at home in Scotland knew so much -less then than every-body knows now. And as the time approached for -Ronald’s return, Lily, in her longing for him, added to her longing for -something, for some one, for society, emancipation, something that was -life, began to forget all her old aches and troubles of mind; the doubts -flew away; she remembered only that Ronald was coming, that he was -coming, that the sun was about to shine again, that there was happiness -in prospect, love and company and talk and sympathy, and all that is -good in youth and life. This time she must manage so that the deceit of -old would be necessary no longer. Helen should know that the two who had -met so often in the Manse parlor had come to love each other. What so -natural, what so fitting, seeing they had spent so much time together -under her own wing and her own mild eyes? And Katrin and Dougal should -be permitted to see what Lily was very sure they had divined already, -that the poor gentleman whom Lily had nursed so faithfully was more to -her than any other gentleman in the world. He should come to Dalrugas to -see her, and be with her openly as her lover in the sight of all men. If -Sir Robert heard of it, why, then she must escape, she must fly; the -pair must at last take it, as Ronald had said, into their own hands--and -Lily did not feel that she would be very sorry if this took place. At -all events now every thing should be open and honest, clandestine no -more. - -It seemed as if he had come to the same decision when he arrived on the -night which was then called in Scotland, and is perhaps still to some -extent, Hogmanay--why I do not know, nor I believe does any one--the -last night of the year. He came in the early twilight, when the short, -dark day was ending, and the long, cheerful evening about to begin. What -a cheerful evening it was! the fire so bright, the candles twinkling, -the curtains drawn, and from the kitchen the sound of the children -singing who had come out in a band all the way from the village to call -upon Katrin: - - “Get up, gudewife, and shake your feathers, - And dinna think that we are beggars, - For we are bairns, come out to play; - Get up and gie’s our Hogmanay.” - -Lily was about to go down, flying down the spiral stairs, her heart -beating loud with expectation, wondering breathlessly when he would -come, how he would come, who alone could bring the Hogmanay cheer to -her, and in the meantime ready, for pure excitement, and to keep herself -still, to join the women in the kitchen, and fill the children’s wallets -with cakes, cakes _par excellence_, the oatmeal cakes to wit, which are -still what is meant in Scotland by that word, baked thin and crisp, and -fresh from the girdle, making a pleasant smell; and over and above these -with shortbread, in fine, brown farls, the true New Year’s dainty, and -great pieces of bun, the Scotch bun, which is something between a -plum-pudding and the Pan Giallo of the Romans, a mass of fruit held -together by flour and water. Great provision of these delights was in -the kitchen, which was all “redd up” and shining for the festival, with -Katrin in her best cap, and Beenie in a silk gown and muslin apron, a -resplendent figure. A band of “guisards” had accompanied the children, -ready to enact some scene of the primitive drama of prehistoric -tradition. Lily was hastening down to join this party, in a white dress -which she too had put on in honor of the occasion. The kitchen was very -noisy, full of these visitors, and nobody but she heard the summons at -the big hall-door. Lily hesitated for a moment, her heart giving a bound -as loud as the knock--then opened it. And there he stood--the hero and -the centre of all! - -“And, eh, what a lucky thing to come this night that Miss Lily may have -her ploy too! You will just stop and eat your bit dinner with her, -Maister Lumsden!” Katrin cried. - -“Will it be a ploy for Miss Lily? I would like to be sure of that.” - -“Eh, nae need to pit it in words,” said Katrin: “look at her bonnie -e’en; and reason good, seeing that she has never spoken to one of her -own kind, and least of all to a young gentleman, since the day ye gaed -away.” - -“I am staying at Tam the shepherd’s, on the other side of the moor,” -said Ronald. - -“Losh me! at Tam the shepherd’s, for the shootin’?” she asked in a tone -of consternation. - -“Well,” he said, with a laugh, “you can judge, Katrin, for yourself.” - -“Ay, ay,” she said, brightening all over, “I judge for mysel’, sir, and -I see it’s just the auld story. Tam the shepherd’s an awfu’ haverel, but -his wife’s an honest woman, and clean,” she added, “as far as she kens. -But you shall have a good dinner with Miss Lily, I promise you, for once -in a way.” - -Lily only half listened, but she heard all that was said. And her heart -danced to see his open look, and the words in which there was no -pretence of shooting, or any reason, save the evident one, for his -presence there. The excuses were all over; there was to be no more -deception. Honestly he came as her lover, endeavoring to throw no dust -in the eyes of her humble guardians. If they had been noble guardians, -holding her fate in their hands, Lily could not have been more happy. -They were not to be deceived. Openness and honesty were to be around -her in the house which was her home. What was wanted but this to make -her the happiest girl that ever piled shortbread into a child’s wallet -in honor of Hogmanay, and the New Year which was coming to-morrow? A new -year, a new life, a different world! Katrin came up to her with -half-affected horror and tender kindness, grasping her arm. “Eh, Miss -Lily,” she cried, “you’ll just ruin the family, and we’ll no have a -single farl of shortbread left for our ain use; and the morn’s the New -Year! Ye are giving every thing away. Na, na, we must mind oursel’s a -wee. No more for you, my wee man. Miss Lily’s just ower good to you. Run -up the stairs, my bonnie leddy, for Beenie is setting the table, and -you’ll get your dinner, you and the gentleman, before the guisards -begin.” - -“The gentleman!” Lily felt her countenance flame, as she laughed and -turned away. “How kind you are, Katrin,” she said, “to provide me with -company, too, me that never sees any body.” - -“Am I no kind,” cried Katrin in triumph, “and him for coming just at the -right moment? I am awfu’ pleased that you have a pairty of your ain to -bring in a good New Year.” - -How strange, how delightful it was to sit down opposite to him at the -table, to eat Katrin’s excellent dinner, which, though it was almost -impromptu, was so good--trout and game, the Highland luxuries, which -were, indeed, almost daily bread on the edge of the moor, but not to -Ronald, who amid all their happiness was man enough to like his dinner -and praise it. “This is how we shall sit at our own table, and laugh at -all our little troubles when they are over,” he said. - -“Oh, Ronald!” said Lily, with a little cloud in the midst of joy. They -might be little troubles to him, but not to her, all lonely in the -wilderness. - -“At all events they will soon be over,” he said. His eyes were bright -and his tones assured; there was no longer any doubt in his look, which -she examined in the moments when he was not looking at her with an -anxious criticism. “And tell me about the good folk at the Manse, and -kind Miss Eelen and her assistant and successor. Is he to be her -assistant, too, as well as her father’s? I had a famous letter from the -old gentleman about the wine I sent him. And, Lily, I think that with -very little trouble I will get him to do all we want as soon as you can -make up your mind to it. After all this time we must not have any more -delay.” - -“To do all we want?” she said, looking up at him with surprise. The -dinner was over by this time, and they had left the table and were -standing by the fire. - -“Yes,” he said. “What do we want but to belong to each other, Lily? You -don’t need grand gowns or all the world at your wedding. Oh, yes, I -should have liked to see my Lily with all her friends about her, and -none so sweet as herself. But since we cannot do that, why should we -mind it, when the old minister here can make every thing right in half -an hour?” - -“Ronald,” she said, with a gasp, “you take away my breath!” - -“Why,” he cried, “is not this what has been in our minds for ever so -long? Have you not promised, however poor I was, in whatever -straits----” - -“Yes, yes, there is no question of that.” - -“And why, then, should it take away your breath? My bonnie Lily, is it -not an old bargain now? We have waited and waited, but nothing has come -of waiting. And Providence has put us in a quiet place, with nothing but -friends round, and a good old minister, a kind old fellow, who likes a -good glass of wine and knows what he’s drinking!” He laughed at this as -he drew her closer toward him. “Lily, with every thing in our favor, you -will not put me off and make a hesitation now?” - -Oh, this was not quite the way, not the way she looked for! Yet she drew -her breath hard, that breath which fluttered in spite of herself, and -put both her hands in his. No, after so long waiting why should she make -a hesitation now? And then they went down to the kitchen together, arm -in arm, Lily yielding to the delightful consciousness that there was no -need for concealment, to see the guisards act their primitive drama, and -to bring in the New Year. - -Oh, the New Year! which was coming in amid that rustic mirth among those -true, kind, humble friends to whom the young pair were as gods in the -glory of their love and youth. Lily trembled in her joy: what bride does -not? What would it bring to them, that New Year? - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -This New Year’s Eve remained, amid all the experiences of Lily, a thing -apart. It became painful to her to think of it in after times, but in -the present it was like a completion and climax of life, still all in -the visionary stage, yet so close on the verge of the real that she -became herself like an instrument, thrilling to every touch, answering -every air that blew, every word that was said, in each and all of which -there were meanings hidden of which none was aware but herself. There -was the little dinner first, so carefully prepared by Katrin, so -tenderly served by Beenie, the two young people sitting on either side -of the table as if at their bridal banquet, while the sound of the -festivities going on in the kitchen came up by times when the door was -opened: a squeak of the fiddle, the sound of the stamping of the -guisards as they performed their little archaic drama, adding a franker -note of laughter to the keen supreme pleasure that reigned above. Beenie -went and came, always bringing with her along with every new dish that -little gust of laughter and voices from below, to which she kept open -half an ear, while with the other she attended to what her little -mistress said. - -“You maun come down, Miss Lily, to do them a grace: they a’ say they’ll -no steer till they’ve seen the young leddy; and they’re decent lads -just come out to play, as the bairns say in their sang, neither beggars -nor yet stravaigers, but lads from the town, to please ye with their bit -performance; and I ken a’ their mothers!” Beenie cried with a little -outburst of affectionate emotion. - -When Lily went down accordingly, followed closely by her lover, the -little primitive drama was repeated, with more stamping and shouting -than ever; and then there was an endless reel, to the sound of the -squeaking fiddle, in which Lily danced as long as she could hold out, -and Beenie held out, as it seemed, forever, wearing out all the lads. - -“Eh! I was a grand dancer in my time,” she admitted, when she had breath -enough, while the fiddle squeaked on and on. - -And then, as was right, Ronald said good-night as the rural band -streamed away from the door. The curious group of the guisards, some of -them in white shirts outside their garments, some in breastplates of -tin, with an iron pot on their heads by way of helmet, “set him home” -with much respectful kindness. “But I wuss ye were coming with us to the -toun, for Tam the shepherd’s is no a howff for a gentleman,” they said. - -“Any hole will do for me,” said Ronald in the exhilaration of the -evening; and all the house came out of doors to speed the parting -guests. The moon shone mistily over the long stretch of the moor, -throwing up a sinister gleam here and there from the deep cuttings, and -flinging a veil as of gossamer over the great breadth of the country. -The air was fresh, not over-cold, “saft,” as Dougal called it, with the -suggestion of rain, and the sudden irruption of voices and steps into -the supreme and brooding silence made the strangest effect in the middle -of the night. Lily stood watching them as they streamed away, Ronald so -distinct from them all as they streamed down under the shadow of the -bank, to show again, chiefly by reason of their disguises, upon the road -a little way down. Lily lingered until a speck of white in the distance -was all that was visible. She was wrapped in a plaid which Ronald had -put round her, drawing the soft green and checkered folds closely around -her face, and as warm physically as she was at heart. Now he was -himself; he had flung all prudences and fancies to the wind; he had -forgotten Sir Robert and his fortune, and every other common thing that -could come between. Lily danced up the spiral staircase with a heart -that sang still more than her lips did as she “turned” the tune to which -they had been dancing. No one can keep still to whom “Tullochgoram” is -sung or played. She danced up the stairs, keeping time faster and faster -to the mad melody--the essence unadulterated of reckless fun and -drollery. - -“Eh, my bonnie leddy!” Beenie cried, who had gone before with the -candles; while Katrin stood looking after her, and Dougal locked and -bolted the great hall-door. Katrin shook her head a little: she was much -experienced. “Eh, if he be but worthy of her!” she sighed. - -“It’s late, late at nicht, and the New Year well begun,” said Robina. -“Eh, Miss Lily, you’ll never forget this New Year?” - -“Why should I forget it?” said Lily. “You had better wait till it is -past before you say that. But maybe you are right, after all, for there -never was a Hogmanay like this; and to think that the morn will come, -and that it will be no more like the other days than this has been! -Beenie, did you ever hear that folk might be as feared for joy as for -trouble? or is it only me that am so timorsome, and cannot tell which it -is going to be?” - -“’Deed, and I’ve heard o’ that many’s the day. It’s just the common way, -my bonnie dear. Many a bonnie lassie would fain flee to the ends of the -earth the day before her bridal that is just pleased enough when a’s -said and done. You mustna lose heart.” - -“I’m not losing heart,” said Lily. “The day before my bridal! Is that -what it is? I will just be happy to-night and never think of the morn; -for when I begin to think, it takes so many things to be satisfied, and -I would like to be satisfied just for once, and take no thought.” - -Robina had a great deal to do in Lily’s room that night. She kept moving -to and fro, softly opening and shutting drawers and presses, laying away -her mistress’s things with a care that was scarcely necessary, and meant -only restlessness and excitement and an incapacity to keep still. Long -before she had done moving about the half-lighted room Lily was fast -asleep, her excitement, though presumably greater, not being enough to -keep sleep from the eyes which were dazzled with the sudden gleam of -something so new and strange in her life, as well as tired with an -unusual vigil. Lily slept as soundly as a child till the clear, somewhat -shrill daylight, touched with frost, shone upon her late in the wintry -morning and called her up much more effectually than the wavering call -of Beenie, who was hanging over her in the morning, as she had been at -night, the first to meet her eyes. - -“Eh, Miss Lily, what a grand sleep ye have had!” Beenie cried. She had -slept but little herself, her head full of the new situation and all the -strange things that might be to come. The house in general had a sense -of excitement breathing through it, not visible, indeed, in Dougal, who -was, as usual, wrestling with the powny outside, but very apparent in -Katrin, who went about her morning work with an extremely serious face, -as if all the cares of the world were on her shoulders. Robina and she -had various stolen moments of communication through the day, indeed, -which testified to a degree of confidence between them, and a mutual -preoccupation. - -“I’m no to say a word to her; but how am I to keep my tongue in my head -when Dauvit himself says that when he was musin’ the fire burnt!” - -“Losh,” cried Katrin, “if it was naething but haudin’ your tongue! but -what I’ve to think of is mair than that. Eh, I’m doing that for Miss -Lily I would do for none of my kin, no, nor Dougal himself; and I wish I -was just clean out of it, for I’m no fond of secrets--they are uncanny -things.” - -“Eh, woman! ye wouldna betray them?” Beenie cried. - -“Betray them? Am I a person to betray what’s trusted to me? But I wish -there were nae secrets in this world. It’s just aye cheating somebody. -Ye canna be straichtforward, do what ye will, when ye’ve got other -folks’ secrets to keep, let alone them that are your ain.” - -“I’m no sae particular,” said Beenie, with a little toss of her head, -“and there will be no stress upon ye for long. It’s just the ae step.” - -“I have my doubts,” said Katrin, shaking her head. - -“Ye have your doubts? And what doubts would ye have? It will a’ be plain -when ance it’s done. There are nae mair secrets after that! It’s just as -I said, the ae step. Eh me, I could have likit it far better in Sir -Robert’s grand house in George Square, and a’ Edinburgh there, and the -Principal himself to join their hands thegether, and my bonnie Miss Lily -in the white satin, and the auld lady’s grand necklace about her bonnie -white neck. But we canna have every thing our ain gate. The Manse parlor -is just a’ that can be desired in the circumstances we’re noo in; and -when it’s done, it will just be done and naething more to say.” - -But Katrin still shook her head. She was a far-seeing woman. “I’m no -just sure we will be out of it sae easy as that,” she said. - -This talk was not completed at once, but came in on various occasions, a -few words here and there, as opportunity secured; and the two women, -though both were excited and disturbed, did no doubt enjoy the rôle of -conspirator, more or less, and felt that those secret consultations -added a zest to life. Beenie, whose lips were sealed in the presence of -her mistress, and Katrin, who had to maintain an aspect of absolute calm -in the sight of Dougal, could not but feel a consciousness of -superiority, which consoled them for much that was uncomfortable. But, -indeed, it was exasperatingly easy to deceive Dougal. He suspected -nothing; secrets or mysteries had never come his way. Life meant to him -his daily work, his daily parritch, the comfort of a crack now and then -with his friends, a glass of toddy on an occasion, and the prevailing -consciousness of being well done for at all times, with a clean -hearthstone, and the parritch and the broth both well boiled and -appetizing, more than fell to the lot of ordinary men. If he had known -even that Katrin was keeping a secret from him, it is doubtful whether -he would have been at all moved. He would have thought it some -whigmaleerie of the wife’s, and would have remained perfectly easy in -his mind, in the conviction that she would tell him if it was any thing -he had to do with, and if not, wha was minding? Nothing that she did or -said roused his curiosity to any great degree. There had need to be -something more serious than Dougal to account for the little contraction -over Katrin’s eyes. - -This was, perhaps, more visible, however, after the conversation she had -with Mr. Lumsden on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. I cannot tell what -he said to her, but there was something in it additional to what he had -said on the evening before, when he had told her and Beenie what their -parts were to be in the little drama for which he had not yet fully -prepared the chief actor of all. Lily waited for him at the window with -a heart that beat high in her breast on that frosty morning, when all -the stretches of the moor were crisp and white, and every little -rowan-tree and bush of withered heather shone like something of frosted -silver across the gray surface, tinged with a lower tone of whiteness. -Lily saw him almost before he had come within the range of mortal -vision, so far off that the road itself could not be seen, and only a -faint speck that moved was distinguishable in the chill and frozen -silence. The speck moved on, disappeared, came out again till it grew -into absolute sight and knowledge, near enough to be recognized from the -window, and hastily met at the door with a sweep of flying feet and -hands outstretched. “My bonnie Lily! the only flower that’s not -frosted!” he said. The change that had taken place between them was made -plain by this: that he came quite openly to the door, and that Lily -flew to meet him. There was no longer any occasion for the supposed -accident of meetings on the moor. How this change came about Lily did -not stop to enquire. It was, and that was enough; and she was too happy -in it ever to wonder what could have been said or done underneath to -make the lover’s appearance now a thing expected, and which it was -unnecessary to attempt to conceal. - -“It will perhaps be for to-morrow and perhaps for the day after; I am -not certain yet,” Ronald said. - -“What will perhaps be for to-morrow?” Lily cried, with a sudden flush on -her cheek. - -“We are not going to make any fuss about it, Lily. You promised me you -would not desire that. It’s very easy to be married in our country. If -we were to call Dougal up and Katrin, and say we were man and wife, we -would be married just as fast as by all the ministers in the world.” - -“Ronald!” cried Lily, growing pale. - -“I am not suggesting such a thing. Do you think that I would put a scorn -on my bonnie Lily with a marriage like that? Not I! What I cannot bear -is that you should be stinted of one thing you would like--though, for -my part, the less the better, I say, and the most agreeable to me. But -no; I am not that kind of man. I like the sanction of the Kirk. I like -every thing done decently and in order. That is why I say to-morrow or -the next day, for I have not yet seen Mr. Blythe.” - -“And is it to be so soon as that?” said Lily with awe. - -“My darling, what object have we in waiting? The vacation is short -enough anyway. We must not lose a day. You promised to be ready at a -moment’s warning. Well, I’m giving you a day’s warning. If every thing -had been right, it would have been you to fix the time, and all your -fancies consulted. But we’re past that, Lily. You know you put yourself -into my hands to have it done as soon as was possible.” - -“Did I?” said Lily, confused; and then she added: “I know. I am not one -to make a trouble. It is best to be done when we can--and as soon as we -can--and end this dreary life.” - -“That is what I knew you would say. No certainty, no ground to stand on, -and not knowing what might happen at any moment. No, Lily, it is no time -for scruples now.” - -“Still,” said Lily, “I would have liked to have heard all your plans and -what we are to do. It is fine planning. It is aye a pleasure, even when -it comes to nothing. And now, when it must come to something----” - -“That’s the difference, I suppose, between man and woman,” said Ronald, -with a laugh. “I have no thought of any thing but one thing. I care -nothing about plans. You, that are all made up of imagination, you shoot -past and begin again. But me, I think only of getting my Lily, of having -her for my own. I have neither plots nor plans in my head.” - -“It is a good thing, then, that women think of them, for we can’t do -without them,” Lily said. But she was soothed and pleased that her -bridegroom should have no thought but for herself. Perhaps this was what -was most fit for the man. The woman had the outset to think of, the new -house to live in, and every thing else that was involved. The reverse -thought gives pleasure in other circumstances. There is no consistency -in the reasonings of this period of life. - -“Let us go out now,” said Ronald; “the frost is hard, and it’s fine dry -walking; we’ll get a turn round the moor, and then I will be off to the -‘toun’ to see the minister, and to-night I’ll come back and tell you all -about it. Wrap up well, for it’s cold, but so bright that it does the -heart good. But it is the day itself, and because it is the day, that -does the heart most good,” he said, once more wrapping Lily up, close -round her pretty throat, with the soft, voluminous folds of the plaid. -The two faces so close together, the light in her eyes, the contagious -happiness in his face, took every shadow from Lily’s heart. There had -been no shadows, only a faint sort of floating gossamer, which had no -meaning, and now it melted all away. - -The ramble round the moor filled all the bright noon of the wintry day. -It was not possible to wander among the ling bushes, or by the soft, -meandering lines of turf. All was crisp with the curling whiteness of -the frost, except here and there where a prominent point had been melted -and darkened by the sun. They went along the road, which crackled under -their feet, with small ice crystals in every fissure. The mountains -stood blue in a faint haze that seemed to breathe into the still air, -and the moor stretched white, like a piece of crisp embroidery, under -the shining of the light. How wintry the air was, and how exhilarating, -tightening the nerves and stimulating every force! Toward the north the -sky was heavy and spoke of snow, but there were soft breaks of blue and -lines of yellow light in the brighter quarter. They walked now quickly -as they faced the wind, now slowly as they turned their backs upon it, -and, wrapped in their soft plaids, felt the soft glow and warmth mount -to their youthful cheeks. I doubt if any summer ramble, in the sweetest -air and among the flowers, was more full of pleasure. They talked to -each other incessantly, but perhaps not very much that would bear -repeating; yet there was a little veiled conflict certainly going on all -the time, scarcely conscious, hidden in innocent questions and -suggestions, in innocent seeming evasions. Lily wanted to ask so much, -but half feared to put a direct question lest it should be an offence, -while he wanted to keep every question at arm’s-length, but did not dare -to do so lest it should excite suspicion. There was an occasional flash -of the rapiers, soon covered up in the softest tones and touches, but -still they kept their distinct parts: she anxious to see a little -beyond, he eager to keep her within the limits of the day. He parried -all her thrusts with this pretence: that his thoughts could not stray -beyond to-morrow. “Sufficient unto the day is the happiness thereof,” he -said. - -Then they went in and had their mid-day meal together, once more -attended by Beenie, with a world of meaning in every glance. “They are -just twa bonnie doos crooning on a branch,” she said to Katrin, as she -came down stairs for another dish. “Doos!” cried Katrin; “they have a -very good will to their meat, that’s a’ that I can say.” “They are like -twa bonnie squirrels in a wood,” cried Beenie, at her next dive into the -kitchen, “givin’ aye a look the one to the ither.” “Squirrels, my certy! -but I wouldna like to gether the nits for them a’ the year through,” -said Katrin. But when Beenie came back for the pudding, and declared -that “they were like twa bonnie fishes side by side in the burn, the ane -mair silvery and golden than the other,” Katrin’s amazement and -ridicule, and the excitement underneath, found vent in a shriek which -brought Dougal hurrying in from the barn. “Losh, woman! are ye burnt in -the fire, or have ye spilt the boiling pot upon ye, or what have ye -done?” “I’ll gie you the boiling pot yourself, and a dishclout to pin to -your tail, and that will learn ye to ask fule questions!” Katrin said. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Ronald walked into Kinloch-Rugas after the plentiful lunch upon which -Katrin had made so many remarks. His head was buzzing and his bosom -thrilling with the excitement natural at that period of existence. He -loved Lily--as well as he was capable of loving--with all the mingled -sentiment and passion, the emotions high and low, the very human and -half divine, which are involved in that condition of mind. He was a -healthy, vigorous, and in no way vicious young man. If he had not the -highest ideal, he had not at all the lowered standard of a man whose -mind has been debased by evil communications. He was, in his way, a true -lover, at the climax of life which is attained by a bridegroom. His -thoughts were set to a kind of rhythmic measure of “Lily, Lily,” as he -walked swiftly and strongly down the long road toward the village. If -his mind had been laid bare by a touch of the angel’s spear, it would -not, I fear, have satisfied Lily, nor any one who loved her, but it -sufficiently satisfied himself. He did not want to look beyond the next -step, which, he had convinced himself, was the right step to take; what -was to follow was, he tried to assure himself, in the providence of God; -or, if that was too serious (but Ronald was a serious man, willingly -conceding to God the right to influence human affairs), it was open to -all the developments, chances even, if you like to say so, of natural -events. Who could say what would happen on the morrow? In the meantime a -reasonable man’s concern was with the events of the day. And though he -was not a highly strung person by nature, he was to-day all lyrical, and -thrilling with the emotions of a bridegroom. He was not unworthy of the -position. His very foot acknowledged that thrill, and struck the ground -in measure, as if the iron strings of frost had been those of a harp. -The passer-by, plodding along with head down and nose half sheltered -from the cutting wind, took that member half out of the folds of his -plaid to see what it was that was so bye-ordinary in the man he met. He -did not sound like a common man going into the town on common business, -nor look like it when the spectator turned to breathe the softer way of -the wind for a moment and look after the stranger. Neither did Ronald -feel like any one else on that wintry afternoon. He was a bridegroom, -and the thrill of it was in all his veins. - -It was nearly dark when he came in sight of the lights, chiefly -twinkling lights in windows, for there was no gas as yet to illuminate -every little place as we have it now. In the Manse, with its larger -windows, it was still light enough, and the soft yellow and pink of the -frosty evening sky lent color, as well as light, to the calm of the -parlor, facing toward the west, where Mr. Blythe sat alone. It was the -minister’s musing time. Sometimes he had a doze; sometimes he sat by -the fire, but with his chair turned to the sunset, and indulged in his -own thoughts. These were confessedly, in many cases, his old stories, -over which he would go from time to time, with a choke of a laugh in the -stillness over this and that: perhaps there were moments in which his -musings were more solemn, but of these history bears no record. The -Manse parlor had no feature of beauty. It was a very humdrum room; but -to the minister it was the abode of comfort and peace. He wanted nothing -more than was to be found within its four walls; life was quite bounded -to him by these walls, and I think he had no wish for any future that -went beyond them: his _Scotsman_, which lasted him from one day to -another, till the next (bi-weekly) number came in; his books, chiefly -volumes of old history or Reminiscences, sometimes a Scots (occasionally -printed Scott’s) novel--but that was a rare treat, and not to be -calculated upon; a bout of story-telling now and then with another -clerical brother or old elder whose memory stretched back to those -cheerful, jovial, legendary days, where all the stories come from: these -filled up existence happily enough for the old minister. His work was -over, and I fear that perhaps he had never put very much of his heart -into that, and he had his daughter to serve him “hand and foot,” as the -maids said. He did not need even to take the trouble of finding his -spectacles (which, like most other people, he was always losing) for -himself. “Eelen, where’s my specs?” he said, without moving. Such was -this old Scotch presbyter and sybarite, and though a paradise of black -hair-cloth and mahogany does not much commend itself to us nowadays, I -think Mr. Blythe would gladly have compounded for the deprivation of -pearly gates and golden streets could he have secured the permanence of -this. - -He was very glad to see Ronald, notwithstanding that he had become very -anxious to get rid of him during his stay at the Manse. A visitor of any -kind was a godsend in the middle of winter, and at this time of the -year, and especially a visitor from Edinburgh, with news to tell, and -perhaps a fresh story or two of the humors of the courts and the jokes -of the judges, things that did not get in even to _The Scotsman_. “And -what’s a’ your news, Mr. Lumsden?” he said eagerly. Ronald, who had had -many opportunities of understanding the old minister, had come provided -with a scrap or two piquant enough to please him, and what with the -jokes, and what with the politics, made a very good impression in the -first half-hour of his visit. Then came the turn of more personal -things. - -“Yon was a fine glass of wine, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, with a -slight smack of his lips. - -“I am very glad you liked it, sir; it was chosen by one of my friends -who is learned in such matters. I would not trust it to a poor judge -like myself.” - -“Better for you, Mr. Lumsden, better for you at your age not to be too -good a judge. Look not upon the wine when it is red, says the prophet, -which is just when it’s best, many persons think. I am strongly of his -opinion when your blood’s hot in your veins, like the most of you young -lads; but when a man begins to go down the hill, and when he’s well -exercised in moderation, and to use without abusing, then a grand jorum -of wine like yon makes glad the heart, as is to be found in one rather -mysterious scripture, of God and man.” - -“I hoped it would give you a charitable thought of one that was rather a -_sorner_, as I remember you said, upon your hospitality.” - -“That was never meant, that was never meant,” said the minister, waving -his large flabby hands. Ronald had risen from his seat and was now -standing by the fire, leaning his arm on the mantel-piece. The slow -twilight was waning, and though the daffodil sky still shone in the -window, the fire had begun to tell, especially in the shadow of the -half-lit room. - -“You see, sir,” said Ronald, with a leap of his heart into his throat, -and of the voice which accompanied it, coming forth with sudden energy, -“there was more in that than met the eye.” - -“Ay, do ye say so?” said Mr. Blythe, also with a quickened throb of -curiosity in his voice. - -“Miss Ramsay and I--had met in Edinburgh,” said Ronald, clearing his -throat, “we had seen--a great deal of each other. We had, in short----” - -“I always said it, I always said it!” said the minister. “I told Eelen -the very first night. I’ve seen much in my day. ‘These two are -troth-plighted,’ I said to my daughter, before ye had been in my house a -single night.” - -“I thought it was vain to attempt deceiving your clever eyes,” said -Ronald; “I told Lily so; but ladies, you know, are never so sure--they -think they can conceal things.” - -“Thrust their heads into the sand like the ostriches, silly things, and -think nobody can see them!” said the minister. “I know them well; that’s -just what they all do.” - -“Well, so it was, at least,” said Ronald. “You will not, perhaps, wonder -now that I stayed as long as I could, outstaying my welcome, I fear, and -wearing out even your hospitality; but it was a question of seeing Lily, -without exciting any suspicion, in a natural, easy way.” - -“I will not say much about that last, for it was more than suspicion on -my part.” - -“Ah, but every-body is not like you; neither your experience nor your -powers of observation are common,” said Ronald. He paused a moment, to -let this compliment sink in, and then resumed. “Mr. Blythe, I will admit -to you that Sir Robert is not content, and that, in short, Lily was -banished here to take her away from me.” - -“I cannot think it a great banishment to be sent to Dalrugas, which is a -fine house in its way, though maybe old-fashioned, and servants to be at -her call night and day,” said the minister, “but you may easily see it -from another point of view. Proceed, proceed,” he added, with another -wave of his hand. - -“Well, sir, I can but repeat: Sir Robert does not think me rich enough -for his niece. She is his only kin; he would like her to marry a rich -man; he would sacrifice her, my bonnie Lily, to an old man with a -yellow face and bags of money.” - -“Well, well, that’s no so unnatural as you think. I would like my Eelen -to have a warm down-sitting if I could help her to it, to go no further -than myself.” - -“I understand that, sir; my Lily is worthy of a prince, if there could -be a prince that loved her as well as I do. But it is me she has chosen -and nobody else, and she is not one to change if she were shut up in -Dalrugas Tower all her life.” - -“Eh, I would not lippen to that,” said the minister; “she is but a young -thing. Keep you out of the gate, and let her neither hear from you or -see you, and her bit heart, at that age, will come round.” - -“Thank you for the warning, sir,” said Ronald, with a laugh that was -forced and uncomfortable; “that’s what Sir Robert thought, I suppose. -But you may believe there is no pleasure to me in thinking so. And -besides, it would never happen with Lily, for Lily is true as steel.” He -paused for a moment, with a little access of feeling. It remained to be -seen whether he was true as steel himself, and perhaps he was not quite -assured on that point; yet he was capable, so far, of understanding the -matter that he was sure of it in Lily, and the conviction expanded his -breast with pride and pleasure. He paused with natural sentiment, and -partly with the quickening of his breath, to take the full good of that -sensation; and then he resumed: - -“I am not rich, you will easily understand; we are a lot of sons at -home, and my share will not be great. But I have a good profession, and -in a few years, so far as I can see, I may be doing with the best. As -far as family is concerned, there can be no question between any Ramsay -and my name.” - -The minister waved his hand soothingly over this contention. It was not -to be gainsaid, nor was any comparison of races to be attempted. He -said: “In that case, my young friend, if it’s but a few years to wait -and you will be doing so well, and both young, with plenty of time -before ye, so far as I can see ye can well afford to wait.” - -“I might afford to wait, that am kept to my work, and little enough time -to think, but Lily, Mr. Blythe. Here is Lily alone in the wilderness, as -she says. I’m forbidden to see her, forbidden to write to her.” - -“Restrictions which ye have broken in both cases.” - -“Yes,” cried Ronald. “How could we let ourselves be separated, how could -I leave her to languish alone? I tried as long as I could. I did not -write to her. I did not come near her, but flesh and blood could not -bear it. And then when I saw how glad she was to see me, and how her -bonnie countenance changed----” Here he nearly broke down, his voice -trembled, so genuine and true was his feeling. “We cannot do it,” he -said faintly, “and that’s all that’s to be said. Mr. Blythe, you are the -minister, you have the power in your hands----” - -“Eh, man! but I’m only the auld minister nowadays,” cried the old -gentleman, with a sudden outburst of natural bitterness to which he very -seldom gave vent. He was delighted to have nothing to do, but did not -love his supplanter any more on that account. “Ye must ask nothing from -me; go your ways to my assistant and successor--he is your man.” - -“I will go to nobody but you!” cried Ronald, with all the fervor of a -temptation resisted. “Mr. Blythe, will you marry Lily to me?” - -Mr. Blythe made a long pause. “If ye are rightly cried in the kirk, I -have no choice but to marry ye,” he said. - -“But I want it done at once, and very private, without any crying in the -kirk.” - -“That would be very irregular, Mr. Lumsden.” - -“I know it would, but not so irregular as calling up Beenie and Dougal -and Katrin, and saying before them: ‘This is my wife.’” - -“No,” said the minister, “not just so bad as that, but very irregular. -Do ye know, young man, I would be subject to censure by the Presbytery, -and I canna tell what pains and penalties? And why should I do such a -thing, to save you a month or two, or a year or two’s waiting, that is -nothing, nothing at your age?” - -“It is a great deal when people are in our circumstances,” cried Ronald. -“Lily so lonely, not a creature near her, no pleasure in her life, no -certainty about any thing: for Sir Robert might hear I had been seen -about, and might just sweep her away, abroad, to the ends of the earth. -You say she would forget, but she does not want to forget, nor do I, you -may be sure, whereas, if you will just do this for us, you will make us -both sure of each other forever, and I can never be taken from her, nor -she from me.” - -“Young man,” said the minister impressively, “I got my kirk from the -Ramsays; they’re patrons o’ this parish, and I was a young man with -little influence. I was tutor to Mr. James, but I had little chance of -any thing grander than a parish school, where I might have just -flourished as a stickit minister all my days, and it was the Ramsays -that made me a placed minister, and set me above them a’: that was the -old laird before Sir Robert’s days. But Sir Robert has been very ceevil -the times he has been here. He has asked me whiles to my dinner, and -other whiles he has sent me just as many grouse and paitricks as I could -set my face to. Would it be a just return, think ye, to marry away his -bonnie niece to a landless lad as ye confess ye are, with nothing but -fees at the best, and not too many of them coming in?” - -“Mr. Blythe,” cried Ronald, “if it was Mr. James you were tutor to, it -is to Mr. James you owe all this, and Mr. James, had he been living, -would never have gone against the happiness of his only child!” - -“Eh! but who can tell that?” cried the minister. “Little was he thinking -of that or of any kind of child. He was a young fellow, maybe as -heedless, maybe more than ye are yourself. Na, there was no thought -neither of wife nor bairn in his head.” - -“But,” cried Ronald, “you must feel you have a double duty to one that -is his child, and his only one, little as he knew of it at the time.” - -“A double duty: and what is that?” said the minister, shaking his head. -“The duty to keep her from any rash step, puir young unfriended thing, -or to let her work out her silly will, which, maybe, in a year’s time -she would rather have put her hand in the fire than have done?” - -“You give a bonnie character of me,” Ronald said, with a harsh laugh. - -“I am giving no character of you. I am thinking nothing of you. I am -thinking of the bit lassie. It is her I am bound to protect, both for -her father’s sake and her own. Most marriages that are made in haste -are, as the proverb says, repented of at leisure. She might be -heart-grieved at me that helped her to her will to-day when she knows -more of life and what it means. Na, na, my young friend, take you your -time and wait. Waiting is aye a salutary process. It brings out many a -hidden virtue, it consolidates the character, and if you are diligent in -your business it brings ye your reward, which ye enjoy more than if you -had snatched it before your time.” - -“I tell you, minister,” cried Ronald, “that we cannot wait, that it’s a -matter of life and death to us, both to Lily and me!” - -“What is that you are saying? I am hoping there is no meaning in it, but -only words,” the old man said sharply in an altered tone. - -The room had grown almost quite dark, the daffodil color had all faded -away, and the heavy curtain of the coming snow was stretching over the -last faint streak of light. The fire was smouldering and added little to -the room, which lay in a ruddy dark, warmed rather than lighted up. -Ronald stood with his elbow on the mantel-piece close to the old -minister, whose face had been suddenly raised toward him with an -expression of keen command and alarm. And who can tell what devil had -stolen in with the dark to put words of shame into the mouth of the -young man who had come down the frosty moorland road like a song of joy -and youth? It was rapid as a dart. He stooped down and said something in -the old minister’s ear. - -The shameful lie! the shameful, shameful lie! The temptation, the fall, -was so instantaneous that Ronald himself was scarcely conscious of it, -or of what he had done in his haste. The old gentleman uttered into the -darkness a sort of moan. And then he spoke briefly and sharply, with a -keen tone of scorn in his words which stung his companion even through -the confusion of the time. - -“If that’s so, ye’re a disgraceful blackguard! but it’s not my part to -speak. Be here at this house the morn, with her and your witnesses; I -insist upon the witnesses, two of them, to sign the lines. I will send -Eelen out of the way. Come before it’s dark, as ye came to-day; I am -always alone at this hour. That’s enough, man, I hope. What are you -wanting more?” - -“I want only to say that you judge me very hastily, Mr. Blythe.” - -“It’s a case in which least said is soonest mended,” said the minister. -“To-morrow, just before the darkening, and, thank the Lord, there need -not be another word said between you and me!” - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -Ronald started back on his way to Dalrugas in the beginning of the -wintry night in a condition very different from that in which he came. -His head was dazed and swimming; something had happened to him; he had -taken a step such as he had never contemplated taking, a step which, did -Lily ever know or suspect it, would, he knew, open such a gulf between -them as nothing could ever bridge over. He was in a hundred minds to -turn back, to confess his sin before he had passed the last house in -the village. We do not call that a temptation when we are impelled to -do right, but it is the same thing, only the temptations to do right are -somehow less potent than those to do wrong. He was torn by a strong -impulse to go back and remedy what he had done: the temptation to commit -that fault had been momentary, but overwhelming; the temptation to go -back and confess was continuous, but evidently feeble, for he went -straight on through all its tuggings, and did not walk more slowly. But -yet it would have done him much good and probably no harm had he done -so: the minister would have forgiven a fault so soon repented of; he -would probably, in the natural feeling toward a penitent sinner, have -acceded to his wishes all the same. These thoughts went through Ronald’s -head without ever stopping his steady and quick walk into the dark. He -repented, if that had been enough, in sackcloth and ashes; he was so -deeply ashamed of what he had done that he felt his countenance flame in -the darkness where nobody could by any possibility see. But he did not -turn back. And presently by repetition the impulse weakened a little, -his brain cleared, and the world became steady once again. The thing was -done; it could not be undone. There was no possibility that Lily should -ever hear of it; nobody would ever know of it but old Blythe and -himself, and old Blythe would die. It would be a recollection which, in -the depth of the night, in moments of solitude, or when awakened by a -sudden touch of the past, would go on stinging him like a serpent all -the days of his life, but it would be otherwise innocuous. Lily would -never hear of it, that was the great thing; there was no chance that she -could ever hear. The old minister’s lips were sealed. It would be -contrary to every rule of honor if he were to betray what had been said -to him. Ronald said to himself that he must accept the stinging of that -recollection, which he would never get rid of all his life, as his -punishment; but no one else would suffer, Lily least of all. - -These feelings were hot and strong in his mind as he set out; but a walk -of four miles against a cold wind, and with the snow threatening to -come down every moment, is a very good thing for dispersing troublous -thoughts: they gradually blew away as he went on, and the bridegroom’s -state of triumph and rapture came back, dimly at first, and as if he -dared not indulge it, but gaining strength every moment, until, before -he reached Dalrugas, from the first moment when he saw his love’s light -in her window shining far over the moor, it came back in full force, -driving every thing else away. He saw, first, the little star of light -hanging midway between earth and sky, and then the shape of the window, -and then Lily’s figure or shadow coming from time to time to look out; -and no lover’s heart could have risen higher or beat more warmly. He -entirely forgot how he had wronged her in the glory of having her, of -knowing her to be there waiting for him, and that she would be his wife -to-morrow. She came to the top of the stairs to meet him, while he -rushed up three steps at a time, rubbing against the narrow spiral of -the stair with such passion and force of feeling as the best man in the -world could not have surpassed. One does not require, it is evident, to -be the best man in the world, or even a true man at all, to love truly -and fervently, and with all the force of one’s being. One might say that -it was selfishness on Ronald’s part to appropriate at any cost the girl -he loved; but the fact remained, a fact far deeper than any explanation, -that he did love her as deeply, as warmly, as sincerely as any man -could. Their meeting was a moment of joy to both, like a poem, like a -song; their hearts beat as high as if it had been a first meeting after -years of absence, and yet it would have been less complete had they been -parted for more than the two or three hours which was its real period. I -need not go any further into this record. It did not matter what they -said; words are of little account at such moments. It is only to note -that a man who had just told a disgraceful lie, and put upon his bride a -stigma of the most false and cruel kind, and whose mind was already -shaping thoughts which were destined to work her woe, was at the moment -when he met her with the news that their marriage was to take place -next day as much, as tenderly in love with her as heart could desire. -The problem is one which I have no power to explain. - -Next day being still one of the daft days, bright with the reflection of -the New Year, and the day of the weekly market in Kinloch-Rugas, Katrin -announced early her intention of going in to the toun in the course of -the day, an expedition which Beenie, with much modesty and reference to -Miss Lily, proposed to share. “I havena been in the toun, no to say in -the toun, ither than at the kirk, which is a different thing, since I -came to Dalrugas. I’ll maybe get ye a fairing, laddie, for the sake of -the New Year----” - -“If he gangs very canny with the powny, and tak’s care of a’ our -bundles,” Katrin said. - -“And me, I’m to be left my lane, to keep the hoose,” said Dougal, “like -Joan Tamson’s man.” - -“Weel,” said Katrin, “ye’re in there mony a day and me at hame; it would -be a funny thing if I couldna gang to the market once at the New Year.” - -“I’m saying nothing against you and your market. And here’s Miss Lily -away to her tea at the Manse, and maun have Rory no less to drive her in -the geeg with that lad from Edinburgh. I wish there was less of that lad -from Edinburgh; he’s nae ways agreeable to me.” - -“Losh, man! it’s no you he’s running after,” cried Katrin, “nor me -neither. But he’s a fine lad for all that.” - -“Fine or foul, I would like to see the back of him,” said Dougal; and -the women in their guilty consciences trembled. They had both been -brought to Ronald’s side. Both of them had a soft heart for true love, -and the fact of stealing a march upon Sir Robert was as pleasant to -Katrin as if she had been ten times his housekeeper. The house was full -of subdued excitement, hidden words exchanged between the women on the -stairs and in dark corners, as if they were conspirators or lovers. “Has -he any suspicion, do ye think?” Beenie whispered in Katrin’s ear. -“Him!” cried Katrin. “If it was put under his nose in black and white, -he would bring it to me to spell it out till him.” “Eh, but sometimes -these simple folks discern a thing when others that are wiser see -nothing.” “Wha said my man was simple? There’s no a simple bit about -him; but he knows I’m a woman to be trusted, and he’ll no gang a step -without Katrin!” It was not, perhaps, a moment when an anxious enquirer -could feel this trust justified. “Eh, Katrin,” cried Robina, “tell me -just what’s the worst that could happen to them if it was found out.” -“The worst is just that he would have to take his bride away, Beenie.” -“Eh! she would no be minding! That’s just what she wants most.” “And -lose her uncle’s siller,” Katrin added, with a deeper gravity of tone. -“That wouldna trouble her either,” said Beenie, shaking her head as over -a weakness of her mistress which she could not deny. “But I am feared, -feared,” said Katrin solemnly, with that repetition which makes an -utterance emphatic, “that it would be a sore trouble to him.” “Anyway, -it’s a’ settled now, and we’ll have to stick to them,” said Beenie -doubtfully. “Oh, I’ll stick to them as long as I can stand,” Katrin said -with vigor; and this was the last word. - -It was clear enough that something was going to take place at the tower -of Dalrugas on that Thursday; but this was sufficiently accounted for by -the fact that Katrin was going to the market, a thing that did not -happen above twice or thrice a year. There were a great many -arrangements to make, and the black powny had begun his toilet, and the -little cart had been scrubbed and brushed before the sun was well up in -the sky to receive the two substantial forms, which, on their side, were -arrayed in their best gowns before the early dinner to which they sat -down, each with her heart in her mouth in all the excitement of the ripe -conspiracy. Only an hour or two now, and the signal would be given, the -cord would be pulled, and the great scene would open upon them. “Will -you and me ever forget this day, Katrin?” Beenie gasped, unable to -control herself. Katrin gave her a push with her shoulder, and took her -own place soberly at the board to dispense the dinner as usual. “There’s -an awfu’ fine piece of beef in the pot,” she said, “ower good for the -like of us; but it’ll mind ye, Dougal, of the day ye keepit the house, -and I gaed to the toun.” - -“It’s no the first day I’ve keepit the house, and you been the one to -gang to the toun.” - -“No, maybe, ye’ve done it four times since you and me were marriet. If -ye ever got better broth than thae broth, it’s no me that made them. -They’re that well boiled they just melt in your mouth with goodness, -with a piece of meat in them fit for the laird’s table. Have ye taken up -some of my broth, Beenie, to the young lady and her friend up the -stair?” - -“You’re no taking much of them yourself,” said Dougal, “nor Beenie -either. Bless the women, your heads are just turned with the grand ploy -o’ going to the market. Me, I gang to the market and say naething about -it, nor ever lose a bite of a bannock on that account. But you’re queer -creatures, no to be faddomed by man. Are ye going to spend a lot o’ -siller that ye’re in siccan a state? Beenie, now, she’ll be wanting a -new gown.” - -“If ye think that I, that am used to a’ the grand shops in Edinburgh, -would buy a gown at Kinloch-Rugas----” - -“Oh, when ye can get nae better, it’s aye grand to tak’ what ye can -get,” said Dougal. “As for Katrin, I canna tell what’s come over her. -Her hand’s shaking----” - -“My hand’s no shakin’!” cried Katrin vehemently. “I’m just as steady as -any person. But I’ve been awfu’ busy this mornin’ putting every thing in -order, and I’ve very little appetite. I’m no a great eater at any time.” - -“Nor me,” said Beenie, “and I’m tired too. I’ve just been turning over -and over Miss Lily’s things.” - -“Ye had very little to do,” said Katrin, resenting the adoption of her -own argument. “Miss Lily’s things could easy wait. Sup up your broth, -and dinna keep us all waiting. Sandy, here’s a grand slice for you. It’s -seldom you’ve tasted the like of that. And as soon as you’re done, -laddie, hurry and put in the pony, for we must have a good sight o’ the -market, Beenie and me, before it gets dark.” - -Dougal came out to the door to see them off, with his bonnet hanging -upon the side of his head by a hair. He felt the presence of something -in the atmosphere for which he could not account. What was it? It was -some “ploy” among the women, probably not worth a man’s trouble to -enquire into. And, as soon as they were off, he had Rory to put in, and -await the pleasure of “thae twa” upstairs. He could not refuse Lily any -thing, nor, indeed, had he any right to refuse to Sir Robert’s niece the -use of Rory, on whom she had already ridden about so often. But the lad -from Edinburgh was a trial to Dougal. He had an uneasy feeling that it -would not please his master to hear of this visitor, and that a strange -man about the house was not to be desired. “If it had but been a -lassie,” he said, in that case he would have been glad that Miss Lily -had some company to amuse her; but a gentleman, and a gentleman too that -was a stranger, not even of the same county--a lawyer lad from the -Parliament House. He did not willingly trust a long-leggit loon like -that to drive Rory. He was mair fit to carry Rory than Rory to carry -him. So that Dougal’s countenance was entirely overcast. - -There had been some snow in the morning, a sprinkling just enough to -cover the ground more softly and deeply than the hoar frost, but that -was but preliminary--there was a great deal more to come. Dougal stood -when the pony was ready, pushing his cap from side to side and staring -at the sky. “Ye’ll do weel to bide but very short time, Miss Lily,” he -said; “the tea at the Manse is, maybe, very good, but the snow will be -coming down in handfu’s before you get hame.” - -“We shall not stay long, Dougal, I promise you,” Lily said. There was a -tremble in her voice as there had been in Katrin’s and in Robina’s. “The -women are all clean gyte!” Dougal said to himself. He watched them go -away, criticising bitterly the pose of Ronald as he drove. “A man with -thae long legs has no mortal need for a pony,” he said; “they’re just a -yard longer than they ought to be. I’m about the figure of a man, or -just a thought too tall, for driving a sensitive beast like our Rory. -Puir beast, but he has come to base uses,” said Dougal. I don’t know -where he had picked up this phrase, but he was pleased with it, and -repeated it, chuckling to himself. - -That evening, just before the darkening, when once more the sunset sky -was flushed with all kinds of color, and shone in graduated tints of -rose pink darkening to crimson, and blue melting into green, through the -Manse window, one homely figure after another stole into the Manse -parlor. Katrin had brought the minister a dozen of her own fresh eggs, -and what could he do less than call her in and say, “How is a’ with ye?” -at New Year’s time, when everybody had a word of good wishes to say? -“And this is Robina,” he added, with a touch of reserve and severity in -his tone. Beenie could not understand how to her, always so regular at -the kirk and known for a weel-living woman, the minister should be -severe; but it was easy to understand that on such an occasion he had a -great deal on his mind. There was a chair at either end of the great -sofa that stood against the wall; for in these days furniture was -arranged symmetrically, and it was not permitted that any thing should -be without its proper balance. The two women placed themselves there -modestly one at each end; the great arms of the sofa half hid them in -the slowly growing twilight. Katrin, who was nearest the door, was -blotted out altogether. Beenie, who was at the end nearest the window, -showed like a shadow against the light. - -And then there was a pause; it was a very solemn pause indeed, like the -silence in church. The minister sat in his big chair in the darkest part -of the room, with the red glow of a low fire just marking that there was -something there, but not a word, not a movement, disturbing the dark. -The room after a while seemed to turn round to the two watchers, it was -so motionless. When Mr. Blythe drew a long breath, a sort of suppressed -scream came from both of them. Was it rather a death than a marriage -they had come to witness? They had never seen any living thing so still, -and the awe of the old man’s presence was overwhelming enough in itself. - -“What’s the matter with you,” he said almost roughly. “Can I not draw my -breath in my own house?” - -“Oh, sir, I beg your pardon,” cried Katrin, thankful to recover her -voice. “It was just so awfu’ quiet, and we’re no used to that. In our -bit houses there’s nobody but says whatever comes into his head, and -we’re awfu’ steering folk up at Dalrugas Tower.” - -“Just in the way o’ kindness, and giving back an answer when you’re -spoken to,” said Beenie deferentially, in her soft, half-apologetic -voice. It was a great comfort to them in the circumstance, which was -very unusual and full of responsibility, to hear themselves speak. - -“Ye must just try and possess your souls in patience till ye get back -again,” the minister said out of his dark corner. It was just a grand -lesson, both thought, and the kind of thing that the minister ought to -say. And the silence fell again with a slow diminution of the light, and -gradual fading of the yellow sky. To sit there without moving, without -breathing, with always the consciousness of the minister unseen, fixing -a penetrating look upon them, which probably showed him, so clever a -man, the very recesses of their hearts, became moment by moment more -than Katrin or Robina could bear. - -“The young fools; I’ll throw it all up if they dinna put in an -appearance before that clock strikes!” cried Mr. Blythe at last. “Look -out of the window, one of you women, and see if ye can see them.” - -“There’s nothing, minister, nothing, but a wheen country carts going -from the market,” said Beenie in the rôle of Sister Anne. - -“The idiots!” said Mr. Blythe again with that force of language peculiar -to his country. “Not for their ain purposes, and them all but unlawful, -can they keep their time.” - -“Oh, sir, ye mustna be hard upon them at siccan a moment!” cried Katrin, -rocking herself to and fro in anxiety. - -“Eh, but I see the powny!” cried Beenie from the window; “there’s a wee -laddie holding Rory. And will I run and open the door no to disturb -Marget in the kitchen?” she said, not waiting for an answer. The spell -of the quiet had so gained upon Robina, and the still rising tide of -excitement, that she swept almost noiselessly into the narrow hall, and -opened the door mysteriously to the two other shadows who stole in, as -it seemed, out of the yellow light that filled up the doorway behind -into a darkness which, turning from that wistful illumination, seemed -complete. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -It was all like a dream, a scene without light or sound, shadows moving -in the faint twilight, at first not a word said. Beenie remained at the -door, holding the handle to guard the entrance. Katrin had risen up too, -and stood against the wall, trembling very much, but not betraying it in -this faint light. These two were in the light side of the room, the half -made visible by the window with its fading sunset glimmer. The other two -passed into the darker side and were all but lost to sight. A sudden -flicker of the fire caught the color of Lily’s dress and revealed her -outline for the moment. She had taken off her hat, not knowing why, and -the soft beaver with its feather was hanging down by her side in her -hand. Katrin made a step forward and relieved her of it, trembling lest -some dreadful voice should come to her ears out of the darkness, though -not seeing the minister’s eyes, which shot upon her a fiery glance. Then -he broke that strange haunted silence, in which so many thoughts and -passions were hidden, by his voice suddenly rising harsh, sounding as if -it were loud: it was not at all loud, it was, indeed, a soft voice on -ordinary occasions, only in the circumstances and in the intense quiet -it had a strange tone. To Ronald it sounded menacing, to Lily only half -alarming, as she knew no reason why it should be less kind than usual; -the women were so awe-stricken already that to them it was as the voice -of fate. The brief little ceremony was as simple as could be conceived. -The troth was not given, as in other rites, by the individuals -themselves, but simply said by the old minister’s deepening voice, which -he was at pains to subdue after the shock of the first words, and -assented to by the bride and bridegroom, Lily, to the half horror of the -two women, who gripped each other wildly in their excitement at the -sound, giving an audible murmur of assent, while Ronald bowed, which was -the usual form. “Yon’ll be the English way,” Katrin whispered to Beenie. -“Oh, whisht, whisht!” said the other. And then in the darkness there -ensued a few rolling words of prayer, the long vowels solemnly drawn -out, the long words following each other slowly and with a certain -grandeur of diction in their absolute simplicity, and the formula common -to all: “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” And then -there was a little stir in the darkness and all was over. - -“But there’s just this to say to you, young man,” came out of the gloom -from the old voice, quavering a little with feeling or fatigue: -“Forasmuch as ye have been wanting before, so much the more are ye -pledged now to be all a man ought to be to this young creature that has -trusted herself to you. If ever I hear an ill word of your conduct or -your care, and me living, you will have one to answer to that will have -it in his power to do you an ill turn, and will not refrain. Mind you -this: if I am in the land of the living, and know of any hairm to this -poor lassie, _I will not refrain_; and ye know what I mean, and that I -am one that will do what I say.” - -“If you think I require to be frightened into loving and cherishing my -bonnie wife----” said Ronald, confused and alarmed, but attempting to -take a high tone. - -“Oh, Mr. Blythe!” cried Lily, “how little you know!” She could speak in -the dark, where no one could see, though the light would have reduced -her to silence and blushes. She put her hand with a pretty gesture -within Ronald’s arm. - -“I, maybe, know more than I’m thought to do,” he said gruffly; “light -that candle that you’ll find on the mantel-piece, and let us get our -work done.” The candle brought suddenly to light the confused scene, all -the party standing except the figure of the minister, large and -shapeless in his big chair. And there was a moment of commotion, while -one by one they signed the necessary papers, the young pair quickly, the -women with a grotesqueness of awe and difficulty which might have -transferred the whole scene at once to the regions of the burlesque. -Both to Katrin and Robina it was a very solemn business, slowly -accomplished with much contortion both of countenance and figure. -“Women, can ye not despatch?” Mr. Blythe said sternly. “My daughter may -be here any minute, the time of my supposed rest is over, and this -sederunt should be over too. Marget will be in from the kitchen with the -lamp.” - -“Oh, Beenie, be quick, quick!” murmured Lily. She had feared to be -entreated with the constant hospitality of the Manse to wait until Helen -came, and to take tea. It gave her a curious wound to feel that this was -not likely to be the case, even though she was most anxious to escape. -She was indeed a little frightened for Marget and the lamp, and for -Helen and the tea; but it hurt her that the minister who had just made -her Ronald’s wife should have any hesitation. Feelings are not generally -so fine in rural places. A bride is one to be eagerly embraced, not kept -out of sight. Though, indeed, she did not want to see Helen or any one, -she said almost indignantly to herself. - -“And now there are your lines, Mistress Lumsden,” the minister said. -“Keep them safe and never let them out of your own hands, and I wish ye -all that is good. If it’s been a hasty step or an unconsidered, it’s you -that will probably have to bear the wyte of it. I will not deceive you -with smooth things; but if there has been error at the beginning----” - -“Excuse me,” said Ronald in a low fierce voice, “but there is snow in -the sky, and it’s already dark, and I must take my wife away.” - -“Don’t you interrupt me,” said the old minister, “or I will, maybe, say -more than I meant to say. If there’s been error at the beginning, my -poor lassie, take you care to be all the more heedful in time to come. -Do nothing ye cannot acknowledge in the face of day. And God bless you -and keep you and lift up the light of his countenance upon you,” he -said, lifting up his arms. The familiar action, the familiar words, -subdued all the group in a moment. He had not meant with these words to -bless the bride that had been brought before him as poor Lily had been, -but it had been drawn from him phrase by phrase. - -And then the door opened, and Lily found herself once more outside in -the keen air touched with the foretaste of snow which is so distinct in -the North. The sky was heavy with it for half the circle from north to -south, but in the west was something of that golden radiance still, and -a clear blueness above, and one or two stars sparkling through the -frost. She lifted her eyes to these with relief, with a feeling of -consolation. Was that the light of His countenance that was to shine -upon her? But below all things were dark and dreary. To the hurry of -excitement which had possessed her before something vexing, troublous, -had come in. She had wished, and was eager to hurry away, to escape -Helen, but why had she been hurried away, made to perceive that she was -not intended to see Helen? It was more fantastic than could be put into -words. And Ronald too was in so great a hurry, eager to get her beyond -the observation of the people coming from the market, almost to hide -her in a sheltered corner, while he himself went to get the pony. -“Nobody will see you here,” he said. She wished that nobody should see -her, but yet an uncalled-for tear came to Lily’s eyes as she stood and -waited. It looked almost as if it was a path into heaven, the narrow way -which was spoken of in the Bible, that strip of golden light with the -stars shining above. But it was not to heaven she wanted to go in the -joy of her espousals, on her wedding day. She wanted the life that was -before her--the human, the natural, the life that other women had; to be -taken to the home her husband had made for her, to be free of the bonds -of her girlhood and the loneliness of her previous days. But Lily did -not know, not even a step of the path before her. It rushed upon her now -that he had never said a word, never one definite word. She did not know -what was going to happen to-morrow. To-night it was too late, certainly -too late, to go further than Dalrugas, but to-morrow! She remembered now -suddenly, clearly, that to all her questions and imaginings what they -were to do he had never made one distinct reply. He had allowed her to -talk and to imagine what was going to be, but he had said not a word. -There seemed nothing, nothing clear in all the world but that one golden -path leading up into the sky. “Lift up the light of His countenance upon -you.” That did not mean, Lily thought, half pagan as the youthful -thinker so often is, the blessing that is life and joy, but rather that -which is consolation and calm. And it was not consolation or calm she -wanted, but happiness and delight. She wanted to be able to go out upon -the world with her arm in her husband’s and her head high, and to shape -her new life as other young women did--a separate thing, a new thing, -individual to themselves, not any repetition or going back. Standing -there in the dark corner, hidden till he could find the pony and take -her up secretly out of sight, hurrying away not to be seen by any -one--Lily’s heart revolted at these precautions, even though it had been -to a certain extent her own desire they should be taken. But, oh! it -was so different, her own desire! that was only the bridal instinct to -hide its shy happiness, its tremor of novelty and wonder. It was not -concealment she had wanted, but withdrawal from the gaze of the crowd; -but it was concealment that was in Ronald’s thought, a thing always -shameful, not modest, not maidenly, but an expedient of guilt. - -Perhaps Ronald was just a little too long getting the pony; but he was -not very long. He had her safely in the little geeg, with all her wraps -carefully round her, before fifteen minutes had passed; but fifteen -minutes in some circumstances are more than as many hours in others. -Lily was very silent at first, and he had hard ado to rouse her from the -reflections that had seized upon her. “What are we going to do?” she -said out of the heaviness of these reflections, when all that found its -way to his lips was the babble of love at its climax. Was it that she -loved him less than he loved her? He whispered this in her ear, with one -arm holding her close, while Rory made his way vigorously along the -road, scenting his stable, and also the snow that was coming. Lily made -no answer to the suggestion. Certainly that murmur of love did not seem -to satisfy her. She was overcome by it now and then, and sat silent, -feeling the pressure of his arm, and the consciousness that there was -nobody but him and herself in the world, with the seductive bewilderment -of emotion shared and intensified, yet from time to time awoke sharply -to feel the force over again of that question: “What are we going to -do?” Oh, why had she not insisted on an answer to it before? The night -grew darker, the snow began to fall in large flakes. They were more and -more isolated from the world which was invisible round them, nothing but -Rory tossing his shaggy ears and snorting at the snow that melted into -his nostrils. By the time they reached the Tower, discovering vaguely, -all at once, the glimmer of the lights and the voice of Dougal calling -to the pony to moderate the impatience of his delight at sight of his -own stable, they were so covered with snow that it was difficult for -Lily to shake herself clear of it as she stumbled down at the great -door. “Bide a moment, bide a moment; just take the plaid off her bodily. -It’s mair snaw than plaiden!” cried Dougal. “Ye little deevil, stand -still, will ye? Ye’ll get neither bite nor sup till your time comes. -Have ye no seen the ithers on the road? Silly taupies to bide so long, -and maybe be stormsted in the end!” - -“They’re on the road, Dougal,” cried Lily, with humility, remembering -that she had never once thought of Katrin and Beenie. “I am sure they’re -on the road.” - -“They had better be that,” he said angrily. “What keepit them, I’m -asking? Sir, if ye’ll be advised by me, ye’ll just bid good-by to the -young leddy and make your way to Tam’s as fast as ye can, for every -half-hour will make it waur. It’s on for a night and a day, or I have -nae knowledge of the weather.” - -“Half-an-hour can’t make much difference, Dougal,” said Ronald, with a -laugh. - -“Oh, can it no? It’s easy to see ye ken little of our moor. And the e’en -will be as black as midnicht, and the snaw bewildering, so that ye’ll -just turn round and round about, and likely lie down in a whin bush, and -never wake more.” - -A half shriek came from Lily in the doorway, while Ronald’s laugh rang -out into the night. “It will be no worse in half-an-hour,” he said. - -“Ay, will it! There’s a wee bit light in the west the noo, but there -will be nane then. Heigh! is’t you? Weel, that’s aye something,” Dougal -said, as the other little vehicle, with its weight of snow-covered -figures, came suddenly into the light; and in the bustle of the second -arrival, which was much more complicated than the first, nothing more -was said. Katrin and Beenie had shaken off the awe of their conspiracy. -They were full of spirits and laughter, and their little cart crowded -with parcels of every kind. They had found time to buy half the market, -as Dougal said, and they occupied him so completely with their talk, -and the bustle of getting them and their cargo safely deposited indoors, -that the young couple stole upstairs unnoticed. “Tam may whistle for me -to-night,” Ronald said, “and Dougal growl till he’s tired, and the snow -fall as much as it pleases. I’m safe of my shelter, Lily. A friend in -court is worth many a year’s fee.” - -“Who is your friend in court?” she said, shivering a little. The cold -and the agitation had been a little too much for Lily. Her teeth -chattered, the light swam in her eyes. - -It was Katrin who was the Providence of the young people. She it was who -ordained peremptorily, not letting Dougal say a word, that to send Mr. -Lumsden off to Tam’s cottage on such a night was such a thing as had -never been heard of. - -“I wouldna turn out a dog,” she cried, “to find its way, poor beast, -across the moor.” - -“I warned the lad,” said Dougal; “I tell’d him every half-hour would -make it waur. It is his ain fault if he is late. What have you and me to -do harboring a’ the young callants in the country, or out of it, that -may come here after Miss Lily? You’ve just got some nonsense about true -love in your head.” - -“Am I the person,” said Katrin, “to have true love cast in my face, me -that have been married upon you, Dougal, these thirty year? Na, na! I’m -no that kind of woman; but I have peety in my heart, and there’s a dozen -empty rooms in this house. I think it’s just a shame when I think of the -poor bodies that are about, maybe sleepin’ out on the cauld moor. I’ll -not take the life of this young lad, turning him away, and neither shall -you, my man, if you want to have any comfort in your ain life.” - -“I warned him,” said Dougal; “if he didna take my warning, it’s his ain -wyte.” - -“It shanna be mine nor yours either,” said Katrin, and, indeed, even -Dougal, when he looked out, perceived that there was nothing to be said. -The snow had fallen so continuously since their arrival that already -every trace, either of wheels or hoofs, was filled up. The whiteness lay -unbroken in the court-yard and up to the very door, as if no one had -come near the house for days. Sandy was in the stable with his lantern, -hissing over the little black pony as he rubbed him down; but even -Sandy’s steps to the stable were wiped out by the snow-storm. It covered -every thing, fair things and foul, and, above all, every trace of a path -or road. - -“I’m no easy in my mind about what Sir Robert would say,” he muttered, -pushing his cap to his other ear. - -“And what would Sir Robert say? If it had been a lad on the tramp, a -gangrel person or selling prins about the road, he would never have -grudged him a bed, or at the worst a pickle straw in the stable, on such -a night. And this is a young gentleman of the family of the Lumsdens of -Pontalloch, kent folk, and as much thought of as any person. Is’t a -pickle straw the laird would have offered to a gentleman’s son like -that? He’s just biding here till the storm’s over, if it was a week or a -fortnicht, and I’ll answer for it to the laird!” Katrin cried. - -Dougal looked at her in consternation. “A week or a fortnight! It’s no -decent for the young leddy,” he said. - -“It’s just a grand chance for the young lady--company to pass the time -till her, and her all her lane. If he will bide--but maybe he will not -bide,” said Katrin, with a sigh. Katrin, too, was a little anxious, as -Lily was, for what to-morrow would bring forth. She had but taken the -bull by the horns, in Dougal’s person, saying the worst that could be -said. “But it’s my hope, Beenie,” she said afterward, with an anxious -countenance, “that he’ll just take his bonnie wife away to his ain house -as soon as the snaw’s awa’.” - -“Oh, ay! ye needna have any doubt of that,” said Beenie, with a broad -smile of content. - -“Then you’ll just take off your grand gown and serve them with their -dinner. I have naething but the birds to put to the fire, and that will -take little time; and if they never had a good dinner before nor after, -they shall have one that any prince might eat, between you and me, -Robina, poor things, on their wedding night.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -The snow-storm lasted for about a week, day after day, with an -occasional interval, with winds that drifted it, and dreadful nights of -frost that made it shrink, but covered it over with sparkling crystals, -and with occasional movements of a more genial temperature, that touched -the surface only to make it freeze again more fiercely when that -relenting was over. The whole landscape was turned to whiteness, and the -moor, with all its irregular lines, rounded as if a heavy white blanket -had been laid over the hummocks of the ling and the hollows and deep -cuttings. The hills were white, too, but showing great seams and -crevasses of darkness, from which all the magical color had been taken -by the absence of light. Black and white was what every thing was -reduced to, like the winter Alps, with a gray sky overhead still heavy -with inexhaustible snow. This snow-storm was “a special providence” to -the inhabitants of Dalrugas--at least to most of them. Dougal grumbled, -and suggested various ways in which it might be possible for the lad -from Edinburgh to get away. He might walk two miles north, to a village -on the main road, where the coach was bound to pass every lawful day, -whether it snowed or whether it blew; or he might get the geeg from the -inn at Kinloch-Rugas to carry him south, and strike the route of another -coach also bound to travel on every lawful day. But Dougal talked to the -air, and nobody gave him heed: not to say that the gentleman from -Edinburgh found means to conciliate him by degrees, and that, at last, a -crack with Mr. Lumsden became a great relief to Dougal from the -unmitigated chatter of the womankind by which he was surrounded night -and day. - -This week of snow flew as if on wings. They were shut off from all -intrusion, and even from every invading question, by the impossibility -of overstepping that barrier which nature had placed around them; they -lived as in a dream, which circumstances had thus made possible without -any strain of nature. Nobody could turn a stranger out into the snow, -not Sir Robert himself. Had he been there, however little he liked his -visitor, he would have been compelled to keep him in his house, and -treat him like a favored guest. Not even an enemy’s dog could have been -turned out into the snow. It made every thing legitimate, every thing -simple and natural. I don’t know that Lily required this thought to -support her, for, indeed, she was not at that time aware that any secret -was made of the marriage, that it was concealed from any one in the -house, even Dougal, or that Helen Blythe at the Manse, for instance, had -not been made aware of it by that time. She had never clearly entered -into the question why Helen Blythe had not been present, why the -ceremony had been performed in the darkening, and so much mystery had -surrounded it, except by the natural reason that no observation which -could be avoided should be drawn upon the bride, and that, indeed, all -possibility of vulgar remark should be guarded against. The question, -what was to be done next? had filled Lily’s mind on that day; but the -snow had silenced it and covered it over like the ling bushes and the -burn, which no longer made its usual trill of running remark, but was -also hushed and bound by the new conditions which modified all the life -of this portion of the earth. The moor and all its surroundings hung -between heaven and earth in a great silence during this period. The gray -sky hung low, so that it seemed as if an unwary wayfarer, if he went far -enough against that heavy horizon, might strike against it, blinded as -he must have been by the whirling flakes that danced and fluttered down, -sometimes quickening in pace like the variations of a swift strathspey, -sometimes falling large and deliberate like those dilated flakes of fire -that fell on the burning sands in the Inferno. There were no images, -however different in sentiment, that might not have been applied to that -constant falling. It was snow, always snow, and yet there was in it all -the variety of poetry when you looked at it, so to speak, from within, -looking through it upon an empty world in which no other life or variety -seemed to be left. - -Sometimes, however, the pair sallied forth, notwithstanding the snow, to -breathe the crisp and frosty air, and to feel with delight the great -atmosphere and outdoor world around them instead of four walls. Lily -wore a great camlet cloak, rough, but a protection against both wet and -chill, with a large silver clasp under her chin, and her head and -shoulders warmly hooded and wrapped in her plaid of the Ramsay color, -which she wore as fair Ramsays did in Allan Ramsay’s verse. Lily’s eyes -sparkled under the tartan screen, and not to risk the chilling of a hand -which it would have been necessary to put forth to clasp his arm, Ronald -in his big coat walked with his arm round her, to steady her on the -snow; for every path was obliterated, and they never knew when they -might not stumble over a stifled burn or among the heathery hillocks of -the moor. These walks were not long, but they were delightful in the -stillness and loneliness, the white flakes clothing them all over in -another coat, lighting upon Lily’s hair and Ronald’s beard, getting into -their eyes, half blinding them with the sudden moisture, and the -laughter that followed. I will not attempt to give any account of the -talk with which they beguiled both these devious rambles and the long -companionship indoors in the warm room from which they looked out with -so much comfort on the white and solitary world. It harmonized and made -every thing legitimate, that lucky snow. One could not ask: “What shall -we do to-morrow?” in the sight of the absolute impossibility of doing -any thing. It was not the bridegroom but Nature herself who had arranged -this honeymoon. If it would but last! But then it was in the nature of -things that it could not last. - -The frost began to break up a little on the eighth day, or rather it was -not the frost that broke up, but the sky that cleared. In the evening -instead of the heavy gray there came a break which the sky looked -through, and in it a star or two, which somehow changed altogether the -aspect of affairs. That evening, as she stood looking out at the break -so welcome to every-body, but which she was not so sure of welcoming as -other people were, Lily felt the question again stir, like a bird in its -nest, in the hushed happiness of her heart. In the morning, when she -looked out upon a world that had again become light, with blue overhead, -and a faint promise of sun, and no snow falling, it came back more -strongly, this time like a secret ache. The women and Dougal and Sandy -and even the ponies were full of delight in the end of the storm. “What -a bonnie morning!” they shouted to each other, waking Lily from her -sleep. A bonnie morning! There was color again on the hills and color in -the sky. The distance was no longer shut out, as by a door, by the heavy -firmament: it was remote, it was full of air, it led away into the -world, into worlds unseen. As Lily gazed a golden ray came out of it and -struck along the snow in a fine line. Oh, it was bonnie! as they called -to each other in the yard, as Rory snorted in his stable, and all the -chickens cackled, gathering about Katrin’s feet. The snow was over! The -storm was over! In a little while the whiteness would disappear and the -moor would be green again. “What are we going to do?” All nature seemed -to ask the question. - -“I wish,” said Ronald, “those fowls would cease their rejoicings about -the end of the snow. I wish the snow could have lasted another -fortnight, Lily; though perhaps I should not say that, for I could not -have taken advantage of it. I should need to have invented some means of -getting away.” - -“Because you were tired of it, Ronald?” she said, with a smile; but the -smile was not so bright as it had been. It was not Lily’s snow-smile, -all light and radiance; it was one into which the question had come, a -little wistful, a little anxious. Ronald saw, and his heart grieved at -the change. - -“That’s the likely reason!” he said, with a laugh; “but, oh, Lily, my -bonnie love, here is the Parliament House all astir again, the judges -sitting, and all the work begun.” - -“Well,” she said, that smile of hers shooting out a pure beam of fire -upon him, “I am ready, Ronald, I am ready, too.” - -“Ready to speed the parting husband, and to wish me good luck?” he said -with a faint quiver in his voice. He was not a coward by nature, but -Ronald this time was afraid. He had not forgotten the question: “What -are we going to do?” which had been expressed in every line of Lily’s -face, in every tone of her voice, before the evening of the marriage. He -knew it had come again, but he did not know how he was to meet it. He -plunged into the inevitable conflict with his heart in his mouth. - -“To speed the parting---- Are you going, Ronald, are you thinking of -going, without me?” - -“My dearest,” he said, spreading out his hands in deprecation, “it’s -like rending me asunder; it is like tearing my heart out of my bosom.” - -“I am not asking you what it is like!” cried Lily. “What I am asking is -your meaning. Were you thinking of going without me?” - -“Lily, Lily!” he said, “don’t be so dreadfully hard upon me! What am I -to do? I know nothing else that I can do.” - -“Oh, if it’s only that,” she said, “I can tell you, and very easy, what -to do. You will just take me down to Kinloch-Rugas, or to that other -place where the coach stops, and wrap me well in my camlet cloak and in -my tartan plaid, and I’ll not feel the cold, not so much as you will, -for women’s blood is warm, and when we get to Edinburgh we will take -the topmost story of a house, and make it as warm as a nest, and get the -first sunshine and the bonnie view away to Fife and the north. And -Beenie will follow us with my things and her own; but we’ll just be all -alone for the first day or two, and I will make you your dinner with my -own hands,” said Lily, holding up those useful implements with a look of -triumph, which was, alas! too bright, which was like the sun when a -storm is coming: brilliant with alarm and a sense of something very -different to come. - -“They don’t look very fit for it, those bits of white hands,” he said, -eager, if possible, by any means to divert her from the more important -question, and he took her hands in his and kissed them; but Lily was not -to be diverted in this way. - -“You may think what you like of how they look, but they are just a very -useful pair of hands, and can cook you a Scots collop or a chicken or -fish in sauce as well as any person. I know what I have undertaken, and -if you think I will break down, you are mistaken, Ronald Lumsden, in -me.” - -“I am not mistaken in you, Lily. I know there is nothing you could not -do if you were to try; but am I to be the one to make a drudge of my -Lily--I that would like her to eat of the fat and drink of the sweet, as -the ministers say, and have no trouble all her days?” - -“It depends upon what you call trouble,” said Lily, still holding up her -flag. “Trouble I suppose we shall have, sooner or later, or we’ll be -more than mortal; but to serve you your dinner is what I would like to -do. You’ll go out to the Parliament House and work to get the siller, -for it must be allowed that between us we have not much of the siller, -and you cannot buy either collops or chuckies without it, nor scarcely -even a haddie or a herring out of the sea. But that’s the man’s share. -And then I will buy it and clean it, and put it on in the pot, and you -will eat of your wife’s cooking and your heart will be glad. Do you -think I want to go back to George Square, or a fine house in one of the -new Crescents, and sit with my hands before me? Not me, not me!” - -“My bonnie Lily,” he cried, “it’s a bonnie dream, and like yourself, and -if you only cooked a crust, it would be better than all the grand French -kickshaws in the world or the English puddings to me.” - -“You need not be so humble, sir,” said Lily; “I will cook no crust. It -will be savory meat, such as thy soul loveth; though I’ll not cheat you -as that designing woman Rebekah did.” - -“My bonnie Lily, you’ll always do more for me, and better for me, than I -deserve,” he cried. “Is that the postman for the first time coming up -the road from the town?” - -They went to the window to look out at this remarkable phenomenon, and -there he kept her, pointing out already the break of the snow upon the -side of the moor, revealing the little current of the burn, and -something of the edge of the road, along which, wonderful sight! that -solitary figure was making its way. “But it will not be passable, I -think, till to-morrow for any wheeled thing, so we will make ourselves -happy for another day,” Ronald said; and this was all the answer he gave -her. He was very full of caresses, of fond speeches, and lover’s talk -all day. He scarcely left an opening for any thing more serious. If Lily -began again with her question, he always found some way of stopping her -mouth. Perhaps she was not unwilling, in a natural shrinking from -conflict, to have her mouth stopped. But there rose between them an -uneasy sense of something to be explained, something to be unravelled, a -desire on one side which was to encounter on the other resistance not to -be overcome. - -Ronald went out to Dougal after dinner and stood by him while he -suppered the pony. “I think the roads will be clear to-morrow, Dougal,” -he said. - -“I wouldna wonder,” said Dougal. His opinion was that the lad from -Edinburgh would just sorn on there forever eating Sir Robert’s good meat -and would never more go away. - -“Which do you think would be best? to lend me Rory and the little cart -to take me in to Kinloch-Rugas, or to send for the geeg from the inn to -catch the coach on the South Road at Inverlochers?” - -“I could scarcely gie an opinion,” said Dougal. “A stoot gentleman o’ -your age might maybe just as easy walk.” - -When Dougal said “a stoot gentleman” he did not mean to imply that -Ronald was corpulent, but that he was a strong fellow and wanted no pony -to take him four miles. - -“That’s true enough,” said Ronald; “but there’s my portmanteau, which is -rather heavy to carry.” - -“As grand as you----” Dougal began, but then he stopped and reflected -that he was, so to speak, on his own doorstep (in the absence of Sir -Robert), and that it was a betrayal of all the traditions of hospitality -to be rude to a guest, especially to one who was about to take himself -away. “Weel,” he added quickly, with a push to his bonnet, “I canna -spare you Rory--the young leddy might be wanting a ride; but Sandy and -the black powny will take in the bit box if ye’re sure that you’ve made -up your mind--at last.” - -“I dare say you thought I was never going to do that,” Ronald said, with -a laugh. - -And then Dougal melted too. “Oh,” he said, “I just thought you knew when -you were in good quarters,” in a more friendly voice. - -“And did not you think I was a sensible fellow,” said the amiable guest, -“to lie warm and feed well instead of fighting two or three days, or -maybe more, through the snow? But now the courts are opened, and the -judges sitting, and every-body waiting for me. I would much rather bide -where I am, but I must go.” - -“If it’s for your ain interest,” said Dougal; “and I wudna wonder but -ye’re a wee tired of seeing naebody and doing naething, no even a gun on -your shoulder. I’ll bid the laddie be ready, I’ll say, at sax of the -clock.” - -“Six o’clock!” said Ronald in dismay; “the coach does not leave till -ten.” - -“Weel, I’ll say aicht if you like. You should be down in good time. -Whiles there are a heap of passengers, and mair especial after a storm -like this, that has shut up a’ the roads.” - -“I shall be very much obliged to you, Dougal. I have been obliged to you -all the time. I will explain the circumstances to Sir Robert if he is in -Edinburgh in the spring, and I will tell him that Katrin and you have -been more than kind.” - -“’Deed, and if I were you,” said Dougal, “I would just keep a calm sough -and say naething to Sir Robert. He might wonder how ye got here; he -would maybe no think that our young leddy---- I’m wanting no certificate -frae any strange gentleman,” said Dougal, “and least said is soonest -mended. There are folk that canna bide to hear their ain house spoke of -by a stranger, nor friends collecting about it that might maybe no just -be approved. No, no, haud you your tongue and keep your ain counsel; and -so far as things have gaen, you’ll hear nae more about it frae Katrin or -me.” - -Ronald was confounded by this speech. “So far as things have gaen.” Had -this rough fellow any idea how far they had gone? Had his wife told him -what happened in the Manse parlor? Had his suspicions penetrated the -whole story? But Dougal turned back to the pony with a preference so -unaffected, and whistled “Charlie is my darling” with so distinct an -intention of dismissing his interlocutor, that Ronald could not imagine -him to see in the least into the millstone of this involved affair. -Dougal was much more occupied with his own affairs than either those of -Lily or those so very little known to him of the strange gentleman who -had kept Lily company during the daft days, the saturnalia of the year. -He proceeded with his work, pausing sometimes to swing his arms and -smite his breast for cold, clanking out and in through the warm -atmosphere of the stable to the wildly cold and sharp air outside, -absorbed more than was at all necessary in the meal and the toilet of -Rory, and taking no further heed of the guest. - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - - -“At last,” said Ronald, coming upstairs with his light-springing foot -three steps at a time, “at last, Lily, I have settled with Dougal, and I -am starting to-morrow morning: at eight, he says, but nine will do. And -this for a little while, my darling, will be my last night in the nest.” - -The room had undergone a wonderful change since it had first been Lily’s -bower. It had changed much while she was there alone, but the change was -much greater within the last week than all that had happened before. It -had become a home: there were two chairs by the fire, there was an -indefinable consciousness in every thing of two minds, two people, the -union and conjunction which make society. It was all warm, social, -breathing of life, no suggestion in it of loneliness or longing, or -unsatisfied thought, or the solitude which breathes a chill through -every comfort. Lily, sitting alone, had been, it was very clear, left -but for a moment. This sentiment cannot, indeed, expand stone walls, yet -the once dull and chilly drawing-room, with its deep small windows, -seemed to possess a widened circle, a fuller atmosphere. Into this -already had there pushed a care or two, the reflection of the -diversities of two minds as well as their union? If so, it only helped -to widen the sphere still further, to make it more representative of the -world. Lily looked up from the book she had taken up in her husband’s -absence with a change of countenance and sudden exclamation. - -“_You_ are going to-morrow? Not _we_?” she cried. - -“My bonnie Lily, you were always reasonable--how could it be _we_? I’m -thankful, though, that you meant it to be we, for it was not a happy -thought that my own lassie, my wife of a week old, was pushing me away, -back with the first loosening of the frosts, into the world.” - -“You never thought that, you never could have thought that!” cried Lily, -divided between indignation and a tumult of new feeling that rose in -her. And then she covered her face with her hands. “Are you going to -leave me here, Ronald, my lane, my lane?” she cried, with a tone of -anguish in her voice. - -He was behind her, drawing her head upon his shoulder, soothing her in -every way he knew. “Oh, Lily, my darling, don’t say I have beguiled you! -What could it be else, what could it be? I might have held out by myself -and kept away. I might have sworn I would never go near you, for your -sweet sake. Would you rather I had done that, Lily? Is it not better to -belong to each other, my darling, at any cost, so as to be ready in a -moment to take advantage of a bright day when it comes?” - -“Of a bright day when it comes?” she said, suddenly taking her hands -from her face. A chill as if of the ice outside came upon Lily. She was -as white as the snow, and cold, and trembled. “Is that all--is that all -that is between you and me, Ronald?” she cried. - -“Now, Lily, my dearest, how can you ask such a question? Is that all? -Nothing is all! There are no bounds to what is between you and me; but -because we have to be parted for a time that was not a reason for always -keeping apart, was it, Lily? I thought, my darling, you agreed with me -there. We have had a happy honeymoon as ever any pair had, happier, I -think, than ever any blessed man but me. And now I must go out to the -bleak world to work for my bonnie wife. Oh, it will be a bleak world no -longer; it will all be bright with the thought that it is for my bonnie -Lily. And you will just wait and keep your heart in a kist of gold, and -lock it with a silver key.” - -“Ah, that was what she says she should have done before----” cried Lily -with a sharp ring of pain in her voice. Then she subdued herself and -looked up into his face. “I am ready to share whatever you have, -Ronald. I want no luxuries, no grand house. I want no time to get ready. -I’ll be up before you to-morrow and my little things in a bundle and -ready to follow you, if it was in a baggage-wagon or at the plough’s -tail!” - -“I almost wish it was that,” he said, eager for any diversion. “If I had -been a ploughman lad, coming over the hills to Nannie O; with a little -cot to take her to as soon as she could be my own!” These were echoes of -the songs Lily had sung to him, and he to her, in their hermitage when -shut in by the snow. - -“But just up under the roof in a high house in the old town, or one of -the new ones out to the west of Princes Street--that new row, with a -nice clean stair and a door to it to shut it in: to me that would be as -good as any little cot upon the ploughed fields.” Lily spoke eagerly, -turning round to him with hands involuntarily clasped. - -“A strange place,” he said, “for Sir Robert Ramsay’s heir.” - -“Oh, what am I caring for Sir Robert Ramsay! If he was ill and wanted -me, I would be at his call night and day--he is my uncle, whatever -happens; but because he is rich and can leave me a fortune! that is -nothing, Ronald, to you and me.” - -He made no immediate reply, but smoothed the little curls of her hair -upon her forehead, which was at once an easier and a much more pleasant -thing to do. - -“Besides,” she said, “I have known plenty of kent folk, as good as you -or me, who lived, and just liked it very well, up a common stair.” - -“I would not like my Lily, coming out of George Square, to set up in -life like that.” - -“Would you like your Lily,” she cried again, turning upon him with -glowing cheeks, “to sit alone and pingle at her seam and eat her heart -away, even at George Square, where she might see you whiles, or, worse -still, here at Dalrugas,” she said, springing from her seat with energy, -“to be smoored in the snow?” - -He followed her round to the window, and stood holding her in his arm -and looking at her admiringly. “You will never be smoored in the snow, -my Lily! The fire in you is enough to melt it into rivers all about.” - -“Rivers that will carry me--where?” she cried in a tone half of -laughter, half of despair. - -“Listen to me, my darling,” he said. “We will be practical: there is -always the poetry to fall back upon. For one thing, I’ve no house, even -if it were up a common stair or in the highest house of the old town, to -take you to. Houses, as you know as well as me, can only be got at the -term. There is no chance now till Whit-Sunday of finding one. We must -just be patient, Lily; we can do no more. It is not you, my darling, -that will suffer the most. Think of me in all the old places that will -mind me of you at every moment, and seeing all the folk that know you, -and even hearing your name----” - -“Oh,” cried Lily, and then suddenly she fell a-crying, leaning on her -husband, “I would like to hear your name now and then just to give me -heart, and to see the folk that know you, and the old places----” - -“My bonnie Lily!” he cried. - -Perhaps this outburst did her good. She cried for a long time, and all -the evening an occasional sob interrupted her voice, like the lingering -passion of a child. But Lily, like a child, had to yield to that voice -of the practical, the voice of reason. She said no more at least, but -sadly assisted at the packing of the portmanteau, which had been brought -across the snow somehow from the cottage in which Ronald had found -refuge before the storm and all its privileges began. - -“I am not going with him,” she said to Robina, when these doleful -preparations were over. “You see, there are no preparations made, and -you cannot get a house between the terms. You might have minded me of -that, Beenie. What is the use of being a person of experience if you -cannot tell folk that are apt to forget?” - -“I ought to have minded, my bonnie dear,” said Beenie with penitence. - -“And it’s a long time till Whit-Sunday; but we’ll need to have -patience,” Lily said. - -“So we will, my darling bairn,” Beenie replied. - -“You say that very cut and dry. You are not surprised; you look as if -you had known it all the time.” - -“Eh, Miss Lily, my dear, how could I help but ken? Here’s a young -gentleman that has little siller, and no the mate that Sir Robert would -choose.” - -“I wish,” cried Lily, “that Sir Robert was at the bottom of the sea! No, -no, I’m wishing him no harm, but, oh, if he only had nothing to do with -me!” - -“The only thing ye canna do in this world is to change your blood and -kin,” said Beenie; “but, oh, Miss Lily, ye must just be real reasonable -and think. If he were to take you away, it would spoil a’. He has gotten -you for his ain, and you have gotten him for your ain, and nothing can -come between you two. But he hasna the siller to give ye such a -down-sitting as you should have, and nae house at all possible at this -time of the year. No, I’m no way surprised. I just knew that was how it -had to be, and Katrin too. It would be just flyin’ in the face of -Providence, she says, to take ye away off to Edinburgh, without a place -for the sole of your foot, when ye have a’ your uncle’s good house at -your disposition, and good living and folk about you that tak’ a great -interest in you. Katrin herself she canna bide the thought of losing her -bonnie leddy. ‘If Miss Lily goes, I’ll just take my fit in my hand and -go away after her,’ she says. But what for should ye go? It will be far -more comfortable here.” - -“Comfortable!” said Lily in high disdain, “and parted from my husband!” -The word was not familiar to her lips, and it brought a flush of color -over her face. - -“Oh, whisht, my bonnie leddy,” Beenie cried. - -“Why should I whisht? for it is true. I might not have said it before, -but I will say it now, for where he is I ought to be, and whatever he -has I ought to share, and what do I care for Dougal’s birds and -Katrin’s fine cooking when my Ronald (that has aye a fine appetite for -his dinner,” cried Lily in a parenthesis, with a flash of her girlish -humor) “is away?” The last words were said in a drooping tone. Her mood -changed like the changing skies. Even now she had irruptions of laughter -into the midst of her trouble, which was not yet trouble, indeed, so -long as he was still not absolutely gone; and who could tell what might -happen before morning, the chill morning of the parting day? - -Lily was up and astir early on that terrible morning. There had been a -hope in her mind that Providence would re-tighten the bonds of the frost -and bring the snow blinding and suffocating to stop all possibility of -travel; but, alas! that was not the case: bands of faint blue -diversified the yellow grayness of the clouds, and the early sun gave a -bewildering glint over the moor, making the snow garment shrink a little -more and show its rents and crevasses. Every thing was cheerfully astir -in the yard, the black pony rearing as Sandy backed him into the shafts -of the cart, snorting and shaking his head for joy at thought of the -outing, and the sniff of the fresh, exhilarating air into which, as yet, -there had come little of the limpness of the thaw. There was an air out -of doors partly of pleasure in the excitement of the departure, or at -least in the little commotion about something which is an agreeable -break in the monotony of all rural solitudes. Dougal looked on and -criticised with his hands in his pockets and gave Sandy directions as if -this were the first time the boy had ever touched the pony which had -been his charge for more than a year; and Katrin, too, stood at the door -watching all these preparations, though the air was cold as January air -could be. Upstairs there was a very different scene. Lily had tried to -insist upon driving to the town to see her husband off, a proposal which -was crushed by both Ronald and Robina with horror. “Expose yoursel’ to -the whole countryside!” Beenie cried. - -“Expose myself! and me his wife! Who should see him off if not his -wife?” said Lily. And then Ronald came behind her and drew her against -his breast once more. - -“My bonnie Lily! We need not yet flourish that before the world. You are -as safe here as a bird in its nest. Why should we set everybody talking -about you and me? Sir Robert will hear soon enough and there is no need -to send him word. There’s nobody to penetrate our secret and publish it -if you will be patient a little till better things can be.” - -“Our secret!” said Lily, springing from his hold with a great cry. - -“A secret that is well shared by those that care for my Lily; but we -need not flourish it before the world.” Lily’s color rose from pale to -red, then faded. She stood apart from him, her countenance changing; her -pride was deeply wounded that she should be supposed to be desirous of -flourishing any thing before the world. It was an injury to her and a -scorn, though this was no moment to resent it, and the sharp impression -only mingled with the anguish of parting a sense of being wronged and -misjudged, which was very hard to bear. “I may come down to the door, I -suppose,” she said, in a voice from which she tried to banish every tone -of offence. - -“No, my darling,” he said, “not even to the door. I could not say -farewell to my Lily with strangers looking on. I will like to think when -I am gone of every thing round you here, all the old chairs and tables -even, where my Lily and I have had our honeymoon.” Oh, there was nothing -to complain of in the warmth of his farewell. No man could have loved -his young wife better, or have held her close to him with deeper -feeling. “I will soon be back, I will soon be back!” he cried. His eyes -were wet like hers. It was as great a thing for him to tear himself away -as it was for her to remain behind and see him go. But then Lily could -only stand trembling and weeping at the head of the stairs, that nobody -might see, and catch a distorted glimpse through the window over the -door of the cart, into which he got with Sandy, while Dougal still -murmured that “a stoot gentleman would have done better to walk,” and to -see him hold out his hand to sulky Dougal, and to Katrin, who had her -apron at her eyes, and Beenie, who was sobbing freely! They could stand -there and cry, but she might not go down stairs lest she should flourish -her story before the world. And why should she not, after all, flourish -it before the world? Is a marriage a thing to be hid? When the little -cart drove away, the pony, very fresh after his long confinement, -executing many gambols, Lily went back to her window, from which she -could see them disappear under the high bank, coming out again lower -down. The deep road was so filled up with snow that the moment of -disappearance was a very short one, and then she could trace for a long -time along the road the little dark object growing less and less, till -it disappeared altogether. The pony’s gambols, which, though he was too -far off to be distinctly visible, still showed in the meandering of his -progress and sudden changes of pace, the head of one figure showing over -the other, the gradual obliteration in the gray of distance, kept all -her faculties occupied. It seemed hours, though it was but a very little -time, when Lily let her head droop on the arm of the old-fashioned sofa -and abandoned herself to the long-gathering, long-restrained torrent and -passion of tears. - -It was a heavy, dreary day. When you begin life very early in the -morning, it ought to be for something good, for some natural festivity -or holiday, in the light of which the morning goes brightening on to -some climax, be it a happy arrival for which the moments are counted or -a birthday party. But to begin with a parting and live the livelong day -after it, every hour more mournful and more weary, is a melancholy -thing. This used to be very common in the old days, when travelling was -slower, and night trains not invented, and night coaches not much -thought of. It added a great deal to the miseries of a farewell: in the -evening there is but little time before the people who are left behind; -they have an excuse for shutting themselves up, going to bed, most -likely, if they are young, sleeping before they know, with to-morrow -always a new day before them. But Lily had to live it all out, not -excused by Beenie or her other faithful retainers a single hour or a -single meal. They brought her her dinner just as though he had not -shared it with her yesterday, and pressed her to eat, and made a -grievance of the small amount she swallowed. “What is the use,” Katrin -said majestically, “of taking all this trouble when Miss Lily turns her -back upon it and will not eat a morsel?” “Oh, try a wee bit, Miss Lily,” -Beenie cried, adding in her ear, with a coaxing kindness that was -insupportable: “Do you think he would relish the cauld snack he’ll be -getting on the road if he thought his bonnie leddy was not touching bite -or sup?” - -“Go away, or you will drive me daft!” said Lily. “He will just clear the -board of every thing that’s on it and never think of me. Why should he, -with such a fine appetite as he has? Do I want him to starve for me?” -she cried, with a laugh. But the result was another fit of tears. In -short, Lily was as silly as any girl could be on the day her lover left -her. She was not even as she had been for a moment, and was bound to be -again, a young wife astonished and disappointed at being left behind, -not knowing how to account for this strange, new authority over her -which had it in its power to change the whole current of her life. She -had never looked at Ronald in that light or thought of him as a power -over her, a judge, a law-giver, whose decisions were to be supreme. She -was astonished to find herself subdued before him now, her own -convictions put aside; but this was not the channel in which for the -moment her thoughts were running. She was weeping for her lover, for the -happiness that was over, for him who was away, and dreaming dreams to -herself of how the coach might be stopped by the snow, or some accident -happen that would still bring him back. She imagined to herself his step -on the stair and the shriek of joy with which she would rush to welcome -him. This was the subject of her thoughts, broken into occasionally by -divergences to other points, by outbursts of astonishment, of -disappointment, almost of resentment, but always returning as to the -background and foundation of every thing. The other thoughts lay in -waiting for her, biding their time. It was the dreadful loss, the blank, -the void, the silence, that afflicted her now. Ronald gone, who for this -week, which had been as years, as a whole life, her life, the real and -true one, to which all the rest was only a preface and preliminary, had -been her companion, almost herself! It was of this that her heart was -full. Without him, what was Lily now? She had been often a weary, angry, -dull, disappointed little girl before, but there were always breaks in -which she felt herself, as she said, her own woman and was herself all -the Lily there was. But now she had merged into another being; she was -Lily no longer, but only a broken-off half of something different, -something more important, all throbbing with enlarged and bigger life. -This consciousness was enough for the girl to master during that -endless, dreary, monotonous day. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - - -The next day after any thing, whether happiness or disaster, is -different from the day on which the event took place. The secondary -comes in to complicate and confuse the original question more or less, -and the abstract ends under that compulsion. Nothing is exactly as it -seems, nor, indeed, as it is; it takes a color from the next morning, -however opaque that morning may be. This was especially the case with -Lily, whom so many of these secondary thoughts had already visited, and -who had now to go back from the dream of that eight days in which every -thing had been put to flight by that extraordinary invasion of the new -and unrealized which comes to every girl with her marriage, and amid -which it is so difficult to keep the footing of ordinary life. She was -that morning, however, not any longer the parted lover, the mourning -bride, but again, more or less, “her own woman,” the creature, full of -energy and life, and thoughts and purposes of her own, who had not -blindly loved or worshipped, but to whom, at all times, it had been -apparent that Ronald’s way of loving, though it was to her the only way, -was not the way she would have chosen or which she would have adopted -herself had she been the man. A very different man Lily would have made, -much less prudent, no doubt, but how decisive in the beginning of that -youthful career! how determined to have no secrets, but every thing as -open as the day! to involve the woman beloved in no devious paths, but -to preserve her name and her honor above all dictates of worldly wisdom! -Lily would have had her lover vindicate her at once from her uncle’s -tyranny. She would have had him provide the humble home for which she -longed, without even suffering his lady to bear the ignominy of that -banishment to the moor. And now! with what a flame of youthful love and -hope Lily would have had him carry off his bride, snapping his fingers -with a Highland shout at all the powers of evil, who would have had no -chance to touch them in their honest love and honorable union. Oh, if -she had been the man! Oh, if she could have showed him what to do! - -And all these thoughts, intensified and increased, came back to Lily the -day after her husband left her. She was not drooping and longing now for -her departed lover. Her energies, her clear sense of what should have -been, her objection to all that was, came back upon her like a flood. -She sat no longer at the window gazing out upon the expanse of snow, -which shrank more and more, and showed greater and blacker crevasses in -its wide expanse every hour, but walked up and down the room, pausing -now and then to poke the fire with energy, though the glowing peats were -not adapted to that treatment, and flew in tiny morsels about, requiring -Beenie’s swift and careful ministrations. Lily felt, however, for one -thing, that her position was far better now for expounding her views -than it had ever been. A girl cannot press upon her lover the necessity -of action. She has to wait for him to take the first step, to urge it -upon her, however strongly she may feel the pressure of circumstances, -the inexpediency of delay. But now she could plead her own cause, she -could make her own claim of right, her statement of what she thought -best. She said to herself that she had never yet tried this way. She had -been compelled to wait for him to do it, but perhaps it was no wrong -thing in him, perhaps it was only exaggerated tenderness for her, desire -to save her from privations, or what he thought privations, that had -prevented any bolder action, and made him think first of all of saving -her from any discomfort. It was possible to think that, and it was very -possible to show him now that she cared for no discomfort, that her only -desire was to be with him, that it was far, far better for Lily to meet -the gaze of the world in her own little house, however small it might -be, than hide in the solitude as if there was something about her that -should be concealed. This thought made Lily’s countenance blaze like the -glowing peat. Something about her that should be concealed! a secret -hidden away in the heart of the moor, in the midst of the snow, which -he, going away from her, would keep silent about, silent as if it were a -shame! Lily threw herself into the chair beside her writing-table with -impetuosity, feeling that not a moment should be lost in putting this -impossible case before him and making her claims. She was no fair -Rosamond, but his wife. A thing to be concealed? Oh, no, no! She would -rather die. - -In any case she would have written him a long letter, seizing the first -possible moment of communicating with him, carrying out the first -instinct of her heart to continue the long love-interview which had made -this week the centre of all her days. But Lily threw even more than this -into her letter. She said more, naturally, than she intended to say, and -brought forth a hundred arguments, each more eloquent, more urgent than -the other, to show cause why she should join him immediately, why she -should not be left, nobody knowing any thing about her, in this Highland -hermitage. The lines poured from her pen; she was herself so moved by -her own pleas that she got up once or twice and walked about to -dissipate the impulse which she had to set out at once, to walk if it -were needful to Edinburgh, to claim her proper place. And it was not -till the long, glowing, fervent letter was written that she paused a -little and asked herself if Ronald had really only left her behind -because it was impossible to get a house between the terms, if his first -business was to look out for a house, so as to have it ready for her by -the next term, by Whit-Sunday, was it right to argue with him and -upbraid him as if he intended the separation to go on forever? Lily -threw down her pen which she had dipped in fire--not the fire of anger, -but of love just sharpened and pointed with a little indignation--and -her countenance fell. No, if that were so, she must not address him in -this heroic way. After all it was quite reasonable what he had said: it -was extremely difficult to get a house between the terms. And perhaps he -would not have been justified in engaging one at Michaelmas, before any -thing was decided what to do. He could not have done that; and what, -then, could he do but wait till Whit-Sunday? and, for a man like him, -with his own ways of action, not, unfortunately, though she loved him, -like Lily’s, it was perhaps natural that there should be no premature -disclosure, that as they were parted by circumstances it should remain -so, without taking the world into their confidence, or summoning Sir -Robert to cast his niece who had deceived him out of the shelter which -her husband did not think unbecoming for her now. Lily threw down her -pen, making a splash of ink upon the table--not a large one, to spoil -it, but a mark, which would always remind her of what she had done or -had been about to do. - -And then there fell a pause upon her spirit, and tears were the only -relief for her. To take the heroic way, to walk to Edinburgh through the -snow, or even to think of doing so, to pour forth an eloquent appeal -against the cruel fate of her isolation and concealment as if it were to -last forever, was an easier method than to wait patiently until -Whit-Sunday and make the best of every thing, which would really be the -wise thing; for what could Ronald do more than that which he could of -course begin to do as soon as he arrived, to look for a house? And how -could it have been expected of him when every thing was so vague, and he -did not know what might happen, to have provided one, months in advance, -on the mere chance that he could persuade her into that strange -marriage, and the minister into doing it? It would be strange and -embarrassing after that scene to see the minister again, and Lily fell -a-wondering how Ronald had persuaded him, what he had said. Mr. Blythe -was not a very amiable man, ready to do what was asked of him. He made -objections about most things and hated trouble. But Ronald could -persuade any body; he could wile a bird from the tree. And what a grand -quality that was for an advocate! and how proud she would be hereafter -to go to the court and hear him make his grand speeches. Perhaps now he -would talk over some man that wanted to get rid of his house, and make -him see that it would be better to do it now than to wait for the term. -There was, indeed, nothing that Ronald could not persuade a man into if -he tried. Lily felt that her own periods were more fiery, those eloquent -sentences which her good sense had already condemned, but Ronald’s -arguments were beyond reply, there was no getting the better of them. -You might not be sure that they were always sound, you might feel that -there was a flaw somewhere; but to find out what it was, or to get your -answer properly formed, or to convict him of error was more than any -one, certainly more than Lily, could do. - -She had risen up, and was stretching her arms above her head in that -natural protest against the languor and solitude which take the form of -weariness, when she saw a dark speck approaching on the road, and -rushed to the window with the wild hope, which she knew was quite vain, -that it might by some possibility be Ronald coming back. But it was only -a rural geeg from Kinloch-Rugas or some other hamlet, or one of the -farms in the neighborhood, creeping up the road against the wind and the -slippery, thawing snow, with a woman in it beside the driver -undistinguishable in her wraps. While Lily looked out and wondered if by -any chance it might be a visitor, Beenie came in with a look of -importance. “Eh, Miss Lily, do you see who that is?” Robina said. - -“It is a woman, that is all I know, and keen upon her business to come -out on such a day.” - -“Her business?” said Robina. “It’s the Manse geeg, and it’s Miss Eelen -in it, and as far as I can tell she has nae business, but just to spy -out, if she can, the nakedness of the land.” - -“There is no nakedness in the land, and nothing to spy out!” cried Lily, -with a flush. “Have we done any thing to be ashamed of that we should be -feared of a neighbor’s eye?” - -“Bless me, no, Miss Lily!” cried Robina; but she added: “Eh, my bonnie -bairn, there’s many a thing that’s no expedient, though it’s no wrong. I -wouldna just say any thing to Miss Eelen if I was you. She’s maybe no to -be trusted with a story. The minister had sent her out o’ the road yon -evening in the Manse. Baith me and Katrin remarked it, for she’s his -right hand and he can do nothing without her in a common way, but yon -time she just didna appear.” - -“Did he think I was not good enough----” Lily began in a flutter, but -stopped immediately. “What a silly creature I am! as if there could be -any thing in that. Do you think I have such a long tongue that I want to -go and publish to every-body every thing that happens?” - -“Oh, Miss Lily, no me! never such a thought was in my head; but it would -be real natural, and you no a person to speak to except Katrin and me, -that are servants baith, though we would go through fire and water for -you. But you see she wasna there, and if I were you, Miss Lily----” - -“You happen not to be me,” cried Lily, with eyes blazing, glad of an -opportunity to shed upon Beenie something of the vague irritation in her -heart, “and since we are speaking of that, what do you mean, both Katrin -and you, that were both present, in calling me Miss Lily, Miss Lily, as -if I were a small thing in the nursery, when you know I am a married -woman?” Lily cried, throwing back her head. - -“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Robina, with a suppressed shriek, running to the -door. She looked out with a little alarm, and then came back -apologetically. “You never ken who may be about. That Dougal man might -have been passing, though he has nothing ado up the stair.” - -“And what if he had been passing?” Lily said in high disdain. - -“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Robina, again giving the girl a troubled look. - -“Do you mean to say that Dougal does not know? Do you mean he -thinks--that man that is my servant, that lives in the house---- Oh, -what can he think?” cried Lily, clasping her hands together in the -vehemence of her horror and shame. - -“He just thinks nothing at a’. He’s no a man to trouble any body with -what he thinks. He’s keepit very weel in order, and if he daured to fash -his head with what he has nae business with! He just guesses you twa are -troth-plighted lovers, Miss Lily, and glad he was to get our young -maister away.” - -Lily covered her face with her hands. “Am I a secret, then, a secret!” -she cried. “Something that’s hidden, just a lie, no true woman! How -dared you let me do it, then--you that have been with me all my days? -Why did ye not step in and say: ‘Lily, Lily, it’s all deceiving. It’s a -secret, something to be hidden!’ Would I ever have bound myself to a -secret, to be a man’s wife and never to say it? Oh, Beenie, I thought -you cared, that you were fond of me, and me not a creature to tell me -what I was doing! No mother, no friend, nobody but you.” - -“Miss Lily, Miss Lily, we thought it was for the best. Oh, we thought it -was for the best, both Katrin and me! For God’s sake dinna make an -exhibition before Miss Eelen! Here she is, coming up the stair. For -peety’s sake, Miss Lily, for a’ body’s sake, if ye have ainy -consideration----” - -“Go away from me, you ill woman!” cried Lily, stamping her foot on the -ground. She stood in the middle of the room, wild and flushed and -indignant, while Beenie disappeared into the bedchamber within. Helen -Blythe, coming up a little breathless from the spiral staircase, paused -with astonishment to see her friend’s excited aspect, and the sounds of -tempest in the air. - -“Dear me! have I come in at a wrong time?” Helen said. - -“Oh, no,” cried Lily, with a laugh of fierce emotion, “at the very best -time, just to bring me back to myself. I’ve been having a quarrel with -Beenie just for a little diversion. We’ve been at it hammer and tongs, -calling each other all the bonnie names--or perhaps it was me that -called her all the names. How do you think we could live out here in the -quiet and the snow if we did not have a quarrel sometimes to keep up our -hearts?” - -“Lily, you are a strange lassie,” said Helen, sitting down by the fire -and loosening her cloak. “You just say whatever comes into your head. -Poor Beenie! how could you have the heart to call her names? She is just -given up to ye, my dear, body and soul.” - -“She is no better than a cheat and a deceiver!” cried Lily. “She makes -folk believe that she does what I tell her, and never opposes me, when -she just sets herself against her mistress to do every thing I hate and -nothing I like, as if she were a black enemy and ill-wisher instead of a -friend!” - -This speech was delivered with great fervor, and emphasized by the sound -of a sob from the inner room. - -“Poor Beenie!” cried Helen with mingled amusement and concern, “how is -she to take all that from you, Lily? But you do not mean it in your -heart?” - -“No, I don’t mean a word of it,” cried Lily, “and it’s just an old goose -she is if she thinks I do! But for all that she is the most exasperating -woman! I never saw any body like her to be faithful as all the twelve -apostles, and yet make you dance for rage half the time.” - -A faint “Oh, Miss Lily!” was heard from the inner room, and then a door -was softly opened and shut, and it was evident that Beenie had slipped -away. - -“I heard ye were down at the Manse one day that I was away. It’s seldom, -seldom I am from home, and at that hour above all. But I had to see some -new folk at the Mill, and it was a good thing I went, for there has not -been an open day since then. And I heard ye had a visitor with you, -Lily.” - -Lily’s heart seemed to stand still, but she made a great effort and -mastered herself. “Yes,” she said, “it was Mr. Lumsden [many married -persons call their husbands Mr. So-and-So] that had come in quite -suddenly with the guisards on the last night of the year.” - -“I understand,” said Helen, with a smile; “he wanted--and I cannot blame -him--to be your first foot.” - -The first person who comes into a house in the New Year is called the -first foot in Scotland, and there are rules of good luck and bad -dependent upon who that is. - -“It might be so,” said Lily dreamily, “and I think he was, if that was -what he wanted; but the kitchen was full of dancing and singing, the -guisards making a great noise, as it was Hogmanay night.” - -“That was to be expected,” said Helen, “and I am glad you had a man, and -a young man, and a weel-wisher, or I am sore mistaken, for your first -foot. It brings luck to the New Year.” - -A “weel-wisher” means a lover in Scotland, just as in Italy a girl will -say, _Mi vuol bene_, when she means to say that some one loves her. - -“He was here after, twice or thrice, and he wanted to thank the minister -for all his kindness, and as I was at the market with Beenie and Katrin, -and he had offered to drive the pony, I went too. I thought I would have -seen you, but you were not there.” - -“Oh, how sorry I was, Lily! but a sight of the market would aye be -something. It’s not like your grand ploys in Edinburgh, but it’s -diverting too.” - -“Oh, yes,” said Lily, with great gravity, “it is diverting too.” - -“And you had need of something to divert you. What have you been doing, -my bonnie wee lady, all this dreadful storm? I hope at least they have -kept you warm. It is a dreadful thing a winter in the country when you -are not used to it. But now the snow is over and the roads open: you and -me must take a little comfort in each other, Lily. I’m too old for you, -and not so cheery as I might be.” - -Lily, suddenly looking at her visitor, saw that Helen’s mild eyes were -full of tears, and with one of her sudden impulsive movements, flung -herself down on her knees at her friend’s feet. “Oh, why are you not -cheery, Helen? you that do every thing you should do, and are so good.” - -“Oh, I’m far, far from good! It’s little you know!” said Helen. “My -heart just turns from all the good folk, whiles out of a yearning I take -for those that are the other way.” - -“You have some trouble, Helen, some real trouble!” cried Lily with a -tone of compassion. “Will you tell me what it is?” - -“Maybe another time, maybe another time,” said Helen, “for my heart’s -too full to-day, and I can hear your poor Robina, that you have been so -cruel to, coming up the stair, the kind creature, with a cup of tea.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - - -Helen stayed till the first shade of the darkening stole over the moor, -and till the minister’s man had told all the “clash” of the countryside -to Katrin and Dougal, and received but a very limited stock of -information in return. There was, indeed, much more danger to the secret -which now dominated and filled the house of Dalrugas like an actual -personage from that chatter in the kitchen than from any thing that -could have taken place upstairs. For the minister’s man was dimly aware -that the young lady from Dalrugas had been in the village on that day -when something mysterious was believed to have taken place in the Manse -parlor; that she had been seen with a gentleman, and that Katrin and -Robina had also been visible at the Manse. “Ay, was I,” said Katrin; “I -just took the minister a dizzen of my eggs. In this awfu’ weather nobody -has an egg but me. I just warm them up and pepper them up till they’ve -nae idea whether it’s summer or winter, and we lay regular a’ the year -round. I never grudge twa-three new-laid eggs to a delicate person, and -the minister, poor gentleman, is no that strong, I’m feared.” - -“He’s just as strong as a horse,” said the minister’s man, “and takes -his dinner as if he followed the ploo, but new-laid eggs are nae doubt -aye acceptable. The gentleman was from here that was paying him yon -veesit twa days after the New Year?” - -“We have nae gentleman here,” said Katrin, stolid as her own cleanly -scrubbed table, on which she rested her hand. Dougal cocked his bonnet -over his right ear, but gave no further sign. “There’s been a gentleman, -a friend of Sir Robert’s, at Tam Robison’s and we had to give him a bed -a nicht or twa on account of the snaw. Now I think o’t, he was a friend -o’ the minister’s too. It’s maybe him you’re meaning? but he’s back in -Edinburgh as far as I ken, these twa-three----” - -“Weel, it would be him, or some other person,” said the minister’s man -with an affectation of indifference; but he returned to the subject -again and again, endeavoring, if he had been strong enough for the rôle, -or if he had been confronted by a weak enough adversary, to surprise her -into some avowal; but Katrin was too strong for him. It was with -difficulty she could be got to understand what he meant. “Oh, it’s aye -yon same gentleman you’re havering about! Eh, what would I ken about a -strange gentleman? The minister is no my maister nor yet Dougal’s. He -might get a visit from Auld Nick himself and it would be naething to him -or me.” - -“It might be much to me,” said the minister’s man, who was known for a -“bletherin’ idiot” all over the parish. “It’s just a secret, and a -secret is aye worth siller.” - -“Well, I wish ye may get it,” Katrin said. During this time she was, to -tell the truth, more or less anxious about the demeanor of her husband. -It was true that Dougal knew nothing unless what he might have found out -for himself, putting two and two together. Katrin had great confidence -in the slowness of his intellect and his incapacity to put together two -and two. Perhaps her trust was too great in this incapacity, and too -little in the dogged loyalty with which Dougal respected his own -roof-tree and all that sheltered under it. At least the fact is certain -that the authorized gossip of the parish carried very little with him to -compensate him for the cold drive and all the miseries of the way. - -Lily took out her letter and went over it again when Helen had gone. She -found it far too eloquent, too argumentative, too full of a foregone -conclusion. Why should she assume that Ronald did not mean to provide a -home for her, that there was any reason to believe in an intention on -his part of keeping their marriage a secret and their lives apart? All -his behavior during the past week had been against this. How could there -have been a more devoted lover, a husband more adoring? She asked -herself what there was in him to justify such fears, and answered -herself: Nothing, nothing! not a shadow upon his love or delight in her -presence, the happiness of being with her, for which he had sacrificed -every thing else. He might have spent that New Year amid all the mirth -and holiday of his kind: in the merry crowd at home, or in Edinburgh, -where he need never have spent an hour alone; and he had preferred to be -shut up all alone with her on the edge of a snowy wintry moor. Did that -look as if he loved her little, as if he made small account of her -happiness? Oh, no, no! It was she who was so full of doubts and fears, -who had so little trust, who must surely love him less than he loved -her, or such suggestions would never have found a place in her heart. If -she already felt this in the evening, how much more did she feel it next -morning, when the post brought her a little note all full of love, and -the sweet sorrow of farewell, which Ronald had slipped into the post in -the first halting-place beyond Dalrugas? - -It was written in pencil, it was but three lines, but after she received -it Lily indignantly snatched her letter from the blotting-book and flung -it into the fire, which was too good an end for such a cruel production. -Was it possible that she had questioned the love of him who wrote to her -like _that_? Was it possible that she, so adored, so longed for, should -doubt in her heart whether he did not mean to conceal her like a guilty -thing? Far from her be such unkind, disloyal thoughts. Ronald had gone -off into the world, as it is the man’s right and privilege and his duty -to do, to provide a nest for his mate. If she were left solitary for a -moment, that was inevitable: it was but the natural pause till he should -have prepared for her, as every husband did. Instead of the indignation, -the resentment, the bitter doubt she had felt, nothing but compunction -was now in Lily’s mind. It was not he but she who was to blame. She was -the unfaithful one, the weak and wavering soul who could never hold -steadily to her faith, but doubted the absent as soon as his back was -turned, and was worthy of nothing except to undergo the fate which her -feeble affection feared. She was, perhaps, a little high-flown in the -revulsion of her feelings, as in the fervor of these feelings -themselves. A little less might have been expected from Ronald, a little -charity extended to him in his short-coming; and certainly the vehemence -and enthusiasm of her faith in him now was a little excessive. “Yes, it -is better you should call me Miss Lily,” she said to Robina; “it is best -just to keep it to ourselves for a while. Mr. Lumsden thought of all -that, though he left it entirely to me, without a word said. There would -be so many questions asked, even Dougal and Helen Blythe. I would have -had to summer and winter it, and her not very quick at the uptake. It is -a long time till Whit-Sunday,” said Lily, with a little quiver of her -lip. “I will just be Miss Ramsay till then.” - -“Eh, you will aye be Miss Lily to me, whatever!” Beenie cried. - -“And I am just Miss Lily,” said her mistress, with a little air of -dignity which was new to the girl. It was as if a princess had consented -to that humiliation, sweetly, with a grace of self-abnegation which made -it an honor the more. - -It cannot be denied, however, that it was difficult, after all the -agitations that had passed, after the supreme excitement of the New -Year, and the short, yet wonderful, union of their life together, to -fall back upon that solitude, and endeavor, once more, to “take an -interest” in the chickens and the ponies, and the humors of Sandy and -Dougal, which Lily, in the beginning, had succeeded in occupying herself -with to some extent. She did what she could now to rouse her own -faculties, to fill her mind with harmless details of the practical life. -How comforting it would have been had she but been compelled to plan and -contrive like Katrin for all those practical necessities--how to feed -her family, how to make the most of her provisions, how to diet her -cows and her hens; or like Dougal to care for the comfort of the beasts, -and amuse himself with Rory’s temper, and the remarks that little -snorting critic made upon things in general; or even to look over the -“napery” and see if it wanted any fine darning, as Beenie did, and to -regulate the buttons and strings of the garments and darning of the -stockings. Then Lily might have done something, trying hard to make -volunteer work into duty, and consequently into occupation and pleasure. -But, Beenie being there, she had no need to do what would have simply -thrown Beenie, instead of herself, out of work; and this was still more -completely the case with Katrin, who, gladly as she would have -contributed to the amusement in any way of her little mistress, would -have resented, as well as been much astonished by, any interference with -her own occupations. Lily could not do much more than pretend to be -busy, whatever she did. She knitted socks for Ronald; beguiled by -Beenie, she began with a little enthusiasm the manufacture into -household necessaries of a bale of linen found by Katrin among the -stores of the establishment, but stopped soon with shame, asking herself -what right she had to take Sir Robert’s goods for that “plenishing” of -abundant linen which is dear to every Scotch housewife’s heart. This was -a scruple which the women could not share. “Wha should have it if no -you?” cried Katrin. “Sir Robert he has just presses overflowing with as -nice napery as you would wish to see. There is plenty to set up a hoose -already, besides what’s wanted, and never be missed, let alone that -except yourself, my bonnie Miss Lily, there is nae person to use thae -fine sheets. But the auld leddy’s web that she had woven at the weaver’s -and never lived to make it up--wha should have it, I should like to -know, but you?” - -“Not while my uncle is the master, Katrin.” - -“I’ve nothing to say against Sir Robert,” cried Katrin--“he’s our -maister, it’s true, and no an ill maister, just gude enough as maisters -go--but the auld leddy was just your ain grandmother, Miss Lily, and -your plenishing would come out of her hands in the course of nature, and -for wha but you would she have given all that yarn (that she span -herself, most likely) to be made into a bonnie web o’ linen? There is -not a word to be said, as Robina will tell ye as weel as me. It’s just a -law afore a’ the laws that a woman has her daughter’s plenishing to look -to as soon as the bairn is born, and her bairn’s bairn with a’ the -stronger reason, the only one that is left in the auld house.” - -“Eh, Miss Lily, that’s just as sure as death,” Beenie said. - -But Lily was not to be convinced. She flung the great web of linen, in -its glossy and slippery whiteness, at the two anxious figures standing -by her, involving them both in its folds. “Take it yourselves, then,” -she said, with a laugh. “I am an honest lass in one way, if not in -another. I will have none of grandmamma’s linen that belongs to Sir -Robert and not to me.” - -And then Lily snatched her plaid from the wardrobe and wrapped it round -her, and ran out from all their exclamations and struggles for a ramble -on the moor. Oh, the moor was cold these February days, the frost was -gone and every thing was running wet with moisture, the turf between the -ling bushes yielding like bog beneath the foot, the long, withered -stalks of the heather flinging off showers of water at every touch, the -black cuttings gleaming, the burn running fast and full. Lily began a -devious course between the hummocks, leaping from one spot to another, -as she had done with Ronald, saturating herself with the chilly -freshness, as well as with the actual moisture, of the moor; but this -was an amusement which soon palled upon the girl alone. She felt the -exercise fatigue her. And the contrast between her solitude and the hand -so ready and so eager to help her was more than she could bear. It was -because they had to cling to each other so, because the mutual help was -so sweet, that they had loved it. Lily was reluctantly obliged to -confess that it was no fun alone, and though it was a relief to walk -even a little on the road, that was but a faint alleviation of the -monotony of life. Sometimes the aspect of the mountains stole her from -herself, or a sudden pageant of sunset, or something of a darker drama -going on, if she had but any interpretation of it, among those hills. -Any thing going on, if it were but the gathering of the mist and the -scent of the coming storm, was a relief to Lily. It was the long blank, -not a passenger on the road, not an event in the day, which she could -not bear. - -And then even if the walk, by dint of a sunset or some other occurrence, -had been enlivening, there was always the shock of coming back, the -shutting of her door against every invasion of life, the quiet that -might have been comfort to her old grandmother, the old leddy who had -spun the yarn for that web of linen, and received it home with -triumph--was it for the plenishing of Lily unborn? Lily came to have a -little horror of that old leddy. She figured her to herself spinning, -spinning, the little whirr of the wheel in its monotony going on for day -after day. Lily did not think of the sons away in the world--Robert -wherever there was fighting; her own father always in trouble--that -filled the old leddy’s thoughts, which were spun into that yarn, and -might have made many a pattern of mystic meaning in the cold snowy linen -which looked so meaningless. She used to sit in the silent room, feeling -that from some corner the old leddy’s eye was fixed upon her over the -whirring wheel, till she could bear it no more. - -She went down to Kinloch-Rugas to return Helen’s visit, but that was not -a happy experience. The old minister, half seen in the gloaming, seated -like a large shadow by the fire, gave her always a thrill of alarm. She -had hoped that he would not have treated her as a secret, that he would -have addressed her by her new name, and set her at once in a true -position. But he did not do this. He looked at her not unkindly, and -spoke to her with a compassionate tone in his voice. But he too seemed -to accept the necessity which had been forced on her by a kind of -unspoken command, a dilemma from which she could not escape. In that -case the consciousness of being in the presence of a man who knew all, -but made no sign, sitting there by the side of innocent Helen, who knew -nothing, and who treated herself in all simplicity as the girl-Lily, the -same as she had known before, was intolerable; and Lily did not go back -again, much as the refuge of some other house to go to was wanted in her -desolate state. “You’ll come and see me, Helen?” “That will I, my dear. -You must not mind my father. He is kind, kind in his heart, and always a -soft place for you.” “I am not thinking that he is unkind,” said Lily. -Ah, no, the minister was not unkind! He was sorry for the young -abandoned wife; for, as he thought, the young betrayed woman; and Lily, -though she was not aware of this last aggravation, yet resented it, -feeling the pity in his tone. And why should any one pity her, or -venture to be sorry for her, and she, with no secret in her own honest -intention, Ronald Lumsden’s lawful wife? - -As the days lengthened it was possible to be out of doors more, and Lily -began to scour the country upon Rory, and to see, though in the doubly -cold aspect of this formidable northern spring, many places about in -which, in more genial weather, when “the families” were at home, there -might be friends to be made. She had come home tired from one of these -rides, and the day having been dry, had ventured a little on the moor, -holding up her riding-skirt, and looking toward the western hills, where -a great sunset was about to be accomplished and all the unseen -spectators were hastily putting on garments of gold and rose-color and -robes of purple for the ceremony. It was not like a mere bit of limited -sky, but a world of color, one hue of glory surging up after another as -from some great treasury in the depths below, changing, combining, -deepening, melting away in every kind of magical circle. Lily’s heart -was not very light, but it rose instinctively to that wonderful display -of nature. Oh, how beautiful it was! Oh, if there had only been some -one to whom to say that it was beautiful! Whether it was the glorious -color half blinding her with excessive radiance, or the thought of the -unshared spectacle, Lily’s eyes filled full of tears. Either cause was -enough. At Lily’s age, and in such circumstances as hers, the tears are -not slow to come. - -And then in a moment she felt a touch upon her waist and a voice in her -ear. “Was it ever like this before, my Lily, my Lily? or has it all -lighted up for you and me, and because I am back again?” - -There is one compensation for those who suffer from great anxiety, from -the misery of separation, from longing after things that seem -unattainable. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, a flood of -blessedness comes over them in the momentary attainment, the momentary -meeting, the instantaneous relief. It was like a warm tide that flooded -the heart of Lily, sweeping every fancy and every doubt away. She leaned -her head upon his shoulder, and murmured in her rapture: “Oh, Ronald, -you’ve come back!” - -“Did you think I could keep away from you?” he said. No, no; how could -he have kept away from her? He had come to claim her, as he had always -intended to claim her, now, this moment, before the world. - - - - -CHAPTER XXV - - -He had come back; he had come--could there be any doubt on that -point?--to take his wife away, to take her home. - -Lily, at least in her own mind, would admit of no doubt. She was -transported in a moment from the depths to the heights. So much the more -as it had been impossible yesterday to see any light, there was now such -a flushing of the whole horizon that doubt was out of the question. She -came toward the house with him with his arm around her, thinking of no -precautions. Why should they conceal any thing, this young pair? The -man had come to take his wife away. When he withdrew his arm from her -waist and drew her hand through it, it did not, however, strike her that -there was any thing in that. It was more decorous, like old married -people, no longer mere lad and lass. She walked proudly by his side, -leaning on his arm. Who cared if Sir Robert himself were there to see? -Lily had never cared much for Sir Robert, had always been ready to defy -him and vindicate her rights over her own life. As it happened there was -nobody but Katrin standing at the door, looking out with her hand over -her eyes. Katrin was very quick to make believe that she was dazzled by -any little bit of light. - -And the lonely moor lighted up and became as paradise to Lily. He -brought her all kinds of news, besides the best news of all, which was -to see him there. He brought back her old world to her--the world where -she had been so happy and so full of friends; her new world, where so -soon, in a day or two, she was to find her young companions again, and -resume the former life more cordial, more kind, more full of friendship -and every gentle affection than ever. - -While he sat there thawing, expanding, shaking the cold from him, Lily, -who a little while ago had been the fastidious little maiden, courted -and served, began to move about the room serving him, eager to get every -thing for him he wanted, to undo his muffler, to bring him his slippers. -Yes, she would have liked to bring him his slippers as she brought him, -like a house-maid, on a little silver salver, not a cup of tea, which -probably Ronald would not have appreciated, but something stronger, “to -keep out the cauld,” which Katrin recommended and brought upstairs with -her own hands to the drawing-room door. “You are not going to serve me, -my Lily?” Ronald said. “But I am just going to serve you,” she cried, -with a little stamp of her foot, “and who has a better right? and who -should wait on my man but me that am bound to take care of him? and him -come to take me away.” - -Was she afraid to say these words out loud lest they should break the -spell? or was he afraid that she might say them and he not be able to -ignore them? But between them something was thrown down, a noise was -made in which they were inaudible. I do not know if Lily had any little -tremor that made her avoid explanation that evening; at all events she -had a sort of hunger to be happy, to enjoy it to the utmost. She laid -the table with her own hands, shutting the door in the face of the -astonished Robina, who hurried up as soon as she came in to have her -share. “I can do without you for all so grand as you think yourself,” -Lily cried; “I am just going to wait upon my own man!” - -“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Beenie, terrified; but she added to herself: -“What a good thing there’s naebody in the house! Dougal will not be in -till it’s late, and most likely he’ll be fou when he comes--and be nane -the wiser. And naething will need to be said.” I cannot tell whether -Katrin made quite the same explanation to herself; but she had taken her -precautions in case that should happen to Dougal which happened in these -days to many honest men on a market night without much infringement of -their character for sobriety. It would make the explanation much simpler -about the gentleman upstairs. In short, it would not be necessary to -make any explanation at all. - -“Get out the boxes, Beenie,” said Lily, at a later hour. “Do not make -any fuss or have things lying about, for gentlemen, you know, cannot -endure that; but just prepare quietly, without any fuss.” - -“Oh, Miss Lily! do you think it has come to that?” Beenie cried, -clasping her hands with a start of joyful surprise, but with a -countenance full of doubt. - -“And what else should it come to?” cried Lily, radiant. “Is this what -folk are married for, to live one in Edinburgh and one up far in the -Hielands? And what should my man come for but to take me home?” - -She must have believed it or she would not have said it with such -boldness. She gave Beenie a shake and then a kiss, but cried: “Don’t -make a confusion, don’t leave the things lying about, for that is what -gentlemen cannot endure,” as she ran away to rejoin her husband. Robina -stood immovable, looking after her. “Who has learnt her that?” she said -to herself; and then she began to shake her head. “They soon, soon learn -what a gentleman canna bide; and set him up! that he should not bide any -thing coming from her!” But Beenie did not bring out any boxes. She -concluded that at all events it would be time enough for that to-morrow. - -Ronald remained for three or four days, during which time Dougal, who -had carried out the judicious previsions of the women, and had required -no explanations of any kind on the market night, maintained a very -sullen countenance and did not welcome the visitor, of whom he was -suspicious without well knowing why. During this time there was scarcely -any pretence kept up of sending Ronald off to the cottage of Tam Robison -or in any way making a stranger of him. He was “the young leddy’s -freend.” “Young leddies had nae sic freends in my time,” said Dougal. -“They have aye had them in my time,” said Katrin, “and that cannot be -far different.” He did not know what to say; but he was very glum, and -open to no blandishments on the part of the stranger. And those were -days of anxious happiness for Lily. Ronald said nothing upon that one -sole subject which she longed to know of. He sounded no note of freedom -amid all the litanies he sang to her about her own sweetness, her -beauty, her kindness. Lily grew sick of hearing her own praises. “Oh, if -he would but say I was an ugly, troublesome thing! and then say: ‘You -must be ready, Lily, for we’re going home to-morrow!’” But Lily was very -sweet to her husband; this short visit was full of delight to him; he -loved to look at her, to take her in his arms, to know she was his. -Going away from her was hard to bear. He would have bemoaned his very -hard case if he had not feared that she would beseech him to put an end -to it, to take her away with him, and that it need be hard no longer. -That was not what he wanted. He preferred the moments of rapture and -the separations between. At least he preferred them to the loss of many -other things which would be otherwise involved. - -One day they went down to the Manse, Lily riding upon Rory, and her -husband walking by her side. “You can say I have just come over for the -day,” he said. “The minister of course knows very well, but your friend -Miss Helen----” - -“Why should we tell lies about it, Ronald? Isn’t it very easy, very easy -to understand?” - -“Oh, yes,” he said, “in any case it’s easy to understand; but we might -as well avoid gossip if we could.” - -“There would be no gossip,” cried Lily, “about a man coming to see his -wife! The only thing would be that folk would wonder why he did not take -her home.” - -“Folk would wonder about something, you may be sure; but I’ve noticed -that ladies think less of that than men. You think it is natural that -people’s minds should be occupied with you, my bonnie Lily. And so it -is; but not with a common man. Maybe it is the jealousy that’s in human -nature. I hate the chance of it, you see!” - -He spoke with a little vehemence, and Lily’s eyes filled with tears. It -was almost approaching the border of a first quarrel. “You and me,” she -said plaintively, “though I would not have believed it, Ronald, do not -always think the same.” - -“Did we ever think the same? No, Lily. But so long as we feel the -same--and it’s best to be on the safe side. I’ll say I have come over -for the day from--what do you call that place?--Ardenlennie, on the -other side, where I had to see Sir John’s man of business--which is -true. And I found you coming out to pay your visit and came with you. -Will that do?” - -“Oh, it will do as well as any other--false story,” said Lily, “if we -are to go on telling lies all our days!” - -“Not all our days, I hope,” he said gently. He was very good to her. No -lover could have been more devoted to her service, with no eyes or ears -but for her. That ride, though Lily was not happy in the depths of her -heart, though she was fretted almost beyond endurance, was yet sweet to -her in spite of herself. “Do you mind how we careered along that other -day, me riding, you running,” he said, “pushing at Rory behind, and -pulling him before, and the poor little beast astonished with the weight -on him of a long-legged chield instead of a bonnie lady? My Lily, what -you did for me that day! What should I have done without you--at that or -any other time?” - -“You have to do without me--not that I think I am much good--when you go -away.” - -“Come,” he said, “you must not harp forever on this going away. Holloa!” -he added immediately, retiring from her side with a sudden impulse as if -some hand had pushed him away, “there is a man I know.” - -“A man you know!” she cried, startled, not so much by this intimation as -by the start it produced in him. - -“Not a very creditable acquaintance,” he went on, with a short laugh, -dropping Rory’s bridle and keeping, as Lily remarked with a pang, quite -apart from her. “I thought he had been at the other end of the world. He -is Alick Duff, one of the Duffs of Blackscaur. They were once the great -people up here; but the present laird, I believe, is never at home. You -might ride on while I say a word to him. He’s not an acquaintance for -you.” - -Rory, however, at this moment did not show any inclination to quicken -his pace, and Lily heard the greeting between the two men. “Holloa, -Lumsden, is that you?” and “Duff! I thought you were at the other end of -the world!” - -“Well, no, here I am--no in such clover as you,” said the new-comer, -with a rough laugh. “Present me to the lady, Ronnie--Miss Ramsay, I’m -sure.” - -“This is Mr. Alick Duff--Miss Ramsay,” Lumsden said with a dark color on -his face. “We are going the same way.” - -“And I’m going the contrary road--I’m sorry,” said the stranger, who -was a heavy man, older and far less well looking than Ronald. “I’m going -to have a look at the old place and see if they’ll have any thing to say -to me there. Then I’m off again to the ends of the world, as you say; -and the further the better,” he added, again with a harsh laugh. Rory by -this time had moved on, and Lily, though she heard the men’s voices -almost loud on the still air, did not make out what they said. In a few -moments Ronald rejoined her almost out of breath. - -“That’s the black sheep of the family,” he said; “not likely he’ll get -much of a reception at home, even if there’s any body there. The only -thing that could be wished, for all belonging to him, is that he should -never be heard of more.” - -“He is a dreadful-looking man,” said Lily, with a shudder, “and seems to -laugh at every thing, and looks as if he might do any terrible thing.” - -“You should ask Helen Blythe about that,” Ronald said. He was still -keeping at a certain distance, the other wayfarer being still in sight. -Ronald did not know that, when at the sudden turn of the next corner he -resumed his place at Rory’s bridle, it was almost in the heart of his -wife to have pushed him back with her hands. This incident stopped the -question about Helen Blythe which was trembling on Lily’s lips. What -could he know about Helen Blythe, and what could she have to do with -this dreadful man? - -The minister sat in his big chair as usual, immovable, by the fire, with -a keen glance at Ronald and another at Lily as they came in. Lily was a -little flushed with the fresh air and exercise, and with the -associations of the place, and the sense that to one person here at -least her secret was known. She would not take upon herself a syllable -of the explanation which Ronald hastened to give fluently over her -shoulder. “I am up at Ardenlennie, on business with Sir John’s factor,” -he said, “and I was so fortunate as to find Miss Ramsay just setting out -on a visit to you, so I thought I might come too.” - -“You’re welcome,” said the minister curtly. “Come in to the fire, my -dear young lady, and take a seat here.” - -“Eh, Lily, my dear,” cried Helen, “I am feared you are not well, for -you’ve turned white in a moment after that bonnie color you had!” Helen -herself was not looking well. There was a little redness in her eyes, as -if she had been crying, and her cheeks were still paler than Lily’s. She -was interrupted by her father’s peremptory voice: - -“If you would but let your friends be! Sit down here and rest. No doubt -ye’re both tired and cold. And, Eelen, if you had any sense, you would -get the tea.” - -“That’s one word for you, Lily, and two for himself,” said Helen, with a -smile. “He’s as fond of his tea as if he were an old woman. I will just -tell Marget and come back in a moment.” Perhaps she was glad to be out -of sight, even for that moment; but poor Lily, wholly occupied with her -own concerns, and wondering whether Helen knew any thing, or how much -she knew, or what she would think of this dreadful deception, had no -leisure in her mind to think of any possible troubles of Helen’s own. - -“Did you meet any--waif characters on the road?” the minister said, with -a bitter pause before the last words to give emphasis. It was said loud -enough for Helen to hear. - -“We met--Alick Duff; I thought he was in Australia or America. He is not -precisely what one would call a--fine character,” Lumsden said. - -“There are not very many of them about,” said the old man; “some take -one turn and some another; but them that stick to the straight road are -few, as was said on a--more important occasion. And how will you be -liking your stay in Dalrugas, Miss Lily, after all the daffing of the -New Year is over? A visitor for a day or so maybe makes it bearable; but -it’s lonely for the like of you.” - -“Oh,” cried Lily, involuntarily putting her hands together, “I get very -tired of it! But I think,” she added, with a confidence she was far from -feeling, “that I shall not be very long there now.” - -“Oh! ye think ye will not be very long there?” he repeated after her. -There was not very great assurance or encouragement in his voice. - -“Well,” said Helen, who had come back, “I understand it’s dull for you; -but here is one person that will be very sorry, Lily. It will, maybe, be -better for you, but the whole countryside will miss you; for many a one -takes pleasure to see you pass--you and the powny--that never has said a -word to you. She is just a public benefit,” said the minister’s -daughter, “with her bonnie face.” - -A silence ensued, nobody said a word, and it became visible that Helen’s -cheeks were a little glazed, as if by sudden application of cold water -to wash away certain stains from her eyes. She had seated herself for a -moment where all the light from the window fell on her, but restlessly -jumped up again and began to remove her work and some books from the -table in preparation for tea. “And when are you leaving this -neighborhood, Mr. Lumsden? I hope you have some time to stay.” - -“Alas! I am going to-morrow. A man who has his work to do has little -leisure,” said Ronald. “We must keep our noses to the grindstone -whatever happens. Ladies are better off.” - -“Do you think we are better off,” said Helen, with a sigh, “to bide at -home whatever happens, and wait for news that maybe never comes? to see -the others go away, and never be able to follow them, except with the -longings of our hearts? I have had two brothers----” she said, with a -sudden little catch in her throat. - -“Eelen,” said the minister, “I never knew you for a hypocrite, whatever -you were. It is none of your brothers----” - -“Oh, father, how can you ken? Do I wear my heart on my sleeve that you -can tell what’s in it? You never thought much about them yourself, and -how could you know what was in another’s heart? But it’s not for me to -speak. I have aye my duty. It’s just Mr. Lumsden’s notion that it’s a -fine thing for us to sit quiet at home and endure all things and never -hear.” - -“Well, here is your tea at all events,” said Mr. Blythe, “and I see -James Douglas passing the window to get a cup. When there’s nothing to -do in an afternoon and every thing low, as it is at that period in the -day, there is a great diversion in tea. In fact,” he added, “the best of -meals is just the diversion they make. You are shaken out of yourself. -Ye say your grace and ye carve your chuckie, or even a sheep’s head on -occasion, and your thoughts are taken clean away from the channel, maybe -a troublesome one, that they are in. Still better is a cup of tea. Come -ben, come ben, Mr. Douglas; there’s plenty of room for you. We were just -thinking, Eelen and me, that it is a long time since you have been -here.” - -A pleasant light shone in the young minister’s face. “If I thought I -could make myself missed, I would have the heart to stay away longer -still,” he said, “but then I think that out of sight is often out of -mind.” - -It was pathetic to observe how he sought the eyes of Helen, and how he -contrived to put his chair next hers at the table, round which they all -sat. Helen took but little notice of the gentle young man; she set down -his cup before him with a precipitation that was almost rude, and turned -away to Lily, with whom she talked in an undertone. What about? Neither -one nor the other knew. Yet neither one nor the other had any perception -of what was in her neighbor’s bosom. Helen’s trouble to her filled all -the world. It was greater than anything else she knew; the air tingled -with it; the very horizon could scarcely contain it. Lily, a child, with -all the world smiling upon her!--what could there be in her lot to -approach the greatness of the pain which Helen had to bear? She was half -angry with the girl for making a fuss about being dull, as if that -mattered; or seeing her sweetheart only by intervals, which was all, she -thought, that Lily had to complain of. The little spoiled child! but -what a real heartbreak was, Helen knew. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI - - -“Did you mean that, Ronald--that you are really going away to-morrow?” - -“Indeed and alas, I meant it, Lily. It is the middle of the session. How -could I stay longer? It was, as I said to the minister--though you never -more than half believe what I say--a real piece of business with Sir -John’s factor at Ardenlennie that gave me the occasion of spending a few -days with my Lily, which I seized upon without giving you any warning, -as you know.” - -“And me that thought you could not do without me one day longer, and -were coming hurrying to bring your wife home!” - -“My darling!” said Ronald, with no lack of ardor on his part. “But then -my bonnie Lily has always sense to know that the longing of the heart -changes nothing, and that it is no more the term in March than it is in -January. Where could I find a place to put you now, or till Whit-Sunday -comes?” - -Was it true? Oh, yes; it was true. In Scotland you do not find an empty -house and go into it whenever you want to--especially not in the -Scotland of those days. You have to wait for the term, which is the -legitimate time. Nevertheless Lily was very sure that, if she were now -in Edinburgh looking for a place to establish her nest in, she would -find it; but perhaps a man has not the time, perhaps he cannot take the -trouble, going upstairs and down stairs looking at all kinds of unlikely -places. This, Lily felt sure, was another of the things that gentlemen -could not abide. - -“We must make the best of you, then, while we have you,” she said, -drawing her chair to the side of the fire after their dinner together. -It was cold at night, though the hardy folk of the North were content to -believe that spring was coming, and that there was a different “feel” in -the air. The wind was sweeping over the moor as keen as a knife, bending -the gray bushes of the ling and spare rowan-trees that cowered before it -like human travellers caught in the cutting breeze. There was a cold -moon shining fitfully, with frightened, swift-flying glimpses from among -the clouds which flew over her face. Colder than the depth of winter -outside, but within, with the firelight and lamplight, and Lily making -the best of her husband’s flying visit, very bright and very warm. - -“I will just look for the next term, Ronald, and pack up all my things -and be ready, so that if you came suddenly, as you did the other -day----” - -“Do you bid me, then,” he said, “not to come till Whit-Sunday? which is -a long time to be without a sight of my Lily. If I should have another -chance like this of getting a day or two--which is better than -nothing----” - -“Oh, no, do not miss the day or two,” cried Lily; “how could you think I -meant that? But I’ll look for the term-time, like the maids when they’re -changing their places. It’s more than that to me, for it will be the -first home I have ever had. Uncle Robert’s house was never a home--there -was no woman in it.” - -“Nor will there be any woman, Lily----” - -“I will be the woman,” she cried, with a playful blow on his shoulder; -“it is me that will make it home. And you will be the man. And if any -stranger comes into it--not to say a poor, motherless bairn like what I -was--their hearts will sing for pleasure; for there will be one for -kindness and warmness, and one for protecting and caring, and that will -make it home. Uncle Robert was but one, and not one that was caring. If -you were there, he just let you be. ‘Oh,’ he would say, ‘you are here!’ -as if it was a surprise. Do you wonder that I hunger and thirst for my -own home, Ronald, when I never had in my life any thing but that?” - -“It will come in its time, my Lily,” he said, holding her close to him, -with her hands in his. - -“Ay, but you mind what Shakespeare says: ‘While the grass grows----’” - -“If the proverb was musty then,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “it’s -mustier now.” - -“So it is; but as true as ever. And I weary for it, I weary for it!” -cried the girl. “However, sit you there, and me here; and we’ll think it -is our own house--that you will have come in, and you will have had your -dinner, and you will be telling me every thing that has passed in the -day.” - -“What, all the pleas before the Fifteen, and old Watty’s speeches, and -the jokes of Johnny Law, and the wiles of----” - -“Every one of them! When you are in a profession, you should know every -thing about it. If you were a--tailor, say, who would make your fine -buttonholes, and the braiding of the grand waistcoats, but your wife? Or -a--school-master it would be me to look after the exercises; and -wherefore not an advocate’s wife to know all about the Parliament House, -and how to conduct a case if there should be occasion?” - -“So that you might go down to the court instead of me, and plead for me -if I had a headache,” said Ronald, laughing. “It would be grand for my -clients, Lily, for I’ll answer for it, with Symington on the bench, and -Hoodiecraw and the two Elders, you would gain every plea.” - -“That’s while I am young and----” said Lily, with a little toss of her -head. She was saucy and gay and full of malice, as he had never seen -her, for this was not much Lily’s way. “I did not say I would plead; but -I would have to know. Every thing you would have to tell me, as well as -the jokes of the old lords.” - -“Well,” said Ronald, “I might do that, and you would take no harm, for -you would not understand them, my Lily. But they all like a bonnie lass, -and you would win every plea. I’ll tell you all the stories, Lily, and -there are plenty of them. The plainstanes of the Parliament House know -more human trouble and vice than any other place in Edinburgh. I’ll tell -you----” - -“Oh, not the wicked things!” cried Lily, clasping her hands, “for how -could we help those that suffer by them? or what could that have to do -with you and me?” - -“If you leave out the wicked things, there would be little to do,” said -Ronald, “for the courts of law.” - -“But we will leave them out!” cried Lily. “All our cases shall be about -mistakes, or something that comes from not understanding; so that as -soon as you put it to them very clear they will see the right and own it -and go back to the just way. For there is nobody that would not rather -be in the right than in the wrong if they knew, and that is my -principle; things are so twisted in and out it’s hard to understand; and -bad advice and thinking too much of himself make a man do a sudden thing -without thinking, till he finds that it is wrong. And then when he sees, -he is sorry and puts it back.” - -“If it were so easy as all that, Lily, it would be new heavens and a new -earth.” - -“Well, we’ll try,” said Lily gayly. She was so gay, she was so full of -quips and cranks, so ready with amusing turns of speech and audacious -propositions, that Ronald found her a new Lily, full of brightness and -fun and novel, ridiculous suggestions and high-flown notions, which she -was ready herself to laugh at as high-flown, yet taking his sober -thoughts to pieces and turning them upside down. What would it be, -indeed, to carry her away with him, to have her always there, turning -every little misfortune into fun and laughter, making every misadventure -a source of amusement instead of trouble! A gleam of light rose in his -eyes, and then he shook his head slightly to himself and sighed. The -shake of the head and the sigh were when Lily’s back was turned. He -dared not let her see them, divine them, answer them with a hundred -quick-flashing arguments. She had an answer for every thing, he knew. -She cared nothing for the things that were, after all, the chief things -to care for--money, progress in the world, that sound foundation in life -without which no man could make sure of rising to the head of his -profession. Some did it without doubt. There was Lord Pleasaunce, that -had fought his way to the bench, marrying a wife and beginning in a -garret, as Lily wished; now he thought of it, she was something like -Lily, the judge’s wife, though fat now and roundabout. They had even -been Lord Advocate in their time, and gone to London (with such a -couple, even Ronald felt instinctively, you don’t say he, but they) and -struggled through somehow; but always poor, always poor! They did not -seem to mind; but then Ronald knew that he would always mind. They had -no fortunes for their daughters nor to put out their sons well in the -world. He shook his head again as he rejected once more that possibility -which for a moment, only for a moment, had caught and almost beguiled -him. Lily had gone out of the room, but, coming back, caught that last -shake of his head. - -“And what is that for?” she said. “You will have been thinking that Lily -is good for very little, that she could not keep the house and make the -meat as she thinks, but would look to be served herself, hand and foot, -as she is here.” - -“Not that--but still my Lily has always been served hand and foot. There -is Beenie, without whom we cannot budge a step----” - -“No,” said Lily gravely, “without Beenie I could not budge a step--not -because Beenie is my maid, and I need her to serve me, but because it -would break her heart.” - -“My love, poor folk as we shall be cannot afford to think of breaking -hearts.” - -“I will break yours rather!” cried Lily, with a little stamp of her -foot. “I will give ye ill dinners and a house that is never redd up, and -keep Beenie like a lady in the best room and give her all the good -things.” - -“That is just what I say,” said Ronald; “we will have a train--all the -old servants that cannot endure their lives without Miss Lily, perhaps -Katrin and Dougal, too.” - -Lily stood looking at him for a moment, with her eyes enlarged and her -face pale. “Is it in fun, or in earnest?” she said, with a little gasp. - -“Oh, in fun, in fun,” he said hastily, “though considering how they have -fulfilled their duty to Sir Robert, it would not be strange if he turned -them out of his doors--and whom, then, could they turn to but you and -me?” - -“It is not for you and me to blame them,” said Lily, still under the -impression of what he had said, “and this is not the kind of fun that is -good fun. But it is true, after all, though I never thought of that -before. Katrin is kind, but she has, perhaps, not been quite as true to -Uncle Robert as to me; but Dougal, he knows nothing. Dougal has never -known any thing; he has never meant to desert Uncle Robert. Ronald,” -cried Lily, with sudden affright, “we have all been cheating Uncle -Robert! This is what we have done, and nothing else, since you first -came here.” - -“I am well aware of it, Lily,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “and for my -part I am quite agreed to go on cheating Uncle Robert for as long as you -please.” - -“It does not please me!” she said; “I would like to cheat nobody. It is -a new thing to me--I did not think of that. Oh, Ronald, take me away! I -laugh and I chatter, but my heart’s breaking. We are cheating every -body--not Uncle Robert only, but Helen Blythe and every creature that -knows me. What do I care how poor we are, or if I have to work for my -living? I will work, oh, with a good heart! but take me away, take me -away!” - -Ronald held her hands in his and steadied her against her will. He had -foreseen such an outburst, as well as the other manifestations of her -agitated and disturbed life. He was ready to allow even that it was no -wonder she became excited by times, that she had been more patient than -he could have hoped. He was himself very cool, and could afford to be -moderate and humor her. He held her hands in his, and restrained the -violence of her feelings by that steady clasp. “My Lily, my Lily!” he -said. The girl yielded to that restraining influence in spite of -herself. She could almost have struck him in the vehemence of her -passion and in the intolerable sensation of this sharp light upon the -situation altogether; but the cool touch of his hands, his firm hold, -his soothing voice, subdued her. The question between two people at such -a crisis is almost entirely the question which is stronger, and on this -occasion Ronald was certainly the stronger. When Lily’s passion ended in -the natural flood of tears, she shed them on his shoulder, encircled by -his arm, all her resistance quenched. And he was very kind to her; no -one could have consoled her more lovingly, or more tenderly soothed the -nervous and excited feelings which had got beyond her control. He was -master of the situation, and felt it, but used his power in the most -gentle way. And Lily said not a word more--what was there to be said? -She had put herself in the wrong by her passion and by her tears. This -was not the calm reason with which a woman ought to discuss the -beginning of her life--with which, she said to herself, a man expected -his wife to consider and discuss these affairs. She had neither been -calm nor reasonable. She had been passionate, excited, perhaps -hysterical. Lily was deeply ashamed of herself. She was humble toward -him who must, she thought, be disappointed in her, and find her like the -women in books, all folly and excitement, instead of a creature able to -take all the circumstances into consideration. Nothing could have -subdued her spirits like that sense of being in the wrong. - -Later in the evening she endeavored to make up for her foolishness by -returning to the mood of gayety with which she began the evening. She -gave Ronald a little sketch of the humors of Rory, and the respect in -which Dougal held that small and fiery personage. She told him about -Katrin’s cows and her chickens, and the amusement which these living -creatures had given during the long winter days to the little family at -Dalrugas. - -“But spring is coming,” he said. - -“Oh, yes; spring is coming; the moor will soon be dry enough for -walking, and many a ramble I will have. I am beginning,” said Lily, “to -grow very fond of the moor. You see, it is all we have. It’s cross and -market and college and court and all together to me. In the morning the -bees will be busy among the whins--there is always a bud somewhere on a -whin bush--and full of honey as they can hold; and then in the evening -there is the sunset, and the hills all standing out against the west, -with their old purple cloaks around them. What with the barnyard and -what with the moor, there’s no want of diversion here.” - -“My bonnie Lily,” he cried in sudden compunction, “not much diversion -for the like of you!” - -“What do you call the like of me? I am very well off. I have neighbors -and all. There is Helen Blythe, poor thing, she is not so well off. The -minister is a handful; he holds her night and day. And who was yon glum -man, Ronald, and what had he to do with her? Her eyes were red, and she -had been crying; and I am sure it was something about that man.” - -“Alick Duff? Nonsense, Lily! He is a black sheep, if ever there was one. -That was all a foolish story, we’ll suppose. A good little thing like -the minister’s daughter should never be thrown away on him.” - -“Perhaps she is a good little thing. We are all good little things till -we show ourselves different. But her eyes were red and her cheeks were -pale. I must see if I can comfort her,” said Lily half to herself. “And -now, sir, if you are going away to-morrow, you should go to your bed, -for you’ll have a weary day.” - -“Yes, I shall have a weary day; but I could bear that and more to see my -Lily,” Ronald said. - -“Well, if you care for her at all, you would need to do that, for she -must either be there or here,” Lily said. “It’s a pity I’m solid, that I -cannot fly away like the birds, and tap at your window as the lady does -in the ballad. What ballad? I don’t remember. Perhaps it was after she -was dead. And does Mrs. Buchanan always make you comfortable and cook as -well as Katrin? Oh, Katrin is very good for some things, though you -think her an ill housekeeper for Uncle Robert. But never mind that. Tell -me about Luckie Buchanan. I will wager you a silver bawbee, as Beenie -says, that she does not send you up your bird as good as we do here.” - -“Nothing is so good as it is here. You take me up too quick, Lily.” - -“Me take you up quick? I do nothing but try to please you. But I know -how it is, Ronald. You think shame of Luckie Buchanan. She burns your -bird, and she does your chop in the frying-pan, and her kettle is not -half boiled. Young men are very badly treated in their lodgings. I know -very well. Uncle Robert’s men that came to see him were always -complaining, and they were old men that could make their curries -themselves and drive womenfolk desperate, whereas you’re only young and -would think shame to look as if you cared. I wonder if she brushes your -clothes right, and gives you nice burnished boots, as you like them to -be,” said Lily, with a critical look at the sleeve of his coat, which -she was smoothing down with her hand. - -“You will make me think myself a terrible being, taken up with my own -wants,” he said in a vexed tone. - -“It is me that am taken up with your wants,” she said, “and what more -right than that--a man’s wife! What is the good of her but to look after -her man! And when I cannot do it for failure of circumstances, not good -will, then I must just ask and plague you till you tell me there’s -nothing more for me to do--till the term comes, and I go home to my -place,” cried Lily, with a laugh, but with two tears, which she turned -away her head that he might not see. “It’s my first place!” she cried. -“You cannot wonder I am excited about it, Ronald; and I hope I will give -you satisfaction--Beenie and me!” - -Next morning Lily got up without, as appeared, any cloud on her face, -and gave him his breakfast, and saw to the packing of his bag, and that -his big coat was well strapped on to Sandy’s shoulders, who was to walk -into the town with him and carry his small belongings. “You will not -want it walking, but you will want it in the coach,” she said, “and be -sure you keep yourself warm, for, though it’s March, the wind is -terrible cold over the moor; and here is a scarf to put round your neck -for the night journey. It will keep you warm, and it will mind you of -me.” - -“Do I want that to mind me of my Lily?” he said reproachfully. - -“No, after I have been giving you such a taste of my humors, and you -know I am not just the good thing you thought. But you might be more -grateful for my bonnie scarf that I took out of the lavender to give you -to wrap round your throat at night! And it is a very bonnie scarf,” said -Lily; “look at the flowers worked upon it, the same on both sides, and -as soft as a dove’s feathers that are of silver. You will put it round -your neck and say Lily gave me this; and then at Whit-Sunday, when I -take up my place, I will find it again, laid away in some drawer, and I -will take it back, and it will belong then both to you and me.” - -“That is a bargain,” he said, more moved by the parting than he had ever -been; but Lily went with him to the head of the stairs, and there stood -looking after him from the staircase window, to keep up some sort of -transparent fiction for Dougal’s sake, with her eyes shining and a smile -upon her mouth. She was resolved that this was how he should see her -when he went away. There should be no more breakings down. She would -importune him no more. She would not shed a tear. When he turned round -to wave his hand before he disappeared under the bank, she was still -smiling and calm. It was, perhaps, a little startling to Ronald, who had -never seen her so reasonable before--and reasonableness, though so -desirable, is sometimes a little alarming too. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII - - -When she was sure that the travellers were out of sight, Lily flew down -the spiral stairs, snatched her plaid from where it hung as she passed, -and rushed out to the only shelter and refuge she had--the loneliness -and silence of the moor. She had to push through between the two women, -who would so fain have stopped her to administer their consolation and -caresses, but whom, in her impatience, she could not tolerate, shaking -her head as they called after her to put on her plaid and that she would -get her death of cold. It was March and a beautiful morning, the air -almost soft in the broad beaming of the sun, and the moisture, which lay -heavy on the moss-green turf and ran and sparkled in little pools and -currents everywhere; but the breeze was keen and cold, and blew upon her -with a sharp and salutary chill, cooling her heated cheeks. Lily sprang -over the great bushes of the ling, which, bowed for a moment by her -passage, flung back upon her a shower of dew-drops as they recovered -their straightness, and the whins caught at the plaid on her arm as she -brushed past; but she took no notice of these impediments, nor of the -wetness under her feet, nor the chill of the air upon her uncovered -head, and shoulders clothed only in her indoor dress. She paused upon a -little green hillock slightly rising over the long level, which was a -favorite point of vision, and from which, as she had often found, the -furthest view was possible of any thing within the horizon of this -little world. But it was not to see that little speck on the road, which -was Ronald, that Lily had made this rush into the heart of the moor. It -was for the utter solitude, the silence which enclosed and surrounded -her, the separation from every thing that could intrude upon that little -speck of herself, so insignificant in the great fresh shining world, -yet so much more living in her trouble than all the mountains and the -moors. Lily sank down on the mossy green and covered her face with her -hands. She had shed passionate tears on her husband’s shoulder last -night, but these were different which forced their way now without any -thing to restrain them. They were not mere tears of a parting, which, -after all, was no wonderful thing. He would come again. Lily had no fear -that he would come again. She had no doubt of his love, no thought that -he might grow cold to her. Of the two it was Ronald who was the warmer -lover, holding her in perfect admiration as well as in all the fondness -of a young husband, which was not exactly what could be said on her -side. But his love was of a different kind, as perhaps a man’s always -is. He did not want all that she did in their marriage. A little house -of their own, wherever it was--a home, a known and certain place: was it -the woman who thought of this rather than the man? It gave her a pang -even to think that it might perhaps be so, or at least that Ronald did -not care for what she might suffer in this respect. He might be content -with casual visits, but what she wanted was her garret, her honest name, -and honor and truth. - -And then Whit-Sunday, Whit-Sunday, the term when people did their -flitting, and the maids went to their new places! Oh, happy, honest -prose that had nothing to do, Lily thought, with romance or poetry. -Would it come--in two months, not much more--and make an end of all -this? or would it never come? Poor Lily’s heart was so wrung out of its -right place that she lost her confidence even in the term; she could -scarcely think of any thing in earth or heaven, she who had once been so -confident, of which she could now think that there was no fear. - -By this time the cold had begun to creep to Lily’s heart, her fever of -excitement having found vent, and she was glad to wrap herself closely -in her plaid, putting it over her head and gathering the soft folds -round her throat. She put back the hair which the cold breeze and the -disorder of her weeping had brought about her face, smoothing it back -under the tartan screen, the soft warm folds that gave a little color to -her pale face. Oh, if she could have had a plaid, but that of Ronald’s -tartan, to wrap about her heart, the chilled spirit and soul that had no -warmth of covering! But that must not be thought of now, when Lily’s -business was to go back to her dreary home, to meet the eyes that would -be fixed upon her, to bear her burden worthily, and to betray to no one, -even her most confidential companion, the doubts and terrors that were -in her own heart. - -As she came out upon the road, having made a long round of the moor to -give herself more time, Lily perceived two figures in front of her, whom -she did not at once recognize; but after a moment or two her attention -was attracted by the voice of the man, who spoke loudly, and by -something in the attitude of the little figure walking by his side, and -replying sometimes in an inaudible monosyllable, sometimes by a -deprecating gesture only, to his vehement words. Was it Helen Blythe who -was here so far from home by the side of a man who spoke to her almost -roughly, certainly not as so gentle a creature ought ever to have been -spoken to? It was some time before Lily’s faculties were sufficiently -roused to hear what he was saying, or at least to discover that she -could hear if she gave her attention; when, however, a sudden “If you -had ever loved me, Helen!” caught her ear, Lily cried out in alarm: “Oh, -whisht, whisht! Whoever you are, I am coming behind you and I can hear -what you say.” - -The man turned round almost with rage, showing her the dark and clouded -face of the stranger whom she had met the day before with Ronald, and -who was the cause, as she had divined, of Helen’s sad eyes. “Confound -you!” he cried in his passion, “can ye not pass on, and leave the road -free to folk going about their own business?” These words came out with -a rush, and then he paused and reddened, and took off his hat. “Miss -Ramsay!” he said, “I beg your pardon,” placing himself hastily between -her and his companion. - -“I neither want to see nor hear,” cried Lily. “Let me pass; you need -have no fear of me.” - -At the voice Helen came quietly out of his shadow. “You need not hide me -from Lily,” she said, “for Lily is my dear friend. I’ve walked far, far -from home, Lily, with one that--one that--I may never see again,” she -said, turning a pathetic look upon the man by her side. “He blames me -now, and perhaps I am to be blamed. But to think it is, maybe, the last -time, as he is telling me, breaks my heart. Lily, will you take us in, -if it was only for half-an-hour? I feel as if I could not go on another -step, for my heart fails me as well as my feet.” - -“You never told me you were wearied, Helen!” he cried in a tone of -fierce penitence. “How was I to know? I could have carried you like a -feather.” - -She shook her head. “You could carry more weight than me, Alick, but as -soon Schiehallion as me. And I was not wearied till I saw rest at hand.” - -“Miss Ramsay,” he said, “you know what she and I are to each other.” - -“I know nothing,” cried Lily, “and you need not tell me, for what Helen -does is always right; but come in and welcome, and have your talk out in -peace. Never mind to explain to me--I scarcely know your name.” - -“It is, alas, no credit, or rather I am no credit to a good name that -has been well kept on this countryside; but we are old, old friends, -Helen Blythe and me. She should have been my wife, Miss Ramsay, though -you might not think it, nearly ten long years ago. If she had kept her -promise, they would never have called me wild Alick Duff, and the black -sheep of the family, as they do now. This is the third time I’ve come -back to bid her keep her word; for I have her word, rough and careless -as you may think me. Each time I’m less worth taking than I was the time -before, and I’m not going to risk it any more. When she drops me this -time, I will just go to the devil, which is the easiest way, and -trouble nobody more about me.” - -“And why should you go to the devil?” said Lily, “for that is what -nobody except your own self can make you do.” - -“Oh, do not hearken to him, Lily; let us come in for half-an-hour, for -neither will my feet carry me nor will my heart hold me up if there is -more.” - -Lily made her guests enter before her when they reached the door of -Dalrugas; but lingering behind as Helen made her way slowly with her -tired steps up the spiral stairs, caught Duff by the sleeve and spoke in -his ear: “Do you not think shame of yourself to break her heart, a -little thing like that, with putting the weight of your ill deeds upon -her, and you a big strong man?” - -“Me--think shame!” he said, with a low laugh. - -“_I_ would think shame,” cried Lily vehemently, all her hot blood -surging up in her veins, “to lay the burden of a finger’s weight upon -her, and her not a half or a quarter so big as me!” - -This sharp, indignant whisper Helen heard as a murmur behind her while -she went up the stairs. She turned round when she reached the -drawing-room, meeting the others as they appeared after her. “And what -were you two saying to each other?” she asked, with a tremulous smile. - -“I am going,” said Lily, “to leave you to yourselves; and when you have -had your talk out, you will come down to me to have something to eat; -and then we will think, Helen, how we are to get you home.” - -“You are coming in here, Lily. Him and me we have said all there is to -be said. And he has told you what there is between us, as perhaps I -would never have had the courage to do. Come and tell him over again, -Lily, you that are a young lass and have known no trouble--tell him what -a woman can do and cannot do, for he will not believe me.” - -“How can I tell? that have known no trouble, as you say,” cried Lily. -But Helen knew nothing to explain the keen tone of irony that was in the -words, and looked at the girl with an appeal in her patient eyes, too -full of her own sorrow to remember that, perhaps, this younger creature -might have sorrows too. “How should I know,” said Lily, “what a woman -cannot do? If it is to keep a man from wrong-doing, is that a woman’s -business, Helen? How do I know? They say in books that it’s the women -that drive them to it. Are you to take him on your shoulders and carry -him away from the gates of ---- Or what are you expected to do?” - -“If she had married me when I asked her,” cried Duff, “she would have -done that. Ay, that she would! From the gates of hell, that a little -thing like you daren’t name. I would never have known the way they lay -if she had put her hand in mine and come with me. And that I have told -you, Helen, a hundred times, and a hundred more.” - -“Oh, Alick, Alick!” was all that Helen said. - -“And you never would have thought shame,” cried Lily, “to ride by on her -shoulders, instead of walking on your own feet? I would have set my face -like a flint and passed them by, and scorned them that wiled me there! I -would have laid it upon nobody but myself if I had not heart enough to -save my own head!” - -“Oh, Lily, Lily!” cried Helen, turning upon her champion, “my bonnie -dear! it’s you that are too young to understand. Maybe he’s wrong, but -he’s a kind of right, too. I am not blaming him for that. Many a woman -keeps a man on the straight road almost without knowing, and him no -worse of it nor her either. I could tell you things! And, Alick, I will -not deceive you; if I had not been so young that time--if I had only had -the courage--for there was no reason then, but just that I was a young -lass, and frightened, and did not know---- There was no -reason--then----” - -“Except that I was wild Alick Duff, that they said would settle to -nothing, and not a man that would ever make salt to his kale.” - -Helen made no answer, but shook her head with a sigh. - -“How can I stand between you and him?” said Lily. “You take away my -breath. I cannot understand the tongue you are speaking. It’s not good -English nor Scots either, but another language. Are we angels, to make -men good? and is it no matter what evil thing a woman takes into her -heart if she can but make her man look like a whited sepulchre, and keep -him, as you say, on the straight road? Is that what we were made for?” -she cried in all the indignation of her youth. - -Duff, a little surprised, a little confused by this unexpected -controversy, too much occupied with his own purpose not to be impatient -with any digression, yet uncertain whether this strange digression might -not serve his cause in the end, made answer, first fixing his eyes upon -Lily, the little girl who knew no trouble: “I’m thinking that was a good -part of it,” he said. “You had the most to do with bringing ill into the -world; you should have the most to do with driving it out. But what do I -care about women?” he cried. “It’s Helen I’m thinking of. There might -never be such another, but there she is that could have done it, and -would not lift her little finger. And now she will smile and send me -away.” - -“He speaks,” cried Lily, “as if it were your responsibility and not -his--as if you would be answerable!” - -“Oh,” said Helen in a hurried undertone, “and that is what I lie and -think upon in the watches of the night. Will the Lord demand an account -at my hands? Will he say: ‘Helen, where is thy brother?’ I that was -maybe appointed for him to be his keeper, to take care of him, with all -his hot blood and all his fancies that nobody understood but me!” - -Duff was walking impatiently about the room, not listening to what the -two women spoke between themselves, and Lily was too much bewildered by -this new view to make any answer, except by a brief exclamation: “It is -like a coward to put the blame upon you!” - -“I would not shrink from it if I might bear it,” said Helen. “It’s not -that. But to think it might be a man’s ruin that a poor frightened -creature of a woman--no, a lassie, twenty years old, no more--could not -see her duty. For there was no reason then. My mother was living, my -father was a strong man. The boys had been unlucky, but me, I was free. -And I let him go away. Oh, lay the wyte on me!” she said, clasping her -hands. “Oh, lay the wyte on me!” - -Duff came suddenly to a stand-still before her, catching up something of -what she said. “I’ll forgive you all that’s come and gone, and all that -might have been, and the vows I’ve broken, and the little good I’ve ever -done”--a tender light came over his dark face--“Helen, I’ll forgive you -all my ruin, and we’ll gather up the fragments that are left, if you -will but come with me now.” - -“Forgive her!” cried Lily, indignant. - -“Ah, forgive her! you that know nothing of the heart of man. Can she -ever give it back? She says herself the Lord will seek my blood at her -hands: how much more me, that knows what might have been and never has -been because she was not there? But, Helen, let it be now! It may be but -the hinder end of life that’s left, but better that than nothing at all. -We are not so old yet, neither you nor me. And there’s the fragments -that remain--the fragments that remain.” He held out his hands toward -her, the face that Lily had thought so dark and forbidding melting in -every line, the lowering brows lifted, the fierce eyes softened with -moisture. And Helen looked up at him with her own overflowing, and a -light as of martyrdom on her face. - -“Oh, Alick, my father, my father! I cannot leave my father now.” - -He kicked away a footstool on the carpet with a sudden movement which, -to Lily, at first appeared as if he were offering violence to Helen -herself. “Your father!” he cried, “the minister that will have no broken -man for his daughter nor ill name for his house, that wants the siller -of them that come to woo, that would sell you away to that white-faced -lad because he has something to the fore and a respectable name! Oh, -don’t speak to me of your father, Helen Blythe, him that should be all -spirit and that’s all flesh! Confound him and you and all your sleekit -ways! In what way is he better than me?” - -“Man! you will kill her!” cried Lily, springing forward and putting -herself between them. “How dare you swear at her, that is far, far too -good for you!” - -But Helen was not horrified, like Lily. She looked at him still, bending -her head to the other side. “My father,” she said, “has his faults, like -us all. He is a mixture, as you are yourself. I am not angry at what you -say. He likes his pleasure as you do, Alick. He is more moderate: he is -a minister. He has not, maybe, been tempted like you, but I allow that -it is not far different. Perhaps in the sight of God----” But here her -voice failed her, suddenly interrupted by something deeper than tears. - -“He likes his pleasure,” said Duff, with a short laugh; “he likes a good -glass of wine, not to say whiskey, and a good dinner, and tells his -stories, and is no more particular when he’s with his cronies than me. -Only I’ll tell you what he does, Helen, that me I cannot do. Would he -have had it in him if he had not been a minister, nor had a wife, nor -been kept from temptation? That is what none of us can tell. He knows -when to stop; he likes himself better than his pleasures. He keeps the -string about his neck and stops himself when he’s gone far enough. I do -not esteem that quality,” cried the big man, striding about the room, -making the boards groan and creak. “I am not fond of calculation. Alick -Duff has cost me many a sore head and many a sore heart. I scorn him,” -he cried, with a strong churning out of the fierce letters that make up -that word, “both for what he’s done and what he hasn’t done. But it’s no -for him I would draw bridle if I were away in full career. But I would -for you!” he said, suddenly sinking his voice, and throwing himself in a -chair that swung and rocked under him by Helen’s side. “Helen, I would -for you!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXVIII - - -Lily had an agitating and troubled day between this strange pair, which -had the good effect upon her, however, of turning her thoughts entirely -away from her own affairs, the struggle and trouble of which seemed of -so little importance beside this conflict which had the air of being for -life or death. She did not understand either of the combatants: the man -who so fearlessly owned his weaknesses, and put the weight of his soul -upon the woman who ought to have saved him; or the woman who did not -deny that responsibility, nor claim independence or a right irrespective -of him to follow her own way. Helen Blythe had ideas of life, it was -evident, very different from those that had ever come into Lily’s mind. -In those days there were no discussions of women’s rights; but in those -days, alas! as in all other periods, the heart of a high-spirited young -woman here and there swelled high with imagination, wrath, and -indignation at the thought of those indignities which all women had to -suffer. That it should be taken as a simple thing that any man, after he -had gone through all the soils and degradations of a reckless life, -should have a spotless girl given to him to make him a new existence, -was one of those bitter thoughts that rankled in the minds of many -women, though nothing was said on the subject in public, and very little -even among themselves. For those were subjects which girls shrank from -and blushed to hear of. The knowledge was horrible, and made them feel, -when any chance fact came their way, as if their very souls were soiled -by the hearing. Not that the elder women, especially those inconceivably -experienced and impartial old ladies of society, who see every thing -with the sharpest eyesight, and discuss every thing with words that cut -and glance like steel, and who have surmounted all that belongs to sex, -except a keen dramatic interest in its problems, did not talk of these -matters after their kind, as in all the ages. But the girls were not -told, they did not know, they shrank from information which they would -not have understood had it been conveyed to them, except, indeed, a few -principles that were broad and general: that to marry a girl to an old -man or a wicked man was a hideous thing, and that the old doctrine of a -reformed rake, which had been preached to their mothers, was a scorn to -womankind, and no longer to be suggested to them. For the magic of the -Pamelas was over, and Sir Walter had arisen in the sky, which cleared -before him, all noisome things flying where he made his honest, noble -way. Not much these heroes of his, people say, not worth a Tom Jones -with his stress and storm of life; but bringing in a new era, the young -and pure with the young and true, and not a whitewashed Lovelace in the -whole collection. Lily was of Scott’s age; and when she saw this wolf -approaching the lamb, or rather this black sheep, as every-body called -him, demanding a maiden sacrifice to clean him from his guilt, her heart -burned with indignation and the rage of innocence. She could not -understand Helen’s strange acquiescence, nor her sense of possible guilt -in not having accepted that part which was offered to her. The very -atmosphere which surrounded Duff was obnoxious to Lily: the roughness of -his tones and his clothes, his large, noisy movements and vehemence and -gestures. He had lost, she thought, that air of a gentleman which is the -last thing a man loses who is born to it, and never, as she believed, -loses innocently. - -She was glad beyond description when, after much more conversation, and -a meal to which his excitement and passion did not prevent him from -doing a certain justice, Duff was got out of the house, leaving Helen -behind, for whom the cart with the black pony had to be brought out once -more. Helen was greatly exhausted by all the agitations of the day. He -had left her without bringing her to any change of mind, yet vowing he -would see her once again and make her come with him still, that he would -not yet abandon all hope, while she sat tired out, shaking her head -softly, with a melancholy smile on her face--a smile more pitiful than -many complaints. She did not rise from her chair to see him go away, but -followed him with wistful eyes to the door--eyes that were full of a dew -of pain that flooded them, but did not fall. She did not say any thing -for a long time after he had gone. Was she listening to his steps as he -went away, leaving on the air a lingering sound, measured and heavy? -Helen had thought that footstep like music. She had watched for it many -a day, and heard it, as she thought, miles off, in the stillness of the -long country roads, and again, in imagination, many and many a day when -he was far out of hearing. She heard it now, long after it had been lost -by every ear but her own. Her face had a strained look, as if that sound -drew her after him, yet stronger resolution kept her behind. - -“You did not mean that, Helen--oh, not that!” Lily said, encircling her -friend with her arm. - -“My bonnie Lily! but that I did, with all my heart!” - -“That you, a good woman, would go away out into the world with an ill -man, knowing he was an ill man, and thinking that you could turn him and -mend him! Oh, Helen, Helen! take him to your heart, that is pure as -snow, knowing he was an ill man?” - -“Lily, you are very young--you are little more than a bairn. What are -our small degrees of good and ill--or rather of ill and worse--before -our Maker? Do you think he judges as we judge? They say my poor Alick is -wild, and well I wot he is wild, and has taken many, many a wrong step -on the road. Oh, if you think it presumptuous of me to believe I could -have held him fast so that he should not fall, that would be more true! -But, Lily, if ye were long in this countryside, you would see it with -your own e’en. The women long ago were not so feared as we were. They -just married the lad they liked, and if he were wild, forgave him; and -I’ve known goodwives that have just pushed them through--oh, just pushed -them through!--till they came to old age with honor on their heads and a -fine family about them, that would have sunk into the miry pit and the -horrible clay if the woman had not had the heart to do it. I am not -saying I had not the heart,” said Helen, with a melancholy shake of her -head, “but I was young and knew nothing, and the moment passed away.” - -“It can never be right,” cried Lily, “to run such a dreadful risk! Oh, -if they cannot guide themselves, who are we that we should guide them? I -am not like you, Helen. I know for myself I could guide no man.” - -No! well she knew that! Not so much as for the taking of a little -house--not so much as the simplest duty as ever lay in a man’s road. -Helen was not so clever as Lily, she had no such pretensions in any way; -every thing--blood and breeding, and the habit of carrying out her own -projects and holding her head high--was in the favor of the younger. But -Lily had no such confidence as Helen. She did not believe in any -influence she could exert. Her opinion, her entreaties, were of no use. -They did not move Ronald. He dismissed them with a kiss and a smile. “I -could guide no man,” she repeated with a bitter conviction in her heart. - -“It would, maybe, not be a perfect life,” said Helen; “far from that; -there would be many an ill moment. The goodwife has her cross to carry, -and it’s not light; but, oh, Lily, better that than ruin to the man, and -a lonely life, with little use in it, to _her_; and there is aye the -hope of the bairns that will do better another day.” - -“The bairns,” said Lily, “that would be the worst of all. An ill man’s -bairns--to carry on the poison in the blood.” - -“You are a hard judge,” said Helen, pausing to look at her, “for one so -young; but it’s because you are so young, my bonnie dear. We are all ill -men and women, too. There’s a line of poetry that comes into my head, -though it’s a light thing for such a heavy subject, and I cannot mind -it exact to a word. It says we were all forfeit once, but he that might -have best took the advantage found out the remedy. It is bonnier than -that, and it is just the truth. The Lord said: ‘Neither do I condemn -thee.’ Ye will mind that at least, Lily.” - -“I mind them both,” cried Lily, piqued to have her knowledge doubted, -“but yet----” - -“And you must not speak of my poor Alick as an ill man. Oh, if I could -but let you see how little he is an ill man! His heart is just as -innocent as a bairn’s in some things, I’m not saying in all things. He -is wild, poor lad, the Lord forgive him! He does a foolish thing, and -then he thinks after that he shouldn’t have done it. If I were there, I -would make him think first, I would think for him; and then, if the -thing was done, there would be me to try to mend it and him, too. But -why should I speak as if that was in my power?” cried Helen, with a -sudden soft momentary rush of tears, “for I cannot, I cannot, go with -Alick and leave my father! I will have to stand by and see my poor lad -go out again without a friend by his side into the terrible, terrible -world.” - -Lily put her arm round her friend, kneeling beside her, giving a warm -clasp of sympathy if nothing more. Helen’s heart was beating sadly, with -a suppressed passion, but Lily felt as if her slim young frame was all -one desperate pulse, clanging in her ears and tingling to her fingers’ -ends. Was it her fault that in all her veins there burned this sense of -impotence, this dreadful miserable consciousness that she could do -nothing, move no one, and was powerless to shape her own fate? Helen was -powerless too, but in how different a way! sure that she would have been -able to fulfil that highest purpose if only her steps had been free, -whereas Lily was humiliated by the certainty that there was no power at -all in her, that to everybody with whom she was connected she was a -creature without individual potency, whose fate was to be decided for -her by the will of others. The contrast of Helen’s feeling, which was so -different, gave a bitterness to her pain. - -“It was all very simple,” said Helen. “My father--you have never seen -him at his best, Lily; there is not a cleverer man, nor a better -learned, in all this countryside--was tutor to Mr. Duff when they were -both young, and the boys, as they grew up, used to come to him for -lessons. Alick was the youngest, just two years older than me, that am -the last of all. They were great friends with our own boys, who are both -out in the world, and, oh, alack! not doing so very well that we should -cast a stone at other folk. Eh but he was a bonnie boy! dark, always -dark, like his mother, but the flower of the flock, and courted and -petted wherever he went. He was a wild boy, and wild he was, I will not -deny it, in his youth, and began by giving me a very sore heart; for, -from the first that I can mind of, I have never thought of any man but -him. And then he was sent away abroad--oh, not for punishment--to do -better and make up the lost way. He came to my father and he said: ‘Let -Helen go with me and I’ll do well.’ I was but nineteen, Lily, and him -twenty-one. They just laughed him to scorn. ‘It would be the Babes in -the Wood over again,’ they said, and what was I, a little lass at home, -that I could be of any help to a man? Lily!” cried Helen, her mild eyes -shining, her cheeks aglow, “I knew better myself, though I dared not say -it, and he, poor laddie, he knew best of all. I should have gone with -him then! that very moment! if I had but seen it; and, oh, I did see, -but I was so young, and no boldness in my heart. My father said: ‘Work -you your best for five years and wipe out all the old scores, and come -back and ye shall have her, whether it pleases your father or no.’ For -the family would not have it. I was not good enough for them. But little -was my father minding for that. He never thought upon the old laird but -as a boy he had given palmies to, and kept in for not knowing his -lessons. He did not care a snap of his fingers for the old laird.” - -“At nineteen, and him twenty-one!” Lily said. - -“Oh, yes--they all said it was folly, and maybe I would say so, too, if -I saw another pair. But for all that it was not folly, Lily. He wanted -me to run away with him and say no word. And, oh, but I was in a -terrible swither what to do. It’s peetiful to be so young: you have no -experience; you cannot answer a word when they preach you down with -their old saws. I thought upon my mother that was weakly, and Tom and -Jamie giving a good deal of trouble. And at the last I would not. It was -my moment,” she said softly, with a sigh, “and I had a perception of it; -but I was frightened, Lily, and, oh, so silly and young!” - -“Helen, you could not, you should not, have done it. It would have been -impossible! It would have been wrong!” - -Helen only shook her head with a melancholy smile. “And then he came -back,” she said, “at the end of the five years. Never, never, Lily, may -you have the feeling I had when I saw Alick Duff again. Something said -in me: ‘Eelen, Eelen, that is your work!’ The light had gone from his -eyes, and the open look; his bonnie brow was all lined. He had grown to -be the man you saw to-day. But what would that have mattered to me? He -had but the more need of me. Alas, alas! my mother was dead, the boys -all adrift, and my father taken with his illness, and what could I do -then? He pleaded sore and my heart went with him. Oh, I fear he had been -wild, wild! He came back without a shilling in his pocket or a prospect -before him. The old laird was still living and went about with a brow -like thunder. He looked as if he hated every man that named Alick’s -name; but them that knew best said he was the favorite still of all the -sons. And Mrs. Duff, that had been so proud, that would not have the -minister’s daughter for her bonnie boy, she came to me herself, Lily. -You see, it was not me only that thought it. She said: ‘Eelen, if you -will marry him, you will save my bonnie lad yet.’ But I could not, I -could not, Lily. How could I leave my own house, that had trouble in it, -and nobody to make a stand but me?” - -“They were selfish and cruel!” cried Lily; “they would have sacrificed -you for the hope of saving an ill man!” - -“Oh, whisht, whisht,” cried Helen again. “And now he has come back. And -every thing is changed. The old laird is dead and gone, and John Duff, -that was never very kind, is laird in his stead, and there’s no home for -him there in his father’s house. And he’s a far older man--eight years -it was this time that he was away. And you will wonder to hear me say a -bonnie lad when you look at that black-browed man. But I see my bonnie -lad in him still, Lily; he is aye the same to me. And, oh, if you knew -how it drags my heart out of my bosom when he bids me come with him and -I cannot! He says we might save the fragments that remain--but there’s -more than that, more than that! He has wasted his youth, but he has not -yet lived half his life. And there’s that to save, Lily; and him and me -together we could stand. Oh, Lily, there’s neither man nor devil that I -would fear for Alick’s sake, and at Alick’s side, to save him--before it -is too late!” - -“Helen,” cried Lily, “what do I know? I dare not speak; but what if -after all you could not save him? If he cannot stand by himself, how -could you make him? You are but a little delicate woman; you are not fit -to fight. Oh, Helen, Helen, what if you could not save him when all is -done!” - -“I am not feared,” Helen said with a serene countenance. And then there -suddenly came a cloud over her, and tears came to her eyes. “What is the -use of speaking,” she said, throwing up her hands with an impatience -unlike her usual calm, “when I can do nothing? when he must just go away -again without hope, my poor Alick! and come back no more? And that will -be the end both of him and me,” she went on, “two folk that might have -made a home, and served God in our generation, and brought up children -and received strangers and held our warm place in the cold world. One of -us will perish away yonder, among wild beasts and ill men, and one of us -will just fade away on the roadside like a flower thrown away when its -sweetness is gone--and it will be no better for any mortal, but maybe -worse, that Alick Duff and Helen Blythe were born into this weary -world.” - -“Oh, Helen, Helen!” cried Lily, “I think Alick Duff must have been the -cloud that has come over your life and turned its brightness to dark. If -you had not always been thinking of him, you would have had another home -and a brighter life. And even now--can I not see myself?--don’t you know -very well there is a good man----” - -“Oh,” cried Helen, rising up with sudden animation, almost pushing -Lily’s kneeling figure from her, “go away from me with your good man! It -is enough to make a person unjust, to make ye hate the name of good! How -do you know whether they are good or no, one of them? Were they ever -tempted like him? Had they ever the fire of hot thoughts in their head, -or the struggle in their hearts? Was nature ever in them running free -and wild like a great river, carrying the brigs and the dams away? or -just a drumlie quiet stream, aye content in its banks, and asking no -more? Oh, dinna speak to me of your good man! It’s blasphemy, it’s -sacrilege, it’s the sin that will never be pardoned! There is but one -man, be he good or bad, and one woman that is bound to do her best for -him; and ill be her lot if she fails to do it, for it is not herself she -will ruin,--that would matter little--the feckless creature, no worth -her salt,--but him, too, but him, too!” - -She sat down again after this little outburst and dried her eyes. Lily, -who had risen hurriedly to her feet, too, startled and almost angry, -stood irresolute, not knowing how to reply, when Helen put out to her a -trembling hand. “You are not to be troubled about me,” she said; “you -are not to be angry at what I say. It is a comfort to speak out my mind. -Who can I speak to, Lily? Not to my father, who stands between me and my -life; not to _him_, that rages at me as you have heard because I cannot -arise and follow him, as I would do if I could, to the end of the world. -Oh, Lily, it is good for the heart, when it is full like mine, to -speak. It takes away a little of the burden. ‘I leant my back until an -aik’--do you mind the old song? You are not an oak, you’re only a -lily-plant, but, oh! the comfort to lean on you, Lily, just for a -moment, just till I get my breath.” - -“Say to me whatever you like, Helen; say any thing. I may not agree----” - -“I am not asking you to agree--how should you agree, you that know -nothing? Oh, Lily, my bonnie Lily,” cried Helen, suddenly looking in her -face, “am I speaking blasphemy, too? You may know more than I think; -there is that in your face that was not there six months ago.” - -The color changed in Lily’s cheek, but she did not flinch. “If I know -any thing,” she said, “it is not in your way, Helen. I am not the kind -of woman that can change a man’s thoughts or his life. I am one that has -no power. If I tried your way, I would fail. No one has changed a -thought or a purpose in all my life for me. I am useless, useless. I -have to do what other folk tell me, and wait other folk’s pleasure, and -blow here and blow there like a straw in the wind. And I love it not, I -love it not!” she cried. “It is as bad for me as for you.” - -Helen thought she knew what the girl meant. She was here in durance, -bound by her uncle’s hard will; prevented, too, from carrying out the -choice of her heart. It had not yet dawned upon the elder woman that -Lily’s experience had gone further than this. And it is possible that -the gentle Helen, used all her life to an influence over others far -stronger than seemed natural to her character, and believing fully and -strongly in that power, could not have understood the higher trial of -the far more vivacious and vigorous nature beside her, which flung -itself in vain against the rock of another mind inaccessible to any -power it possessed, and, clear-sighted and strong-willed, had yet to -submit and do nothing but submit. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIX - - -Alick Duff went away from the valley of the Rugas, calling on heaven and -earth to witness that he would never be seen there more, and that from -henceforward he was to be considered as an altogether shipwrecked and -ruined man. “There is nobody that will contradict you there,” the -minister said sternly, “and nothing but the grace of God, my man, for -all you threep and swear to make my poor Eelen meeserable, that would -ever have made any difference.” “And who will say,” cried Duff, “that it -was not just _her_ that would have been the grace o’ God?” The minister -shook his head, yet was a little startled by the argument. As for Helen, -she said little more to her strange lover. “It is no use speaking now. -There is nothing more to say. I cannot leave my father.” Lily, to whom -this story had come like a revelation in the midst of the quiet country -life which seems, especially in Scotland, never to be ruffled by -emotion, much less passion, and on whom it acted powerfully, restoring -her mental balance and withdrawing at least a portion of her thoughts -from herself, was a great deal at the Manse during this agitating -period, which was all the more curious that nothing was ever said about -it on the surface of the life which flowed on in an absolutely unbroken -routine, as if there was no impassioned despairing man outside in the -darkness waiting the moment to fling himself and his terrible needs and -wishes at Helen’s feet, and no terrible question tearing her heart -asunder. That it was there underneath all the time was plain enough to -those who were in the secret. The minister had an anxious look, even -when he laughed and told his stories; and Helen, though her serenity was -extraordinary, grew pale and red with an unconscious listening for every -sound which Lily divined. He might burst in at any moment and make a -scene in the quiet Manse parlor, destroying all the pretence of -composure with which they had covered their life, or, worse still, he -might do something desperate--he might disappear in the river or end his -existence with a shot, leaving an indelible shame on his memory, and -upon those who belonged to him, and upon her who, as the country folk -would say, “had driven him to it.” If she had married Alick Duff and -gone away with him, there would have been an unanimous cry over her -folly; but if in his despair he had cut the thread in any such -conclusive way, Helen never would have been mentioned afterward but as -the woman who drove poor Alick Duff to his death. There was a thrill of -this possibility even in the air of the little town, where he was seen -from time to time wandering about the precincts of the Manse, and where -every-body knew him and his story. But the most exciting thing of all to -Lily was to see the face and watch the ways of the excellent young -minister, Mr. Blythe’s assistant and successor, who went and came -through these troubled days, talking of the affairs of the parish, -sedulously restraining himself that he might not appear to think of, or -be conscious of, any thing else, but with a countenance which reflected -Helen’s, which followed every change of hers, yet when her attention was -attracted toward him, closed up in a moment, with the most extraordinary -effort dismissing all meaning from his countenance. Lily became -fascinated by Mr. Douglas, through whom she could read, as in a mirror, -every thing that was happening. He said not a word on this subject, -which, indeed, nobody spoke of, nor did he betray any consciousness of -the other man’s presence, about which even the maid in the kitchen and -the minister’s man, who never had been so assiduous in the discharge of -his duties as now, were so perfectly informed; but yet she felt sure -that something in him tingled to the neighborhood of his rival like an -elastic chord. He would come in sometimes pale, with a stern look in his -closely drawn mouth, and then Lily would feel sure that he had seen -Alick Duff in the way, waiting till Helen should appear. And sometimes -the lines of his countenance would relax, so that she felt sure he had -heard good news and believed that haunting figure to have gone away; and -then at a sound which was no sound outside, at the most trifling change -in Helen’s face, the veil, the cloud, would shut again over his face. - -The manner in which Lily attained the possibility of making these -studies was that by the minister’s invitation, seconded, but not with -very much warmth, by Helen, she had come to the Manse on a visit of a -few days. Whatever prejudice Mr. Blythe had against her--and she was -sure he had a prejudice, though she could not imagine any cause for -it--had disappeared under the pressure of his own sore need. He himself -was helpless either to watch over or to protect his daughter, and in -despair he had thought of the other girl, herself caught in a tangle of -the bitter web of life, and full of secret knowledge of its -difficulties, who, though she was so much younger, had learned to some -degree the lesson which Helen was so slow to learn. “She’s but a girl, -but I’ll warrant she could give Eelen a fine lesson what it is to lippen -to a man,” the minister said to himself. He had no high view of human -nature, for his part. To lippen to a man seemed to him, though he had -been in that respect severely virtuous himself, the last thing that a -woman should do. For his own part he lippened to, that is, trusted, -nobody very much, and thought he was wise in so doing. To have Lily -there, seeing every thing with those young eyes, no doubt throwing her -weight on the other side, allowing it at least to be seen that a man was -not so easily turned round a woman’s little finger as poor Helen -thought, would be something gained in the absence of all other help. Mr. -Blythe had a tacit conviction that Lily’s influence would be on the -opposite side, though his chief reason for thinking so was one that was -fictitious. - -This was how Lily came to be acquainted with all that was going on. They -all appealed to her behind backs, each hoping he or she was alone in -calling for her sympathy. “You will tell her better than I can; they -all distrust an old man. They think the blood’s dry in his veins and he -has forgotten he was once like the rest. And she will listen to him at -the last. The thought that he’s going away, to fall deeper and deeper, -and that strong delusion she has got that she can save him, will -overcome her, and I’ll be left in the corner of the auld Manse sitting -alone.” - -“Oh, no, Mr. Blythe, never think that; Helen will not leave you.” - -“I would not trust her, nor one of them,” he cried, and there in the -dark, sitting almost unseen beside the fire, his voice came forth -toneless, like that of a dead man. “I have never been thought to make -much work about my bairns: one has gone and another has gone, and it has -been said that the minister never minded. But there was once an auld man -that said: ‘When I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.’” - -Lily put her hand upon the large, soft, limp hand of the old minister in -quick sympathy. “She will never leave you,” she repeated: “you need fear -nothing for that--she will never go away.” - -He shook his head and put his other hand for a moment over hers. “You -may have been led astray,” he said, “poor little thing! but your heart -is in the right place.” - -Lily did not think or ask herself what he meant about being led astray. -She was too much occupied with Helen, who came in at the moment with the -thrill and quiver in her which was the sign that she had seen her lover. -The waning sunset light from the window which had seen so many strange -sights indicated this movement too, the tremor that affected her head -and slight shoulders like a chill of colder air from without. She said -softly as she passed Lily: “There is one at the door would fain speak a -word to you.” It was not a call which Lily was very ready to obey. She -had kept as far as possible out of the reach of Duff, and she had not -the same sympathy for him as for the others involved; indeed, it must be -allowed that, notwithstanding the charm of the romance, Lily’s feelings -were far more strongly enlisted on the side of the gentle and patient -young minister than on any other. She lingered, putting away some scraps -of work which had been on the table, until she could no longer resist -Helen’s piteous looks. “Oh, go, go!” she whispered close to Lily’s ear. -It was a blustering March night, the wind and the dust blowing in along -the passage when the Manse door was opened, and Lily obeyed, very -reluctantly, the gesture of the dark figure outside, which moved before -her to a corner sheltered by the lilac bushes, which evidently was a -spot very familiar. She felt that she could almost trace the steps of -Helen on the faint line which was not distinct enough to be a path, and -that opening among the branches--was it not the spot where she had -leaned for support through many a trying interview? Duff tacitly ceded -that place to Lily, and then turned upon her with his eyes blazing -through the faint twilight. “You are with them all day, you hear all -they’re saying. They’re all in a conspiracy to keep me hanging on, and -no satisfaction. Tell me: am I to be cast off again like an old clout, -or is there any hope that she’ll come at the last?” - -“There is no hope that she’ll come; how could she?” cried Lily. “Her -father is old and infirm, Mr. Duff, she has told you. It is cruel to -keep her like this, always in agitation. She cannot; how could she? Her -father----” - -“Confound her father!” he cried, swinging his fist through the air. -“What’s her father to her own life and mine? You think one person should -swamp themselves for another, Lily Ramsay. You’ve not been so happy in -doing that yourself, if all tales be true.” - -“What tales?” cried Lily, breathless with sudden excitement; and then -she paused and said proudly: “Take notice, Mr. Duff, that I am not Lily -Ramsay to you!” - -“What are you, then?” he cried, with a laugh of scorn. “If you’ve kept -your father’s name, you are just Lily Ramsay to Alick Duff, and nothing -else. Our forefathers have known each other for hundreds of years. There -was even a kind of a cousinship, a grandmother of mine that was a -Ramsay, or yours that was a Duff, I cannot remember; but if you expect -me, that knew you before you were born, to stand on ceremony--and -Lumsden too,” he added, in a lower tone, “whatever you may be to him.” - -“If it was my concerns you asked me out here to discuss, I think I will -go in,” said Lily, “for it is cold out of doors, and I have nothing to -say to you.” - -“You know well whose concerns it was. Is she coming? Does she understand -that it’s for the last time? I know what she thinks. I’ve been such a -fool hitherto she thinks I will be as great a fool as ever, and come -hankering after her to the stroke of doom. If she thinks that, let her -think it no more. This time I will never come back. I will just let -myself go. Oh, it’s easier, far easier, than to hold yourself in, even a -little bit, as I’ve done. I’ve always had the fear of her before my -eyes. I’ve always said to myself: ‘Not that! not that! or she will never -speak to me again;’ but now----” He swung his fist once more with a -menacing gesture through the dim air. It seemed to Lily as if he were -shaking it in the face of Heaven. - -“And you don’t think shame to say so!” cried Lily, tremulous with cold -and agitation, and finding no argument but this, which she had used -before. - -“Why should I think shame? There are things a woman like Eelen Blythe -can look over, but there are some you would not let her hear of, not to -save your soul. It’s a matter of saving a man’s soul, Lily Ramsay, -whatever ye may think. The worst is she knows every word I have to say: -there’s nothing new to tell her--except just this,” he said with -vehement emphasis: “that this time I will never come back!” - -“And that is not new either. I have heard you tell her so fifty times. -Oh, man,” cried Lily, “cannot you go and leave her at peace? She will -never forget you, but she will accept what cannot be helped. Me, I fight -against it, but I have to submit too. And Helen will not fight. She will -just live quiet and say her prayers for you night and day.” - -“Her prayers! I want herself to stand by my side and keep my heart.” - -“You would be better with her prayers than with many a woman’s company. -Your heart! Can you not pluck up a spirit and stand for God and what is -right without Helen? How will you do it with her, then? You would mind -her at first--oh, I do not doubt every word she said--but then you would -get impatient, and cry: ‘Hold your tongue, woman!’” - -“Is that,” he cried quickly, “what he says to you? He is just a sneaking -coward, and that I would tell him to his face!” - -“You are a coward to call any man so that is not here to defend -himself!” cried Lily, wild with rage and pain, “though who you mean I -know not, and what you mean I care not. Never man spoke such words to -me, but you would do it, you are of the kind to do it. You have thought -and thought that she could save you, and then when you found it was not -so, you would be fiercer at her and bitterer at her than you have been -at your own self. Oh, let Helen be! She will never forget you, but she -will never go with you so long as her old father sits there and cannot -move in his big chair.” - -“If I thought that----” he said, then paused. “If that’s what’s to come -of it all after more than a dozen years! Would I have been a vagabond on -the face of the earth if she had taken me then? I trow no. You will -think I am not the kind good men are made of? Maybe no; but there’s more -kinds than one, even of decent men. I would not drag what was her name -in the dust.” - -“You think not,” said Lily, “but if you have dragged your father’s----” - -“You little devil,” he cried, “to mind me of that!” and then he took off -his hat stiffly, and with ceremony, and said: “I beg your pardon, Miss -Ramsay, or whatever your name may be.” - -“You are very insulting to me!” said Lily. “Why should I stand out here -and let you abuse me? What are you to me that I should bear it?” But -presently she added, softening: “I’m very sorry for you, all the same.” - -She was hurrying away when he seized her by the arm and held her back. -“Do you see that? Am I to stand still and see that, and hold my peace -forever?” - -The corner among the lilacs had this advantage, carefully calculated, -who could doubt, years ago? that those who stood there, though unseen -themselves, could see any one who approached the door of the Manse. The -young minister, Mr. Douglas, had come quietly in while they were -speaking: his footstep was not one that made the gravel fly. He stood, -an image of quietness and good order, on the step, awaiting admittance. -Scotch ministers of that date were not always so careful in their dress, -so regardful of their appearance, as this young Levite. He had his coat -buttoned, his umbrella neatly folded. He was not impatient, as Duff -would have been in his place, but stood immovable, waiting till Marget -in the kitchen had snatched her clean apron from where it lay, and tied -it on to make herself look respectable before she answered the bell. -Duff gripped Lily’s arm, not letting her go, and shaking with fierce -internal laughter, which burst forth in an angry shout when the door was -closed again and the assistant and successor admitted. “Call that a -man!” he said, “with milk in his veins for blood; and you’re all in a -plot to take her from me, and give her to cauld parritch like that!” - -“He would keep her like the apple of his eye. There would no wind blow -rough upon her if he could help it!” cried Lily, shaking herself free. - -“And you think that a grand thing for a woman?” he cried scornfully, -“like a petted bairn, instead of the guardian of a man’s life.” - -“Oh, Alick Duff!” cried Lily, half exasperated, half overcome, “come -back, come back an honest man, for her father will not live forever.” - -“What would I want with her then if I was all I wanted without her?” he -said, with another harsh laugh, and then turned on his heel, grinding -the gravel under his foot, and without another word stalked away. - -How strange it was to go in with fiery words ringing in her ears and the -excitement of such a meeting in her veins, and find these people -apparently so calm, sitting in the little dimly lighted parlor, where -two candles on the table and a small lamp by Mr. Blythe’s head on the -mantel-piece were all that was thought necessary! Lily was too much -moved herself to remark how they all looked up at her with a certain -expectation: Helen wistful and anxious, the old minister closing his -open book over his hand, the young one rising to greet her, with almost -an appealing glance. They seemed all, to Lily’s eyes, so harmonious, the -same caste, the same character, fated to spend their lives side by side. -And what had that violent spirit, that uncontrollable and impassioned -man, with his futile ideal, to do in such a place? Mr. Douglas belonged -to it and fell into all its traditions, but the other could never have -had any fit place within the little circle of those two candles on the -table. When the pause caused by her entrance--a pause of marked -expectation, though none of the party anticipated that she would say a -word--was over, the usual talk was resumed, the conversation about the -parish folk who were ill, and those who were in trouble, and those to -whom any special event had happened. John Logan and the death of his -cows, poor things, who were the sustenance of the bairns; and the -reluctance of poor Widow Blair to part with her son, who was a -“natural,” and had just an extraordinary chance of being received into -one of those new institutions where they are said to do such wonderful -things for that kind of poor imbecile creature: this was what Helen and -her friend were talking of. The minister himself had a more mundane -mind. He held his _Scotsman_ fiercely, and read now and then out loud a -little paragraph; and then he looked fixedly at Lily behind the cover of -the newspaper, till his steady gaze drew her eyes to him. Then he put a -question to her with his lips and eyes, without uttering any sound, and -finding that unsuccessful, called her to him. “See you here, Miss Lily: -there’s something here in very small print ye must read to me with your -young eyes.” - -“Can I do it, father?” said Helen. - -“Just let me and Miss Lily be. She will do it fine, and not grudge the -trouble. Is that man hovering about this house? Is he always there? I -will have to send for the constable if he will not go away.” - -“I hope he is gone for to-night, Mr. Blythe.” - -“For to-night--to be back to-morrow like a shadow hanging round the -place. You’re a young woman and a bonnie one, and that carries every -thing with a man like him. Get him away! I cannot endure it longer. Get -him away!” - -“Mr. Blythe----” - -“I am saying to you get him away!” said the minister in incisive, sharp -notes. And then he added: “After all, the old eyes are not so much worse -than the young ones. Many thanks to you all the same.” - - - - -CHAPTER XXX - - -This agitating episode in Lily’s life was a relief to her from her own -prevailing troubles. They all apologized to her for bringing her into -the midst of their annoyances, but it was, in fact, nothing but an -advantage. To contrast what she had herself to bear with the lot of -Helen even was good for Lily. If she had but known a little sooner how -long and sweetly that patient creature had waited, how many years had -passed over her head, while she did her duty quietly, and neither -upbraided God nor man, Lily thought it would have shamed herself into -quiet, too, and prevented, perhaps, that crowning outcome of impatience -which had taken place in the Manse parlor on that January night. Did she -regret that January night with all its mystery, its hurry, and tumult of -feeling? Oh, no! she said to herself, it would be false to Ronald to -entertain such a thought; but yet how could she help feeling with a sort -of yearning the comparative freedom of her position then, the absence of -all complication? Lily had believed, as Ronald told her, that all -complications would be swept away by this step. She would be freed, she -thought, at once from her uncle’s sway, and ready to follow her husband -wherever their lot might lie. Every thing would be clear before her when -she was Ronald’s wife. She had thought so with certain and unfeigned -faith. She might perhaps have been in that condition still, always -believing, feeling that nothing was wanted but the bond that made them -one, if that bond had not been woven yet. Poor Lily! She would not -permit herself to say that she regretted it. Oh, no! how could she -regret it? Every thing was against them for the moment, but yet she was -Ronald’s, and Ronald hers, forever and ever. No man could put them -asunder. At any time, in any circumstances, if the yoke became too hard -for her to bear, she could go unabashed to her husband for succor. How, -then, could she regret it? But Helen had waited through years and years, -while Lily had grown impatient before the end of one; or perhaps it was -not Lily, but Ronald, that had grown impatient. No, she could not -shelter herself with that. Lily had been as little able to brave the -solitude, the separation, the banishment, as he. And here stood Helen, -patient, not saying a word, always bearing a brave face to the world, -enduring separation, with a hundred pangs added to it, terrors for the -man she loved, self-reproach, and all the exactions of life beside, -which she had to meet with a cheerful countenance. How much better was -this quiet, gentle woman, pretending to nothing, than Lily, who beat her -wings against the cage, and would not be satisfied? Even now what would -not Helen give if she could see her lover from time to time as Lily saw -her husband, if she knew that he was satisfied, and, greatest of all, -that he was unimpeachable, above all reproach? For that certainty Helen -would be content to die, or to live alone forever, or to endure any -thing that could be given her to bear. And Lily was not content, oh! not -at all content! Her heart was torn by a sense of wrong that was not in -Helen’s mind. Was it that she was the most selfish, the most exacting, -the least generous of all? Even Ronald was happy--a man, who always -wanted more than a woman--in having Lily, in the fact that she belonged -to him; while she wanted a great deal more than that--so much more that -there was really no safe ground between them, but as much disagreement -as if they were a disunited couple, who quarrelled and made scenes -between themselves, which was a suggestion at which Lily half laughed, -half shuddered. If it went on long like this, they might turn to be--who -could tell?--a couple who quarrelled, between whom there was more -opposition and anger than love. Lily laughed at the thought, which was -ridiculous; but there was certainly a shiver in it, too. - -Duff had gone away before her short visit to the Manse came to an end. -He disappeared after a last long interview with Helen under the bare -lilac bushes, of which the little party in the parlor was very well -aware, though no one said a word. The minister shifted uneasily on his -chair, and held his paper with much fierce rustling up in his hands -toward the lamp, as if it had been light he wanted. But what he wanted -was to shield himself from the observation of the others, who sat -breathless, exchanging, at long intervals, a troubled syllable or two. -Mr. Douglas had, perhaps, strictly speaking, no right to be there, -spying, as the old minister thought, upon the troubles of the family, -and, as he himself was painfully conscious, intrusively present in the -midst of an episode with which he had nothing to do. But he could not go -away, which would make every thing worse, for he would then probably -find himself in face of Helen tremblingly coming back, or of the -desperate lover going away. A consciousness that it was the last was in -all their minds, though nobody could have told why. Lily sat trembling, -with her head down over her work, sometimes saying a little prayer for -Helen, broken off in the middle by some keen edge of an intrusive -thought, sometimes listening breathless for the sound of her step or -voice. At last, to the instant consciousness of all, which made the -faintest sound audible, the Manse door was opened and closed so -cautiously that nothing but the ghost of a movement could be divined in -the quiet. No one of the three changed a hair-breadth in position, and -yet the sensation in the room was as if every one had turned to the -door. Was she coming in here fresh from that farewell? Would she stand -at the door, and look at them all, and say: “I can resist no longer. I -am going with him.” This was what the old minister, with a deep distrust -in human nature, which did not except Helen, feared and would always -fear. Or would she come as if nothing had happened, with the dew of the -night on her hair, and Alick Duff’s desperate words in her ears, and sit -down and take up her seam, which Lily, feeling that in such a case the -stress of emotion would be more than she could bear, almost expected? -Helen did none of these things. She was heard, or rather felt, to go -upstairs, and then there was an interval of utter silence, which only -the rustling of the minister’s paper, and a subdued sob, which she could -not disguise altogether, from Lily, broke. And presently Helen came into -the room, paler than her wont, but otherwise unchanged. “It is nine -o’clock, father,” she said; “I will put out the Books.” The “Books” -meant, and still mean, in many an old-fashioned Scotch house, the family -worship, which is the concluding event of the day. She laid the large -old family Bible on the little table by his side, and took from him the -newspaper, which he handed to her without saying a word. And Marget came -in from the kitchen, and took her place near the door. - -Thus Helen’s tragedy worked itself out. There is always, or so most -people find when their souls are troubled, something in the lesson for -the day, or in “the chapter,” as we say in Scotland, when it comes to be -read in its natural course, which goes direct to the heart. Very, very -seldom, indeed, are the instances in which this curious unintentional -_sortes_ fails. As it happened, that evening the chapter which Mr. -Blythe read in his big and sometimes gruff voice was that which -contained the parable of the prodigal son. He began the story, as we so -often do, with the indifferent tones of custom, reverential as his -profession and the fashion of his day exacted, but not otherwise moved. -But perhaps some glance at his daughter’s head, bent over the Bible, in -which she devoutly followed, after the prevailing Scotch fashion, the -words that were read, perhaps the wonderful narrative itself, touched -even the old minister’s heavy spirit. His voice took a different tone. -It softened, it swelled, it rose and fell, as does that most potent of -all instruments when it is tuned by the influence of profound human -feeling. The man was a man of coarse fibre, not capable of the finer -touches of emotion; but he had sons of his own out in the darkness of -the world, and the very fear of losing the last comfort of his heart -made him more susceptible to the passion of parental anguish, loss, and -love. Lower and lower bowed Helen’s head as her father read; all the -little involuntary sounds of humanity, stirrings and breathings, which -occur when two or three are gathered together, were hushed; even Marget -sat against the wall motionless; and when finally, like the very climax -of the silence, another faint, uncontrollable sob came from Lily, the -sensation in the room was as of something almost too much for flesh and -blood. Mr. Blythe shut the book with a sound in his throat almost like a -sob. He waved his hand toward the younger man at the table. “You will -give the prayer,” he said in what sounded a peremptory tone, and leaned -back in the chair, from which he was incapable of moving, covering his -face with his hands. - -It was hard upon the poor, young, inexperienced assistant and successor -to be called upon to “give” that prayer. It was not that he was -untouched by the general emotion, but to ask him to follow the departure -of that prodigal whose feet they had all heard grind the gravel, the -garden gate swinging behind the vehemence of his going--the prodigal who -yet had been all but pointed out as the object of the father’s special -love, and for whom Helen Blythe’s life had been, and would yet be, one -long embodied prayer--was almost more than Helen Blythe’s lover, -waiting, if perhaps the absence of the other might turn her heart to -him, could endure. None of them, fortunately, was calm enough to be -conscious how he acquitted himself of this duty, except, perhaps, Mr. -Blythe himself, who was not disinclined to contemplate the son-in-law -whom he would have preferred as “cauld parritch,” Duff’s contemptuous -description of him. “No heart in that,” the old minister said to himself -as he uncovered his face and the others rose from their knees. The -mediocrity of the prayer, with its tremulous petitions, to which the -speaker’s perplexed and troubled soul gave little fervor, restored Mr. -Blythe to the composure of ordinary life. - -Helen said little on that occasion or any other. “He will be far away -before the end of the week,” she said next morning. “It’s best so, Lily. -Why should he bide here, tearing the heart out of my breast, and his -own, too? if it was not for that wonderful Scripture last night! He’s -away, and I’m content. And all the rest is just in the Lord’s hands.” -The minister, too, had his own comment to make. “She’ll be building a -great deal on that chapter,” he said to Lily, “as if there was some kind -of a spell in it. Do not you encourage her in that. It was a strange -coincidence, I am not denying it; but it’s just the kind of thing that -happens when the spirits are high strung. I was not unmoved myself. But -that lad’s milk and water,” he added, with a gruff laugh, “he let us -easy down.” The poor “lad,” time-honored description of a not fully -fledged minister, whose prayer was milk and water, and his person “cauld -parritch” to the two rougher and stronger men, accompanied Lily part of -the way on foot as she rode home, Rory having come to fetch her, while -the black powny carried her baggage. He was very desirous to unbosom his -soul to Lily, too. - -“Miss Ramsay, do you think she will waste all her heart and her life -upon that vagabond?” he said. “It’s just an infatuation, and her friends -should speak more strongly than they do. Do you know what he is? Just -one of those wild gamblers, miners, drinkers--it may be worse for any -thing I know, but my wish is not to say a word too much--that we hear of -in America, and such places, in the backwoods, as they call it--men -without a spark of principle, without house or home. I believe that’s -what this man Duff has come to be. I wish him no harm, but to think of -such a woman as Helen Blythe descending into that wretchedness! It -should not be suffered, it should not be suffered! taking nobody else -into consideration at all, but just her own self alone.” - -“I think so, too, Mr. Douglas,” said Lily, restraining the paces of -Rory, “but then what can any one say if Helen herself----” - -“Helen herself!” he said almost passionately; “what does she know? She -is young; she is without experience. She is very young,” he added, with -a flush that made it apparent for the first time to Lily that he was -younger than Helen, “because she is so inexperienced. She has never been -out of this village. Men, however little they may have seen of -themselves, get to know things; but a woman, a young lady--how can she -understand? Oh, you should tell her, her friends should tell her!” he -cried with vehemence. “It is a wicked thing to let a creature like that -go so far astray.” - -“I agree with you, Mr. Douglas,” said Lily again, “but if Helen in her -own heart says ‘Yes,’ where is there a friend of hers that durst say -‘No’? Her father: that is true. But he will never be asked to give his -consent, for while he lives she will never leave him.” - -“You are sure of that?” the young minister asked. - -“If it had not been so, would she have let him go now? She will never -leave her father, but beyond that I don’t think Helen will ever change, -Mr. Douglas. If he never comes back again, she will just sit and wait -for him till she dies.” - -“Miss Ramsay, I have no right to trouble you. What foolish things I may -have cherished in my mind it is not worth the while to say. I thought, -when the old man is away, what need to leave the house she was fond of, -the house where she was born, when there was me ready to step in and -give her the full right. It’s been in my thoughts ever since I was named -to the parish after him. It’s nothing very grand, but it’s a decent -down-sitting, what her mother had before her, and no need for any -disagreeable change, or questions about repairs, or any unpleasant -thing. Just her and me, instead of her and him. I would not shorten his -days, not by an hour--the Lord forbid! but just I would be always ready -at her hand.” - -“Oh, Mr. Douglas,” cried Lily, “her father would like it--and me, I -would like it.” - -“Would you do that?” cried the young minister, laying his hand for a -moment on Lily’s arm. The water stood in his eyes, his face was full of -tender gratitude and hope. But either the young man had pulled Rory’s -bridle unawares, or Rory thought he had done so, or resented the too -close approach. He tossed his shaggy head and swerved from the side of -the path to the middle of the road, when, after an ineffectual effort to -free himself of Lily, he bolted with her, rattling his little hoofs with -triumph against the frosty way. It was perhaps as well that the -interview should terminate thus. It gave a little turn to Lily’s -thoughts, which had been very serious. And Rory flew along till he had -reached that spot full of associations to Lily, where the broken brig -and the Fairy Glen reminded her of her own little romance that was over. -Over! Oh, no, that was far from over; that had but begun that wonderful -day when Ronald and she picnicked by the little stream and the accident -happened, without which, perhaps, her own story would have gone no -further, and Helen’s would never have been known to her. Rory stopped -there, and helped himself to a mouthful or two of fresh grass, as if to -call her attention pointedly to the spot, and then proceeded on his way -leisurely, having given her the opportunity of picking up those -recollections which, though so little distant, were already far off in -the hurry of events which had taken place since then. Had it been -possible to go back to that day, had there been no ascent of that -treacherous ruin, no accident, none of all the chains of events that had -brought them so much closer to each other and wound them in one web of -fate, if every thing had remained as it was before the fated New Year, -would Lily have been glad? That the thought should have gained entrance -into her mind at all gave a heavy aspect to the scene and threw a cloud -over every thing. She did not regret it: oh, no, no! how could she -regret that which was her life? But something intolerable seemed to have -come into the atmosphere, something stifling, as if she could not -breathe. She forced the pony on, using her little switch in a manner -with which Rory was quite unacquainted. Let it not be thought of, let it -not be dwelt upon, above all, let it not be questioned, the certainty of -all that had happened, the inevitableness of the past! - - - - -CHAPTER XXXI - - -The spring advanced with many a break and interval of evil weather. The -east winds blew fiercely over the moor, and the sudden showers of April -added again a little to the deceitful green that covered bits of the -bog. But May was sweet that year; in these high-lying regions the whins, -which never give up altogether, lighted a blaze of color here and there -among the green knowes and hollows where there was solid -standing-ground, and where one who did not mind an occasional dash from -the long heads of the ling which began to thrill with sap, or an -occasional sinking of a foot on a watery edge, might now venture again -to trace the devious way upon the most delicious turf in the world here -and there across the moor. The advancing season brought many a thrill of -rising life to Lily. It seemed impossible to dwell upon the darker side -of any prospect while the sunshine so lavished itself upon the gold of -the whins and the green of the turf, and visibly moved the heather and -the rowan-trees to all the effort and the joyous strain of life. I do -not pretend that the sun always shone, for the history of the north of -Scotland would, I fear, contradict that; but the number of heavenly -mornings there were--mornings which lighted a spark in every glistening -mountain burn and wet flashing rock over which it poured, and opened up -innumerable novelties of height and hollow, projecting points and deep -withdrawing valleys, in a hillside which seemed nothing but a lump of -rock and moss on duller occasions--were beyond what any one would -believe. They are soon over: the glory of the day is often eclipsed by -noon; but Lily, whose heart, being restless, woke her early, had the -advantage of them all. And many a tiny flower began to peep by the edges -of the moor--little red pimpernels, little yellow celandines, smaller -things still that have no names. And the hills stood round serenely -waiting for summer, as with a smile to each other under the hoods which -so often came down upon their brows even while the sun was shining. What -did it matter, a storm or two, the wholesome course of nature? Summer -was coming with robes of purple to clothe them, and revelations of a -thousand mysteries in the hearts of the silent hills. - -Amid such auguries and meditative expectations it was not possible that -Lily could remain unmoved. And thus her expectation, if not so sublime -as that of nature, was at least as exact and as well defined. Alas, the -difference was that nature was quite sure of her facts, while an -unfortunate human creature never is so. The course of the sun does not -fail, however he may delay that coming forth from his chamber, like a -bridegroom, which is the law of the universe. But for the heart of man -no one can answer. It was such a little thing to do, such an easy -thing--no trouble, no trouble! Lily said to herself. To find the little -house they wanted, oh, how easily she could do it if she could but go -and see herself to this, which was really a woman’s part of the -business. Lily imagined herself again and again engaged in that -delightful quest. She saw herself running lightly up and down the long -stairs. Why take Ronald from his work when she could do it so easily, so -gladly, so pleasantly, with so much enjoyment to herself? And though she -had been banished for so long, there was still many a house in Edinburgh -which would take her in with kindly welcome, and rejoice over her -marriage, and help and applaud the young couple in their start. Oh, how -easy it all was were but the first step sure. She had thought, in her -childishness, that the mere fact of marriage would be enough; that it -would bring all freedom, all independence, with it; that the moment she -stood by Ronald’s side as his wife the path of their life lay full in -the sunshine and light of perfect day. Alas, that had not proved so! - -He came again another time between March and May. It was wonderful the -journeys he took, thinking nothing of a long night in the coach coming -and going, to see his love, for the sake of only a couple of days in her -society. The women at Dalrugas were very much impressed, too, by the -money it must cost him to make these frequent visits. “Bless me,” Katrin -said, “he is just throwing away his siller with baith hands; and what -are they to do for their furnishing and to set up their house? I am not -wanting you to go, Beenie--far, far from that. It will be like the sun -gone out of the sky when we’re left to oursel’s in the house, nothing -but Dougal and me. But, oh! only to think of the siller that lad is -wastin’ with a’ his life before him. They would live more thrifty in -their own house than him there and her here, and thae constant traiks -from one place to another, even though her and you at present cost him -naething--but what, after a’, is a woman’s meat?” - -“I wot weel it would be more thrift, and less expense, not to say -better in every way; but if the man does not see it, Katrin, what can -the wife do?” - -“I ken very weel what I would do,” said Katrin, with a toss of her head. -These were the comments below stairs. But when May came and went, and it -was not till early June that Lily received her husband, the fever of -expectation and anxiety which consumed her was beyond expression. She -met him at the head of the spiral stair as usual, but speechless, -without a word to say to him. Her cheeks flamed with the heat of her -hopes, her terrors, her wild uncertainty. She held out her hands in -welcome with something interrogative, enquiring, in them. She did not -wish to be taken to his heart, to be kept by any caress from seeing his -face and reading what was in it. Was it possible that it was not Ronald -at all she was thinking of, but something else--not her husband’s visit, -his presence, his love, and the delight of seeing him? And how common, -how trivial, how paltry a thing it was which Lily was thinking of first, -before even Ronald! Had he found the little house? Had he got it, that -hope of her life? was it some business connected with that that had -detained him? Had he got the key of it, something resembling the key of -it, to lay at her feet, to place in her hand, the charter of her rights -and her freedom? But he did not say a word. Was it natural he should -when he had just arrived, barely arrived, and was thinking of nothing -but his Lily? It was his love that was in his mind, not any secondary -thing such as filled hers. He led her in, with his arms around her and -joy on his lips. His bonnie Lily! if she but knew how he had been -longing for a sight of her, how he had been stopped when he was on the -road, how every exasperating thing had happened to hold him back! Ah, -she said to herself, it would be the landlord worrying for more money, -or some other wicked thing. “But now,” cried Ronald, “the first look of -my Lily pays for all!” That was how it was natural he should speak. She -supported it all, though her bosom was like to burst. She would not -forestall him in his story of how he had secured it, nor yet chill him -by showing him that while the first thought in his mind was love, the -first in hers was the little house. Oh, no, she would respond, as, -indeed, her heart did; but she was choked in her utterance, and could -speak few words. If he would only say a word of that, only once: “I have -got it, I have got it!” then the floodgates would have been opened, and -Lily’s soul would have been free. - -Ronald spoke no such word; he said nothing, nothing at all upon that -subject, or any thing that could lead to it. He was delighted to see her -again, to hold her in his arms. Half the evening, until Beenie brought -the dinner, he was occupied in telling her that every time he saw her -she was more beautiful, more delightful, in his eyes. And Lily gasped, -but made no sign. She would wait, she would wait! She would not be -impatient; after all, that was just business, and this was love. She -would have liked the business best, but perhaps that was because she was -common, just common, not great in mind and heart like--other folk, a -kind of a housewife, a poor creature thinking first of the poorest -elements. He should follow his own way, he that was a better lover, a -finer being, than she; and in his own time he would tell her--what, -after all, was no fundamental thing, only a detail. - -The dinner passed, the evening passed, and Ronald said not a word, nor -Lily either. She had begun to get bewildered in her mind. Whit-Sunday! -Whit-Sunday! Was it not Whit-Sunday that was the term, when houses were -to be hired in Edinburgh, and the maids went to their new places? And it -was now past, and had nothing been done for her? Was nothing going to be -done? Lily began to be afraid now that he would speak; that he would say -some word that would take away all hope from her heart. Rather that he -should be silent than that! There was a momentary flagging in the -conversation when the dinner was ended, and in the new horror that had -taken possession of her soul Lily, to prevent this, rushed into a new -subject. She told Ronald about Alick Duff and Helen Blythe, and how she -had received them at Dalrugas, and had passed some days at the Manse -seeing the end of it. Ronald, with the air of a benevolent lord and -master, shook his head at the first, but sanctioned the latter -proceeding with a nod of his head. “Keep always friends with the Manse -people,” he said; “they are a tower of strength whatever happens; but I -would not have liked to see my Lily receiving a black sheep like Alick -Duff here.” - -What had he to do with the house of Dalrugas, or those who were received -there? What right had he to be here himself that he should give an -authoritative opinion? Oh, do not believe that Lily thought this, but it -flashed through her mind in spite of herself, as ill thoughts will do. -She said quickly: “And the worst is I took his part. I would have taken -his part with all my heart and soul.” - -Ronald did nothing but laugh at this protestation. And he laughed -contemptuously at the thought that Helen could have saved the man who -loved her. “That’s how he thinks to come over the women. He would not -dare say that to a man,” he cried. “Helen Blythe, poor little thing!” He -laughed again, and Lily felt that she could have struck him in the -sudden blaze out of exasperation which somewhat relieved her troubled -mind. - -“When you laugh like that, I think I could kill you, Ronald!” - -“Lily!” he cried, sitting up in his chair with an astonished face, “why, -what is the matter with you, my darling?” - -“Nothing is the matter with me! except to hear you laugh at what was -sorrow and pain to them, and deadly earnest, as any person might see.” - -“Havers!” cried Ronald; “he had his tongue in his cheek all the time, -yon fellow. He thought, no doubt, her father must have money, and it -would be worth his while----” - -“If you believe that every-body thinks first of money----” Lily said, -her hand, which was on the table, quivering to every finger’s end. - -“Most of us do,” he said quietly; “but what does it mean that my Lily -should be so disturbed about Alick Duff, the ne’er-do-well, and Helen -Blythe?” - -“I can’t tell you,” cried Lily, struggling with that dreadful, -inevitable inclination to tears which is so hard upon women. “I am--much -alone in this place,” she said, with a quiver of her mouth, “and you -away.” - -“My bonnie Lily!” he cried once more, hastening to her, soothing her in -his arms, as he had done so often before. That was all, that was all he -could say or do to comfort her; and that does not always answer--not, at -least, as it did the first or even the second or third time. To call her -“My bonnie Lily!” to lean her head upon his breast that she might cry it -all out there and be comforted, was no reply to the demand in her heart. -And the hysteria passion did not come to tears in this case. She choked -them down by a violent effort. She subdued herself, and withdrew from -his supporting arm, not angrily, but with something new in her -seriousness which startled Ronald, he could not tell why. “We will go -upstairs,” she said, “or, if you would like it, out on the moor. It is -bonnie on the moor these long, long days, when it is night, and the day -never ends. And then you can tell me the rest of your Edinburgh news,” -she said, suddenly looking into his face. - -Oh, he understood her now! His face was not delicate like Lily’s to show -every tinge of changing color, but it reddened through the red and the -brown with a color that showed more darkly and quite as plainly as the -blush on any girl’s face. He understood what was the Edinburgh news she -wanted. Was it that he had none to give? - -“Let us go out on the moor,” he said. “Where is your plaid to wrap you -round? It may be as beautiful as you like, but it’s always cold on a -north country moor.” - -“Not in June,” she cried, throwing the plaid upon his shoulder. It was -nine o’clock of the long evening, but as light still as day, a day -perfected, but subdued, without sun, without shadow, like, if any thing -human can be like, the country where there is neither sun nor moon, but -the Lamb is the light thereof. The moor lay under the soft radiance in a -perfect repose, no corner in it that was not visible, yet all mystery, -spellbound in that light that never was on sea or shore. At noon, with -all the human accidents of sun and shade, they could scarcely have seen -their own faces, or the long distance of the broken land stretched out -beyond, or the hills dreaming around in a subdued companionship, as -clearly as now, yet all in a magical strangeness that overawed and -hushed the heart. Even Lily’s cares--that one care, rather, which was so -little, yet so great, almost vulgar to speak of, yet meaning to her -every thing that was best on earth--were hushed. The stillness of the -shining night, which was day; the silence of the great moor, with all -its wild fresh scents and murmurs of sound subdued; the vast round of -cloudless sky, still with traces on it of the sunset, but even those -forming but an undertone to the prevailing softness of the blue--were -beyond all reach of human frettings and struggles. They were on the eve -of discovering that the earth had been rent between them, closely though -they stood together, but in a moment the edges of the chasm had -disappeared, the green turf and the heather, with its buds forming on -every bush, spread over every horrible division. Lily put her arm within -her husband’s with a long, tremulous sigh. What did any uneasy wish -matter, any desire even if desperate, compared with this peace of God -that was upon the hills and the moor and the sky? - -I doubt, however, whether all of this made it easier for Ronald to clear -himself at last of the burden of the unfulfilled trust. When she said -next morning, with a catch in her breath, but as perfect an aspect of -calm as she could put on: “You have told me nothing about our house,” -his color and his breath also owned for a moment an embarrassment which -it was difficult to face. She had said it while he stood at the window -looking out, with his back toward her. She had not wished to confront -him, to fix him with her eyes, to have the air of bringing him to an -account. - -Ronald turned round from the window after a momentary pause. He came up -to her and took both her hands in his. “My bonnie Lily!” he said. - -“Oh,” she cried with sudden impatience, drawing her hands from him, -“call me by my simple name! I am your wife; I am not your sweetheart. Do -I want to be always petted like a bairn?” - -“Lily!” he said, startled, and a little disapproving, “there is -something wrong with you. I never thought you were one to be affected -with nerves and such things.” - -“Did you ever think I was one to live all alone upon the moor? to belong -to nobody, to see nobody, to be married in a secret, and get a visit -from my man now and then in a secret, too? and none to acknowledge or -stand by me in the whole world?” - -“Lily! Lily!” he cried, “how far is that from the fact? Am I not here -whenever I can find a moment to spare, and ready to come at any time for -any need if you but hold up your little finger? Why is it you are not -acknowledged and set by my side as I would be proud to do? Can you ever -doubt I would be proud to do it? But many a couple have kept their -marriage quiet till circumstances were better. You and I are not the -first--I could tell you of a score--that would not keep apart half their -days and lose the good of their life, but just kept the fact to -themselves till better times should come.” - -“You said nothing to me about better times coming,” said Lily; “you -spoke of the term, and that you could not get a house to live in till -the term.” - -“And I said quite true,” said Ronald. As soon as he got her to discuss -the matter he felt sure of his own triumph. “You knew that as well as I -did. And now here is just the truth, Lily: I am not very well off, and -it does not mend my practice that I’ve been so often here in the North. -Don’t tell me I need not come unless I like; that’s a silly woman’s -saying, it is not like my Lily. I am not very well off, and you have -nothing if there is a public breach with Sir Robert. And for a little -while I have been beginning to think----” - -He paused, hoping she would say something, but Lily said nothing. She -had covered her face with her hands. - -“I have been beginning to think,” he continued slowly, “that this is a -bad time for beginning life in Edinburgh. You are not ignorant of -Edinburgh life, Lily; you know that in the vacations, when the courts -are up, nobody is there. If we had twenty houses, we could not stay in -them in August and September, when every-body is away. As this is a bad -time for beginning in Edinburgh, I was thinking that to take the expense -of a house upon me now would be a foolish thing. Think of a garret in -the old town from this to autumn, with all the smoke and the bad air -instead of the bonnie moor! And in six weeks or a little more, Lily, I -would be able to get some shooting hereabouts, which will be a grand -excuse, and we could be together without a word said, with nobody to -make any criticisms.” - -She cried out, stamping her foot: “Will you never understand? It is the -grand excuse and the nobody to criticise that is insufferable to me. Why -should there be any excuse? Why should there be a word said? I am your -wife, Ronald Lumsden!” - -“My dear, you are ill to please,” he said. “But nobody can see reason -better than you if you will but open your eyes to it. See here, Lily: -two months and more are coming when our house, if we had it, would be -useless to us, and in the meantime you are very well off here.” - -She gave him a sudden glance, and would have said something, but -arrested herself in time. - -“You are very well here,” he repeated, “far better than even going upon -visits, or at some other little country place, where we might take -lodgings, and be very uncomfortable. Your moor is a little estate to -you, Lily; it’s company and every thing. And if I had a little shooting -which I could manage--a man with a gun is not hard to place in Scotland, -and up in the north country there is many an opportunity; and there is -always Tom Robison’s cottage to fall back on, where you are very well -off as long as you neither need to eat there nor to sleep there. Your -servants here are used to me. Whatever explanations Dougal has made to -himself, he has made them long ago. I have no fears for him. Where would -you be so well, my Lily, as in your home?” - -“And where would you be so ill, Ronald,” she cried, “as in--as in----” -But Lily could not finish the sentence. How could it be that he did not -say that to himself, that he left it to her to say--to her, who was -incapable, after all, of saying to the man she loved such hard words? -Her own home, her uncle’s house, who had sent her here to separate her -once for all from Ronald Lumsden, while Ronald arranged so easily to -establish himself under his enemy’s roof. - -“Where would I be so ill as in Sir Robert’s house?” he said, with a -laugh. “On the contrary, Lily, I am very happy here. I have been happier -here than in any other house in the world, and why should I set up -scruples, my dear, when I have none? If Sir Robert had been a wise man -he never would have tried to separate you and me; and now that we have -turned his evil to good, and made his prison a palace, why should we -banish ourselves when all is done to do him a very doubtful pleasure? He -will never hear a word of it in my belief, and if he does, he will hear -far more than that I have come to share your castle for another -vacation. It was the first step that was the worst: yon snow-storm, -perhaps, at the New Year; but that was the power of circumstances, and -no Scots householder would ever have turned a man out into the snow. -When we did that, we did the worst. A few weeks, more or less, after -that--what can it matter? And, short time or long time, it is my belief, -Lily, that he will never be a pin the wiser. Then why should we trouble -ourselves?” Ronald said. - -As for Lily, this time she answered not a word. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXII - - -It may be imagined that after this there was very little said of the -house in Edinburgh, which now, indeed, it was impossible to do any thing -about till the term at Martinmas. But Lily, I think, never alluded to -the Martinmas term. Her heart sank so that it recovered itself again -with great difficulty, and the very suggestion of the thing she had so -longed for, and fixed all her wishes upon, now brought over her a -sickness and faintness both of body and soul. When some one talked by -chance of the maids going to their new places at the term, the color -forsook her face, and Helen Blythe was much alarmed on one such -occasion, believing her friend was going to faint. Lily did not faint. -What good would that do? she said to herself with a sort of cynicism -which began to appear in her. She dug metaphorically her heels into the -soil, and stood fast, resisting all such sudden weaknesses. Perhaps -Ronald was surprised, perhaps he was not quite so glad as he expected to -be, when she ceased speaking on that subject; but, on the whole, he -concluded that it was something gained. If he could but get her to take -things quietly, to wait until he was quite ready to set up such an -establishment as he thought suitable, or, better still, till Sir Robert -died and rewarded her supposed obedience by leaving her his fortune, -which was her right, how fortunate that would be! But Lily was taking -things too quietly, he thought, with a little tremor. It was not natural -for her to give in so completely. He watched her with a little alarm -during that short stay of his. Not a word of the cherished object which -had always been coming up in their talk came from Lily’s lips again. -She made no further allusion to their possible home or life together; -her jests about cooking his dinner for him, about the Scotch collops and -the howtowdie, were over. Indeed, for that time all her jests were over; -she was serious as the gravest woman, no longer his laughing girl, -running over with high spirits and nonsense. This change made Ronald -very uncomfortable, but he consoled himself with thinking that in a -light heart like Lily’s no such thing could last, and that she would -soon recover her better mood again. - -He did not know, indeed, nor could it have entered into his heart to -conceive--for even a clever man, as Ronald was, cannot follow further -than it is in himself to understand the movements of another mind--the -effect that all this had produced upon Lily, the sudden horrible pulling -up in the progress of her thoughts, the shutting down as of a black wall -before her, the throwing back of herself upon herself. These words could -not have had any meaning to Ronald. Why a blank wall? Why a dead stop? -He had said nothing that was not profoundly reasonable. All that about -the vacation was quite true. Edinburgh is empty as a desert when the -courts are up and the schools closed. The emptiness of London after the -season, which is such perfect fiction and such absolute truth, is -nothing to the desolation of Edinburgh in the time of its holiday. To -live, as he said, in a garret in the old town, or even in the top story -of one of the newer, more convenient houses in the modern quarter, while -every-body was away, instead of here on the edge of the glorious -heather, among the summer delights of the moor, was folly itself to -think of. It was impossible but that Lily must perceive that, the moment -she permitted herself to think. Dalrugas might be dreary for the winter, -especially in the circumstances of their separation, he was ready to -allow; but in August, with the birds strong on the wing, and the heather -rustling under your stride, and no separation at all but the punctual -return of the husband to dinner and the evening fire--what was there, -what could there be, to complain of? Sir Robert’s house an ill place -for him! he said to himself, with a laugh. Luckily he was not so -squeamish. Such delicate troubles did not affect his mind. He could see -what she meant, of course, and he was not very sure that he liked Lily -to remind him of it; but he was of a robust constitution. He was not -likely to be overwhelmed by a fantastic idea like that. - -And the autumnal holiday was, as he anticipated, actually a happy moment -in their lives. Before it came Lily had time to go through many fits of -despair, and many storms of impatience and indignation. To have one -great struggle in life and then to be forever done, and fall into a -steady unhappiness in one portion of existence as you have been -persistently happy in another, is a thing which seems natural enough -when the first break comes in one’s career. But Lily soon learned the -great difference here between imagination and reality. There was not a -day in which she did not go through that struggle again, and sank into -despair and flamed with anger, and then felt herself quieted into the -moderation of exhaustion, and then beguiled again by springing hopes and -insinuating visions of happiness. Thus notwithstanding all the -bitterness of Lily’s feelings on various points, or rather, perhaps, in -consequence of the evident certainty that nothing would make Ronald see -as she did, or even perceive what it was that she wanted and did not -want--the eagerness of her passion for the house, which meant honor and -truth to her, but to him only a rash risking of their chances, and -foolish impatience on her part to have her way, as is the worst of -women--and her bitter sense of the impossibility of his calm -establishment here in her uncle’s house, a thing which he regarded as -the simplest matter in the world, with a chuckle over the discomfiture -of the old uncle--all these things, by dint of being too much to grapple -with, fell from despair into the ordinary of life. And Lily agreed with -herself to push them away, not to think when she could help it, to -accept what she could--the modified happiness, the love and sweetness -which are, alas! of themselves not enough to nourish a wholesome -existence. She was happy, more or less, when he came in with his gun -over his shoulder, and a bag at which Dougal looked with critical but -unapproving eyes. Dougal himself took, or had permission, to shoot over -Sir Robert’s estate, which was not of great extent. These were not yet -the days when even a little bit of Highland shooting is worth a better -rent than a farm, and the birds had grown wild about Dalrugas with only -Dougal’s efforts at “keeping them down.” What the country thought of -Ronald’s position it would be hard to say. He gave himself out as living -at Tam Robison’s, the shepherd’s, and being favored by Sir Robert -Ramsay’s grieve in the matter of the shooting, which there was nobody to -enjoy. No doubt it was well enough known that he was constantly at -Dalrugas, but a country neighborhood is sometimes as opaque to perceive -any thing doubtful as it is lynx-eyed in other cases. And as few people -visited at Dalrugas, there was no scandal so far as any one knew. - -And with the winter there came something else to occupy Lily’s thoughts -and comfort her heart. It made her position ten times more difficult had -she thought of that, but it requires something very terrible indeed to -take away from a young wife that great secret joy and preoccupation -which arise with the first expectation of motherhood. Besides, it must -be remembered that there was in Lily’s mind no terror of discovery. -Perhaps it was this fact which kept her story from awakening the -suspicious and the scandal mongers of the neighborhood. There was no -moment at which she would not have been profoundly relieved and happy to -be found out. She desired nothing so much as that her secret should be -betrayed. This changes very much the position of those who have -unhappily something to conceal, or rather who are forced to conceal -something. If you fear discovery, it dodges you at every step, it is -always in your way. But if you desire it, by natural perversity the -danger is lessened, and nobody suspects what you would wish found out. -So that even this element added something to Lily’s happiness in her new -prospects. That hope in the mind of most women needs nothing to enhance -it; the great mystery, the silent joy of anticipation, the overwhelming -thought of what is, by ways unknown, by long patience, by suffering, by -rapture, about to be, fills every faculty of being. I am told that these -sentiments are old-fashioned, and that it is not so that the young women -of this concluding century regard these matters. I do not believe it: -nature is stronger than fashion, though fashion is strong, and can -momentarily affect the very springs of life. But when it did come into -Lily’s mind as she sat in a silent absorption of happiness, not thinking -much, working at her “seam,” which had come to be the most delightful -thing in heaven or earth, that the new event that was coming would -demand new provisions and create new necessities which it seemed -impossible could be provided for at Dalrugas, the thought gave an -additional impetus to the secret joy that was in her. Such things, she -said to herself, could not be hid. It would be impossible to continue -the life of secrecy in which she had been kept against her will so long. -Whatever happened, this must lead to a disclosure, to a home of her own -where in all honor her child should see the light of day. - -For a long time Lily had no doubt on this point. She began to speak -again about the term and the upper story in the old town. “But I would -like the other better now,” she said; “it would be better air for----, -and more easy to get out to country walks and all that is needed for -health and thriving.” It had been an uncomfortable sensation to Ronald -when she had renounced all the talk and anticipation of the house to be -taken at the term. But now that he was accustomed to exemption from -troublesome enquiries on that point he felt angry to have it taken up -again. He was disposed to think that she did it only to annoy him, at a -time, too, when he was setting his brain to work to think and to plan -how the difficulties could be got over, and how in the most satisfactory -way, and with the least trouble to her, every thing could be arranged -for Lily’s comfort. But he did not betray himself; he took great pains -even to calm all inquietudes, and not to irritate her or excite her -nerves (as he said) by opposition. He tried, indeed, to represent mildly -that of all country walks and good air nothing could be so good as the -breeze over the moors and the quiet ways about, where every thing -delicate and feeble must drink in life. But Lily had confronted him with -a blaze in her eyes, declaring that such a thing was not possible, not -possible! in a tone which she had never taken before. He said nothing -more at that time. He made believe even, when Whit-Sunday returned, that -he had seen a house, which he described in detail, but did not commit -himself to say he had secured it. Into this trap Lily fell very easily. -She had all the rooms, the views from the windows, the arrangement of -the apartment described to her over and over again, and for the great -part of that second summer of her married life there was no drawback to -the blessedness of her life. She spent it in a delightful dream, taking -her little sober walks like a woman of advanced experience, no longer -springing from hummock to hummock like a silly girl about the moor, -taking in, in exquisite calm, all its sounds and scents and pictures to -her very heart. In the height of the summer days, when the air was full -of the hum of the bees, Lily would sit under the thin shade of a -rowan-tree, thinking about nothing, the air and the murmur which was one -with the air filling her every consciousness. Why should she have sought -a deeper shadow. She wanted no shadow, but basked in the warm shining of -the sun, and breathed that dreamy hum of life, and watched, without -knowing it, the drama among the clouds, shadows flitting like breath as -swift and sudden, coming and going upon the hills. All was life all -through, constant movement, constant sound, alternation and change, no -need of thinking, foreseeing, fore-arranging, but the great universe -swaying softly in the infinite realm of space, and God holding all--the -bees, the flickering rowan-leaves, the shadows and the mountains and -Lily brooding over her secret--in the hollow of his hand. - -As the summer advanced, however, troubles began to steal in. She was -anxious, very anxious, to be taken to the house, which he allowed her to -believe was ready for her. It must be said that Ronald was very -assiduous in his visits, very anxious to please her in every way, full -of tenderness and care, though always avoiding or evading the direct -question. It went to his heart to disappoint her, as he had to do again -and again. The house was not ready; there were things to be done which -had been begun, which could not be interrupted without leaving it worse -than at first. And then was it not of the greatest importance for her -own health that she should remain as long as possible in the delicious -air of the North--the air which was, if not her own native air, at least -that of her family? Lily had been deeply disappointed, disturbed in her -beautiful calm, and a little excited, perhaps, in the nerves, which she -had never been conscious of before, but which Ronald assured her now -made her “ill to please”--by his unreasonable resistance to her desire -to take refuge in the house which she believed to be awaiting her--when -a curious incident occurred. Beenie appeared one morning with a very -confused countenance to ask whether her mistress would permit her to -receive the visit of a cousin of hers, “a real knowledgable woman,” who -was out of a place and in want of a shelter. “You had better ask Katrin -than me, Beenie,” cried Lily; “I’ve filled the house too much and too -long already. It is not for me to take in strangers.” “Eh, mem,” cried -Katrin, her head appearing behind that of Beenie in the doorway, “it -will be naething but a pleasure to me to have her.” Katrin’s countenance -was anxious, but Beenie’s was confused. She could not look her mistress -in the face, but stood before her in miserable embarrassment, laying -hems upon her apron. “Speak up, woman, canna ye?” cried Katrin, “for -your ain relation. Mem [Katrin never said Miss Lily now], I ken her as -weel as Beenie does. She’s a decent woman and no one that meddles nor -gies her opinion. I’ll be real glad to have her if you’ll give your -consent.” “Oh, I give my consent,” Lily cried lightly. And in this easy -way was introduced into Dalrugas a very serious, middle-aged woman, not -in the least like Beenie, of superior education, it appeared, and a -quietly authoritative manner, whose appearance impressed the whole -household with a certain awe. It was a few days after the termination of -one of Ronald’s visits that this incident occurred, and Lily could not -resist a certain instinctive alarm at the appearance of this new figure -in the little circle round her. “You are sure she is your cousin, -Beenie? She is not like you at all.” “And you’re no like Sir Robert, -Miss Lily, that is nearer to ye than a cousin,” said Beenie promptly. -She added hurriedly: “It’s her father’s side she takes after, and she’s -had a grand education. I’ve heard say that she kent as much as the -doctors themselves. Education makes an awfu’ difference,” said Beenie -with humility. I am not sure that Lily was more attached to this new -inmate on account of her grand education. But that was, after all, a -matter of very secondary importance; and so the days and the weeks went -on. - -There occurred at this time an interval longer than usual between -Ronald’s visits, and Lily lost all her happy tranquillity. She became -restless, unhappy, full of trouble. “What is to become of me, what is to -become of me?” she would cry, wringing her hands. Was she to be left -here at the crisis of her fate in a solitude where there was no help, no -one to stand by her? She felt in herself a reflection, too, of the -visible anxiety of the two women, Beenie and Katrin, who never would let -her out of their sight, who seemed to tremble for her night and day. The -sight of their anxious faces angered her, and roused her occasionally to -send them off with a sharp word, half jest, half wrath. But when she was -freed from these tender yet exasperating watchers, Lily would cover her -face with her hands and cry bitterly, with a helplessness that was more -terrible than any other pain. For what could she do? She could not set -out, inexperienced, alone, without money, without knowing where to go. -She had, indeed, Ronald’s address; but had he not changed into the new -house, if new house there was? Lily began to doubt every thing in this -dreadful crisis of her affairs. She had no money, and to travel cheaply -in these days was impossible. And how could she get even to -Kinloch-Rugas, she who had avoided being seen even by Helen Blythe? She -wept like a child in the helplessness of her distress. She did not hear -any knock at the door or permission asked to come in, but started to -find some one bending over her, and to see that it was the strange woman -Marg’ret, Beenie’s supposed cousin. Lily made this discovery with -resentment, and bid her hastily go away. - -“Mem, Mrs. Lumsden,” Marg’ret said. - -Lily quickly uncovered her face. “You know!” she cried with a mixture, -which she could not explain to herself, of increased suspicion, yet -almost pleasure; for nobody had as called yet her by that name. - -“I would be a stupid person indeed if I didna know. Oh, madam, I’ve made -bold to come in, for I know more things than that. Beenie would tell you -I’ve had an education. I’ve come to beg you, on my bended knees, to give -up all thoughts of moving--it’s too late, my dear young leddy--and just -make yourself as content as you can here.” - -“Here!” cried Lily, with a scream of distress. “No, no, no, I must be in -my own house. Woman, whoever you are, do you know I’m Miss Ramsay here? -It’s not known who I am, and what will they think if any thing--any -thing--should happen?” - -“Are you wanting to conceal it, Mrs. Lumsden?” - -“No, no, no! Any thing but that! If you will go to the cross of -Kinloch-Rugas and say Lily Ramsay has been Ronald Lumsden’s wife for -more than a year, I will--I will kiss you,” cried Lily, as if that was -the greatest sacrifice she could make. - -“Then why should you not bide still? If it’s found out, it’s found out, -and you’re pleased. And if it’s not found out, maybe the gentleman’s -pleased. Mrs. Lumsden, I’m a real, well-qualified nurse. I will tell you -the truth: they were frightened, thae women. I said, when Beenie told -me, I would come and just be here if there was any occasion. Mistress -Lumsden, I will show you my certificates. I am just all I say, and maybe -a little more. Will you trust yourself to me?” - -And what could Lily do? She was in no condition to enquire into it, to -satisfy herself if it was a plot of Ronald’s making, or only, as this -woman said, a scheme of the women. To think over such subjects was no -exercise for her at that moment. She yielded, for she could do nothing -else. And a very short time after there was an agitated night in the old -tower. It was the night of the market, and Dougal had come in, in the -muzzy condition which was usual to him on such occasions, and -consequently slept like a log and was conscious of nothing that was -going on. Ronald had arrived the day before. And when the morning came, -there was another little new creature added to the population of the -world. - -It was more like a dream than ever to Lily--a dream of rapture and -completion, of every trouble calmed, and every pang over, and every -promise fulfilled. She was surrounded by love and the most sedulous -watching. She seemed to have no longer any wishes, only thanks in her -heart. She even saw her husband go away without trouble. “Come back soon -and fetch us. Come back and fetch us,” she said, smiling at him through -half-closed eyes. - -It was not, however, much more than a week after when Ronald, without -warning or announcement, rushed into her room, pale with fatigue, and -dusty from his journey. “I have come here post-haste!” he cried. “Lily, -your Uncle Robert is in Edinburgh. He is coming on here for the -shooting, and other men with him. If I’m a day in advance, that is all. -I have thought of the only thing that is to be done if you will but -consent.” - -“The only thing to be done,” said Lily, raising herself in her bed, -with sparkling eyes, “is what I have always wished: to tell him all -that’s happened, and, oh! what a light conscience I will have, and what -a happy heart!” - -“He would turn you out of his doors!” cried Ronald in dismay. - -“Well!” cried Lily, who felt capable of every thing, “I may not be a -great walker yet, but I’ll hirple on till a cart passes or something, -and they’ll take me in at the Manse.” - -“Oh, my darling, don’t think of such a risk!” he cried. “For God’s sake, -keep quiet! Say nothing and do nothing till you hear from me again. I -have thought of a plan. Will you promise to do nothing, to make no -confession, till I’m at your side, or till you hear from me?” - -“Are you not going to stay with me, to meet him?” - -“I cannot, I cannot! I’ve come now at the greatest risk. Lily, you will -promise?” - -“I am going to dress the baby for the night,” said the nurse, -interposing. “Will ye give him a kiss, mem, before I take him away?” - -Lily’s lips settled softly on the infant’s cheeks like a bee on a -flower. “He’s sweeter and sweeter every day. Ronald, you must not ask me -too much. But I will try, so long as all is well and safe with him.” - -“I will see that all is safe with him,” Ronald cried. He lingered a -little with the young mother, half jealous of the looks she cast at the -door for the return of the child in Margaret’s arms. - -“You have told her not to bring him back,” she said with smiling -reproach, “but I’ll have him all to myself after.” She was not afraid of -his news, she was not shaken by his excitement. The approach of this -tremendous crisis seemed only to exhilarate Lily. She was so glad, so -glad, to be found out. It was the only thing that was wanting to her -perfect happiness. - -Ronald’s gig had been waiting all the time while he lingered. He had to -rush away at last in order to catch the night coach from Kinloch-Rugas, -he said; and Lily waited, with smiles shining through the tears in her -eyes, to hear the sound of the wheels carrying him away. And then she -cried impatiently: “Marg’ret, Marg’ret, bring me my baby!” - -But Marg’ret, it seemed, did not hear. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIII - - -Sir Robert arrived, as they had been warned, next day. An express came -in the morning, preceding him, to order rooms to be prepared for three -guests--to the great indignation of Katrin, who demanded where she was -expected to get provender for four men, and maybe men-servants into the -bargain, that were worse than their masters, at a moment’s notice. “As -if there was naething to do but put linen on the beds,” she cried. “The -auld man must have gaun gyte. Ye canna make a dinner for Sir Robert and -his gentlemen out of a chuckie and a brace o’ birds frae the moor. If I -had but a hare to make soup o’, or a wheen trout, or a single blessed -thing. You’ll just put the black powny in the cart, Dougal, and ye’ll -gang down yoursel’ to the toun. Sandy! What does Sandy ken? How could I -trust that callant to look after Sir Robert’s denner? You’re nane so -clever yoursel’--but it’s you that shall go, and no another. Man, have -ye no thought of your auld maister and his first dinner when the auld -man comes home?” - -“I think of him maybe mair than some folk that have keepit grand goings -on in his auld hoose.” - -“_What_ were ye saying?” cried Katrin, fixing him with a commanding eye. -She pronounced this, as I have gently insinuated before, “F’what,” which -gave great force to the sound. “I might have kent,” she cried, with a -toss of her head, “there wasna a man breathing that could hold his -tongue when he thought he had a story to tell!” - -“Me--tell a story!” said Dougal in instinctive self-defence. Then he -added: “It a’ depends--on what a man has to tell.” - -“Ye’re born traitors, a’ the race o’ ye, from Adam doun!” cried Katrin -in her wrath, “and aye the women to bear the wyte, accordin’ to you. -Tell till ye burst!” she exclaimed with concentrated fury, “and it’s no -me ’ll say a word; but put the powny in the cart and gang doun to the -town, and try what ye can get for my denner. I’ll no have the auld man -starved, no, nor yet shamed afore his freends, nor served with an ill -denner the first night--him that hasna been in his ain auld hoose for -years.” - -“Ye’re awfu’ particular about his denner, considering every thing that’s -come and gone, and the care you’ve ta’en of him and his.” - -“Yes!” cried Katrin, “I’m awfu’ particular about his denner. Are you -going? or will I have to leave the rooms to settle themselves and go -mysel’?” - -Dougal at last obeyed this strong impulsion; but the black powny and the -cart were not for so important a person as Sir Robert’s factotum the day -his master came home. He put Rory into the geeg, and drove down in such -state as was procured by these means, with his countenance full of -unutterable things. He was, indeed, when the little quarrel with Katrin -was over, a man laden with much thought. Dougal had observed not very -clearly, but yet more than he was believed to have observed. His stolid -understanding had been played upon unmercifully by the women, and he had -been taken in many times in respect to Ronald’s presence or absence in -the house. Often it had occurred that he “could have sworn” the visitor -was there when he was not there, and still oftener he could have sworn -the reverse; but at the end of all the tricks and deceptions he was -tolerably clear as to the position of affairs, if he had possessed the -faculty of speech, and sufficient indifference to other motives to have -used it. But Dougal, who was a very simple soul, was held in the grasp -of as great a complication of influences as if he had been the most -subtle and the most self-analyzing. Should he tell Sir Robert what he -had seen and guessed? Sir Robert was his master, and it was Dougal’s -duty, as guardian of the house, to report what had occurred in it. Ay! -but would he shame the house by raising a story that maybe never would -be got at by the right end? For what could he say? That a gentleman from -Edinburgh had been about the place, coming and going by night and by -day; that a person could never tell when he was there and when he wasna -there; and, finally, that it was clear as daylight him and Miss Lily -were “great freends.” Ah, Miss Lily! That brought up again another -series of motives. She was his, Dougal’s, young leddy, by every lawful -tie, the only bairn of the house, the real heir. If Sir Robert, as he -was perfectly capable, were to leave Dalrugas away from her the morn, -she would not a whit the less be the only Ramsay left of the old family, -Mr. James’s daughter, who had been Dougal’s adoration in his youth. Was -he to raise a scandal on Miss Lily--he, her own father’s man? Dougal’s -heart revolted at the thought. And Katrin, that spoiled the lassie, that -could see nothing that was not perfect in her--Katrin would never have a -good word for her man again. She would call him a traitor--that word -that burns and never ceases to wound--like black Monteith that betrayed -the Wallace wight, like---- But Dougal’s courage was not equal to that -anticipation; rather any thing than that, rather flee the country than -that--to betray a bit creature that trusted him, Mr. James’s daughter, -the last Ramsay, a little lass that could not fight for herself. “No -me!” cried Dougal to all the winds that blew. “No me!” he said, -confronting old Schiehallion, as if that tranquil mountain had tempted -him. He shook his fist at the hills and at the world. “No me, no me!” he -said. - -I do not believe that Katrin ever was in the least afraid in respect to -Dougal, but a very troubled woman was Katrin that day. She had been in -Ronald Lumsden’s confidence all along, more than his wife knew, and in -her way had abetted him and helped him, though often against her -conscience. Beenie had done the same, but she had not Katrin’s head, -and meekly followed where the other led. They had both been partially -guilty in respect to Marg’ret, a woman introduced into the house by the -clumsiest means, which Lily could have seen through in a moment had she -tried, but whose presence was so great a comfort and relief to the other -two that their eagerness to accede to the artifice by which she was -brought as a guest to Dalrugas was very excusable. “What would you and -me do, Beenie?” Katrin had said, for once acknowledging a situation with -which she was not able to cope. They had been able “to sleep at night,” -as they both said, since _that_ woman was there, and there was nothing -to be said against the woman. She was not troublesome, she was kind, she -knew what she was about. That she was Ronald’s emissary was nothing -against her. She was, on the contrary, an evidence of the husband’s -tender care for his wife; his anxiety that she should have the best and -most costly attention. “And a bonnie penny she will cost him,” the two -women said to themselves. But the events of the last twenty-four hours -had altogether overwhelmed Katrin, and she had not the comfort even of -speaking to any one on the subject, of expressing her horror, her -amazement and dismay, for Beenie was shut up with Lily, whose state was -such that she could not be left alone for a moment. It was well for the -housekeeper that her head was filled with Sir Robert’s dinner and the -airing of the mattresses. It gave her a relief from her heavy thoughts -to drag down the feather beds and turn them over and over before a -blazing fire, though it was August, and the sun blazing hot out of -doors. She worked--as a Highland housekeeper works the day the gentlemen -are to arrive--for the credit of the house and her own. “Would I let -strangers find a word to say, or a thing forgotten, and me the woman in -charge of Dalrugas this mony and mony a year?” she said to herself. And -it did Katrin a great deal of good, as she did not hesitate to -acknowledge. It took off her thoughts. - -Sir Robert arrived in the evening with two elderly friends and one -young one, with all their guns and paraphernalia, Sir Robert’s own man -directing every thing, and at least one other man-servant, bringing -dismay to Katrin’s heart. “You will not have more than two or three good -days on my little bit of moor,” the old gentleman had said with proud -humility, “but the neighbors are very friendly, and no doubt my niece -has got a lot of cheerful Highland lassies about her that will enliven -the time for you, my young friend.” The friends, young and old, had -protested their perfect prospective satisfaction with the entertainment -Sir Robert had to offer, none of them believing, as, indeed, he did not -believe himself, his own disparaging account of the moor. They arrived -very dusty in their post-chaise, but in high spirits, the old gentleman -with an excited pleasure in returning to the old house of his fathers, -which he had not seen for years. Perhaps it looked to him small and gray -and chill, as is the wont of old paternal houses when a long-absent -master comes back. He called out almost as soon as he came in sight of -the door, where Dougal was waiting with his bonnet poised on the extreme -edge of his head, on one hair, and Sandy behind him, ready with awe to -follow the directions of the gentlemen’s gentlemen, and carry the -luggage upstairs. “Where is Miss Lily? Where is my niece?” Sir Robert -cried. “Does she not think it worth her trouble to come and meet her old -uncle at the door?” - -Katrin came forward from the threshold, within which she had been -lurking, and courtesied to the best of her ability. “You’re welcome, Sir -Robert; you’re awfu’ welcome,” she said; “but Miss Lily, I’m sorry to -say, is just very ill in her bed.” - -“Ill in her bed!” cried Sir Robert. “Nonsense! Nonsense! I know that -kind of illness. She is vexed at me for sending her here, and she’s made -up her mind to sulk a little that I may flatter her and plead with her. -You may tell her it won’t do. I’m not that kind of man. I’ll pardon, -maybe, a bonnie lass in all her braws and showing her pleasure in them, -but a sulky, sour young woman---- Eh, Evandale, what were you saying--an -old house? It’s old enough if ye think that to its credit, and bare -enough. Katrin, I hope you’ll be able to make these gentlemen -comfortable in the old barrack, such as it is.” - -“I hope so, Sir Robert,” said Katrin. She was relieved that his -animadversions on Lily should be cut short. - -And then they mounted the spiral staircase with the worn steps, which in -one or two places were almost dangerous, and which the elder men mounted -very cautiously, one after the other, the loud footsteps of the men -echoing through the place, their deeper voices filling the air. - -“Lord bless us all!” Katrin cried within herself, “if they had arrived -ten days ago!” It was a comfort, in the midst of all the trouble, that -Lily was safe in her bed, and, whatever happened, could not be -disturbed. - -Sir Robert’s enquiries again next morning after his niece were made late -and after long delay. It was the 12th of August, and unnecessary to say -that Dalrugas was full of sound and hurry from an early hour; the -manufacture and consumption of an enormous breakfast, and the -preparations for the first great day with the grouse, occupying -every-body, so that Katrin herself, though very anxious, had not found a -moment to visit Lily’s room, or even to snatch a moment’s talk with -Beenie over her mistress’s state. “Just the same, and that’s very bad,” -Beenie said, through the half-open door, “and just half out of her wits -with the noise, and no able to understand what it means.” “Oh, it’s a’ -thae men!” cried Katrin. “The gentlemen and their grouse, and the others -with the guns and the douges and a’ the rest o’t. Pity me that have not -a moment, that must gang and toil for them and their breakfasts!” When -every thing was ready at last, and the party set out, Sir Robert, whose -shooting days were over, accompanied them to a certain favorite corner -upon Rory, who, though the old gentleman was not a heavy weight, -objected to the unusual length of his limbs and decision of his -proceedings; but he returned to the house shortly after, musing, with a -sigh or two. Perhaps it was a rash experiment to come back after so -many years; his doctor had advised it strongly, giving him much hope -from his native air, the air of the moors and hills, and from the quiet -and regular hours and rule of measured living which he would have no -temptation to transgress. “We must remember we are not so young as we -once were--any of us,” the physician had said, notwithstanding that he -himself was but forty. When a man is old and ailing, and lives too -perilously well, and sees and does too much in the gayer regions of the -land, and is known at the same time to have a castle in the North, an -old patrimony in the Highlands, delightful in August at least, and -probably the best place in the world for him at all times of the year, -such a prescription is easy. “Your native air, Sir Robert, and a quiet -country life.” The 12th of August, a fine day, and already the sharp, -clear report of the guns in the brilliant air, and a sense of company -and enjoyment about, and the moor a great magnificent garden, purple -with heather, is about as cheerful a moment as could be chosen to make a -beginning of such a life. But old Sir Robert, returning from the -beginning of the sport which he was not able to share to his old house, -his Highland castle, which, as he turned toward it in the glorious -sunshine of the morning, looked so gray and pinched and penurious, with -the tower, that was only a high outstanding gable, and the farm -buildings, which had for so long a time been the chief and most -important points of the cluster of buildings to its humble occupants, -had little to make him cheerful. A sharp sensation almost of shame stung -the old man as he realized what his friends must have thought of his -Highland castle. Taymouth and Inverary are castles, and so are the -brand-new houses down the Clyde in which the Glasgow merchants establish -themselves with all the luxuries which money can buy. But where did old -Dalrugas come in, so spare and poor, rising straight out of the moor -without garden or plaisance, not to speak of parks or woods? He smiled -to himself a little sadly at the misnomer. He was wounded in the pride -with which he had regarded that shrunken, impoverished little place--a -pride which he felt now was half ludicrous and yet half pathetic. How -was it that he had not thought so when last he was here, then a mature -man and having passed all the glamour of youth? He shook his head at the -pinched, tall gable, the corbie steps cut so clearly against the blue -sky, the gray line of the bare, blank wall. After all, it was but a poor -house for a family with such pretensions as the Ramsays of Dalrugas--a -poor thing to brag to his Southern friends about. And it was not very -gay. He, who had been a man who loved to enjoy himself, and who had done -so wherever he had been, to come back here in the end of his days to -settle down to the dreariness of the solitary moor and the silence of a -country life--was it not a discipline more than he could bear that -“those doctors” had put him under? Was a year or two more of vegetation -here worth the giving up of all his old gratifications and amusements? -It is hard even upon a man who knows he is old, but does not care to -acknowledge it, to accompany on a pony for a little way his friends, who -are keen for their sport, to set them off on the 12th without being able -to go a step or fire a shot with them. Those doctors--what did they -know? They had probably sent him off, not knowing what more to do for -him, that they might not be troubled with the sight of him dying before -their eyes. - -Then, however, there came before Sir Robert, by some more kindly touch -of memory, certain scenes from the old life, when Dalrugas was the -warmest and happiest home in the world, always overflowing with kindly -neighbors and friends of youth. Their names came back to him one by -one--Duffs, Gordons, Sinclairs. Where were they all now? There would be -at least their representatives in all the old places--sons, nay, perhaps -grandsons, of his contemporaries, young asses that would turn up their -noses at a _vieille moustache_; yet perhaps some of the old folk too. -Lily would know; no doubt but Lily would know every one of them. She -would have her partners among the boys and her cronies among the girls. -He felt glad that Lily was here to renew the alliances of the old -place. What had he sent her here for, by-the-bye? Something about a -silly sweetheart that she would not give up, the silly thing. Probably -she would have forgotten his very name by this time, as Sir Robert did; -and there would be another now waiting his sanction. Well, no harm if it -was a fit match for the last Ramsay. He would insist upon that. Somebody -that had gear enough, and good blood, and a proper place in the world. -No other should poor James’s daughter marry; that was one thing sure. - -And then he began to think what had become of Lily that she had neither -come to meet him last night nor appeared this morning. Was she bearing -malice? or sulking at her old uncle? He would soon see there was an end -to that. If she was ill, she must have the doctor. If it was but some -silly cold or other, or the headache that a woman sets up at a moment’s -notice, she must get up out of her bed, she must come down stairs. -Self-indulgence was good for nobody, especially at Lily’s age. He would -see her woman, Beenie, who was her shadow, and whom Sir Robert began to -recollect he had not seen any more than Lily herself. And then the -alternative should be given her--the doctor, who would stand no -nonsense, or to get up and put a shawl about her, and nurse her cold by -the fireside, where she could talk to him, and be much better than if -she were in bed. Sir Robert quickened Rory’s paces, and, indeed, as the -pony was nothing loath to reach his stable, appeared at the house with -almost undignified haste to put in immediate operation this plan. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIV - - -“No better this morning! What is the matter with her? I never heard Lily -was unhealthy or delicate!” - -“She is neither the one nor the other,” said Katrin, indignant, “but -she’s not well to-day. The best of us, Sir Robert, we’re subjeck to -that.” - -“Ye think so!” he said rather fiercely, as if it were a dogma to -question. And then he added: “There’s that big Beenie creature, that is, -I suppose, as much with her as ever--send her to me.” - -“Eh, Sir Robert, how is she to leave Miss Lily, that is just not well at -all this morning?” - -“Send her to me at once!” the old gentleman said imperatively. He went -into the dining-room, which was on the lower floor and the room he liked -best, the most comfortable in the house. There were no signs of a -woman’s presence in that room. A vague wonder crossed his mind if, after -all, Lily had been here at all. He forgot that he had been much -incommoded the evening before by the books and the work-baskets, the -cushions and the footstools, which had demonstrated the some time -presence of a woman upstairs. He kept walking up and down the room -stiffly, feeling his foot a little, as he owned to himself. Sir Robert -truly felt that he would not be sorry if the prescription of his native -air failed manifestly at once. - -“Well,” he said, turning round hastily at a timid opening of the door. -“How’s your mistress--how’s my niece? What does she mean by taking -shelter in her bed, and never appearing to bid me welcome?” - -“Oh, Sir Robert, Miss Lily----” said Beenie. She held the door open and -stood leaning against the edge, as if ready to fly at a call from -without or a thrust from within. Beenie’s hair, which it was difficult -to keep tidy at the best of times, hung over her pale countenance like a -cloud, a short lock standing out from her forehead. We are accustomed -now to every vagary of which hair is capable, and are not disturbed by -loose locks; but in those days strict tidiness was the rule; and Beenie, -very white as to her cheeks and red round the eyes, partly with tears, -partly with watching, was, to Sir Robert, a being unworthy of any -confidence. - -“Woman!” he cried, “you look as if you had been up all night--and not a -fit person to be a lady’s body-servant, and with her night and day!” - -“Fit or no,” said Beenie, with a sob, “I’m the one Miss Lily’s aye had, -and her and me will never be parted either with her will or mine.” - -“We’ll see about that,” said Sir Robert. But he was wise man enough to -know that a favorite servant was a difficult thing to attack. He asked -peremptorily: “What is the matter with her?” placing himself, like a -judge, in the great chair. - -“Eh, Sir Robert, if Marg’ret, my cousin, had been here, that is half a -doctor herself! but me I know nothing,” cried Beenie, wringing her -hands. - -“Is it a cold?” - -“It was, maybe, a cold to begin with,” said Beenie cautiously, but then -she melted into tears and cried: “She’s awfu’ fevered, she’s the color -o’ fire, and kens nothing,” in a lamentable voice. - -“Bless me,” cried Sir Robert, “is there any fever about?” - -“There’s nae fever about that I ken of--there’s nae folk hereby to get a -fever,” Beenie said. - -“Then I’ll go and see her myself!” cried Sir Robert, rising from his -chair. - -“Eh, Sir Robert!” cried Katrin, from behind the door, “you a gentleman -that could do the puir thing no good! It’s better to leave her to us -women folk.” - -“There is truth in that, too,” Sir Robert said. He took a turn about the -room and then sat down again in his chair, his forehead contracted with -a line of annoyance and perplexity which might have been called anxiety -by a charitable onlooker. Beenie had seized the opportunity of Katrin’s -appearance to hurry away, and he found himself face to face with his -housekeeper. He gave a long breath of relief. “It’s you, Katrin,” he -said; “you’re a sensible person according to your lights. There’s fever -with all things--a wound (but that’s of course impossible for her), or a -cold, or any accident. What’s your opinion? Is it a thing that will pass -away?” - -“Leave her with Beenie and me for another day, Sir Robert, and the -morn, if she’s no better, I’ll be the first to ask for a doctor; and eh, -I hope it’s safe no to have him the day.” The latter part of this speech -Katrin said to herself under cover of the door. - -“She’ll have got cold coming home late from one of her parties,” said -the old gentleman, regaining his composure. - -“Her pairties, Sir Robert!” said Katrin, almost with a shriek. “And -where, poor thing, would she get pairties here?” - -“She has friends, I suppose?” he said with a little impatience, -“companions of her own age. Where will young creatures like that not -find parties? is what I would ask.” - -“Eh, Sir Robert! but I’m doubting you’ve forgotten our countryside. -There’s Miss Eelen at the Manse that is her one great friend; and John -Jameson’s lass at the muckle farm, that has been at the school in -Edinburgh, and would fain, fain think herself a lady, poor bit thing, -would have given her little finger to be friends with Miss Lily. But you -would not have had her go to pairties in the farmhouse; and at the Manse -they give nane, the minister being such a lameter. Pairties! the Lord -bless us! Wha would ask her to pairties on this side of the moor?” - -“There are plenty of people,” said Sir Robert almost indignantly, “that -should have shown attention to my brother James’s daughter, both for my -sake and his. What do you call the Duffs, woman? and the Gordons of the -Muckle moor, and Sir John Sinclair’s family at the Lews? Many a merry -night have we passed among us when we were all young. The Duffs’ is not -more than a walk, even if Lily were setting up for a fine lady, which, -to do her justice, was not her way.” - -“Eh, hear till him!” breathed Katrin under her breath. She said aloud: -“Times are awfu’ changed, Sir Robert, since your days. The present Mr. -Duff he’s married on an English lady, and they say she cannot bide the -air of the Highlands, though it is well kent for the finest air in a’ -the world. He comes here whiles with a wheen gentlemen for the first of -the shooting--but her never, and there’s little to be said for a house -when the mistress is never in it. Of the Gordons there’s nane left but -one auld leddy, the last of them, I hear, except distant connections. -And as for Sir John at the Lews, poor man, poor man, he just died -broken-hearted, one of his bonnie boys going to destruction after the -other. They say the things are to be roupit and the auld mansion-house -to be left desolate, for of the twa that remain the one’s a -ne’er-do-well and the other a puir avaricious creature, feared to spend -a shilling, and I canna tell which is the worst.” - -“Bless me, bless me!” Sir Robert had gone on saying, shaking his head. -He was receiving a rude awakening. He saw in his mind’s eye the old -house running over with lively figures, with fun and laughter--and now -desolate. It gave him a great shock, partly from the simple fact, which -by itself was overwhelming, partly because of a sudden pity which sprang -up in his mind for Lily, and, most of all, for himself. What, nobody to -come and see him, to tell the news and hear what was in the London -papers; no cheerful house to form an object for his walk, no men to talk -to, no ladies to whom to pay his old-fashioned compliments! This -discovery went very much to his heart. After a long time he said: “It -would be better to let the houses than to leave them to go to rack and -ruin, or shut up, as you say--the best houses in the countryside.” - -“Let them!” cried Katrin. “Gentlemen’s ain houses! We’re maybe fallen -low, Sir Robert, but we’re no just fallen to that.” - -“You silly woman! the grandest folk do it,” cried Sir Robert. Then he -added in a lower tone: “Lily, I am afraid, may not have had a very -lively life.” - -“You may well say that!” cried Katrin. “Poor bonnie lassie, if she had -bidden ony gangrel body on the road, or any person travelling that -passed this way, to come in and bear her company, I would not have been -surprised for my part.” - -Katrin spoke very deliberately, _avec intention_. It seemed well to -prepare an argument, in case it might be used with effect another time. -And Sir Robert was much subdued. He had not meant to inflict such a -punishment upon his niece. He had believed, indeed, that her life at -Dalrugas would be even more gay than her life in Edinburgh. There the -parties might occasionally be formal, or the _convives_ bores, according -to his own experience at least; but here there was nothing but the good, -warm, simple intimacy of the country, the life almost in common, the -hospitable doors always open. If a compunctious recollection of Lily -ever crossed his mind in the midst of his own elderly amusements, this -was what he had been in the habit of saying to himself: “There will be -lads enough to make a little queen of her, and lasses enough to keep her -company, for she’s a bonnie bit thing when all is said.” He had always -been a little proud of her, though she had been a great trouble to him; -and he thought he knew that in his old home Lily would be fully -appreciated. That he had sent her out into the wilderness had never -entered his thoughts. He dismissed Katrin with an uneasy mind, imploring -her, almost with humility, to do every thing she could think of for his -poor Lily, and if she was not better in the morning, to send at once for -the best doctor in the neighborhood. Who was the best doctor in the -neighborhood? Indeed, there was but little choice--the doctor at -Kinloch-Rugas, who was not so young as he once was, and had, alas, a -sore weakness for his glass, and the one at Ardenlennie on the other -side, who was well spoken of. “Let it be the one at Ardenlennie,” Sir -Robert said. He spent rather a wretched day afterward, taking two or -three short constitutionals, up and down the high-road, three-quarters -of an hour at a time, to while away the lonely day until his friends -returned from the moor. It was far too painful an ordeal, to spend the -12th of August alone in this place where, in his recollection, the 12th -of August had always been ecstasy. He should have chosen another moment. -He had not imagined that he would have felt so much his own -disabilities of old age. He had been wont to boast that he did not feel -them at all, one kind of enjoyment having been replaced by another, and -his desire for athletic pleasures having died a natural death in the -perfection of his matured spirit and changed tastes, which were equal to -better things. But he had certainly subjected himself to too great a -trial now. That the 12th should be his first day at home, and that all -his sport should consist of a convoy given to the sportsmen on the back -of Rory, but not a gun for his own shoulder, not a step on the heather -for his foot! It was too much. He had been a fool. And then this silly -misadventure of Lily and her illness to make every thing worse. - -A moment of comparative comfort occurred in the middle of the day when -he had his luncheon. “Really that woman’s not bad as a cook,” he said to -himself. She was but a woman, and a Scotch, uncultivated creature, but -she had her qualities--and there was taste in what she sent him, that -priceless gift, especially for an old man. He took a little nap after -his luncheon, and then he took another walk, and so got through the day -till the sportsmen came back. They came in noisy and triumphant, with -their bags, and their stories of what happened at this and that corner, -of the cheepers that had been missed and the old birds that were full of -guile. Had they been Sir Robert’s sons it is possible that he might have -listened benignly, and felt more or less the pleasure by proxy which -some gentle spirits taste. But they were strangers, mere “friends” in -the jargon of the world, meaning acquaintances more or less intimate. Of -the three he bore best the laughter and delight and brags and eagerness -to show his own prowess of the young man. The others awakened a sharper -pang of contrast. “Almost my own age!” Alas! the difference between -fifty and seventy is the unkindest of comparisons. They were not even -good companions for him in the evening. When they had talked over every -step of their progress, and every bird that had fallen before them, and -eaten of Katrin’s good dishes an enormous dinner, the strong air of the -moor, and the hot fire of the peats, and the fatigue of the first day’s -exercise and excitement, overpowered them one after another with sleep. -This would not have been the case had Lily been afoot to sing a song or -two and keep them to their manners. Sir Robert was driven to the -expedient of sending for Dougal when they had all, with many excuses, -gone to bed. Dougal was sleepy, too, and tired, though not so much so as -“the gentlemen,” to whom the grouse and the moor were, more or less, -novelties. He gave his wife a curious look when Sir Robert’s man called -him to his master, and Katrin responded with one that partly entreated -and partly threatened. She said: “You can tell him Miss Lily is very -bad, and I’ll get the doctor the first thing the morn.” - -Dougal uttered no word. He could not wear his bonnet when he went up to -see the laird, but he took it in his hands, which was some small -consolation. He was in a dreadful confusion of mind, not knowing what -was to be said to him, what was to be demanded of him. He might be about -to be put through his “questions,” and want all his strength to defend -himself; or it might be nothing at all--some nonsense about the guns or -the birds. His heavy shock of hair stood up from his forehead, giving -something of an ox-like breadth and heaviness of brow. He held his head -somewhat down, with a trace of defiance. Katrin might gloom; it was -little he cared for Katrin when his blood was up; but there was not a -bit of the traitor in Dougal. No blood of a black Monteith in him, if -they were to put the thumbscrews on him or matches atween his fingers. -That poor bonnie creature, whatever was her wyte--they should get -nothing to trouble her out of him. - -“Well, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, dangerously genial, “you see I’m left -all alone. My friends they have gone to their beds, as if they were -callants home from the school.” - -“The gentlemen would be geyan tired,” said Dougal; “they’re English, and -no accustomed to our moors, and some of them no so young either. You -never kent that, Sir Robert, you that were to the manner born.” - -“But too auld for that sort of thing, Dougal, now.” - -“Maybe, and maybe not,” said Dougal. “There’s naething like the auld -blood and the habit o’t. I’d sooner see you cock a rifle, Sir Robert, -though I say it as shouldna, than the whole three of them.” - -“No, no, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, “that’s flattery. They’re not very -good shots, then,” he said, with a smile. He was not indisposed to hear -this of them, though they were his friends. - -“Well, Sir Robert, I wouldna say, on their ain kind o’ ground, among the -stubble and that kind o’ low-country shooting, which, I’m tauld, is the -common thing _there_; but no on our moors. When you’re used to the -heather, it’s a different thing.” - -“No doubt there is something in that,” Sir Robert allowed with discreet -satisfaction. And then he added: “What’s this I hear from your wife -about all the old neighbors, and that there’s scarcely a house open I -knew in my young days?” - -“What is that, Sir Robert?” said Dougal cautiously. - -“The neighbors, ye dunce, my old friends that were all about the -countryside when I was young, and that I thought would be friends for my -poor little Lily when she came here. I’m told there’s not one of them -left.” - -Dougal did not readily take up what was meant, but he held his own -firmly. “There’s been nae gentleman’s house,” he said, “what you would -call open and receiving visitors round about Dalrugas as long as I -mind--no more than Dalrugas itsel’.” - -“Ah, Dalrugas itself,” said Sir Robert, a little abashed. It was -true--if the others had closed their doors, so had Dalrugas; if they -were left to silence and decay, so had his own house been. Other reasons -had operated in his case, but the result was the same. “I’m afraid, -Dougal,” he said, “that my poor little Lily has had an ill time of it, -which I never intended. Give me your opinion on the subject. Your -wife’s a very decent woman--and an excellent cook, I will say that for -her--but she’s like them all, she stands up for her own side. She would -have me think that my niece has been very solitary among the moors. Now -that was never what I intended. Tell me true: has Miss Lily been a kind -of prisoner, and seen nobody, as Katrin says?” - -Dougal pushed his mass of hair to one side as if it had been a wig. “The -young leddy,” he said, “had none o’ the looks of a prisoner, Sir Robert. -I’ve seen her when you would have thought it was the very sun itsel’ -shining on the moor.” - -“You’re very poetical, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, with a laugh. - -“And she would whiles sing as canty as the birds, and off upon Rory as -light as a feather down to the market to see all the ferlies o’ the -toun, and into the Manse for her tea.” - -“That sounds cheerful enough,” said the old gentleman, “though the -ferlies of the town were not very exciting, I suppose. And old Blythe’s -still at the Manse? He’s one of the old set left at least.” - -“He’s an altered man noo, Sir Robert; never a step can he make out o’ -his muckle chair; they say he’s put into his bed at nicht, but it’s a -mystery to me and many more how it’s done, for he’s a muckle heavy man. -But year’s end to year’s end he’s just living on in his muckle chair.” - -“Lord bless us!” Sir Robert said. He looked down on his own still -shapely and not inactive limbs with an involuntary shiver of comparison, -and then he added, with a half laugh: “A man that liked his good dinner, -and a good bottle of wine, and a good crack, with any of us.” - -“That did he, Sir Robert!” Dougal said. - -“Poor old Blythe! I must go and see him,” said the happier veteran, with -an unconscious stretch of his capable legs, and throwing out of his -chest. It was not any pleasure in the misfortune of his neighbor which -gave him this glow of almost satisfaction. It was the sense of his own -superiority in well-being, the comparison which was so much in his own -favor. The comparison this morning had not been in his own favor and he -had not liked it. He felt now, let us hope with a sensation of -thankfulness, how much better off he was than Mr. Blythe. - -“Well, well, the Manse was always something, Dougal,” he said. “Manses -are cheerful places; there’s always a great coming and going. I hope -there was nobody much out of her own sphere that Miss Lily met there--no -young ministers coming up here after her, eh? They have a terrible flair -for lasses with tochers, these young ministers, Dougal?” - -“Ay, Sir Robert, that have they,” said Dougal, “but I’ve seen no -minister here.” - -“That was good luck for Lily--or we that are responsible for her,” said -the old gentleman. “Well, Dougal, my man, you’ll be tired yourself and -ready for your bed, and to make an early start to-morrow with the -gentlemen.” - -“Ay, Sir Robert,” said Dougal. He was very glad to accept his dismissal, -and to feel that without so much as a fib he had kept his own counsel -and betrayed nothing. But when he had reached the door, he turned round -again, crushing his bonnet in his hands. “I was to tell you Miss Lily -was no better, poor thing, and that the women thought the doctor would -have to be sent for the morn.” - -Sir Robert’s countenance clouded over. “Tchick, tchick!” he said, with -an air of perplexity. “You’ll see that the best man in the neighborhood -is the one that’s sent for,” he cried. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXV - - -There had been a pause after Lily called to Marg’ret to bring the baby -on the night when Ronald left her. Marg’ret, though very kind, was a -person who liked her own way. If the child’s toilet was not complete, -according to her own elaborate rule, she did not obey in a moment even -the eager call of the young mother. There were allowances made for her, -as there always are for those who insist upon having their own way. - -Accordingly there was a pause. Lily lay and listened to the wheels of -the geeg which carried Ronald away. They did not bring the same chill to -her heart as usual, and yet a chill began to steal into the room. The -night was warm and soft--the early August, which in the North is the -height of summer--and there was no chill at all in the atmosphere. It -seemed to Lily’s keen ears as she lay listening that the geeg paused as -if something had been forgotten, but then went on at double speed, -galloping up the brae, till the sound of the wheels was extinguished in -the night and distance. Then she called again sharply: “Marg’ret, -Marg’ret! bring in my baby!” But still there was no reply. - -“She’s just a most fastidious woman, with all her dressings and her -undressings. She’ll no have finished him just to the last string tying,” -said Robina. - -“Bid her come at once, at once!” cried Lily. “I want my little man.” - -And Beenie dived into the next room, which was muffled in curtains, -great precautions having been taken lest the cry of the child should be -heard down stairs. There was another room still within that, into which -the nurse occasionally retired; but there was no one in either place, -nor were there any traces of the little garments lying about which -betray a baby’s presence--every thing appeared to have been swept away. -Beenie, who had come for the child with her rosy countenance beaming, -stood still in consternation, her mouth open, her terrified eyes taking -in every thing with speechless dismay; for Marg’ret had never ventured -down stairs as yet, nor had, they flattered themselves, a sound of the -infant been heard, to awaken any question there. Beenie stood silent and -terrified for a moment, and then, instead of returning to her mistress, -she flew down stairs. Katrin was alone, doing some of her delicate -cooking carefully over the fire; all was still, as if nothing but the -most commonplace and tranquil events had ever happened there. Beenie, -who had burst into the place like a whirlwind, again paused, confounded -by this every-day tranquillity. “Katrin, Katrin, where is Marg’ret?” she -cried, adding in a lower tone, “and the bairn?” - -“What a question to ask me!” said Katrin. “She’s with your mistress -without a doubt. Have you ta’en leave of your senses,” she murmured in a -hurried undertone, “to roar out like that about a bairn? What bairn?” - -Here Beenie found herself at the end of all her resources. She burst out -into loud weeping. “She’s no up the stair and she’s no down the stair,” -cried Beenie, “and my bonnie leddy is crying out for her, and will not -be satisfied! And she’s no place that I can find her--neither her nor -yet the bairn.” - -Katrin thrust her saucepan from her as if it had been the offending -thing; she wiped her hands with her apron. She looked at Beenie, both of -them pale with horror. “Oh, the ill man!” she cried. “Oh, the monster! -Oh, sic a man for our bonnie dear! I have been misdoubting about the -bairn--but wha could have expectit that a young man no hardened in -iniquity would have thought of a contrivance like that?” - -Beenie had no thought or time to spare even on such an enormity. “How am -I to face her--and tell her?” she said. - -And at this moment they heard Lily’s voice calling from above, at first -softly, then shouting, screaming all their names. “Marg’ret! Beenie! -Katrin! Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Beenie! Katrin! Where is my bairn? where is -my bairn?” - -The two women flew up the stairs, at the head of which they found Lily -in her white night-dress, with her feet bare, her hair waving wildly -about her head, her face convulsed and drawn. “My bairn!” she cried, “my -bairn! my little bairn! Where is Marg’ret? Where is my baby? Marg’ret! -Marg’ret! Beenie! Katrin! bring me my baby--my baby!” She seized Beenie -wildly with her trembling hands. - -“Oh, my daurlin’!” Beenie cried. “Oh, my bairn--oh, my bonnie Miss -Lily!” - -Lily flung the large weeping woman from her with a passion of -impatience. “Katrin!” she said breathlessly, “you have sense; where is -my baby? bring me my baby! My little bairn! Did ye ever hear that an -infant like that should be kept from his mother? Marg’ret! Marg’ret! -Where has she taken my baby--my baby--my----” - -Lily’s voice rose to a kind of scream. She ceased to have command of her -words, and went on calling, calling, for Marg’ret and for her child in -an endless cry, not knowing what she said. - -“You will come back to your bed first and then I will tell you,” said -Katrin. There was no one in the house but themselves, and they were -isolated in this sudden tragedy from all the world by the distance and -the silence of night and the moor. The door stood open at the foot of -the stairs, and a cold air blew up through the long, many-cornered -passage, chill and searching notwithstanding the warmth of the night. -Lily was glad to lean shivering upon the warm support of the kind woman -who encircled her with her arm. “You will tell me--you will tell me,” -she murmured, permitting herself to be drawn back to her room. The blind -had been raised from one of the windows, and the moonlight streamed in, -crossing the dimly lighted chamber with one white line of light. The -bed, with the little table by it, and the candle burning calmly, seemed -too peaceful for Lily’s mood of suspense and alarm. She stood still in -the moonlight, which seemed to make her figure luminous with her white -bare feet and pale face. “Tell me!” she cried, “tell me! Marg’ret! -Marg’ret! Where has she taken my baby? I want my baby--nothing -more--nothing more.” - -“For the Lord’s sake, mem!” said Katrin, “ye are shivering and -trembling. Go back to your bed.” - -“Oh, my daurlin’!” cried the weeping Beenie. “Oh, my bonnie lamb, he’s -just away with his father in the geeg. Ye needna cry upon Marg’ret; -she’ll no hear you, for it’s just her that’s taken him away!” - -“Oh, you born fool!” Katrin cried, supporting her young mistress with -her arm. - -But Lily twisted out of her hold. She turned upon Beenie, bringing her -hands together wildly with a loud clap that startled all the silences -about like the sudden report of a pistol, and then fell suddenly with a -cry at their feet. - -Since that moment she had not recovered consciousness. Both of them knew -by the force of experience how dangerous a symptom in Lily’s condition -is the strong convulsive shivering which had seized her, and for the -greater part of that dreadful night before Sir Robert’s arrival they -were both by her bedside striving with every kind of hot application to -restore a natural temperature. But when they had partially succeeded in -this, she still lay unconscious, sometimes agitated and disturbed, -flinging herself about with her arms over her head, and once or twice -repeating, what filled them with horror, the extraordinary clap together -of her hands--sometimes quite still, and murmuring under her breath a -continuous flow of inarticulate words, but never conscious of them or -their ministrations, saying no word that had meaning in it. Sir Robert’s -arrival made a certain change, and left the weight of the nursing upon -Beenie, Katrin, with her many additional labors, being unable to bear -her share. They had already, however, had time for several consultations -on the subject, which Sir Robert naturally disposed of with so much -ease, but which to the two women was a much more serious matter--a -doctor. Would not a doctor divine at once with his keen, educated eyes -what had happened so recently? Would not he read as clearly as in a book -what had been the beginning of Lily’s illness? She lay helpless now, -able to give them no assistance in disposing of her--she, so wilful by -nature, who had always got her own way, so far, at least, as they were -concerned. It filled them with awe to look at her lying unconscious, -and to feel that her fate was in their hands. What were they to do? They -were responsible for her life or death. - -The doctor, when he came, listened with very small attention to Beenie’s -long and confused story, chiefly made up from things she had read and -heard of the causes of Lily’s illness. Whatever the causes were, the -result was clear enough. She was in a high fever, her faculties all lost -in that confusion of violent illness which takes away at once all -consciousness of the present and all personal control. “Fever” was an -impressive word in those days, more alarming in some senses, less so in -others, than now. It was not mapped out and distinct, with its charts -and its well-known rules. There was not, so far as I am aware, such a -thing as a clinical thermometer known, at least not in ordinary -practice; and the word “fever” meant something dangerously “catching,” -something before which nurses fled and friends retired in dismay--which -is not to say that those who suffered from it were less sedulously -guarded and taken care of by their own people then than now. The first -idea of both Beenie and Katrin, however, was that it must be “catching,” -being fever, and Sir Robert, when he was informed, was not much wiser. -“Fever--where could she have got it?” he said with a sudden imagination -of some wretched beggar-woman with a sick child who might have given it -to the young lady. “It is not a thing of that kind. You are thinking of -scarlatina or maybe typhus. Nothing of that sort. It does not spring -from infection. It is brain-fever,” the medical man said. “Brain-fever!” -said Sir Robert, indignant. “There was never any thing of that kind in -my family.” He took it as a reproach, as if the Ramsays had ever been a -race subject to disturbance in the brain! - -But whatever they said, it mattered little to Lily. She lay on her bed -for hours together moving her restless head to and fro, muttering -inarticulate words, then pouring forth a stream of vague discourse, -through which there gleamed occasionally a ray of meaning, a wild -sudden demand, a flash of protest and expostulation. “Not that! not -him!” she would sometimes say, “any thing but him!” and the doctor, -making out as much as that one day, believed that the poor girl had been -refused her lover, and that it was the sudden arrival of the uncle, who -was hostile to them, which had brought on or precipitated the trouble in -her brain. Sometimes she would call for “Marg’ret, Marg’ret, Marg’ret!” -in accents now of impatience, now of despair. And then he asked who -Marg’ret was and why she did not come, or rather: “Which of you is -Marg’ret?” to the confusion of the two women. “Oh, sir, neither her nor -me,” cried Beenie, “neither her nor me! but a woman that had something -to do with her--in an ill moment.” “Let her be sent for, then,” he said -peremptorily. Beenie and Katrin had a great deal to bear. Knowing every -thing, they had to pretend they knew nothing, to shake their heads and -wonder why the patient should utter words which were heartrending to -them as betraying the dreadful persistence of that impression of misery -in her mind which they knew so well. They gave themselves the comfort of -exchanging a glance now and then, which was almost all the mutual -consolation they had. For Katrin was very much occupied with the -housekeeping and her work, and the necessity for satisfying her master -and his guests, who, knowing nothing of Sir Robert’s family, and never -having seen his niece, did not propose to go away, as guests in other -circumstances would have done. And Sir Robert was very far from desiring -that they should go away. He was terrified to find himself here alone, -without even Lily’s company, and therefore said very little of her -illness. What difference could it make to her, if she never saw them or -heard of them, whether Sir Robert had company or not? So Katrin labored -morning and night to feed with her best the party in the dining-room, -and with very imperfect help at first to look after all the wants of the -gentlemen, while Beenie, isolated in her mistress’s room, nursed night -and day the helpless, unconscious creature who required so little, yet -needed so much care. Those were not the days of carefully regulated -nursing, in which the most important matter of all is the preservation -of the nurse’s health and her meals and hours of taking exercise. It was -an age when the household was sufficient for itself, and the domestic -nurse devoted herself night and day to her charge, accepting all the -risks and fatigue as a matter of course. Beenie had no help and wanted -none. Sometimes for a moment’s refreshment she would go down to the -door, and breathe in a long draught of the fresh morning air, while -Katrin stood by Lily’s bed trying to elicit from her a look or sign of -intelligence. But Beenie could not have remained absent from her young -mistress had the wisest of nurses been there to take her place. “Na, na; -I’ve ta’en care of her a’ her days, and I’ll take care of her till the -end,” Beenie said, when Katrin exhorted her to take a few minutes more -of the outdoor freshness. “Hold your tongue, woman, with your ends!” -cried Katrin--“a young thing like that with a’ her life in her! She will -see us baith out.” “Oh, the Lord grant it!” cried Beenie, shaking her -large head. “But how is she to live and face the truth and ken all -that’s happened if ever she comes to herself? She will just sit up in -her bed, and clap her two hands together as she did yon dreadful -night--and give up the ghost.” - -“God forgive him--for I canna!” said Katrin, with a deep-drawn breath. - -“And Marg’ret! What do ye say to her, the deep designing woman, that had -been planning it, nae doubt, all the time?” - -“Marg’ret!” cried Katrin with disdain, with the gesture of throwing -something too contemptible for consideration from her. But she added: -“There is just this to be said: We could not have keepit the bairn. No -possible, her so ill, and the doctor about the house, and a wee thing -that bid to have had the air and could not be keepit silent, nor yet -hid. Oh, mony’s the thought I’ve had on that awful subject. It was the -deed of a villain, Beenie! Maybe God will forgive him, but never me. -And yet, being done, it’s weel that it was done.” - -“Katrin!” cried Beenie in dismay. - -But something, perhaps, in their low-toned but vehement conversation had -caught some wandering and confused faculty not entirely overwhelmed in -Lily’s bosom. She began to call out their names again with a wild -appeal, “Marg’ret, Marg’ret!” above all the others, flinging out her -arms and rising up in her bed, as Beenie had described in her gloomy -anticipations, as if to give up the ghost. - -And in this way days and weeks passed away. Lily’s fever seemed to have -become a natural part of the life of the house. Robina seemed to herself -unable to remember the time when she went to bed at night and got up -again in the morning like other people, and had ordinary meals and went -and came about the house. And all the incidents that had gone before -became dim. If an answer had been demanded of her hurriedly, she could -scarcely have ventured to affirm that any one was true: the marriage -ceremony in the Manse parlor, the meetings of the young husband and -wife, and above all the last tremendous event, which had seemed in its -turn to be of more importance than any thing else that ever occurred. -They had all faded away into the background, while Lily, sometimes pale -as a ghost, sometimes flushed with the agitation of fever, lay -struggling between life and death. The doctor, an ordinary village -doctor, knew little of such maladies. He was reduced by his practical -ignorance to the passive position which is now so often adopted by the -highest knowledge. He watched the patient with anxious and sympathetic -eyes, naturally sorry for a creature so young, with her girlish beauty -fading like a flower. He did not know what to do, and he wisely did -nothing. He had made, as was natural, many attempts to find out how an -attack so serious had been brought on. Had she received any great shock? -Katrin and Beenie, looking at each other, had answered cautiously that -maybe it might be so, but they could not tell. Had she suddenly heard -any bad news? Oh, yes, poor thing, she had done that! very bad news -that had just gone straight to her heart like the shot of a gun. “But, -doctor, you’ll say nothing to Sir Robert of that.” The doctor drew his -own conclusions and satisfied himself. No doubt the shock was the -arrival of the old uncle. He had heard something of the young gentleman -who was always coming and going, and that the two would make a bonnie -couple if every thing went right, though this good-natured speech was -accompanied by shakings of the head and prognostications of dreadful -things that might happen if every thing went wrong. The doctor nodded -his head and made up his mind that he had penetrated the affair. It -would not even have shocked him to hear that it had gone the length of a -secret marriage. Private marriages acknowledged late were not looked -upon in Scotland with very severe eyes. Both law and custom excused -them, though in such a case as Lily’s it was strange that any thing of -the kind should occur. - -But it becomes of very little importance, when such a malady has dragged -along its weary course for weeks, to know what was the cause of it. The -rapid cures which a promise of happiness works, in fiction at least, -very seldom occur in life, and when the spiritual part of the patient -becomes lost, as it were, in the hot running current of fevered blood, -and the predominance of the agitated body is complete over all the -commotions of the mind, it is vain to think of proposing remedies for -the original wrong, even if that were possible. Sir Robert now and then -paid a visit to his niece’s room, short and unwilling, dictated solely -by a sense of duty. He stood near the door and looked at her, tossing on -her pillows, or lying as if dead in the apathy of exhaustion, with an -uneasy sense, partly that he was himself badly used by Providence, -partly that he might, perhaps, be partially himself to blame. He had -left her here very lonely. Perhaps it was a mistake in judgment; but -then he had been entirely ignorant of the circumstances, and how could -it be said to be his fault? When she began to talk, he could not -understand what she said--nor, indeed, could any one in the quickened -and hurrying incoherence of the utterance--except the cry of Marg’ret, -Marg’ret, Marg’ret! which still sometimes came with a passion that made -it intelligible from her lips. “Who is Marg’ret?” he asked angrily. “I -remember no person of that name.” “Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Marg’ret!” cried -Lily again, her confused mind caught by his repetition of the name. She -flung herself toward the side of the bed which was nearest the door, -opening her eyes wide, as if to see better, and adding, with a cry of -ecstasy: “She has brought him back--she has brought him back!” Sir -Robert hurried away with a thrill of alarm. Who was it that was to be -brought back? Who was the Marg’ret for whom she cried night and day? Was -it the mere delirium of her fever, or was something else--something real -and unknown--hidden below? - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVI - - -Sir Robert had not at this time a happy life. His friends went away at -last, having exhausted the little shootings of Dalrugas and finding that -social amusement of any kind was not to be found there, besides the -ever-present reason of “illness in the house” why they should not -outstay the limits of their invitation. And no one else came. Why should -they, considering how very little inducement he had to offer? This of -itself was a hard confession for the proud old man to make, who, -perhaps, had been tempted now and then to enhance at his club, or in his -favorite society, those attractions of his little patrimony, which were -so very different, as he remembered them, from what they were now. John -Duff of Blackscaur made a call to say chiefly how sorry he was that he -could show no civilities to his neighbor, having only come to a -dismantled house for a few weeks’ shooting, his wife being abroad. “I -was glad to give a little sport to one of the young Lumsdens last year,” -he said. “I heard he was a friend of yours.” “No friend of mine!” cried -Sir Robert, suddenly recalled by the name to the original cause, which -he had more than half forgotten, of Lily’s banishment. “Ah!” cried John -Duff indifferently, “it was a mistake, then. Of course I knew his -father.” This was the only social overture made to Sir Robert Ramsay, -and it carried with it a sting, which gave him considerable uneasiness. -“Would the fellow have the audacity to come after her here?” he asked -himself. And he made up his mind wrathfully, when Lily was better, to -enquire into this allusion. When Lily was better! But he was still more -angry when any doubt was expressed on that subject. Katrin’s tearful -looks once or twice when the patient was worse he took as a personal -affront. He would not believe that Providence, however hostile, could -treat him so badly as that. - -When he was in this lonely and unsatisfied state of mind, a letter came -for him one day from the Manse, begging him in his charity to go and see -the minister, who was unable to come to him. “Ah! old Blythe,” Sir -Robert said. He would not have thought very much of old Blythe in other -days, but now he remembered, not without pleasure, the good stories the -minister told, and the good company he was. “Will Rory last with me as -far as the Manse?” he said to Dougal. “Rory, Sir Robert, he’ll just last -till the Day o’ Judgment,” said Dougal. “I have no occasion for him so -far as that!” Sir Robert replied sharply; and he felt that it was not -quite becoming his dignity to ride into Kinloch-Rugas mounted upon a -Highland pony; but what can one do when there is no other way? The -minister sat as usual in his great chair by the fire, which burned dully -still, though the day was August. He said: “Come in, Sir Robert, come -ben! I’m very glad to see you, though it is a long time since we met. -You will, maybe, find the fire too much at this time of the year, but, -you see, I’m a lameter that cannot move out of my chair, and I never -find it warm enough for me.” - -“You should have a chair that you could move about and get into the sun -now and then; that’s the only thing that warms the blood--at our age.” - -“I am years older than you. I consider you a fine trim and trig elderly -young man.” - -The minister laughed more cordially at this jest than Sir Robert did. He -did not like the faintest suggestion of ridicule. It is true that he was -trim and well dressed, an example of careful toilet and appearance -beside the careless old heavy form in the easy chair. Mr. Blythe had -long since ceased to care what his appearance was. Sir Robert was “very -particular” and careful of every detail. - -“And how are you liking your home-coming?” Mr. Blythe said. “It’s a -trial and a risk when you have been away all the best of your life. I’m -doubting the auld tower looks but small to your eyes by what it did in -the old days.” - -“Things are changed certainly,” said Sir Robert a little stiffly, -“especially among the old neighbors. There used to be plenty of society; -now there seems none, or next to none.” - -“And that is true. The old folk are dead and gone; the young generation -is changed: the lads go away and never come back, the lasses marry into -strange houses. It’s very true; but you are just very fortunate. Like -me, you have a child to your old age; though you did not, like me, Sir -Robert, take the trouble to provide her for yourself.” - -Sir Robert stared a little at this speech, and then said: “If you mean -my niece Lily, Blythe, you probably know that she’s very ill in bed, and -a cause of great anxiety, not of comfort, to me.” - -“Ay, ay,” said the minister, “we had heard something, but did not know -it was so bad as that. But it will be a thing that will pass by; just -some chill she has got out on the moor, or some other bit small matter. -She has been very well and blooming, a fine young creature all the time -we have had her here.” - -“I am by no means sure,” said Sir Robert, with a cloud on his brow, -“that I did not make a mistake in sending her here. I had no intention -to send her into a desert. My mind was full of the old times, when we -were cheerful enough, as you will remember, Blythe, whatever else we -might be. There was not much money going--nor perhaps luxury--but there -was plenty of company. However, I’m glad you have so good a report to -give of her. She’s neither well nor blooming, poor lassie, now.” - -The minister cleared his throat two or three times, as if he found it -difficult to resume. “Sir Robert,” he said, and then made a pause, “I am -not a man that likes to interfere. I have as little liking for that part -as you or any man could have--to be meddled with in what you will think -your own affairs.” - -Sir Robert stiffened visibly, uplifting his throat in the stiff stock, -which, in his easiest moment, seemed to hold him within risk of -strangulation. “I fail to see,” he said, “what there is in my affairs -that would warrant interference from you or any man; but if you’ve got -any thing to say, say it out.” - -“I meddle with nobody,” said the minister as proudly, “unless it is for -the young of the flock. I can scarcely call you one of my flock, Sir -Robert.” - -“A grewsome auld tup at the best, you’ll be thinking,” said Sir Robert, -with a harsh laugh. - -“Man!” said the minister, “at the least of it we are old friends. We -know each other’s mettle; if we quarrel, it’ll do little good or harm to -any body. And if you like to fling off in a fit, you must just do it. -What I’ve got to say is just this: Women folk are hard to manage for -them that are not used to them. I’ve not just come as well out of it as -I would have liked myself; and that little thing up at Dalrugas is a -tender bit creature. She has blossomed like the flowers when she has -been let alone, and never lost heart, though she has had many a dull -day. Do not cross the lassie above what she is able to bear. If you’re -still against the man she likes herself, for the love of God, Robert -Ramsay, force no other upon her, as you hope to be saved!” - -The old minister was considerably moved, but this did not perhaps -express itself in the most dignified way. What with the fervor of his -mind, and the heat of the fire, and the little unusual exertion, the -perspiration stood in great drops on his brow. - -“This is a very remarkable appeal, Blythe,” said Sir Robert. “_I_ force -another man upon her! Granted there is one she likes herself, as you -seem so sure--though I admit nothing of my own knowledge--am I a man to -force a husband down any woman’s throat?” - -“I will beg your pardon humbly if I’m wrong,” said Mr. Blythe, subdued, -wiping the moisture from his face, “but if you think a moment, you will -see that appearances are against you. We heard of your arriving in a -hurry with a young gentleman in your train; and then there came the news -Miss Lily was ill--she that had stood out summer and winter against that -solitude and never uttered a word--that she should just droop the moment -that it might have been thought better things were coming, and company -and solace--Sir Robert, I ask you----” - -“To believe that it was all out of terror of me!” cried Sir Robert, who -had risen up and was pacing angrily about the room. “Upon my word, -Blythe, you reckon on an old soldier’s self-command above what is -warranted! Me, her nearest relation, that have sheltered and protected -her all her life--do you mean to insinuate that Lily is ill and has a -brain-fever out of dread of me?” - -“If you brought another man to her, knowing her wishes were a different -way, and bid her take him or be turned out of your doors!” - -Sir Robert was not a man who feared any thing. He stood before the -minister’s very face, and swore an oath that would have blown the very -roof off the house had Mr. Douglas, the assistant and successor, sat in -that chair. Mr. Blythe was a man of robust nerves, yet it impressed -even him. “_I_ force a young man down a lassie’s throat!” cried Sir -Robert in great wrath, indignation, and furious derision. “Me make -matches or mar them! Is’t the decay of your faculties, Blythe, your old -age, though you’re not much older than I am, or what is it that makes -you launch such an accusation at me?” - -“There’s nothing decayed about me but my legs,” said the old minister -with half a jest. “I’ll beg your pardon heartily, Sir Robert, if it’s -not true.” - -“You deserve no explanations at my hands,” said the other, “but I’ll -give them for the sake of old times. The young man was a chance -acquaintance for a week’s shooting. I’ll perhaps never see him again, -nor did he ever set eyes on Lily. And I have not exchanged a word with -her since I came back. She knows me not--from you, or from Adam. Blythe, -she is very ill, the poor lassie. She knows neither night nor day.” - -“Lord bless us!” said the minister, and then he put forth his large soft -hand. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “See how little a thing makes a big -lie and slander when it’s taken the wrong color. I was deceived, but I -hope you’ll forgive. In whose hands is she? what doctor? There’s no -great choice here.” - -“A man from the other side of the water,” said Sir Robert in the old -phraseology of the countryside. “Macalister, I think.” - -“Well, it’s the best you can do here. Our man’s a cleverer man, if you -could ever be sure of finding him with his head clear. But Macalister is -an honest fellow. I would not say but I would have a man from Edinburgh -if it was me.” - -“Do you think so?” said Sir Robert. - -“If it was my Eelen--Lord, it’s no one, but half-a-dozen men I’d have -from Edinburgh before I’d see her slip through my fingers. But there’s -nothing like your own very flesh and blood.” - -“I will write at once!” cried Sir Robert. - -“I would send a man--the post’s slow. I would send a man by the coach -that leaves to-night; for an hour lost you might repent all the days of -your life, Robert Ramsay,” said the minister, once more grasping and -holding fast in his large, limp, but not unvigorous hand the other old -gentleman’s firm and hard one. “Just bear with me for another word. If -she’s hanging between life and death--and you know not what may -happen--and if there is a man in Edinburgh she would rather see than any -doctor, for the love of God, man, don’t do things by halves, but send -for him, too.” - -“What the deevil do you mean with your ‘man in Edinburgh’?” Sir Robert -said, with a shout, drawing his hand forcibly away. - -He rode home upon Rory, much discomfited and disturbed. It is scarcely -too much to say that he had forgotten much, or almost all, about Ronald -Lumsden in the long interval that had occurred, during which he was -fully occupied with his own life, and indifferent to what took place -elsewhere. He had sent Lily off to Dalrugas to free her from the -assiduities of a young fellow who was not a proper match for her. That -is how Sir Robert would have explained it; and he had never entertained -a doubt that, what with the fickleness of youth and the cheerful company -about, Lily had forgotten her unsuitable suitor long ago. But to have it -even imagined, by the greatest old fool that ever was, that Lily’s -terror of being obliged by her uncle to accept another man had upset her -very brain and brought on a deadly fever was too much for any man to -bear. And old Blythe was not an old fool, though he had behaved like -one. If he thought so, other people would think so, and he--Robert -Ramsay, General, K. C. B., a man almost as well known as the Prince of -Wales himself, a member of the best clubs, an authority on every social -usage--he, the venerated of Edinburgh, the familiar of London--he would -be branded, in a miserable hole in the country, with the character of a -domestic tyrant, with the still more contemptible character of a -match-maker, like any old woman! Sir Robert’s rage and annoyance were -increased by the consciousness that he was not himself cutting at all a -dignified figure on the country road mounted upon Rory, for whom his -legs were too long (though he was not a tall man) and his temper too -short. Rory tossed his shaggy head to the winds, and did battle with his -master, when the pace did not please him. He all but threw the old -gentleman, who was famed for his horsemanship. And it was in the last -phase of exasperation, having dismounted, and, with a blow of his light -switch, sent Rory careering home to his stable riderless, that Sir -Robert encountered the doctor returning from his morning’s visit. Mr. -Macalister’s face was grave. He turned back at once, and eagerly, -desiring, he said, a few minutes’ conversation. “I cannot well speak to -you with your people and those women always about.” - -“I am afraid, then,” said Sir Robert, “you have something very serious -to say.” - -“Maybe--and maybe not. In the first place there are indications this -morning of a change--we will hope for the better. The pulse has fallen. -There’s been a little natural sleep. I would say in an ordinary subject, -and with no complications, that perhaps, though we must not just speak -so confidently at the first moment, the turn had taken place.” - -“I’m delighted to hear it!” cried Sir Robert. It was really so great a -relief to him that he put out his hand in sudden cordiality. “I will -never forget my obligations to you, Macalister. You have given me the -greatest relief. When the turn has really come, there is nothing, I’ve -always heard, but great care wanted--care and good food and good air.” - -“That was just what I wanted to speak to you about, Sir Robert,” said -the doctor, with one of those little unnecessary coughs that mean -mischief. “Good air there is--she could not have better; and good food, -for I’ve always heard your housekeeper is great on that; and good -nursing--well, yon woman, that is, your niece’s maid, Bauby or Beenie, -or whatever they call her, is little more than a fool, but she’s a -good-hearted idiot, and sticks to what she’s told--when there’s nobody -to tell her different. So we may say there’s good care. But when that’s -said, though it’s a great deal, every thing is not said.” - -“Ay,” said Sir Robert, “and what may there be beyond that?” He had -become suspicious after his experiences, though it did not seem possible -that from such a quarter there should come any second attack. - -“I’m very diffident,” said the doctor in his strong Northern accent, -with his ruddy, weather-beaten countenance cast down in his -embarrassment, “of mentioning any thing that’s not what ye might call -strictly professional, or taking advantage of a medical man’s poseetion. -But when a man has a bit tender creature to deal with, like a flower, -and that has just come through a terrible illness, the grand thing to -ask will be, Sir Robert, not if she has good food and good nursing, -which is what is wanted in most cases, but just something far more hard -to come by--if she’s wanting to live----” - -“Wanting to live!” cried Sir Robert. “What nonsense are you speaking? A -girl of that age!” - -“It’s just precisely that age that fashes me. Older folk have got more -used to it: living’s a habit with the like of us. We just find we must -go on, whatever happens; but a young lass is made up of fancies and -veesions. She says to herself: ‘I would like better a bonnie green turf -in the kirkyard than all this fighting and striving,’ and just fades -away because she has no will to take things up again. I’ve seen cases -like that before now.” - -“And what’s my part in all this?” cried Sir Robert. “You come to me with -your serious face, as if I had some hand in it. What can I do?” - -“Well, Sir Robert,” said the doctor, “that is what I cannot tell. I’m -not instructed in your affairs--nor do I wish to be; but if there is any -thing in this young lady’s road that crosses her sorely--the state of -the brain that made this attack so dangerous evidently came from some -mental shock--if it’s within the bounds of possibility that you can give -in to her, do so, Sir Robert. I am giving you a doctor’s advice--not a -private man’s that has nothing ado with it. If you can give her her own -way, which is dear to us all, and more especially to women folk, give it -to her, Sir Robert! It will be her best medicine. Or if you cannot do -that, let her think you will do it--let her think you will do it! It’s -lawful to deceive even in a case like this--to save her life.” - -“You are trying to make me think, doctor, that my niece has been -pretending to be ill all this time in order to get her own way.” - -“You may think that if you like, Sir Robert. It’s a pretending that has -nearly cost you a funeral, and I will not say may not do so yet--but me, -out of my own line, my knowledge is very imperfect. You know your own -affairs best. But you cannot say I have not warned you of the -consequences,” Dr. Macalister said. - -All the world seemed in a conspiracy against Sir Robert. He took off his -hat formally to the doctor, who responded, somewhat overawed by such a -solemn civility. What was it that this man, a stranger, supposed him to -be doing to Lily? It was ridiculous, it was absurd! first old Blythe, -and then the doctor. He had never done any harm to Lily; he had stopped -a ridiculous love affair, a boy and girl business, with a young fellow -who had not a penny. He did not mean his money to go to fit out another -lot of long-legged Lumsdens, a name he could not bear. No, he had done -no more than was his right, which he would do again to-morrow if -necessary. But then in the meantime here was another question. Her life, -a lassie’s life! Nothing was ever more ridiculous: her life depending on -what lad she married, a red-headed one, or a black-headed one, the silly -thing! But nevertheless it seemed it was true. Here was the doctor, a -serious man, and old Blythe, both in a story. Well, if she were dying -for her lad, the foolish tawpy, he would have to see what could be done. -To think of a Ramsay, the last of his race, following her passions like -that! But it would be some influence from the other side, from the -mother, James’s wife, who, he had always heard, was not over-wise. - -He was turning over these thoughts in his mind as he approached close to -the house, when he was suddenly aware of some one flying out toward him -with arms extended and a lock or two of red hair dropped out of all -restraint and streaming in the wind. Beenie had waited and watched and -lived half in a dream, never sleeping, scarcely eating, absorbed in that -devotion which has no bounds, for the last six weeks. Her trim aspect, -her careful neatness, her fresh and cheerful air, had faded in the air -of the sick room. Combs do not hold nor pins attach after such a long -vigil. She flew out, running wildly toward him with arms extended and -hair streaming until, unable to stop herself, she fairly ran into the -old gentleman’s arms. - -“Oh, Sir Robert,” cried Beenie, gasping and trying to recover her -breath, but too far gone for any apology, “she’s come to herself! She’s -as weak as water, and white as death. But she’s come to herself and -she’s askin’ for you. She’s crying upon you and no to be silenced. ‘I -am wanting Uncle Robert, I am wanting Uncle Robert!’ No breath to speak, -and no strength to utter a voice, but come to hersel’, come to hersel’! -And, oh! the Lord knows if it’s for death or life, for none of us can -tell!” - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVII - - -When Sir Robert went in somewhat reluctantly to Lily’s room--for he was -not accustomed to illness, and did not know what to do or say, or even -how to look, in a sick room--he found her fully conscious, very white, -very worn, her eyes looking twice their usual size and full of that -wonderful translucent clearness which exhaustion gives. Her face, he did -not know why, disposed the old gentleman to shed tears, though he was -very far indeed from having any inclination that way in general. There -was a smile upon it, a smile of wistful appeal to him, such a claim upon -his sympathy and help as perhaps no other human creature had ever made -before. - -“Uncle!” she cried, holding out two thin hands which seemed whiter than -the mass of white linen about her. “Uncle Robert! oh! are you there? I -have been an ill bairn to you, Uncle Robert. I have not been faithful -nor true. You sent me here for my good, and I’ve turned it to harm. But -you’re my only kin and my only friend, and all that I have in the -world.” - -“Lily, my dear, compose yourself, my poor lassie. I am not blaming you: -why should I blame you? When you were ill, what could you do but lie in -your bed and be taken care of? Woman, have ye no sense? She is not fit -yet to be troubled with visits; you might have seen that!” - -“Oh, Sir Robert, and so I did! But how could I cross her when she just -said without ceasing: ‘I want my uncle. I want to see my uncle!’ She was -not to be crossed, the doctor said.” - -“It was not Beenie’s fault.” Lily stretched out her hands till they -reached her uncle’s, who stood by her bedside, yet as far off as he -could, not to appear unkind. He was a little horrified by the touch of -those hot hands. She threw herself half out of the bed to reach him, and -caught his hard and bony old hand, so firm still and strong, between -those white quivering fingers, almost fluid in their softness, which -enveloped his with a sudden heat and atmosphere, so strange and unusual -that he retreated still a step, though he could not withdraw his hand. - -“Uncle Robert, you will not forsake me!” Lily cried. “I have only you -now, I have only you. I have been ill to you, but, oh, be good to me! I -am a very lonely woman. I have nobody. I have put my trust in--other -things, and they have all failed me! I’ve had a long dream and now I’ve -awakened. Uncle Robert, I have nobody but you in all the world!” - -“Now, Lily, you must just compose yourself, my dear. Who thought of -forsaking you? It is certain that you are my only near relation. Your -father was my only brother. What would ail me at you? My poor lassie, -just let yourself be covered up, and put your arms under the clothes and -try if you cannot sleep a little. A good sleep would be the best thing -for her, Robina, wouldn’t you say? Compose yourself, compose yourself, -my dear.” - -Lily still clung to his hand, though he tried so hard to withdraw it -from her hold. “And I will be different,” she said. “You will never need -to complain of me more. My visions and my dreams they are all melted -away, like the snow yon winter-time, when my head was just carried and I -did not know what I was doing. Oh, I have been ill to you, ill to you! -Eaten your bread and dwelt in your house and been a traitor to you. If -they tell you, oh, Uncle Robert, do not believe I was so bad as that. I -never meant it, I never intended---- It was a great delusion, and it is -me that has the worst to bear.” - -“Robina!” cried Sir Robert, “this will never do. What disjointed -nonsense has the poor thing got into her head? She will be as bad as -ever if you do not take care. No more of it, no more of it, Lily. You’ve -been very ill; you must be quiet, and don’t trouble your head about any -thing. As for your old uncle, he will stand by you, my poor lassie, -whatever you may have done--not that I believe for a moment you have -done any thing.” He was greatly relieved to get his hand free. He went -so far as to cover her shoulders with the bedclothes, and to give a -little pat upon the white counterpane. Poor little thing! Her head was -not right yet. Great care must be taken of the poor lassie. He had heard -they were fond of accusing themselves of all kinds of crimes after an -attack of this sort. - -“I suppose the doctor will be coming to-day?” he said to Beenie as he -hastily withdrew toward the door. - -“It’s very near his hour, Sir Robert.” - -“That’s well, that’s very well! Keep her as quiet as you can, that’s the -great thing, and tell her from me that she is not to trouble her head -about any thing--about any thing, mind,” said Sir Robert with an -emphasis which had no real meaning, though it awakened a hundred alarms -in Beenie’s mind. She thought he must have been told, he must have found -out something of the history of these past months. But, indeed, the old -gentleman knew nothing at all, and meant nothing but to express, more or -less in the superlative, his conviction that poor Lily was still under -the dominion of her delusions, and that it was her fever, not herself, -which brought from her lips these incomprehensible confessions. He -understood that it was often so in these cases; probably, if he had let -her go on, she would have confessed to him that she had tried to -murder--Dougal, say, or somebody else equally likely. The only thing was -to keep her quiet, to impress upon her that she was not to trouble her -head about any thing, not about any thing, in the strongest way in which -that assurance could be put. - -Lily lay quite still for a long time after Sir Robert had escaped from -the room. She was very weak and easily exhausted, but happily the -weakness of both body and brain dulled, except at intervals, the active -sense of misery, and even the memory of those events which had ravaged -her life. She was still quite quiet when the doctor came, and smiled at -him with the faint smile of recovered consciousness and intelligence, -though with scarcely a movement as she lay on her pillows, recovered, -yet so prostrated in strength that she lay like one cast up by the -waves, half dead, unable to struggle or even to lift a finger for her -own help. A much puzzled man was the doctor, who had brought her -successfully through this long and dreadful illness, but whose mind had -been sorely exercised to account for many things which connected this -malady with what had gone before. That he divined a great deal of what -had gone before there was little doubt; but he had no light upon Lily’s -real position, and his heart was sore for a young creature, a lady, in -such sore straits, and with probably a cloud hanging over her which -would spoil her entire life. And he was a prudent man, and asked no -questions which he was not compelled to ask. Had it been a village girl -he would have formed his conclusions with less hesitation, and felt less -deeply; but it was a very different matter with Sir Robert Ramsay’s -niece, who would be judged far more severely and lose much more than any -village maiden was likely to do. Poor girl! he tried as best he could, -like a good man as he was, to save her as much as possible even from the -suggestion of any suspicion. “What has she been doing? You have allowed -her to do too much,” he said. - -“She would see her uncle, doctor; she just insisted that she would see -Sir Robert. If I had crossed her in that, would it no have been just as -bad?” - -The white face on the pillow smiled faintly and breathed, rather than -said: “It was my fault.” - -“And he said she was not to trouble her head about ainy thing, not about -_ainy thing_, doctor, and that was a comfort to her--she was so vexed, -him coming for the first time to his ain house, and her no able to -welcome him, nor do any thing for him.” - -“That’s a very small matter; she must think of that no more. What you -have to do now, Miss Ramsay, is just to think of nothing, to trouble -your head about nothing, as Sir Robert judiciously says; to take what -you can in the way of nourishment, and to sleep as much as you can, and -to think about nothing. I absolutely proheebit thinking,” he said, -bending over her with a smile. She was so touching a sight in her great -weakness, and with even his uncertain perception of what was behind and -before her, that the moisture came into the honest doctor’s eyes. - -Lily gave him another faint smile, and shook her head, if that little -movement on the pillow could be called shaking her head, and then he -gave Beenie her instructions, and with a perplexed mind proceeded to the -interview with Sir Robert to which he had been summoned. He did not know -what he would say to Sir Robert if his questions were of a penetrating -kind. But Sir Robert’s questions were not penetrating at all. - -“She has been havering to me, poor lassie,” said the old gentleman, -“about being alone in the world and with nobody but me to look after -her. It is true enough. We have no relations, either her or me, being -the last of the family. But why should she think I would forsake her? -And she says she has been an ill bairn to me, and other things that have -just no sense in them. But that’s a common thing, doctor? Is it not -quite a common thing that people coming out of such an illness take -fancies that they have done all sorts of harm?” - -“The commonest thing in the world,” said the doctor cheerfully. “Did she -say she had stolen your gear, or broken into your strong-box?” - -“There is no saying what she would have said if I had let her go on,” -said Sir Robert, with a laugh, “though, indeed, I was nearer crying than -laughing to see her so reduced. But all that will come right in time?” - -“It will all come right in time. She’s weaker than I like to see, and -you must send for me night or day, at any moment, if there is any -increase of weakness. But I hope better things. Leave her to the women: -they’re very kind, and not so silly as might reasonably be expected. -Don’t go near her, if I might advise you, Sir Robert.” - -“Indeed, I will obey you there,” said the old gentleman; “no fear of -that. I can do her no good, poor thing, and why should I trouble both -her and myself with useless visits? No, no, I will take care of that.” - -And the doctor went away anxious, but satisfied. If there was a story to -tell, it was better that the poor girl should tell it at least when she -was full mistress of herself--not now, betrayed by her weakness, when -she might say what she would regret another time. - -But Lily asked no more for Sir Robert. It was but the first impulse of -her suddenly awakened mind. She relapsed into the weakness which was all -the greater for that brief outburst, and lay for days conscious, and so -far calm that she had no strength for agitation, often sleeping, seldom -thinking, wrapped by nature in a dream of exhaustion, through which mere -emotion could not pierce. And thus youth and the devoted attendance of -her nurses brought her through at last. It was October when she first -rose from her bed, an advance in recovery which the women were anxious -to keep back as long as possible, while the doctor on the other hand -pressed it anxiously. “She will lose all heart if she is kept like this, -with no real sign of improvement,” he said. “Get her up; if it’s only -for an hour, it will do her good.” - -“It will bring it all back,” said Beenie in despair. She stopped herself -next moment with a terrified glance at him; but he knew how to keep his -own counsel. And he gave no further orders on this subject. Lily, -however, was not to be restrained. When she was first led into the -drawing-room, she went to the window and looked out long and with a -steadfast look upon the moor. It had faded out of the glory of heather -which had covered it everywhere when she last looked upon that scene. -Nearly two months were over since that day, that wonderful day of fate. -Lily looked out upon the brown heather, still with here and there a -belated touch of color upon the end of the long stalks rustling with the -brown husks of the withered bells. The rowan-trees gave here and there a -gleam of scarlet or a touch of bright yellow in the scanty leaves, -ragged with the wind, which were almost as bright as the berries. The -intervals of turf were emerald green, beginning to shine with the damp -of coming winter. The hills rose blue in the noonday warmth with that -bloom upon them, like a breaking forth of some efflorescence responsive -to the light, which comes in the still sunshine, disturbed by no flying -breezes. Lily looked long upon the well-known landscape which she knew -by heart in every variation, resisting with great resolution the -endeavors of Beenie to draw her back from that perilous outlook. - -“Oh, look nae mair, my bonnie leddy!” Beenie said. “You’ve seen it mair -than enough, that awfu’ moor!” - -“What ails you at the moor, Robina?” Sir Robert said, coming briskly in. -“You are welcome back, my dear; you are welcome back to common life. -Don’t stand and weary yourself; I will bring you a chair to the window. -I’m glad, Lily, that you’re fond of the moor.” - -Lily turned to him with the same overwhelming smile which had nearly -made an end of Sir Robert before, which shone from her pale face and -from her wide, lucid, liquid eyes, still so large and bright with -weakness; but she did not wait for him to bring her a chair to the -window. She tottered to one that had been placed for her near the fire, -which, however bright the day, was always necessary at Dalrugas. “I am -better here,” she said. She looked so fragile seated there opposite to -him that the old gentleman’s heart was moved. - -“My poor lassie! I would give something to see you as bright-faced and -as light-footed as when you came here.” - -“Ah, that’s so long ago,” she said. “I was light-hearted, too, and -perhaps light-headed then. I am not light in any way now, except, -perhaps, in weight. It makes you very serious to live night and day and -never change upon the moor.” - -“Do you think so, Lily? I’m sorry for that. I thought you were so fond -of the moor. They told me you were out upon it when you were well, -rambling and taking your pleasure all the day.” - -“Yes,” she said, “it’s always bonnie. The heather is grand in its time, -and it’s fine, too, in the gray days, when the hills are all wrapped in -their gray plaids, and a kind of veil upon the moor. But it cannot -answer, Uncle Robert, when you speak, or give you back a look or say a -word.” - -“That’s true, that’s true, Lily. I was thinking only that it’s a -peaceful place, and quiet, where an old man like me can get his sleep in -peace; though there’s that Dougal creature with his pails and pony that -is aye stirring by the skreigh of day.” - -“The pony was a great diversion,” said Lily, “and Dougal, too, who was -always very kind to me.” - -“Kind! It was his bounden duty, the least he could do. I would like to -know how he would have stood before me if he had not been kind, and far -more, to the only child of the old house!” - -“Thank you, Uncle Robert,” said Lily, “for saying so. They were all -kind, and far more than kind. They have just been devoted to me, and -thought of nothing but to make me happy. You will think of that--in case -that any thing should happen.” - -“Lily!” said Sir Robert with an angry tone, “I’m thinking you’re both -ungrateful and unkind yourself. God has spared you and brought you back -out of a dreadful illness, and these two women have nursed you night and -day, and though I could do little for you, having no experience that -way, yet perhaps I’ve felt all the more. And here are you speaking of -‘any thing that might happen,’ as if you had not just been delivered out -of the jaws of death.” - -“Yes, I am very grateful,” said Lily, holding out her thin hand, “to -both them and you, Uncle Robert, and most of all to you, for it was out -of your way indeed; but as for God, I am not sure that I am grateful to -him, for he might have taken me out of all the trouble while he was at -it, and that would have been the best for us all. But,” she added, -looking up suddenly with one of her old quick changes of feeling and -countenance, “how should you think I meant dying? There are many, many -things that might happen besides that. I might go away, or you might -send me away.” - -“I’ll not do that, Lily.” - -“How do you know, Uncle Robert? You sent me away once before when you -sent me here. You might do it again--or, what is more, I might ask -you---- Oh, Uncle Robert, let me go away a little, let me leave the -sight of it, and the loneliness that has broken my heart!” Lily put her -transparent hands together and looked at him with a pathetic entreaty in -her face. - -“Go away!” he said, startled, “as soon as I come here--the first time -you come into the drawing-room to ask that!” - -“It is true,” said Lily, “it’s ungrateful, oh, it’s without heart, it’s -unkind, Uncle Robert, as you say; but only for a little while, till I -get a little better. I will never get better here.” - -“This is a great disappointment to me,” he said. “I thought I would have -you, Lily, to keep me company. I thought you would be my companion and -take care of me for a year or two. I am not likely at my age to trouble -any body for very long,” he added with a half-conscious appeal for -sympathy. - -“And so I will,” said Lily; “I will be your companion. I will be at your -side to do whatever you please--to read or to write, to walk or to talk. -I will look for nothing else in this world, and I will never leave you, -Uncle Robert, and there is my hand upon that. But I must be well first,” -she added rapidly. “And I will never get well here. Oh, let me go! If it -was but for a week, for a fortnight, for two or three days. Is it not -always said of ill folk that when they get better they must have a -change? Let me have a change, Uncle Robert! I want to look out at -something that is not the moor. Oh, how long, how long, if you will only -think of it, I have been looking at nothing but the moor! I am tired, -tired of the moor! Oh, I am wearied of it! I have liked it well, and I -will come back and like it again. But for a little while, uncle, only -for a little while, let me go away from the moor.” - -“Is it so long a time?” he said. “I was not aware you had been here so -long a time. Why, it is not two years! If you think two years is a long -time, Lily, wait till you know what life is, and that a year’s but a -moment when you look back upon it.” - -“It looks like a hundred years to me,” she said, “and before I can look -back as you do it will be a hundred years more. And how am I to bear -them all without a break or a rest? If I were even like you, a soldier -marching here and there, with your colors flying and your drums -beating! but what has a woman to do but to sit and think and count the -days? Uncle Robert,” she said, putting her hand on his arm as he stood -near her, with his back to the fire, “I’m not unwilling at all to die. I -would never have minded if it had been so. I would have asked for -nothing but a warm green turf from the moor, and maybe a bush of heather -at my feet. But it has not ended like that, which would have been God’s -doing--only I will never get well unless I get away, unless I breathe -other air; and if you refuse me, that will be your doing!” she cried -with something of her old petulance and fire. - -“Did the doctor say any thing about this change?” Sir Robert asked -Beenie, with a cloud upon his face. - -“He said she was to be crossed in naething,” Beenie replied. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVIII - - -When it was settled that Lily was to have the change upon which she -insisted, her health improved day by day, and with the increase of her -strength, or perhaps as the real fountain-head and cause of her -increased strength, her elasticity of spirit returned to her. By one of -those strange gifts of temperament which triumph over every thing that -humanity can encounter, this young creature, overwhelmed by so many -griefs--a deserted wife, a mother whose child had been torn from her, -her secret life so full of incidents and emotion ending all at once in a -blank--became in the added grace of her weakness and of the spirit and -courage which overcame it as sweet a companion to her old uncle, as full -of variety and freshness, as the heart could desire. He, indeed, had -never known such company before. She had been younger by an age when she -left him in Edinburgh, less developed, half a child, at least in his -eyes, and he had been surrounded by company and cronies of his own of a -very different character. But now, in this lonely spot where there was -nobody, Lily, rising from her sick-bed, with her eyes still large in -their white sockets, her hands still transparent, her touch and her step -still tremulous with weakness, became his diversion, his delight, making -the long lonely days short, and even the rain supportable when it swept -against the narrow windows, and intensified the brightness of the -fireside and the pleasant talk, or even, when there was no talk, the -sense of companionship within. Sometimes Lily would fall asleep in the -afternoon or at the falling of the day, unawares, in the feebleness of -her convalescence, and perhaps these were the moments in which most of -all the old man of the world felt completely what this companionship -was. He would lay down his paper or his book and look at her--the light -of the fire playing on her face, giving it a faint touch of rose, and -dissimulating the deep shadows under the eyes--feeling to his heart that -most intimate confidence and trust in him, the reliance, almost -unconscious, of a child, the utter dependence and weakness which could -put up no barriers of the conventional, nor stop to think what would be -agreeable: these things found out secret crevices in Sir Robert’s armor -of which neither he nor any one else had dreamed. The water stood in his -eyes as he looked at her, saying “Poor lassie, poor little lassie!” -secretly in his heart. She was as good company then, though she did not -know it, as when she started from her brief sleep and exerted herself to -make him talk, to make him laugh, to feel himself the most interesting -of _raconteurs_ and delightful of companions. Many people had flattered -Sir Robert in his day--he had been important enough in much of his life -for that--but he had never found flattery so sweet as Lily’s demands -upon the stores of his long experience, her questions upon his history, -her interest in what he told her. It was not only that she was herself -such a companion as he had not dreamed of, but that he never had been -aware before what excellent company he was himself. He almost grudged to -see her growing stronger, though he rejoiced in it from the bottom of -his old world-worn heart. - -“And so you are going to leave me, Lily--you’ve settled, that Robina -woman and you--and you’re off in two days seeking adventures?” - -“Yes, uncle--in two days; but only for a little while.” - -“Without a thought of an old man left desolate--upon the edge of the -moor.” - -“Yes, with a thought that is very pleasant--that there’s somebody there -wanting me back”--she paused a moment with a faint sigh and added: “and -that I am coming back to in a little while. And then, as for the moor, -it is full of diversion. You’re never lonely watching the clouds and the -shadows and all the changes: I have had much experience of it, Uncle -Robert--two years, that were sometimes long, long.” - -“I never knew,” said Sir Robert, a little abashed, “how lonely it was, -Lily, and that all the old neighbors were gone. I pictured you -surrounded with young folk, and as merry as the day was long.” - -“It was not exactly that,” she said, with a smile; and then her face -changed, as it did from moment to moment, like the moor which she loved, -yet hated--shadows flying over it as swift, as sudden, and as deep. “But -it’s all past, and why should we think more of it? When I come back, -Uncle Robert, we’ll be cheery, you and me together by the fireside all -the winter through, and never ask whether there are neighbors or not--or -other folk in the world.” - -“I would not go so far as that,” said the old gentleman. “We’ll get the -world to come to us, Lily, a small bit at a time. But you have never -told me where you are going when you leave me here.” - -“To Edinburgh,” she said. - -“To Edinburgh! I thought you had consulted with the doctor, and were -going to the seaside, or to the Bridge of Allan, or some of the places -where invalids go.” - -“Uncle,” said Lily, “I have been two years upon the moor, and in all -that time I have not got a new gown, nor a bonnet, nor any thing -whatsoever. Oh, yes, we will go to the sea, or the Bridge of Allan, or -to some place. But we are not fit to be seen, neither Beenie nor me. -You do not take these things into consideration. You think, when I speak -to you like a rational creature, that I am above the wants of my kind; -but rational or not, a woman must always have some clothes to wear!” - -Sir Robert laughed and clapped his hands. “Bravo, Lily!” he cried. “You -cannot do better, my dear, than own you’re just a woman and are as fond -of your finery as the rest. By all means, then, go to Edinburgh and fit -yourself out; but do not stay there, go out to Portobello, if you do not -care to go farther, or a little more to the West, where it’s milder, and -you will get a warm blink before the winter weather sets in. And that -reminds me that you will want money, Lily.” - -“A good deal of money, Uncle Robert,” she said, with a smile. “You know -I have had none for two years.” - -It was with a sensation of shame that he heard her allusions to those -two years, and perhaps Lily was aware of it. She wanted money, she -wanted freedom, and that her steps should not be watched nor her -movements constrained. And the old gentleman was startled and humiliated -when he realized that his heiress, his only relation, his brother’s -child, had been banished to this wilderness without a shilling in her -pocket or a friend to help her. He could not imagine how he could have -forgotten so completely her existence or her claims upon him and right -to his support. He was glad to wipe that recollection from his own mind -as well as hers by his liberality now. And Lily received from him an -order upon his “man of business” in Edinburgh for an amount which seemed -to her almost fabulous--for she knew nothing of money, had never had -any, nor required it, although when she retired to her room with that -piece of paper in her hand which meant so much, the reflection of what -might have happened and what she could have done had she only at any -time during these two years possessed as much, or half as much, came -upon her with almost a convulsive sense of opportunities lost. She flung -herself upon Beenie’s shoulder when she reached the safe shelter of her -room, where it was no longer necessary to keep herself up and make a -smile for her uncle. “Oh, Beenie!” she cried, “if he had given me the -half of that before, or the quarter! how every thing might have been -changed.” - -“Oh, mem, my bonnie leddy,” cried Beenie, who never now addressed her -mistress as Miss Lily, “it’s little, little that siller can do!” - -Anger flashed in Lily’s eyes. “It could just have done every thing!” she -said. “Do you think I would have been put off and off if I could have -put my hand in my pocket and taken the coach and gone, you and me, to -see to every thing ourselves? Oh! many a time I have wished for it, and -longed for it--but what could we do, you and me, and nothing, nothing to -take us there? Oh, never say siller can do little! It might have spared -us all that’s happened--think! all that’s happened! I might be thinking -now as I thought yon New Year’s time in the snow. I might be as sure and -as full of trust. I might never have learned what it was to deceive and -to be deceived. I might never have been a desolate woman without man or -bairn--without my little bairn, my little baby!” - -“Oh, my darlin’ leddy! but you’ll get him again, you’ll get him again!” -cried Beenie, with streaming eyes. - -“I hope in God I shall,” said Lily, tearless, lifting her eyes and -clasping her hands. “I hope in God I shall, or else that he’ll let me -just lay down my head and die!” - -“He has raised you up from the very grave,” said Beenie. “We had nae -hope, Katrin and me; we had nae hope at all. Here she is hersel’ that -will tell you. There was ae night--oh, come Katrin, come and bear me -out--when you and me just stood over her, and kissed the bonnie white -face on the white pillow, and wrung each other’s hands, and said: ‘If -the baby’s lost and her reason gane, God bless her, she’ll be better -away.’” - -“Whisht with your nonsense,” said Katrin; “that’s a’ past, and now we -have nae such thoughts in our heads. But what will you do, my dear -leddy, my bonnie leddy? Will ye bring him back here? A fine thriving -bairn like yon you canna hide him. The first day, the first night, and -the secret would be parish news. I was frichtened out of my wits the -first days for Dougal, who is not a pushing man, to do him justice, or -one that asks questions; but with Sir Robert in the house, oh, mem, my -bonnie dear, what will ye do?” - -“I have never wanted to make any secret, Katrin,” Lily said. - -“I ken that; but there will be an awfu’ deal to tell when once you -begin. And the bairn he is an awfu’ startling thing to begin with. Do ye -no think an auld gentleman like Sir Robert had better be prepared for -it? It would give him a shock. It might even hairm him in his health. I -would take counsel about it. Oh, I would take counsel! Do naething in a -hurry, not to scandalize the country, nor to give our auld maister a -fright that might do him harm.” - -“To scandalize the country!” said Lily, pale with anger. “Oh! to think -it’s me, me that she says that to! Do you think it is better to deceive -every-body and be always a lie whatever way you turn?” - -“Mem,” said Katrin, “my dear, you’ll excuse me; I must just say the -truth. It’s an awfu’ thing to deceive, as you say, and well I ken it was -never your wyte. But the worst of it is that when you begin you cannot -end. You just have to go on. I’m no saying one thing or another. It’s no -my business, if it wasna that I just think more of you than one mortal -creature should think of another. Oh! just take thought and take -counsel! The maister is an old man. You’ve beguiled him with your -winsome ways just as you’ve beguiled us a’. Can I see a thing wrong you -do, whatever it is? And yet I have a glimmerin’ o’ sense between whiles. -If he’s looking for you back to be his bonnie Lily and his companion, -and syne sees you come in with a bairn in your arms and another man’s -name, what will the auld man do? Oh, mem, the dear bairn, God bless him, -and grant that you may soon have him in your airms! But if you hold by -the auld gentleman and his life and comfort, for God’s sake take -thought! for that is in it, too.” - -“There is nothing, nothing,” cried Lily, “that should keep a mother from -her bairn! You are a kind woman, Katrin, but you’ve never had a bairn. -When once I get him here, how can I ever give him up again?” she said, -straining her arms to her breast as if the child was within them. Beenie -wept behind her mistress’s shoulder, overwhelmed with sympathy, but -Katrin shook her head. - -“When you see Mr. Lumsden there, and go over it all----” - -Lily’s face became instantly as if the windows of her mind had been -closed up. Her lips straightened, her eyes became blank. She said -nothing, but turned away, not looking at either of them nor saying a -word. “And it was no me breathed his name or as much as thought upon -him,” Beenie said a little later in an aggrieved tone, when she had -rejoined Katrin down stairs. - -“It was me that breathed his name, and I’ll do it again till some heed -is paid to what I say. We should maybe have refused yon day to be his -witnesses. But being sae, Beenie, the burden is on you and me as well as -on him. They should have owned each other and spoke the truth from that -day. But now that it has all gone so far and no a whisper risen, and the -countryside just as innocent as if they were two bairns playing, oh, I -wouldna now just burst it all upon the auld man’s head! He’s no an ill -auld man. He’s provided for her all her life; he is very muckle taken up -with her now, maybe in a selfish way, for he’s feeling his age and his -mainy infirmities, and he’s wanting a companion. But, oh! I would not -burst it on him now! He could never abide her man, and, to tell the -truth, Beenie, I’m not that fond of him mysel’, and she, poor thing, has -had a fearfu’ opening to her eyes. How could ye have the bairn here and -no the father? Could she say to her uncle: ‘I was very silly about him -once and married him, and now I canna abide him’? Oh, no! that is what -she will never say.” - -“And I hope she’ll never think it either,” Beenie said. - -“Beenie,” said the other solemnly, “you are a real innocent if such a -thing ever was.” - -“No more than yoursel’,” said Beenie, indignant; but she had to return -to her mistress, and further discussion could not be held on this -question. - -They went away on the second morning, which was a little frosty, though -bright. The establishment had widened out by this time. Sir Robert was -not a man to be driven to kirk or market in the little geeg, drawn at -his wilful pleasure by Rory, which had answered all Lily’s purposes. -There was now a phaeton and a brougham, and three or four horses -accommodated _tant bien que mal_ in the old stables, which had to be -cleared of much rubbish and Dougal’s accumulations of years before they -were in a state to receive their costly inmates. It was in the brougham -that Lily, wrapped up in every kind of shawl and comforter, drove with -her maid to Kinloch-Rugas to take the coach, where the best places had -been reserved for them. Beenie’s pride in this journey exceeded the -anxiety with which her mind was full, in respect to her mistress’s -health in the first place, and the many issues of their journey. But it -was not a “pride” which met with much sympathy from her dear friends and -fellow-servants. Dougal for his part stood out in the stable-yard -carefully isolated from all possible connection with the new grooms and -the new horses, though neither was he without a thrill of pride in the -distinction of a kind of part-proprietorship with Sir Robert in these -dazzling articles. He kept apart, however, with an air of conscious -superiority to such innovations. “I wish ye a good journey,” he said; -“maybe it’ll be warmer this fine morning in a shut-up carriage, but, -Lord! I would rather have Rory and the little geeg than all the coaches -in England!” - -Lily was thrilling with nervous excitement, scarcely able to contain -herself, but she made an effort to give a word and a smile to the -whilom arbiter of all the movements of Dalrugas. “I would rather have -you and Rory in the summer weather,” she said. “If it is a warm day when -I come back, you will come for me, Dougal.” - -“Na, mem, no me; we’re no grand enough now to carry leddies: which I -wouldna care much for, for leddies, as ye ken, are whiles fantastic and -put awfu’ burdens on a beast--but just because his spirit is broken with -trailing peats from the hill, and visitors’ boxes from the toun. They’re -sensitive creatures, pownies. I just begin to appreciate the black -powny’s feelings now I see the effect upon my ain.” - -“He shall drive me when I come back,” said Lily, waving her hand as the -brougham flashed away, the coats of the horses shining in the frosty -sunshine, and the carriage panels sending back reflections. It was -certainly more comfortable than the geeg. But the light went out of -Lily’s face as they left Dalrugas behind. The little color in her cheeks -disappeared. She leaned back in her corner and once more pressed her -arms against her breast. “Oh, shall I find him? shall I find him?” she -cried. - -“You’ll do that--wherefore should you no do that?” said Beenie -encouragingly. - -“He’ll be grown so big we will not know him, Beenie, and he will not -know his mother; that woman Margaret that took him away will have all -his smiles--she will be the first face that he sees, now that he’s old -enough to notice. Oh, my little bairn! my little bairn!” - -“A bairn that is two months auld takes but little notice, mem,” said -Beenie, strong in her practical knowledge. “You need not fash your head -about that. They may smile, but if ye were to ask me the very truth, I -wouldna hide from you that what they ca’ smiling is just in my opinion -the----” - -“If you say that word, I will kill you!” cried Lily. She laughed and -then she cried in her excitement. “How will I contain myself? how will I -keep quiet and face the world, and the folk in the world, and every-body -about, till the moment comes--oh, the moment, Beenie!--when I will get -my baby into my arms?” - -“Eh, mem! but you must not make yoursel’ sae awfu’ sure about that,” -said Beenie. “We might not find them just at first--or he might have a -little touch of the cauld, or maybe the thrush in his wee mouth, or -measles, or something. You must not make yourself so awfu’ sure.” - -“He is ill!” cried Lily, seizing her in a fierce grip. “He is ill, oh, -you false, false woman, and you have never said a word to me!” - -“There is naething ill about him; he is just thriving like the flowers. -But I canna bide when folk are so terrible sure. It seems as if you were -tempting God.” - -“It’s you that are tempting me--to believe in nothing, neither Him nor -women’s word. But what would make a woman deceive a baby’s mother about -her own child? A man might do it, that knows nothing about what that -means; but a woman never would do it, Beenie--a woman that has been -about little babies and their mothers all her days?” - -“No, mem, I never thought it,” said Beenie in dutiful response. - -At the coach, where they were received with all the greater honor on -account of Sir Robert’s brougham, and the beautiful prancing horses, -Helen Blythe met them. “They would not let me come to see you,” she -said. “It’s long, long, since I’ve seen you, Lily, and worn and white -you’ve grown--but just as bonnie as ever: there comes up the color just -as it used to do--but you must look stronger when you come back.” - -“I am going away for that,” Lily said. - -“And it is just the wisest thing she could do,” said the doctor, who had -come also to see her off. “And stay away as long as you can, Miss -Ramsay, and just divert yourself a little. You have great need of -diversion after that long time at the old Tower.” - -“She is not one that is much heeding diversion,” said Helen, looking at -her affectionately. - -“We’re all needing it whether we’re heeding it or no,” said the doctor. -“And if you will take my advice, you will just take a little pleasure to -yourself, as you would take physic if I ordered it. Good-by, Miss -Ramsay, and mind what I say.” - -“He’s maybe right,” said Helen; “they say he’s a clever man. I know -little about diversion. But, oh! I would like to see you happy, -Lily--that would be better than all the physic in the world.” - -“Perhaps I will bring it back with me,” said Lily, with a smile. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIX - - -It was not with a very easy mind that Ronald Lumsden had executed the -great _coup_ which had, so far as Lily was concerned, such disastrous -consequences. He had been deeply perplexed from the moment of the baby’s -birth, nay, before that, as to what his future action was to be. It had -been apparent to him from the first that the child could not remain at -Dalrugas. Much had been ventured, much had been done, to all appearance -successfully enough. No scandal had been raised in the countryside by -his own frequent visits. What might be whispered in the cottages no one -knew; but, apart from such a possibility, nothing that could be called -public, no rumor of the least importance, had arisen. Every thing was -safe up to that point. And he was not much concerned even had there been -any subdued scandal floating about. At any moment, should any crisis -arise, Lily could be justified and set right. What could it matter, -indeed, if any trouble of a moment should arise? He was not indifferent -to his wife’s good name. He considered himself as the best guardian of -that, the best judge as to how and when it should be defended. He had -(he thought) the reins in his hands, the command of all the -circumstances. If he should ever see the moment come when the credit of -his future family should be seriously threatened, and the position of -Lily become an affair of vital importance, he was prepared to make any -sacrifice. The moment it became serious enough for that he was ready to -act; but in the meantime it was his to fight the battle out to the last -step, and to defend her rights as her uncle’s heir, and to secure the -fortune for her behalf and his own. He regarded the situation largely as -from the point of view of a governor and supreme authority. As long as -the circumstances could be managed, the world’s opinion suppressed or -kept in abeyance, and the one substantial and important object kept -safe, what did a little imaginary annoyance matter, or Lily’s fantastic -girlish notions about a house of her own, and a public appearance on her -husband’s arm, wearing her wedding ring and calling herself Mrs. -Lumsden? He liked her the better for desiring all that, so far as it -meant a desire to be always with him; otherwise the mere promotion of -being known as a married lady was silly and a piece of vanity, which did -not merit a thought on the part of the arbiter of her affairs. All the -little by-play about the house which could not be got till the term, -etc., had been a jest to him, though it had been so serious to Lily. He -had never for a moment intended that she should have that house. To keep -her quiet, to keep her contented, Ronald did not stint at such a small -matter as a lie. Between lovers, between married people, there must be -such things. If a man intends to keep at the head of affairs, and yet to -keep the woman, who has no experience and knows nothing of the world, -satisfied and happy, of course there must be little fictions made up and -fables told. Lily would be the first to justify them when the necessity -was over, when the money was secured and their final state arrived at--a -dignified life together, with every thing handsome about them. He had no -compunctions, therefore, about the original steps. It might have been -more prudent, perhaps, if they had not married at all, if they had -waited till Sir Robert died and Lily was free, in the course of nature, -to give her hand and her fortune where she pleased. That, no doubt, was -a rash thing to do, but the wisest of men commit such imprudences. And, -with the exception of that, Ronald approved generally of his own -behavior. He did not find any thing to object to in his conduct of the -matter altogether. - -But the baby put every thing out. The prospect, indeed, occupied Lily -and kept her quiet and reasonable for a long time, but the moment he -knew what was coming a new care came into Lumsden’s mind. A baby is not -a thing to be hid. It was certain that nothing would induce Lily to part -with it, or to be reasonable any longer. She would throw away the result -of all his precautions, of all his careful arrangements, of his -self-denial and thought, in a moment, for the sake of this little thing, -which could neither repay her nor know what she was doing for it. Many -an hour’s reflection, night and day, had he given to this subject -without seeing any way out of it. With all his powers and gifts of -persuasion he had not ventured even to hint to Lily the idea of sending -away the child. Courage is a great thing, but sometimes it is not enough -to face a situation of the simplest character. He could not do it. After -the child arrived, when the inconveniences of keeping it there became -apparent, he had thought it might perhaps be easier; and many times he -had attempted to arrange how this could be done, but never had succeeded -in putting it into words. To do him justice, it was he who had sought -out and chosen with the utmost care the nurse Marg’ret, in whose hands -both mother and child would be safe, and he looked forward with that -vague and foolish hope in some indefinite help to come which the wisest -of men, when their combinations fail, still believe in, like the most -foolish; perhaps some suggestion might come from herself, who could -tell? some sense of the trouble and inconvenience arising in Lily’s own -mind might assist him in disposing of the little intruder. Why do babies -thrust themselves into the world so determinedly where they are not -wanted? Why resist the most eager calls and welcomes where they are? -This confusing question was no joke to Ronald. It made him hate this -meddling baby, though he was not without a young father’s sense of pride -and satisfaction, too. - -He had instructed Marg’ret fully beforehand in the part she might be -called upon to play, though he could not tell her either how or when he -would accomplish the purpose which had gradually grown upon him as a -necessity. In these circumstances, while he yet pondered and turned -every thing over in his mind, failing as yet to perceive any way in -which it could be accomplished, the suddenness of Sir Robert’s coming, -which he learned by accident, was like sudden light in the most profound -darkness. Here was the necessity made ready to his hands. Lily could not -doubt, could not waver; whatever might happen afterward, it was quite -clear Sir Robert could not be greeted on his first arrival by the voice -of an infant--an infant which had no business to be there, and whose -presence would have to be accounted for on the very threshold, without -any preliminary explanation--in the face, too, of his friends whom he -brought with him, revealing all the secrets of his house. This was a -chance which made Ronald himself, with all his coolness, shiver. And -Lily, still in her weakness, not half recovered--what might the effect -be upon her? It might kill her, he decided; for her own sake, in her own -defence, not a moment was to be lost. The reader knows how he flashed -into his wife’s room in haste, but not able even then, in face of Lily’s -perfect calm, and utter inability to conceive the real difficulty of the -situation, to suggest it to her, accomplished his design, secretly -leaving her--not even then with any unkind intention, very sorry for -her, but not seeing any other way in which it was to be done--to -discover her loss and bear it as she might. He was any thing but happy -as he drove away with the traitor woman by his side and the baby hidden -in its voluminous wrappings. Marg’ret was not such a traitor either as -she seemed. She had been made to believe that, though no parting was to -be permitted to agitate the young mother, Lily, too, was aware, and had -consented to this proceeding. “The poor little lassie, the poor wee -thing!” Marg’ret had said, even while wrapping up the baby for its -journey; and she had slipped out into the darkness and waited at the -corner for the geeg with a heavy heart. - -It startled Lumsden very much that no wail of distress, no indignant -outcry, came from Lily on discovering her loss. These were not the days -of frequent communications. People had not yet acquired the habit of -constant correspondence. They were accustomed to wait for news, with no -swift possibility of a telegram or even a penny post to make them -impatient; not, perhaps, that they would have grudged--certainly not -that Ronald would have grudged--the eightpence which was then, I think, -the price of the conveyance of a letter from one end of Scotland to the -other, but that they had not acquired the custom of frequent writing. -When no protest, no remonstrance, no passionate outcry, reached him for -a week or two after the event, Lumsden became exceedingly alarmed. He -said to himself at first that it was a relief, that Lily herself -recognized the necessity and had yielded to it; but he did not really -believe this, and as the days went on, genuine anxiety and terror were -in his mind. Had it killed her? Had his Lily, in her weakness, bowed her -head and died of this outrage? the worst, he now felt in every fibre of -his being, to which a woman could be subjected. He wrote, enclosing his -letter to Beenie; then he wrote to Beenie herself, entreating her to -send him a line, a word. But Lily was unconscious of every thing, and -Beenie of all that did not concern her mistress, when these letters -arrived. They were not even opened until Lily was convalescent, and then -Beenie by her mistress’s orders, in her large sprawling handwriting, and -with many tears, replied briefly to the three or four anxious demands -for news which had arrived one after the other. Beenie wrote: - - “SIR: My mistress has been at the point of death with what they - call a brain-fever. It has lasted the longest and been the - fiercest that ever the doctor saw. She is coming round now--the - Lord be praised--but very slow. She has but one thought--you will - know well what that is--and will never rest till she has got - satisfaction, night or day. - -“I am, sir, - -“Your obedient servant, - -“ROBINA RUTHERFORD. - - “P. S.--I was to tell you the last part, for it is not from me.” - -There was not much satisfaction to be got from this letter, and, indeed, -his mind got little relief from any thing, and the time of Lily’s -illness was a time of mental trouble for the husband, which was not, -perhaps, more easy to bear. Had he lost her altogether? It seemed like -that, though he could not think it possible that the child at least -should be allowed to drop, or that the fever could have made her forget, -which it was evident she had not done in his own case. The courts had -begun again, and Lumsden was more occupied than he had ever been in his -life. He made one furtive visit to Kinloch-Rugas, where he heard -something of Lily’s state, and engaged Helen Blythe to communicate with -him any thing that reached her ears. But no one was allowed to see her -in her illness, and this gave him small satisfaction. He did not dare to -go near the house, which Sir Robert guarded more effectually than a -squadron of soldiers. There was nothing for him to do but to wait. The -unusual rush of occupation which came upon him with the beginning of the -session had a certain irony in it, that irony which is so often apparent -in life. Was he about to become a successful man now that the chief -thing which made life valuable was slipping out of his grasp? He went -about his business briskly, and rose to the claims of his business and -profession, so that he began to be mentioned in the Parliament House and -among his contemporaries, and even by elder men of still more -importance, who said of him that young Lumsden, old Pontalloch’s son, -though he had hung fire at first, was now beginning at last to come to -the front. Was it possible that this was coming to him, this -exhilarating tide of success, just at the moment when Lily, who would -have stood by him in evil fortune and never failed him, had dropped away -from his side? To do him justice, he had never thought of success, of -wealth, of prosperity, without her to share it. And he did not -understand it now. He could not understand how even a woman, however -ignorant or unreasonable by nature, could be so narrow as not to see -that all he had done had been for the best. The last step, no doubt, -might be allowed to be hard upon her, but what else was possible? Could -she for a moment have entertained the idea of keeping the child--a baby -that cried and made a noise, and could not be hid--at Dalrugas? Even if -there had been no word of Sir Robert, it still would have been -impossible; and he had done no more than he had a right to do. He had -considered, and considered most carefully--he did himself but justice in -this--what as her head and guardian it was best for him to do. It was -his duty as well as his right; and the responsibility being upon him as -the husband, and not upon her as the wife, he had done it. Was it -possible that Lily--a creature full of intelligence on other matters, -who even now and then picked up a thing quicker than he did -himself--should not have sense enough and judgment enough to see this? -But these thoughts, though they mingled with all he did, and accompanied -him night and day, did not make things any better. The fact that she had -taken no notice of him all this time, that she had not written to him -even to upbraid him, that she had not even asked him for news of the -child, was very heavy on Lumsden’s mind--almost, I had said, upon his -heart, for he still had a heart, notwithstanding all that had come and -gone. Perhaps it might have relieved him a little had he known that news -had been obtained of the child, though not through him. Marg’ret--who, -though she had been unfaithful to the young mother, to whom at the same -time she had been so kind, certainly had a heart, which smote her much -as being a party to a proceeding which became more and more doubtful the -more she thought of it--had written twice to Beenie, altogether superior -to the question of the eightpence to pay, to assure her of the baby’s -health. He was well, he was thriving, his mother would not know him he -had grown so big and strong, and Marg’ret hoped that ere long she would -put him, just a perfect beauty, into his mother’s arms. These queer -missives, sealed with a wafer and a thimble, had been better than all -the eloquent letters in the world to Lily. When those from Ronald, full -of excellent reason and all the philosophy that could be brought to bear -on the circumstances, were given to her on her recovery, they had but -made her wound more bitter and her resentment more warm; but the nurse’s -letters had given her strength. They had made her able to charm and -please her uncle; they had enabled her to face life again and fight her -way back to a certain degree of health; they had sustained her in her -journey, and this first set out upon the world to manage her own -affairs, which was as novel to her as if she had been fifteen, instead -of twenty-five. They wanted only one thing--they had no address. The -postmark was Edinburgh, but Edinburgh was (to these inexperienced women) -a very wide word. - -What Lily had intended to do when she had found out Marg’ret and -recovered her child--as she was so confident of doing--I cannot tell. -She did not herself know. This was the first step to be taken: every -thing else came a world behind. Whether she was to carry the baby -back in her arms, to beard Sir Robert with it and make her -explanation--though with the conviction that she would then be turned -from the door of her only home forever--or whether she intended, having -escaped, to do what always seems so easy and natural to a girl’s -imagination: to fly away somewhere and hide herself with her child, and -be fed by the ravens, like the prophet--she herself did not know and I -cannot tell. The only thing certain was that she thought of the little -house among the Edinburgh roofs--that house which could only be got at -the term, and which it now made her heart sick to think of--no more. Had -she found the door open for her and every thing ready Lily would have -turned her back on that open door. She could not endure the thought of -it; she could not even think of the time when it would have been -paradise to her, the realization of her dearest hopes. In the depths of -her injured soul she would have desired to find her child without even -making her presence known to her husband. She had no desire even to see -him again--he seemed to have alienated her too completely for any -repentance. And up to this moment, her mind being altogether occupied by -her child, none of those relentings toward those whom we have loved and -who have wronged us, which make the heart bleed, had come upon Lily. She -thought of nothing but her child, her child! to have him again in her -arms, to possess him again, the one thing in the world that was entirely -her own, altogether her own. The fact that this was not so, that the -child was not and never could be entirely her own, did not disturb -Lily’s mind. Had she been reminded of it she would not have believed. -She thought, as every young mother thinks in the wonderful closeness of -that new relation and the sense of all it has cost her, that to this at -least there could be no contradiction and no doubt--that her baby was -hers, hers! and that no one in the world had the right to him that she -had. It was for him that she hurried, as much as any one could hurry in -these days, to Edinburgh, grudging every moment of delay--the time of -changing the horses, which she felt inclined to get out and do herself, -so slow, so slow was every-body concerned; the time for refreshments, as -if one wanted to eat and drink when one was hastening to recover one’s -child. But however slow a journey is the end of it comes at last. It was -a comfort to Lily that she knew where to go to--to the house of a very -decent woman, known to Beenie, who kept lodgings, and where she could be -quite quiet, out of the way of her former friends. But they arrived -only in the evening, and there was another long night to be gone through -before any thing could be done. - - - - -CHAPTER XL - - -Robina had become more and more anxious and uneasy as they approached -Edinburgh. She did not seem to share the anxious elation with which her -mistress hailed the well-known features of the country, and recognized -the Castle on its rock, and the high line of houses against the sky. -Lily was in a state of feverish excitement, but it was mingled with so -many hopes and anticipations that even her anxiety was a kind of -happiness. “To-morrow! to-morrow!” she said to herself. Beenie listened -with much solemnity to this happy tone of certainty. She would have -liked to moralize, and bid her mistress modify her too great confidence. -As the moment approached when it should be justified Beenie’s mind -became more and more perturbed. It was she who had been instrumental in -bringing Marg’ret from Edinburgh, pretending, indeed, that the woman was -her cousin, and she had till now taken it for granted, as Lily had done, -without any doubt in her mind, that where Marg’ret had been found once -she would be found again. But as the hour came nearer Beenie’s -confidence in this became much shaken. If _he_ wanted to hide the child -from his mother--a course which Beenie acknowledged to herself would be -the wisest one, for how could the baby and Sir Robert ever live under -the same roof?--would he have allowed the nurse to settle there, where -her address was known and she could be found in a moment? Beenie’s -intellect was not quick, but she did not think this was probable. She -was not accustomed to secrecy or to the tricks of concealment: they had -not even occurred to her till now; but when she realized that she was to -be her mistress’s guide on the next morning to the house where Lily had -persuaded herself she was certain to find her child, her heart sank to -her boots, and there was no more strength left in her. “And what if we -dinna find her there? and wherefore should we find her there?” Beenie -asked herself. It stood to reason, as she saw now, that Lumsden would -never have permitted her to remain. Why had she not thought of it -before? Why had she come on such a fool’s errand, to plunge her mistress -only into deeper and deeper disappointment? Beenie did not sleep all -night, though Lily slept, in her great fatigue, like a child. Beenie was -terrified of the morning, and of the visit which she now felt sure would -be in vain. Oh, why had she not seen it before? He must have known that -the mother would not give up her child without an attempt to recover him -(“Though what we are to do with him, poor wee man, when we get him!” -Beenie said to herself), and he would never have left the baby where it -could be found at once, and all his precautions made an end of. Beenie -saw now, enlightened by terror, that this plan must have been in -Lumsden’s head all the time, though Sir Robert’s sudden arrival gave the -opportunity for carrying it out. She saw now that after all that had -been done to keep the secret he was not likely to allow it to be thrown -to the winds by the presence of the child at Dalrugas if he could help -it. She divined this under the influence of her own alarm and anxiety. -And would he let the woman bide there in a kent place where Lily could -lay her hands upon the child whenever she pleased, night or day? Oh, no, -no, no! he would never do that, was the refrain that ran through -Beenie’s mind all the night. She had thought how delightful it would be -to hear the clocks striking and the bells ringing after the deep, deep -silence of the moor. But this satisfaction was denied her, for all the -bells and the clocks seemed to upbraid her for her foolishness. “Sae -likely! Sae likely!” one of them seemed to say in every chime. “Cheating -himself! Cheating himself!” said another. And was there not yet one, -heavier than the rest--St. Giles himself for any thing she could -tell--which seemed to echo out: “You fool, Beenie! You fool, Beenie!” -over all the listening town? - -“Oh, my bonnie leddy!” said Beenie, when Lily, all flushed and eager -with anticipation, took her place in the old-fashioned hackney coach -that was to take them to Marg’ret’s abode. This was in a narrow street, -or rather close, leading off the Canongate--one of those places hidden -behind the great houses which lead to tranquil little spots of -retirement, and openings into the fresh air and green braes, which no -stranger could believe possible. “Oh, my bonnie leddy, dinna, dinna be -so terrible sure! I’ve been thinking a’ the way--what if she should have -flitted? There was nae address to her letter. She may have flitted to -another house. She may be away at other work.” - -“What! and leave my baby!” cried Lily, “when she said in her letter he -was all her occupation, as well as all her pleasure! I almost forgave -her what she’s done to me for saying that.” - -“And so she did,” said Beenie doubtfully. “Oh, I’m no saying a word -against Marg’ret--she would be faithfu’ to her trust. But she might flit -to another house for a’ that. In Edinburgh the folk are aye flittin’. I -canna tell what possesses them. Me--I would bide where I was well off; I -would never think of making a change just for change’s sake. But that is -what they’re aye doing here.” - -“Have you heard any thing, Beenie?” cried Lily, turning pale. She had -been so sure that the cup of joy was within reach, that the thirsting of -her heart would be at once satisfied, that she felt as if a -disappointment would be more than she could bear. - -“Oh, mem,” cried Beenie, producing a bottle of salts from her capacious -pocket, “dinna let down your heart! I have heard naething. I was just -speaking of a common fact that every-body kens. And if she had flitted, -they would maybe ken where she had gone. Oh, ay, they would certainly -ken where she has gone--a woman and a bairn canna disappear leaving no -sign. It’s not like a single person, that might just be off and away, -and nobody the wiser, mem! I am maybe just speaking nonsense, and we’ll -see her at her door in a moment, with our bonnie boy in her airms.” - -Beenie, however, had succeeded better than she had hoped. She had -conveyed to her mistress that sickening of the heart which, from the -most ancient days of humanity, has been the consequence of hope -deferred. The light went out of Lily’s eyes. She leaned back in her -corner, closing them upon a world which had suddenly grown black and -void. She did not lose consciousness, being far too strongly bound to -life by hope and despair and pain to let the thread drop even for a -moment; but Beenie thought she had fainted, and, heartstruck with what -seemed to her her own work, produced out of the reticule she carried a -whole magazine of remedies--precious eau-de-Cologne, which was no common -thing in those days, and vinegar with a sharp, aromatic scent, more used -then than now, and even as the last resort a small bottle of whiskey, -which she tried hard, though with a hand that trembled, to administer in -a teaspoon. Lily had strength enough to push her away, and, in -self-defence, opened her eyes again, seeing grayly once more the -firmament, and the high houses on either side, and the dull day from -which all light seemed to have gone. It was she, however, who sprang out -of the coach when it stopped at the entrance to the close. Every-body -knows what the Canongate of Edinburgh is--one of the most noble streets, -yet without question the most squalid and spoiled of any street in -Europe, with beautiful stately old houses standing sadly among the -hideous growths of yesterday, and evil smells and evil noises enough to -sicken every visitor and to shame every man who has any thing to do with -such a careless and wicked sacrifice of the city’s pride and -ornament.[A] But even in the midst of this disgraceful debasement there -remain beyond the screen of the great old houses glimpses of the outlets -which the old citizens provided for themselves--old court-yards, even -old gardens, old houses secure within their little enclosures where the -air is still pure and the sky is still visible. Lily’s heart rose a -little as she came out of the narrow entrance of the close into one of -these unexpected openings. If he were here, he would be well. She could -see the green beyond and the high slopes of Salisbury Crags. There was -something in the vision of greenness, in the noble heights flung up -against the sky, which restored her confidence. - -But it was perhaps well that Beenie had spoken even so little adroitly -on the way, for, indeed, Marg’ret was not found at her old address. She -had never gone back there, they were told, since the time when she was -called away in the summer to attend a lady in the North. She had not, -indeed, been expected back. She had given up her rooms on going away, -and removed her little furniture, and the rooms had been relet at once -to a member of the same profession, who hoped to be sometimes mistaken -for Marg’ret, a person of high reputation in her own line. The landlady -knew nothing of the baby she had now to take care of nor where she was. -The furniture? Oh, yes, she could find out where the furniture had been -taken, but Marg’ret herself, she felt sure, had never come back. She was -maybe with the lady still--the lady in the North. She was so much -thought upon that whiles they would keep her, if the baby were delicate, -for months and months. She had a wonderful way with babies, the woman -said. (At this Lily, who had been leaning heavily on her attendant’s -arm, with her pale face hidden under her veil, and all her courage gone, -began to gather a little spirit and looked up again.) Oh, just a -wonderful way! They just throve wi’ her like flowers in May. What she -did different from ither folk there was not one could tell: if it was -the way she handled them, or the way she fed them, or the pittin’ on o’ -their claithes, with fykes and fancies that a puir buddy with the man’s -meat to get and the house to keep clean had no time for. But the fack -was just this, that there was nobody like Marg’ret Bland for little -bairns. They were just a different thing a’thegither when they were in -her hands. - -As this little harangue went on Lily’s feeble figure hanging on Beenie’s -arm straightened itself by degrees. She put up her veil and beamed upon -the homely woman, who showed evident signs that she had little time, as -she said, to keep herself tidy for one thing. Lily was not discouraged -by so small a matter. She said, holding out her hand: “Then you would -leave a baby in her hands and have no fear?” - -“Eh, my bonnie leddy,” cried the woman, with a half shriek, wiping her -hands upon her apron before she ventured to touch the lady’s glove, “I -would trust Marg’ret Bland maist to bring them back from the deid.” - -“We must find her, that is all,” said Lily, as they turned away, Beenie -trembling and miserable, with subdued sniffs coming from under her deep -bonnet. Her mistress, in the petulance which neither anxiety nor trouble -could quench, gave her “a shake” with her arm, which still leaned upon -hers, though Lily for the moment was the more vigorous of the two. “We -must find her, that is all! She must be clever indeed if she can hide -herself in Edinburgh and you and me not find her, Beenie! We must search -every street till we find her!” Lily cried. The color had come back to -her cheeks and the light to her eyes. That blessed assurance that, -wherever Marg’ret might be, the baby was safe, doubly safe in her -skilled and experienced hands, was to the young mother like wine. The -horror of the disappointment seemed to be disguised, almost to pass -away, in that unpremeditated testimony. If it was for to-morrow rather -than for to-day so long as he was so safe, so well, so assured against -all harm, as that! “We have only to find her,” Lily said, dragging -Beenie back to the hackney coach, in which they immediately drove to the -place where Marg’ret, now to be spoken of as Mistress Bland, had been -supposed to place her furniture. But this was no more than a warehouse, -where the person in charge allowed disdainfully that twa-three auld -sticks o’ furniture in that name were in his charge, but knew nothing -more of the wumman than just that they were hers, and that that was her -name. Lily, however, was not discouraged. She drove about all day in her -hackney coach, catching at every clue. She went to the hospitals, where -Mrs. Bland was known but supposed to be still with the lady in the North -who had secured her services in the summer. - -“If you know where she’s to be heard of,” one of the matrons said, “I -will be too thankful, for there is another place waiting for her or -somebody like her.” - -“And is she such a good nurse as that?” cried Lily, glowing with -eagerness all in a moment, though her face had relapsed into pallor and -anxiety. - -“She is one of the best nurses we have; and especially happy with -delicate children,” the matron answered with some astonishment. And she -tapped Beenie on the shoulder and said an indignant word in her ear. -“Woman!” she said, “are you mad to let your mistress wander about like -this, when it’s well to be seen she’s just out of her bed, and in my -opinion not long past her time?” - -“My mistress,” said Beenie, with a gasp, “is just a young lady--in from -the country.” - -“Just you get her back as fast as you can,” said the experienced woman, -“or you’ll have her worse than ever on your hands again.” - -But this was what Beenie could not do. She had to follow Lily’s -impetuous lead on many a wild-goose-chase and hopeless expedition here -and there from one place to another during the rest of the day; and when -they returned to their lodgings, worn out and cast down, in the evening, -it was still the mistress who had the most strength and spirit left. -“There is only one thing to do now,” she said, while Beenie placed her -on the hard sofa beside the fire, and endeavored to induce her to rest. -Her face was very pale and her eyes very bright, with a faint redness -round the eyelids accentuating the absence of color. “There is one thing -to do. Mr. Lumsden”--she paused a little after the name, as if it made -her other words more difficult or exhausted her breath--“will have come -back now to his lodging. You know where that is as well as I do. You -will go and tell him that he is to come to me here.” - -“Mem!” cried Beenie in great perturbation. - -“Did you think,” said Lily, very clear, in a high, scornful tone, “that -I would come to Edinburgh and not see my husband? Is it not my duty to -see my husband? You will go to him at once!” - -“It is no that,” cried Beenie; “I thought you would see him first of -all. He’s your man, oh! my dear, dear lassie--you’re married upon him -never to be parted till death comes atween you. I would have had you see -him first of a’, and weel ye ken that; but now when you’re wearied out -body and mind, and nae satisfaction in your heart, and every thing that -is atween ye worse and worse by reason of muckle pondering and dwelling -on it--oh, mem, my dear, no to-night, no to-night! You have a sharp -tongue, though you never mean it, and he is a gentleman that is not used -to be crossed and has aye had his ain way. Oh, mem, he’s a masterful -man, though he’s never been but sweet as sugar to you. Try to take a -sleep and rest, and wait for the morn. The morn is aye a new day.” - -“I am glad,” said Lily, with shining eyes, “that you think I have a -sharp tongue, Beenie; and you may be sure, if ever I meant it in my -life, I will mean it now. But I will not discuss Mr. Lumsden with you or -any one. You will just go to him----” - -“Mem, let me speak once, if I’m never to say a word again!” cried -Beenie. “That your heart should be sore to see the dear bairn, to take -him back into your airms, oh, that I can weel understand. So is mine, -though I’m far, far from being what you are to him, and no to be named -in the same breath. But, mem, oh, my dear leddy, my bonnie Miss Lily! -if I may just say that once again, what will ye do with him when you -have him? Oh, let me speak--just this once. You canna, canna take him to -that auld gentleman at hame; you canna do it. He has maybe not been much -to you in the years that are past, but he’s awfu’ fond of you now. He -looks to you to make him a home, to be the comfort of his old age. Oh! -I’m no saying he deserves it at your hands. But what do the best of us -deserve? We just get what we dinna deserve from God the first, and -sometimes from a tender he’rt here below. And he is an auld man and -frail; he has maybe no long to live. Will you tell him a’ that long -story, how we’ve deceived him and the whole world, and about your -marriage, and about the birth, and a’ in his house, that he meant for -such different things?” - -“Beenie,” said Lily, “stop, or you will kill me. If I have deceived him -so long, it was with no will of mine. Oh, God knows, if none of you -know, with no will of mine, nor yet intention! Is that not the more -reason that I should deceive him no longer? He may turn me away. What -will that matter? We will be poor creatures the two of us, you and me, -if we cannot help ourselves and the darling bairn.” - -“But it will maitter to him,” said Beenie steadily, “the poor auld -gentleman in that lonely house. He’s been a kind of a father to you, if -no so tender a father as might have been. I’m no saying you should have -deceived him, but that’s done, and it canna be undone. If you tell him -now, it will maybe kill him at the hinder end, and whether that will be -better you must just think for yoursel’, for I have said all that I’m -caring to say.” - -Lily had covered her face with her hands, and there was a moment of -silence, unbroken save by a sob from Beenie, who naturally, having -spoken forth her soul, was now crying as if her heart would break. - -“Beenie,” said Lily, all at once looking up, “you will go to Mr. -Lumsden, who will be now at his lodgings dressing, I would not wonder, -to go out to dinner--that is what is most likely--and tell him I am -here. I would not wish to make him lose his engagement if he has one; -you can say that.” - -“Oh, mem!” murmured Beenie under her breath. - -“But when it suits with his convenience, I would like to see him, to ask -him a question or two. Go now, go,” she said impatiently, “or you will -be too late.” - -Weeping, Beenie went forth to do her mistress’s behest. Weeping, she put -on her big bonnet, with a veil over it, of a kind of Spanish lace with -huge flowers, which was the fashion of the day, and which allowed here -and there a patch of her tearful countenance to appear, blocking out the -rest. She found some difficulty in gaining admittance to Ronald, who -was, his landlady informed her, “dressing to go out to his dinner,” as -Lily had foretold, and it was in the full glory of evening dress that he -came forth upon her after she had fought her way to his sitting-room, -and had waited some time for his appearance. He was very much startled -by the sight of her, and came up taking her hand, demanding: “Lily--how -is my Lily?” with an energy and anxiety which partly quenched Beenie’s -unreasonable exasperation at the sight of his dress. - -“She is here, sir, and wishful to see you,” said Beenie, “when it’s -convenient to you.” - -“Lily here--where? What do you mean? Convenient! Do you mean she is at -the door?” - -“It is not likely, sir,” cried Beenie with indignant disgust. - -“What do you mean, woman? Lily who, you wrote to me, was just recovered -from a nearly fatal illness!” - -“And that’s true. Her blood would have been on the head of them that -brought it on her if it had not been for the mercy of God.” - -“Where is she?” cried Lumsden, seizing his hat. - -“She said,” said Beenie with much intensity: “‘He will most likely be -going out to his dinner. I will not have him break his engagement for -me!’” - -“I think,” he cried, “that you mean to drive me mad! Where is she? Does -any one know she is here?” - -“It is known she is here,” said Beenie sententiously, “to get change of -air, as is thought, after her long, long illness; but, in fack, to look -for her dear little bairn, which is the object in her ain mind, my poor -bonnie leddy. And, oh, sir! if ye ken where the baby is, as ye must ken, -having taken the responsibility upon your hands, for we canna find him, -we canna find him! and it will just break her heart and she will die!” - -“Here--and looking for the child without consulting me!” he said, with -an exclamation of anger and astonishment. He flung on a coat rapidly, -and, almost thrusting Beenie out of the room before him, hurried her -away. A few more questions put to her as they hastened along the streets -showed him exactly the state of the case. It was no running away. Lily -had not come to him to throw herself upon his mercy, to be owned and -established and have her child restored to her in the legitimate way. -Had it been so it would have been very difficult to reject her, to -silence her prayer and send her back, without losing hold upon her -altogether. Had he lost hold upon her altogether without that? He was -very much alarmed, but yet he felt that the situation was less -impossible than if she had come to demand her place at his side and -public acknowledgment. She did not want him--she wanted her baby; and -what without him could she do with her baby? how produce it, how account -for it? Ronald began to feel more at his ease, to feel himself again -master of the situation as he hurried Beenie, who was very tired and -wretched, and scarcely able to keep up with him, to Lily’s refuge. Let -no one suppose for a moment that he meant to disown her, that any -dishonor was in his thoughts. In the last resort, if nothing else was to -be done, Ronald had no intention but to stand faithfully by his wife. He -had not, indeed, any power of doing otherwise; for were there not Mr. -Blythe and the two witnesses and the marriage lines against him? But, as -a matter of fact, he never thought of that, although he breathed more -freely when he knew no such claim was intended, and felt once again that -the helm was in his own hands. - -But in the meantime how to meet Lily was occupation enough for his -thoughts. He walked along the darkling streets, with the wind in his -face and a whirlwind of thought in his mind. How was he to meet -her--what was he to say to her? It was an interview on which might -depend the whole after-course of his life. - - - - -CHAPTER XLI - - -It was a very little, homely lodging in which Lily was, the little -parlor of an old-fashioned poor little house, intended at its best to -receive an Edinburgh lawyer’s clerk, or perhaps a poor minister or -teacher, on his promotion. Ronald had never seen his wife in such -surroundings. He gave a cry of surprise and dismay as he pushed open the -door. How often had she said that she would share any poverty with him, -and yet it hurt him to see her here, out of her natural sphere, like a -princess banished into a sordid world of privation and ugliness. At the -sound of his voice Lily sprang up from the slippery black hair-cloth -sofa on which she had been reposing. He thought at first it was to meet -him as of old with open arms and heart to heart, but of this she showed -no sign, nor even when he rushed forward to take her into his arms did -she make any movement. She had seated herself on the sofa again, drawing -back in an attitude of repulsion which could not be mistaken. “Lily!” he -cried, “Lily! Is this the way you receive me? Have you nothing to say to -me?” - -“Oh, yes, I have a great deal to say to you. Give Mr. Lumsden a chair, -Beenie. It is as I thought; you were going out to dinner,” said Lily, -with a gleam of exasperation at the sight of his evening dress, which -was of course wholly unreasonable. “Why should you have broken your -engagement for me?” - -“You know well I would break any engagement for you,” he said. “You must -know all that I have suffered during the past two months, unable to see -you, even to hear of you, and not a word, not a word from yourself all -that time.” - -“What hindered you coming to see me?” she asked. “What prevented you? If -I had died, as seemed likely, it could have done you no harm in the -world, for with me every hope of Uncle Robert’s money, which is what has -been my destruction, would have fallen to the ground.” - -“Lily, you never will understand! I did go to Kinloch-Rugas. I was once -under your windows, but got no satisfaction. A man has to be silent and -endure where a woman cries out. I did what I could to----” - -“That is enough,” said Lily, waving her hand. “Between you and me there -need be no more talking. I sent for you for one thing, to ask you one -question--where is my baby? You took him out of my arms; bring him back -again to me, and then there may be ground to speak.” - -“He is my baby as well as yours, Lily. I have the responsibility of the -family. I did what I felt to be best both for him and you.” - -“What was best?” she cried. “Are you a god to judge what is best? But I -will not argue with you. Give me my baby back! His mother’s arms--that -is his natural place! Give me back my child, and then, perhaps, I may -hear you speak.” - -He had thought this matter over as he came along with the rapidity of -highly stimulated thought, and a sudden great necessity for decision; he -had thought of it often before, looking at the subject from every point -of view. To give her back the baby was to ruin every thing for which he -had fought. He had not deprived himself of the company of a wife he -loved, he said to himself, for a small motive; not for nothing had he -encountered all the difficulties of the position in the past, and all -her reproaches, tacit and expressed. Her very look at him had often -been very hard to bear, and yet he paused now before making his last -stroke. Once more, like lightning, the question passed through his mind, -what other way was there? Was there any other way in which her mind -could be satisfied and her foolish search made an end of? Could he in -any other way secure her return to her home, and the carrying out to the -end of his scheme? But on the other hand would she ever forgive him for -what he must now do? He had not more than a moment to carry on that -controversy, to make his final decision. And she was looking at him all -the time: Lily’s eyes, which so often had smiled upon him, so often -followed him with tenderness and met him with the sudden flash of love -and delight, were fixed upon him steadily now, shaded by curved brows, -regarding him sternly without indulgence, without wavering or softening. -He was no longer to Lily covered with the glamour of love. She saw him -as he was, nay, worse than he was, with a look that took no account of -his real feeling toward herself, or of what was in fact a perverted -desire to do the best, as he saw it, for her as well as for himself. -Would these eyes ever soften, whatever he might do or say? Would she -ever forgive him even now? - -“Lily,” he said with an effort, overcoming the dryness of his throat, -trying still to gain a little time. “I am your husband, I am your -natural head and guide; it is my part to judge what is wisest, what is -the best thing for you. I am older than you, I am more experienced in -the world. I know what can be done, and what cannot be done. Whatever -you may wish and whatever you may say, it is for me to judge what is the -best.” - -It is not often that a woman hears an uncompromising statement of this -kind with patience, and Lily was little likely to have done so in her -natural condition of mind, but at present she had no thought but one. “I -have told you,” she cried, “that you can speak after, and that I will -hear. But in the meantime bring me back my little baby. I ask nothing -but that, I’ve no mind for reasoning now. Give me back my baby, my -little bairn; that’s all I am asking. My baby, my baby! Ronald, if ever -in your life you had a kind thought of me, a thought that was not all -interest and money, and for the love of God, if ever you knew that, give -me back my baby! and then,” she cried with a gasp--“then we can talk!” - -His mind was made up now; there was nothing else for it. His face -assumed an air of the deepest gravity; that was not difficult, for, -indeed, his situation was grave enough. He put out his hand and laid it -upon hers for a moment. “Lily,” he said, “I’ve been endeavoring to put -off this blow. It was perhaps foolish, but I thought you would feel it -less were you kept in ignorance than if all your hopes were cut off. -Fain, fain would I bring back your baby and lay him in your arms again! -You think I am a harsh man with no softness for a mother and a child, -but you are mistaken, Lily. All that I am worth in this world I would -give to bring him back. But there is but one hand that could do that.” - -She raised herself up with a start, flinging off his hand, which again -had touched hers. “What do you mean? What do you mean?” she cried, with -wild staring eyes, eyes that seemed to be bursting from her head. She -had been leaning back on the hard sofa in her weakness. Now she sat -upright, her hands raised before her as if to push off some dreadful -fate. - -“You know what I mean, Lily,” he said, looking at her with a determined -steadiness of gaze. “What is the life of an infant like that? It is like -a new-lighted candle that every breath can blow out. Oh! blame me, blame -me; I will not say a word. Tell me it was the night journey, the plunge -into the cold, after the warm bosom of his mother. I thought it was the -only thing I could do, but I will not say a word if you tell me I was to -blame. Anyhow, whosever blame it was, the baby, poor little thing----” - -“You mean he is dead!” said Lily, with a great cry. - -He thought she had fainted: they all were in the way of thinking she -had fainted when all her life went from her, except pain, which is the -strongest life of all. Every thing was black before Lily’s eyes; her -heart leaped with a wild movement and then seemed to die and become -still in her breast; her lips dropped apart, as if the last breath had -passed there with that cry. Ronald thought she had fainted for the first -moment, and then he thought she had died. He sprang up with anguish in -his heart; he had done it, braving all the risks, knowing her weakness, -yet Beenie, rushing in at the sound of Lily’s cry, with all her battery -of remedies, forgave him whatever he might have done at the sight of his -face. “I have killed her! I have killed her!” he cried; “it is my -fault!” - -“Oh, sir, you should mind how weak she is!” cried Beenie, bringing forth -her essences, her salts, her aromatic vinegar. Their words came faintly -to Lily’s brain. She struggled up again from the sofa, on which she had -fallen back, beating the air with her hands, as if to find and clutch at -something that would give her strength. “My baby is dead!” she cried, -stumbling over the words. “My baby, my baby is dead, my baby is dead!” -It seemed as if the wail had become mechanical in the completeness of -her downfall and misery, body and soul. - -“Oh, sir!” cried Beenie again. She looked at him once more with another -light in her eyes. She was but a simple woman, but to such there comes -at times a kind of divination. But Ronald’s look was fixed upon Lily, -his eyes were touched with moisture, the deepest pain was in his face. -Could it be that a man could look like that and yet lie? - -“Say nothing to her!” she cried almost with authority; “let her get her -breath. But tell you me, sir, when was it that this came about? I heard -you tell her to blame you if she pleased. What for were you to blame? -Tell me that I may explain after. Mr. Lumsden, she has a right to ken. -When did it happen and what was the cause? For all so little as a bairn -is, it’s no without a cause when the darlings die.” - -“You take too much upon you, Beenie,” he said. “You have no right to -demand explanations. And yet, why should not I give them?” he said, with -a tone of resignation. “I fear the poor little thing never got the -better of that night journey. What could I do? I could not stay there to -face Sir Robert on his first arrival. I could not leave Lily to bear the -brunt. I had but little time to think, but what was there else to do? I -felt even that to snatch him away at a stroke would be better for her -than a lingering parting with him, and the anticipation of it. There was -every cause. Beenie, you’re a reasonable woman.” - -“I will not say, sir,” said Beenie, “that it was without reason; me and -Katrin have said as much as that between ourselves, seeing a’ that had -gone before.” - -“Seeing all that had gone before,” Ronald repeated with readiness. “But -Providence,” he added, “turns all our wisest plans sometimes to nought. -I know nothing about children----” - -“But Marg’ret kent weel about children!” - -“Yes, she was perhaps the more to blame, if any one is to blame. Anyhow, -the poor little thing--I can’t explain it, you should see her, she would -tell you--caught cold or something. How could I send you word when _she_ -was so ill? I would have kept it from her now, at least till she was -stronger and better able to bear it.” - -“It would, maybe, have been better,” Beenie said, with a brevity that -surprised Ronald and made him slightly uneasy. The woman did not break -forth into lamentations, as he had expected, but that might be for -Lily’s sake, who, lying back again upon the white pillow which Beenie -had placed behind her head, with the effect of making her almost -transparent countenance, with its faint but deepened lines, look more -fragile than ever, was coming gradually to herself. Tears were slowly -welling forth under her closed eyelids, but she was very still. Whether -she was listening, or whether she was absorbed in her own sorrow and -careless of what was going on, he could not tell. Anyhow, it was a -relief to him that she was silent, and that the woman who was her -closest attendant and confidant was so easily satisfied. He began to -question her anxiously as to where Lily should go for her convalescence -now that her object in coming there was so sadly ended. Portobello, -Bridge of Allan, wherever it was, he would go at once and look for -rooms. He would come when she was settled and spend as much time as -possible with her. He took the whole matter at once into his own hands. -And it was with a sensation of relief that he concluded after all this -was said that he could now go away. “You will do well to get her to bed -and give her a sleeping-draught if you have one,” he said, bending over -Lily with a most anxious and tender countenance as she lay, still with -her eyes closed, against the pillow. It was not how he had expected her -to take this dreadful news which he had brought: he had expected a -passion of grief, almost raving; he had expected violent weeping, a -storm of lamentation. He had, on the contrary, got through very easily; -the tears even had ceased to hang upon Lily’s closed eyelids. He bent -down over her and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. She shrank from -the touch, indeed, but yet he felt that he must expect so much as that. - -“There is but one thing, sir,” said Beenie: “the woman Marg’ret, that -does not seem to me to be such a grand nurse as we heard she was--you -say we should see her and she would tell us a’. And that is just what -I’m wanting, to see her, if you could tell me where to find her.” - -“I tell you! How should I know?” he said. “She will be in the same place -where we found her before, I suppose.” - -“No, sir, she is not there.” - -“Then she will have gone off to nurse somebody else. That’s her way of -living, isn’t it? No, I can tell you nothing about her. You may suppose -the sight of her was not very pleasant to me after---- But she is a -well-known person. You will find no difficulty in finding her out.” - -“If that’s your real opinion, Mr. Lumsden----” - -“Of course it is my opinion. I will take a run to the Bridge of Allan -to-morrow, and in the evening I will bring you word.” - -With this, and with careful steps, not to disturb Lily, but yet with an -uneasy soul and no certainty that he had succeeded in his bold stroke, -Lumsden went away, Beenie respectfully accompanying him to the door. But -when it was closed upon him, Beenie, though no light-footed girl, flew -up the stairs, and rushing into the room with her hands outstretched, -was met by Lily, who fell upon her maid’s shoulder, both of them saying -together: “It is not true! it’s no true!” - -“The Lord forgive him!” said Beenie. “And, oh, I hope you’ll be able to -do it, but no me! I’m not a good woman, I’m just a wild Highlander, and -I could have put a pistol to his head as he stood there!” - -“I can forgive him easier,” said Lily, with the tears now coming freely, -“than if it had been true. Oh, Beenie! if it had been true!” - -“Whisht, whisht, my darling leddy! but no, my dear, just greet your -fill. Eh, mem, how little a man kens! They’re so grand with their -wisdom, and never to think that a woman would send a scart of a pen -whatever to let us ken the dear lamb was well. I’ve often heard the -ministers say that the deevil’s no half as clever as he seems, and now I -believe it this day. But you’ll just go to your bed and I’ll give you -the draught, as he said, for this has been an awfu’ day.” - -“Yes, I’ll go, to be strong for to-morrow,” said Lily, and then she -turned back and caught Beenie again, throwing her arms round her. “But -first,” she cried, “we’ll give God thanks on our bended knees that my -baby is safe. Oh, if it had been true!” - -They both felt the baby’s life to be more certain and more assured -because his father had sworn he was dead, and they knew that was not -true. - -Next morning they were both up betimes and had changed their lodging -early, going not to Portobello nor to the Bridge of Allan, but to a -village on the seaside, very obscure and little thought of, where, late -as the season was, they could still spend a week or two without being -remarked; and when she had settled her mistress there, Beenie went back -to Edinburgh to search again and again through every corner that could -be thought of, where Marg’ret might be heard of, but in vain. - -They went again next day, and every day, together, and I think traversed -Edinburgh almost street by street on a quest so hopeless that both had -given it up in their heart before either breathed a word of her despair. -Then they did what seemed even to Lily (and still more to Beenie) a most -terrible and unparalleled thing to do, and to which she had great -difficulty in bringing her mind. This was to apply to the police on the -subject, what we should call putting it into the hands of the -detectives. Perhaps even now there are innocent persons to whom the idea -of “sending the police after” an innocent wanderer still seems a -dreadful thing to do. And these were days in which the idea of the -detective was little developed and still less understood. They are not -always still the most successful of functionaries, but they have at -least become heroes of the popular imagination, and a certain class of -fiction is full of the wonderful deeds they have succeeded in doing, -when all things were arranged to their hand. I do not know that there -was a single individual of the order at that time in Edinburgh under the -present title and conditions, but the thing must have existed more or -less always; and when, with many hesitations and much trouble of mind, -Lily made her appeal to the ingenuity of the police service to find the -missing woman, it was with a little flutter of hope that she saw -Margaret Bland’s name and description taken down. Beenie would not even -be present when this was done. She lifted up her testimony, declaring -that nothing would induce her to send the police after a decent honest -woman that had never done any body any harm. “Oh, mem, you may say what -you like,” Beenie cried. “She has had no ill intention. Send the -pollisman after Anither if you will. It wasna her contrivancy, it wasna -her contrivancy! I would sooner die myself than harry a woman to her -ruin and take away her good name!” This had been the peroration with -which Beenie had broken away, slamming the door in the face of the -official who came to take Miss Ramsay’s orders. Lily was very unhappy -and deeply depressed. She had no one to stand by her. “It is for no -harm. You will understand she is to come to no harm. Her address -only--that is all I want,” she cried. “We’ll put it,” said the man, -writing down his notes in his little book, “that it will be something to -her advantage. That or a creeminal chairge is the only way of dealing -with yon kind of folk.” - -“Yes, yes--let it be something to her advantage,” Lily cried. “And it -will,” she said, “it will! it will be more to her advantage than any -thing she has ever known. You will take care that she is not frightened, -not harmed in any way, not in any way!” - -“How should it harm an innocent person, if this person is an innocent -person?” the functionary said, and left Lily trembling for what she had -done, and unable to bear the eye of Beenie, who would scarcely for a -whole day after forgive her mistress. They themselves lived in terror of -being found, perhaps, in their turn, hunted down by the pollis, Beenie -cried--“for if you can do it for her, mem, what for no him that has nae -scruples for you?” Lily in her heart trembled too at this thought. It -seemed to her that if such means were set in action against herself she -would die of misery and shame. - -Ten days later she returned to Dalrugas, a little stronger, for her -youth and vigor, and the distraction of her thoughts, even though so -painfully, from all preoccupation with herself, had given her elastic -vitality its chance of recovery: but a changed and saddened woman, never -again to be the Lily of the past. Her husband had not sought her, at -least had not found her, nor had she wished him to do so; but yet that -he should not have penetrated so very easy a mystery seemed to prove to -her that he had not wished to do so, and, despite of all that had come -and gone, that was a very different matter. Lily’s heart was as heavy as -a woman’s heart could be as she went home. The whole secret of her -existence, the mystery in which she had been wrapped, which she had felt -to be so guilty a secret, and a mystery so oppressive, seemed now to be -about to melt away, leaving her for her life long a false and empty husk -of being, an appearance and no reality. All this tremendous wave of -existence seemed to have passed over her head and to be gone, leaving -her, as she was, Lily Ramsay, her uncle’s companion, the daughter of the -desolate house, and no more, neither wife nor mother, nothing but a -false pretence, a pitiful ghost, the fictitious image of something that -she was not, and never again could be. - - - - -CHAPTER XLII - - -It was not without much thought that Lumsden decided to leave his wife -unmolested when she fled from him. It did not cost him much trouble to -discover where she had gone, and he watched her proceedings and those of -Beenie carefully, and had little difficulty in discovering what their -object was. But he had foreseen all that and taken his precautions, and -he had no doubt as to the result. With Lily’s absolute inexperience, and -the few facilities which existed at that period, a very simple amount of -care would have been enough to baffle her. But he had taken a great deal -of care. Margaret Bland and her charge were out of the reach of any -researches made in Scotland, and his mind was quite easy as to the -chances of further investigation, for Scotland was very much more -separated from the rest of the world in those days than it is now. I do -not say that it did not cost him a pang to know that Lily herself was -within reach and to refrain from seeing her, from saying a word further -to excuse or explain, and from making at least an endeavor to recover -her confidence. But he had gone too far now for excuses and expedients, -and he felt that it was wiser to refrain from every thing of the kind -until the moment came when, in the course of nature, he would be -liberated from all restrictions and be able to go to her and claim her -freely, without fear of interference. If he could do so, bringing a -great joy and surprise in his hand, he felt that he was more likely to -be received and forgiven than if he were able only to establish a -reconciliation upon the old basis of concealment and clandestine -meetings, which now, indeed, would be impossible. He thought that -absence would draw her heart toward him, and that in the silence she -would make his excuses to herself better than he could do; and what -would not a man merit who would bring back to a mother, who had mourned -for him as dead, her living child? He said over to himself, being a man -of literary taste, some verses of Southey’s, who was more thought of -then as a poet than now: - - “When the fond mother meets on high - The babe she lost in infancy.” - -Would not all be forgiven for the sake of that? But then came in the -question, had they believed him? Had they not believed him? Had there -been some channel of which he knew nothing by which they had procured -information in respect to the child? This was the one doubtful matter -which would be enough to crush all his most careful schemes. But he -could not see how it was possible they could have obtained any -information. That Margaret Bland should have written did not occur to -him. Persons of her class did not write letters daily then as they do -now; and he thought he had secured her devotion wholly to himself, and -made it quite clear to her that for his wife’s sake this was the only -thing that could be done. Margaret had understood him completely. She -was a person of superior intelligence. She was an admirable nurse and -devoted to the baby. But she was quite unaware at first that the -arrangement made with her was unknown to Lily, nor had she known that in -writing to Robina she had transgressed her contract with the child’s -father. It was her duty to be silent now, she was informed, in order to -avoid all danger of a correspondence that might be discovered; but -nothing even now had been said to Margaret which could have made her -feel herself in the wrong, or led her to confess what she had done. Thus -the one thing which would have made him see how fatally he had risked -all his possibilities was concealed from Lumsden. He could still -honestly, or almost honestly, persuade himself that, though what he had -done might be cruel for the moment, it was, in reality, the best thing -for Lily. Nothing else would have satisfied her, nothing less. She would -never have had a moment’s peace had she understood that her child might -be found. She would have thought nothing of any sacrifice involved. Her -inheritance would have been of no value to her in comparison with the -possession of her baby. She was capable of making every thing known to -her uncle at any moment if by this means she could have secured the -child. He had not ceased to love her, nor to entertain for her the -admiration, mingled with indulgence, which makes a young woman’s faults -almost more attractive than her virtues to her lover. It would be like -Lily to do all that; it was like Lily to give him all that trouble about -the house which he never intended to get for her, but which it cost him -so many fictions, so much exercise of ingenuity, to satisfy her about. -There were very pardonable points in that foolishness. The desire to be -with him, to identify her life altogether with his, was sweet: he loved -her the better for it, though, as the wiser of the two, he knew that it -was impracticable, and that it must be firmly, but gently, denied to -her. And to desire to have her baby was very natural and very sweet, -too. What prettier thing could there be than a young mother with her -child? But there were more serious things in the world than those -indulgences of natural affection, which are in themselves so blameless -and so sweet, and this, in her own best interests, he, her husband, her -natural head and guide, was forced to deny her, too. - -I do not think that Lily was aware of the tenor of these reasonings. She -made very little allowance for her husband; at no time had she been -disposed to allow that in these matters, which were of such great -importance in her life, he knew best. He had deceived her first of all, -and then he had made her a reluctant accomplice in deceiving others. -Nature, truth, honor, honesty, had all been from the beginning on her -side, and she had thought Ronald as little wise as he was right in -setting them all at defiance for the preservation of a secret which -ought never to have been made a secret at all. She had endured it all -when there was only herself in question, but from the moment in which -there was hope of the baby Lily had felt with a leap of the heart that -here was the solution of the problem, and that every thing must now be -made open to the light of day. It may be supposed that when, after all -this dreadful episode, she returned alone, like, yet so unlike, the Lily -Ramsay who was sent to Dalrugas two years before into banishment with -Robina, her maid, the whole matter was turned over and over in her mind -with all those dreadful visions of past chances, steps which, if taken, -might have changed every thing, which are the stings of such a review. -To Lily, as she pondered, there seemed so many things she might have -done. She might have resisted the marriage first of all. She might have -refused to be married in secrecy, in a corner--the very minister, she -had always felt sure, though he had been kind, disapproving of her all -the time; but then (she excused herself) she had not foreseen that the -marriage was to be kept a secret: it was only, she had understood, an -expedient to secure quietness and speed without preliminaries that would -have called the attention of the whole parish. And then, when she -followed her own story to that time after Whit-Sunday, when she had -expected her husband to secure the house, which could not, he swore, be -obtained till the term, Lily now saw that she should have taken the -matter into her own hand, that she should have permitted no more playing -with the question, that, whether he liked it or not, she should have -insisted on having some home and shelter of her own. Especially before -the birth of her baby should she have insisted upon this. She clasped -her hands with impatience and a sense of bitter failure as she thought -it all over. She ought not to have allowed herself to be silenced or -hindered. Her child should have been born in her own house, where he -could have been welcomed and rejoiced over, not hidden away. She cried -out in her solitude, with that clasp of her hands, that it was all her -fault, her own fault, that she was responsible for the child above all, -and that it was she who should have done this had not only her husband, -but all the powers of the earth gone against it. Then Lily reflected, -with the impulse of self-defence, that she had no money, and did not -know how to get any, and that it would have been hard, very hard for -her, without her present enlightenment, to have gone against Ronald, to -have flown in his face and thwarted him so completely in a matter upon -which he had so firmly made up his mind. Oh, what a difference there was -between the Lily of that time--hesitating, miserable to yield and yet -unable to resist, not knowing how to take a great step on her own -authority, to oppose her husband and all the lesser chain of -circumstances, the unconscious influence even of the women who held her -with a softer bond of watchfulness and affection--and this Lily now, -braced to any effort, having withdrawn and separated herself from him -and from every other restraint of influence, as she thought, standing -alone against all the world, deeply disenchanted, and considering every -pretence of love and happiness as false and deceitful. Had it been now -how little would she have hesitated! But was not this the bitterness of -life: that it was then only she could have acted effectually, and not -now? - -She settled down to the winter at Dalrugas with these thoughts. She was -Miss Ramsay, the daughter and the mistress of the house. She did not -know and did not care what was thought of her in the countryside. If -stories were told of the gentleman who had come so often from Edinburgh, -but now came no longer, Lily heard none of them. Some faltering -questions from Helen Blythe, who, instinctively, though she did not know -why, never referred to Ronald in presence of Sir Robert, were all the -indications she ever had that his disappearance was commented on, and -Lily did not care who spoke of Ronald, or how or where their secret -might be betrayed; and this indifference delivered her from many doubts -and questionings. She had no objection that any body should tell in -detail the whole thing to Sir Robert. She held her head very proudly -above all terrors of being found out. She was afraid of nothing now. -Every thing, she thought, had happened that could happen. She was -separated from her husband, not by any formality, not by any such motive -as had kept the secret hitherto, but by a great gulf fixed, which Lily -felt it was impossible should ever be bridged over. He had wronged her -as surely never woman had been wronged before, lied to her, made her -herself a lie, deprived her--last and greatest wrong of all--of her -child. Oh, how much time, leisure, quiet, she had to think over and over -all these thoughts, to persuade herself that happiness and truth were -mere words, and that nothing but falsehood flourished in this world! -Gradually she sank into silence on the subject even to Beenie. Her -life-history, over, as it seemed, at twenty-five, dropped out of -knowledge as if it had never been. She received no letters. Ronald, -indeed, continued to write at intervals for some time, addressing his -letters boldly to Miss Ramsay, but she never replied to them, and by -degrees they ceased. She heard nothing at all from the outside world. -She heard nothing of her child. They had concluded between them, Robina -and she, that if “any thing happened” to the child, Margaret would be -restrained by no man, but would let his mother know in any case. This -was all the sustenance upon which Lily lived. Her enquiries far and -near had come to nothing. The harmless detectives of the old-fashioned -Edinburgh police had not succeeded in tracking the fugitive. They had no -news of Margaret to send. They had never found out any thing about her, -except what all the world knew. By one thread, and one only, Lily clung -to life, and that was her vague faith in Margaret, notwithstanding all -things, that the child’s life was safe as long as she made no sign. - -Sir Robert found himself very comfortable in Dalrugas during that -winter. He had no idea he could have been so comfortable in the old -lonely place on the edge of the moor. It was wonderful how possible it -was to live without amusement--nay, to feel thankful that he was no -longer burdened with amusement and with the thought of what he was to do -with himself and how he was to find a little distraction season after -season. When a man is over seventy, the care of these things is perhaps -more trouble than the advantage is worth when secured; but so long as he -is in the old habitual round it is difficult to learn this. He had -thought that he detested monotony, but now it appeared that he rather -liked monotony--the comfort of getting up with the certainty that he had -no trouble before him, no change to think of, no decision to make--to -read his newspaper, to read his book, to take his walk or his drive. Sir -Robert’s horses and carriages very much enlarged his sphere and modified -its loneliness. A longish drive now brought him to a neighbor’s house, -and introduced Lily to the ladies of the county, who made explanations -to her and regrets not to have made her acquaintance before. And callers -became, if not numerous, yet occasional, thus adding something to the -little round of Sir Robert’s distractions. An old gentleman or two in -the distant neighborhood who had known him as a boy would come -occasionally with the ladies, or a younger one, whose father had known -him. And there were occasional dinner-parties, though these occurred but -seldom. Sir Robert liked them all, but at bottom was more than contented -when the clouds hung low and the rain or snow fell and put it out of -the question that he should be disturbed at all. He liked Lily’s talk -best of all, or her silence, when they sat together by the fireside, -where comfort and quiet reigned. He had not been such a good man in his -life that he deserved any such halcyon time at its end, or to feel so -virtuous, so satisfied, so peaceful as he did. But the sun shines and -the rain falls alike on the just and the unjust, and he had, by good -fortune, the art to take advantage of the good things which Providence -sent him. Lily played a game of piquette with him, “not so very badly,” -he said with happy condescension, and was in time advanced to chess; but -there showed signs of beating her instructor, which made Sir Robert -think chess was a little too much for his head. In moments of weakness -they even came down to simple draughts, and thus got through the long -evenings which the old gentleman had so much feared, but which now were -the happiest part of the day. - -“I am told you have been here for a long time, Miss Ramsay,” Lady -Dalzell said, who was the great lady of the neighborhood: “how was it we -never knew? We are here, of course, only for a short time in the year, -but long enough to have driven over to Dalrugas had we known.” - -“I have been here,” said Lily, “for two years--but how it is my -neighbors have not known I cannot tell. I could scarcely send round a -fiery cross to say that a small person of no great account had arrived -at her uncle’s house.” - -“I should have thought Sir Robert would have written or made some -provision. Do you really mean that you have been without a chaperon, -without protection?” - -“Even as you see me,” said Lily, with a laugh. - -“And nothing ever happened,” said the great lady, “to make you feel -uncomfortable?” - -Did she look at Lily with some meaning in her eyes? Did she mean -nothing? Who could tell? There might have been a whole world of -_sous-entendus_ in what Lady Dalzell said, or there might be nothing at -all. Lily met her gaze with perhaps a little more directness than was -necessary, but she did not change color. - -“There was no raid made upon the house,” said Lily. “I never was in any -danger that I know of. There was Dougal, who would have fought for me to -the death--perhaps, or, at all events, till some one came to help him. -And I had two women who took only too much care of me.” - -“Ah, it was not perils of that kind I was thinking of,” said Lady -Dalzell, shaking her head. - -“I am sorry,” said Lily--“or perhaps I should rather be glad--that I -don’t know what perils your ladyship was thinking of.” - -Then the young lady of the party, Lady Dalzell’s daughter, interposed, -and began to talk of the approaching Christmas and the entertainments to -be given in the neighborhood. “If we had only known, we should have had -you to the ball,” she said. “We had not one last New Year, but the year -before, and you were here then.” - -“Yes, I was here then.” - -“It was the year of that dreadful snow-storm. How lonely it must have -been for you, shut up for that long fortnight. Mamma, imagine! Miss -Ramsay was here all alone the year of the snow-storm, shut up in -Dalrugas--and we had our ball and all sorts of things.” - -“I hope Miss Ramsay had some friends or something to amuse her,” said -Lady Dalzell. - -“I had Helen Blythe from the Manse up to tea,” cried Lily, with a little -burst of laughter, which did not seem out of place in the violent -contrast which was thus implied, though she felt it herself almost like -a confession. The two ladies looked at her strangely, she thought, and -hastened to change the subject. Did they look at her strangely? Did they -think of her at all? Or was it the thought of their own shortcomings in -respect to this lonely girl, who was Sir Robert’s niece and heiress, -which made a shade upon their brows? They invited her to the ball, -which was to happen this year, with much demonstration of friendliness. -Not to tire Sir Robert, she and her uncle were asked to go a day or two -before this important festivity and join the home party, and Miss -Dalzell conveyed to Miss Ramsay the delightful intelligence that there -would be “plenty of partners”--all the county, and the officers from -Perth, and a large party from Edinburgh. The girl spoke of all these -preparations with sparkling eyes. - -“Well, Lily,” said Sir Robert, when the visitors were gone, “this will -be something for you: you will have one ball at least.” He did not much -relish the prospect for himself, but he was grateful, and felt that he -must face it for her. - -“I don’t feel so much enchanted as I ought,” said Lily. “Would it -disappoint you much, uncle, if I wrote to say we could not go?” - -“Disappoint _me_, my dear! But you must go, for you would like it, Lily. -Every girl of your age likes a ball.” - -“My age, Uncle Robert! Do you know I am five-and-twenty? I would rather -sit alone all night and sew, though I am not very fond of sewing. Unless -you want to dance and flirt and behave yourself as gentlemen of your age -ought not to do, I think we’ll stay at home and play piquette. I am -going to no ball,” cried Lily, her patience breaking down for the -moment, “not now, nor ever. I--to a ball! after all these years!” - -“Lily,” said Sir Robert, with a disturbed look, “I have expressed my -regret that you should have had such a lonely life, but it hurts me, my -dear, to hear you express yourself with such bitterness about those -years; there were but two of them, after all.” - -“That is true,” she said, recovering herself quickly, “but when one has -a great deal of time to think, one changes one’s mind about a great many -things, especially balls.” - -“That is true, too,” he said, “so long as you are not bitter about it, -as I sometimes fear you are inclined to be, my dear.” - -“Not bitter at all,” she cried, with a smile that quivered a little on -her lip. She got up and stood at the window, with her back to him, -looking out upon the moor. The clouds were hanging low, almost touching -the hills, the sky so heavy that it seemed to be closing down, in one -deep tone of gray, upon the dumb, unresisting earth. “I hope,” said -Lily, “that they will get home before the snow comes down.” She stood -there for some time looking out upon that scene, which had seen so much. -“It was the year of that dreadful snow-storm,” the girl had said. And -the ball to which they had asked her was on the anniversary of her -wedding day. - - - - -CHAPTER XLIII - - -It did not snow that year: the weather was mild and wet. There was not -the exhilaration, the mystery, the clear-breathing chill, of the snow, -the great gorgeous sunsets over the purple hills. But the little world -was closed in with opaque walls of cloud; the sky low, as if you could -almost touch it; the hills absent from the landscape, replaced by banks -of watery mist, indefinite, meaning nothing; and all life shut up within -the enclosure, where there was shelter to be had, and warmth, if nothing -else. It was thus that the anniversary of Lily’s honeymoon passed by. -Her mind was like the sky, covered by heavy mists, falling low, as if -there were no longer earth and heaven, but only a land of darkness and -of despair between. Behind these mists all her existence had -disappeared. Her child, perhaps, was there, her husband was there, the -woman she might have been was there, so was the old Lily, the girl full -of laughter and flying thoughts, full of quick resolutions and plans and -infinite hope. The woman who stood by the window was a woman whom Lily -scarcely knew, who did what she had to do mechanically, whether it was -ordering Sir Robert’s dinner, or playing piquette with him, or gazing, -gazing out of that window before he came down stairs. She gazed, but she -looked for no one upon the distant road; her gaze meant nothing, any -more than her life did. She had no hope of any thing, scarcely, she -thought to herself, any desire left. A ball! to go to a ball! which her -uncle thought every one of her age must wish to do. _He_ had been going -out to dinner _that_ night; most likely he was going to balls also, -about the New Year time, when there were so many in Edinburgh. He could -not well get out of it, he would probably say to himself. At the New -Year time! the New Year! - -That season passed over, and so did many more. Miss Ramsay of Dalrugas -became almost well known in the county. She went nowhere, being very -much devoted, every-body said, to her old uncle, and perhaps a little -bitter at being tied to him, never able to do any thing to please -herself; for it was only natural to suppose it would please her better -to see her friends, to see the world, to have her share of the -amusements that were going, than to sit over the fire with that old man. -“I must say that she is goodness itself to him,” Lady Dalzell said; “now -at least, whatever she may have been.” These words fired the imagination -of her company, who were eager to know what Miss Ramsay might have been -in the past, but Lady Dalzell was very discreet, all the more that she -knew nothing and was unprovided with any story to tell. “Whatever she -may have done, she is not the least what she used to be when she was a -girl in Edinburgh,” she said. And every-body was disposed to believe -that Lady Dalzell referred to the recollections of her own youth, when -she was herself a girl in Edinburgh, and Miss Ramsay of Dalrugas perhaps -a little younger and something of a contemporary. There was nobody who -did not add on ten years at least to Lily’s age. - -The little population at Dalrugas itself almost felt the same. To them, -too, it seemed that ten years and more had suddenly been added to their -young mistress’s age. They themselves had departed to an incredible -distance from her or she from them. To think how they had surrounded her -with their almost protecting and familiar love so short a time before, -watching every movement, feeling every variation of feeling in her, -knowing all her secrets, giving her their most zealous guardianship, and -that now they should be pushed so far away--the servants of the house, -to receive their orders, but all silence between them, every thing that -had been ignored, not a word said. It was Katrin who felt it most, -having been aware all the time that she herself had much more to do in -the matter, and was a more responsible person, than Beenie, who often -would have been very little fitted to meet any such emergencies as had -occurred, but who was now the best off, receiving from time to time a -scrap of confidence, perhaps, at least the chance of close attendance, -while Katrin had to be thinking of her dinner, and of all that was -wanted in the enlarged and much more troublesome household. Lily never -looked at Katrin, even, as if there had been any thing more intimate -between them than the ordinary relations of mistress and servant. Had -she forgotten how Katrin had stood by her, all she had seen, all she had -known? Sometimes Katrin asked herself, with indignation and a sense of -injured affection, what Lily, with more reason, asked herself, too: had -these scenes ever existed but in imagination? had it been all a dream? -Sometimes as she came down stairs with her orders for the day, and with -a full heart, swelling with disappointment after some little implied -appeal to the past, of which Lily had taken no notice, Katrin had hard -work to keep from crying, which would, she felt, be an eternal disgrace -to her “afore thae strange women”--the maids, who now took the work of -the house from her shoulders, and enforced the bondage of the -conventional upon her life. Katrin felt this as deeply as if she had -been the most high-minded of visionaries. Nowadays she had always to -“behave herself,” always to be upon her _p’s_ and _q’s_. She could not -even fly out upon Dougal, which sometimes might have been a -consolation, lest these strange women should exchange looks, and say to -each other how little dignified for Sir Robert’s housekeeper this person -was. Dougal, indeed, in the emergency, was the only one who gave her a -rough support. He would say, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder -in the direction of the stairs: “She’s no just hersel’ the noo. Ye -should ken that better than me; but ye make nae allowance. I would like -to get her out some day for a ride upon the powny, and maybe she would -open her heart.” - -“To you!” Katrin said, with a sort of shriek, pushing him from her, the -strange women for once being out of the way. - -“She might do waur,” said Dougal, pushing his bonnet to his other ear. -“But, my faith! if I ever lay my hand on that birky frae Edinburgh, him -or me shall ken the reason!” he cried, bending his shaggy brows, and -swinging his clenched fist through the air. - -“You’re a bonnie person to interfere in my mistress’s affairs,” Katrin -cried, “your pownies and you! If she’s mair distant and mair grand, it’s -just what’s becoming, and the house full of gentlemen and ladies, no to -speak o’ thae strange women, that are at a person’s tails, spying every -movement, day and night. For gudeness’ sake, gang away and let me be -quit of ye, man! If you come in on the top o’ a’ to take up ony moment’s -peace I have, I will just gang clean out of the sma’ sense that’s left -me, and pison ye all in your broth!” cried Katrin, with flashing eyes. - -Dougal withdrew to the place in which he was most at home in the altered -house, Rory’s stable, where he and his favorite rubbed their shaggy -heads together in mutual consolation. Rory, too, had fallen from his -high estate. Never now did he carry the young lady of the house (which, -truth to tell, was not an honor he had ever appreciated much), never -convey a guest to the coach or the market. Rory went to the hill for -peat; he was ridden into the town, helter-skelter, by a reckless young -groom, for the letters; instead of the gentleman of the stable, with -the black pony under him to do all the rough work, it was he who had -become, as it were, the black pony, the pony-of-all-work of the -establishment. Yet what things he had known! What scenes he had seen! -There was a consciousness of it all, and a choking, no doubt, of honest -merit undervalued in his throat, too, as he rubbed his nose against -Dougal’s shoulder. He had been even “further ben” than Dougal in the -secrets of the life that was past. - -And Lily did not console Katrin, said nothing to Robina, did not even -attempt to save the pony from his hard fate. She was as hard as Fate -herself, wrapped up as in robes of ice or stone, smiling as if from a -pinnacle of chill unconsciousness upon all those spectators of her past -existence, the conspirators who had helped out every contrivance, the -accomplices. And yet it was not the rage which sometimes silently -devoured her which separated her from her humble friends. She was angry -with them, as with all the world, and herself most of all. But sometimes -her heart yearned, too, for a kind word, for a look from eyes which knew -all that had been and was no more. But I think she dared not let it be -seen, lest the flood-doors, once opened, should give forth the whole -tide and could never close again. - -When all this came to an end, I do not think Lily was aware how long it -had been: if it had been two years or three years, I believe she never -quite knew; the dates, indeed, established the course of time, but when -did she think of dates, as the monotonous seasons followed each other, -day by night, and summer by winter, and meal by meal? Routine was very -strong in Sir Robert’s house, where every hour was measured, and every -repast as punctual as clockwork, and there was nothing which happened -to-day which did not happen to-morrow, and would so continue, -unwavering, unending, till time was over. Such a routine makes one -forget that time will ever be over: it looks as if it might go on -forever, as if no breach were possible, still less any conclusion; and -yet, in the course of time, the conclusion must always come at last. - -One of these winters was a bad one for the old folk; something ungenial -was in the air. It was not actually that the temperature was much lower -than usual, but the cold lasted long, without breaks or any intervals of -rest: always cold, always gray, with no gleams in the sky. The babies -felt it first, and then the old people; every-body had bronchitis, for -influenza was not in those days. There was coughing in every cottage, -and by degrees the old fathers and mothers began to disappear. There -were not enough of them to startle people in the newspapers as with any -record of an epidemic, but only the old people who were ripe for -falling, and wanted only a puff of wind to blow them away like the last -leaves on a tree, felt that puff, and dropped noiselessly, their time -being come. It began to appear of more decided importance when Mr. -Blythe was known to be very ill, not in his usual quiet chronic manner, -but with bronchitis, too, like all the rest. There had not been very -much intercourse between Dalrugas and the Manse since Sir Robert’s -arrival. He had been eager to see the old minister, who was almost the -only relic of the friends of his youth, and they had found a great deal -to say to each other on the first and even on the second visit. But Sir -Robert liked his visitors to come to him, and Mr. Blythe was incapable -of moving from his chair, so that their intercourse gradually lessened -even in the first year, and in the second came almost to nothing at all. -There was an embarrassment, too, between the two old gentlemen. Mr. -Blythe felt it, and would stop short even in the midst of one of his -best stories, struck by some sudden suggestion, and grow portentously -grave, just where the laugh came in. Sometimes he would look round at -Lily, half angry, half enquiring. He could not be at ease with his old -friend when so great a secret lay between them, and though Sir Robert -knew nothing about any secret, nor even suspected the existence of such -a thing, he yet felt also that there was something on Blythe’s mind. -“What is it he wants to speak to me about?” he would say to Lily. “I am -certain there is something. Is it about his girl? He should be able to -leave his girl pretty well off, or at least to provide for her according -to her station. Does he want me to take the charge of his girl?” “Helen -will want nobody to take care of her,” said Lily. “Then what is it he -has on his mind?” Sir Robert asked, but got no reply. Thus it was that -their intercourse had been checked. And there was a cloud between Lily -and Helen, who was deeply troubled in her mind by the complete -disappearance of Lumsden from the scene. There were many things about -him, and her friend’s connection with him, that had disturbed Helen in -the past. She had not known how to account for many circumstances in the -story: his constant reappearance, the mystery of an intercourse which -never came to any thing further, yet never slackened, had troubled her -sorely. She had not asked, nor wished to hear, any explanation which -might be, in however small a degree, derogatory to Lily. She would -rather bear the pain of doubt than the worse pain of knowing that her -doubts were justified. And there were a host of minor circumstances -which had added to her confusion and trouble just before Sir Robert’s -arrival, when Lily had, as she thought, withdrawn from her society, and -even made pretexts not to see her, to Helen’s astonishment and dismay. -And then there came Lily’s illness, and Ronald’s anxious visit, and -then--nothing more: a curtain falling, as it were, on the whole confused -drama; an end, which was no end. Ronald’s name had never been mentioned -since; he had never been seen in the country; he had gone out of Lily’s -life, so far as appeared, totally without reason given or word said. And -Helen had not continued to question Lily, whom she, like every-body -else, found to be so much changed by her illness. There was something in -the face which had been so sweet and almost child-like a little time -before which now stopped expansion. Helen looked into it wistfully, and -was silent. And thus the veil which had fallen between the two old men -came down still more darkly between the other two, and the intercourse -had grown less and less, until, in the cold wintry weather of this -miserable season, it had almost died away. - -But it was a great shock to hear, one gray, dull morning when every -thing seemed more miserable than ever, the sky more heavy, the frost -more bitter, that the minister had died in the night. This news came to -them with the letters and the early rolls, for which every morning now a -groom rode into Kinloch-Rugas upon the humiliated Rory. The minister -dead! Sir Robert was more impressed by it than could have been imagined -possible. “Old Blythe!” he said to himself, with a shock which paled his -own ruddy countenance. Why should he have died? The routine of his life -was as fixed and certain as that of Sir Robert himself. There seemed no -necessity that it should ever be broken. He was part of the landscape, -like one of the hills, like the gray steeple of his church, a landmark, -a thing not to be removed. Yet he was removed, and Mr. Douglas, the -assistant and successor, was now minister of Kinloch-Rugas. In a little -while the place which had known him so long would know him no more. Sir -Robert ate very little breakfast that morning; he had himself a bad cold -which he could not shake off; he got up and walked about the room, -almost with excitement. “Old Blythe!” he repeated, and began to recall -audibly to himself, or at least only half to Lily, the time when old -Blythe was young, as young as other folk, and a very cheery fellow and a -good companion and no nonsense about him. And now he was dead! It was -probably the fault of that dashed drunken doctor, who fortunately was -not Sir Robert’s doctor, who had let him die. Lily on her part was -scarcely less moved. Dead! The man who had held so prominent a place in -that dream, who had never forgotten it, in whose eyes she had read her -own history, at least so far as he knew it, the last time she met his -look, with so living a question in them, too, almost demanding, was that -secret never to be told? ready to insist, to say: “Then I must tell it -if you will not!” She had read all that in his look the last time she -had seen him, and in her soul had trembled. And now he was dead and -could never say a word. She had a vague sense, too, that she had one -less now among the few people who would stand by her. But she wanted no -one to stand by her, she was in no trouble. The mystery of her existence -would never now be revealed. - -“I think I ought to go and see Helen, uncle,” she said. - -“Certainly, certainly!” he cried, more eager than she was. “Order the -brougham at once, and be sure you take plenty of wraps. Is there any -thing we could send? Think, my dear: is there any thing I could do? I -would like--to show every respect.” - -He made a movement as if he would go to the _escritoire_ in which he -kept his money; for checks were not, or at least were not for individual -purposes, in those days. - -“Uncle,” she said, “they are not poor people; you cannot send -money--they are like ourselves.” - -“Let me tell you,” he said, with a little irritation, “that there are -many families even like ourselves, as you say, which the Blythes are -not, who would be very thankful for a timely present at such a moment. -But, however---- Is there nothing you can take--no cordial, or a little -of the port, or--or any thing?” - -“Helen wants nothing, uncle--but perhaps a kind word.” - -“Helen! Ah, that’s true: the auld man’s gone that would have known the -good of it. Well, tell her at least that if I can be of any use to -her---- I always thought,” he cried, with a little evident but quickly -suppressed emotion, “that he had something he wanted to say to me, -something that was on his mind.” - -How little he thought what it was that the old minister had on his mind! -and how well Lily knew! - -Helen was very calm, almost calmer than Lily was, when they met in the -old parlor where the great chair was already set against the wall. “You -are not to cry, Lily. He was very clear in his mind, though sore wearied -in his body. He was glad at the last to get away. He said: ‘I’ve had my -time here, and no a bad time either, the Lord be praised for all his -mercies, and I’ll maybe find a wee place to creep into that She will -have keepit for me: not a minister,’ he said, oh, Lily! ‘but maybe a -doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.’ Is that not all we could wish for, -that his mind should have been like that?” said Helen, with eyes too -clear for tears. She was arranging every thing in her quiet way, -requiring no help, quite worn out with watching, but incapable of rest -until all that was needful had been done. The darkened room where so -much had happened, isolated now from the common day by the shutting out -of the light, seemed like a sort of funereal, monumental chamber in all -its homely shabbiness, a gray and colorless vault, not for him who had -gone out of it, but for the ghosts and phantoms of all that had taken -place there. Lily’s heart was more oppressed by the gray detachment of -that room, in which her own life had been decided, than either by the -serene death above or the serene sorrow by her side. - -When she got back, Sir Robert, very fretful, was sitting over the fire. -He was hoarse and coughing, and more impatient than she had seen him. -“If it goes on like this, I’ll not stay here,” he said, “not another -week, let them say what they like! Four weeks of frost, a measured -month, and as much more in that bitter sky. No. I will not stay; and, -however attached you are to the place, you’ll come with me, Lily. Yes, -you’ll come with me! We’ll take up my old travelling carriage and we’ll -get away to the South, if I were but free of this confounded cold!” - -“We must take care of you, uncle. You must let us take care of you, and -your cold will soon go.” - -“You think so?” he said eagerly. “I thought you would think so. I never -was a man for catching cold. I never had a bronchitis in my life; that’s -not my danger. If that doctor man would but come, for I thought it as -well to send for him?” - -He looked up at her with an enquiring look. He was anxious to be -approved in what he had done. “It was the only thing to do,” she said, -and he was as glad she thought so as if she had been the mistress of his -actions. - -But by the evening Sir Robert was very ill. He fought very hard for his -life. He was several years over seventy, and there did not seem much in -life to retain him. But nevertheless he fought hard for it, and was very -unwilling to let it go. He made several rallies from sheer strength of -will, it appeared. But in the end the old soldier had to yield, as we -must all do. The long frost lasted, the bitter winds blew, no softening -came to the weather or to Fate. Sir Robert died not long after the old -minister had been laid in the grave. It was a dreadful year for the old -folk, every-body said; they fell like the leaves in October before every -wind. - - - - -CHAPTER XLIV - - -I do not think that Lily in the least realized what had happened to her -when her uncle died. She grieved for him with a very natural, not -excessive, sorrow, as a daughter grieves for an old father whose life -she is aware cannot be long prolonged. He was more to her than it was to -be expected he could have been. These two years of constant intercourse, -and a good deal of kindness, which could scarcely be called unselfish, -yet was more genuine on that very account, had brought them into real -relationship with each other; and Lily, who never had known what family -ties were, had come to regard the careless Uncle Robert of her youth, to -whom she had been a troublesome appendage, as he was to her the -representative of a quite unaffectionate authority, as a father, who, -indeed, made many demands, but made them with a confidence and trust in -her good feeling which were quite natural and quite irresistible, -calling forth in her the qualities to which that appeal was made. Sir -Robert had all unawares served Lily, though it was his coming which was -the cause of the great catastrophe in her life. She did not blame him -for that--it was inevitable; in one way or other it must have come--but -she was grateful to him for having laid hands upon her, so to speak, in -the failure of all things, and given her duties and a necessity for -living. And now she was sorry for him, as a daughter for a father, let -us say a married daughter, with interests of her own, for a father who -had been all that was natural to her, but no more. - -She was a little dazed and confused, however, with the rapidity of the -catastrophe, the week’s close nursing, the fatigue, the profound feeling -which death, especially with those to whom his presence is new, -inevitably calls forth; and very much subdued and sorrowful in her mind, -feeling the vacancy, the silence, the departure of the well-known -figure, which had given a second fictitious life to this now doubly -deserted place. And it did not occur to Lily to think how her own -position was affected, or what change had taken place in her life. She -was not an incapable woman, whom the management of her own affairs would -have frightened or over-burdened, but she never had possessed any -affairs, never had the command of any money, never arranged, except as -she was told, where or how she had to live. Until her uncle had given -her, when she went to Edinburgh, the sum which to her inexperience was -fabulous, and which she had spent chiefly in her vain search after her -child, she had never had any money at all. She did not even think of it -in this new change of affairs, nor of what her future fate in that -respect was to be. - -This indifference was not shared by the household, or at least by those -two important members of it Katrin and Robina, who had been most -attentive and careful of Sir Robert in his illness, but who, after he -was dead, having little tie of any kind to the old gentleman, who had -been a good enough master and no more, dropped him as much as it was -possible to drop the idea of one who lay solemnly dead in the house, the -centre of all its occupations still, though he could influence them no -more. “What will happen now?” they said to each other, putting their -heads together, when the “strange women,” subdued by “a death in the -house,” were occupied with their special businesses, and Sir Robert’s -man, his occupation gone, had retired to his chamber, feeling himself in -want of rest and refreshment after the labors of nursing, which he had -not undergone. “What will happen noo?” said Katrin. “And what will we do -with her?” Beenie said, shaking her large head. “I’ll tell you,” said -Katrin, “the first thing that will happen: Before we ken where we are -we’ll hae _him_ here!” - -“No, no,” said Beenie; “no, no! I am not expecting that.” - -“You may expect what ye like, but that is what will happen. He will come -in just as he used to do, with a fib about the cauld of the Hielands, -and a word about the steps that are so worn and no safe. Woman, he has -the ball at his fit now. Do you no ken when a man’s wife comes into her -siller it’s to him it goes? She will have every thing, and well he kens -that, and it’s just the reason of all that has come and gone.” - -“He’ll never daur,” said Beenie, “after leaving her so long to herself, -and after a’ that’s come and gone, as you say.” - -“It’s none of his fault leaving her to hersel’. He has written to her -and written to her, for I’ve seen the letters mysel’; and if she has -taken no notice, it is her wyte, and not his. She will have a grand -fortune, a’ auld Sir Robert’s money, and this place, that is the home o’ -them all.” - -“I never thought so much of this place. She’ll not bide here. Her and me -will be away as soon as ever it’s decent, I will assure you o’ that, to -seek the bairn over a’ the world.” - -“You’ll never find him,” said Katrin. - -“Ay, will we! Naebody to say her nay, and siller in her pouch, and the -world before her. We’ll find him if he were at its other end!” - -“Ye’ll never find him without the father of him!” cried Katrin, becoming -excited in her opposition. - -“That swore he was dead!” cried Beenie, flushing, too, with fight and -indignation, “that stood up to my face, me that kent better, and -threepit that the bairn was dead! And her that was his mother sitting -by, her bonnie face covered in her hands!” - -“Woman!” cried Katrin, “would you keep up dispeace in a house for any -thing a man may have said or threepit? I’m for peace, whatever it costs. -What is a house that’s divided against itsel’? Scripture will tell ye -that. Even if a man is an ill man, if he belongs to ye, it’s better to -have him than to want him. It’s mair decent. Once you’ve plighted him -your word, ye must just pit up with him for good report or evil report. -If the father’s in one place and the mother’s in another, how are ye to -bring up a bairn? And a’ just for a lie the man has told when he was in -desperation, and for taking away the bairn when we couldna have keepit -him, when it was as clear as daylight something had to be done. Losh! -Dougal might tear the hair out o’ my head, or the claes frae my back, he -would be my man still.” - -“Seeing he is little like to do either the one thing or the other, it’s -easy speaking,” Beenie said. - -Lily did not come so far as this in her thoughts till a day or two had -passed, and then there came upon her, as Beenie had divined, the sudden -impulse, which nevertheless had been lying dormant in her mind all this -time, to get up and go at once in pursuit of her baby. All the people -she had employed, all the schemes she had tried, had come to nothing. At -first her ignorant efforts had been balked by that very ignorance -itself, by not knowing what to do or whom to trust, and then by distance -and time and agents who were not very much in earnest. To look for a -great criminal--that was a thing which might waken all the natural -detective qualities even before detectives were. But to look for a baby, -with no glory, no notoriety, whatever might be one’s success! Lily saw -all this now with the wisdom that even a very little practical -experience gives. But his mother--that would be a very different matter. -His mother would find him wheresoever he was hidden. And after the first -day of consternation, of confusion and fatigue, this resolution flashed -upon her, as it had done at times through all the miserable months that -were past. She had been obliged to crush it then, but now there was no -occasion to crush it any longer. She was free; no one had any right to -stop her; she was necessary to nobody, bound to nobody. So she thought, -rejecting vehemently in her mind the idea of her husband, who had robbed -her, who had lied to her, but who should not restrain her now, let the -law say what it would. Lily did not even know how much the property of -her husband she was. Even in the old bad times it was only when evil -days came that the women learned this. The majority of them, let us -hope, went to their graves without ever knowing it, except in a jibe, -which was to the address of all women. She did not think of it. Ronald -had robbed her, had lied to her, and was separated from her forever; but -that he would even now attempt to control her did not enter into Lily’s -mind. He was a gentleman, though these were not the acts of a gentleman. -She did not fear him nor suspect him of any common offence against her. -He had been guilty of these crimes--that was the only word to use for -them--but to herself, Lily, he could do nothing. She had so much -confidence in him still. Nor, indeed (she thought at first), would he -have any thing to do with it. He would know nothing; she would go after -her child at once, as was natural, his mother’s right. And he surely -would not be the man to interfere. - -Then as she began to wait, to feel herself waiting, every nerve tingling -and excitement rising in her veins every hour, in the enforced silence -of the shadowed house, until the funeral should set her free, Lily came -to life altogether, she could not tell how, in a moment, waking as if -from the past, the ice, the paralysis that had bound her. She had lived -with her uncle these two years, and she had not lived at all. She had -not known even what was the passage of time. Her existence had been -mechanical, and all her days alike, the winter in one fashion, the -summer in another. The child, the thought of the child, had been a -thread which kept her to life; otherwise there had been nothing. But -now, when that thought of the child became active and an inspiration, -her whole soul suddenly came to life again. It was as when the world has -been hid by the darkness of night, and we seem to stand detached, the -only point of consciousness with nothing round us, till between two -openings of the eyelids there comes into being again a universe that had -been hidden, the sky, the soil, the household walls, all in a moment -visible in that dawn which is scarcely light, which is vision, which -recreates and restores all that we knew of. To Lily there came a change -like that. She closed her eyes in the wintry blackness of the night, and -when she opened them, every thing had come back to her. It was not that -she had forgotten: it was all there all the time; but her heart had been -benumbed, and darkness had covered the face of the earth. It was not the -light or warmth of the sunrise that came upon her; it was that -revelation of the earliest dawn that makes the hidden things visible, -and fills in once more the mountains and the moors, the earth and the -sky. - -It was with a shock that she saw it all again. She had been wrapped in a -false show, every thing vanity and delusion about her--Miss Ramsay, a -name that was hers no longer; but in reality she was Ronald Lumsden’s -wife, the mother of a child, a woman with other duties, other rights. -And he was there, facing her, filling up the world. In her benumbed -state he had been almost invisible; so much of life as she had clung to -the idea of the baby. When he appeared to her, it was as a ghost from -which she shrank, from which every instinct turned her away. But now he -stood there, as he had stood all the time, looking her in the face. Had -he been doing so all these years? or had she been invisible to him as he -to her? She was seized with a great trembling as she asked herself that -question. Had he been watching her through the dark as through the -light, keeping his eye upon her, waiting? She shuddered, but all her -faculties became vivid, living, at this touch. And then there were other -questions to ask: What would he do? Failing that, more intimate still, -what would she do, Lily, herself? What, now that she was free, alone, -with no bond upon her, what should she do? This question shook her very -being. She could go on no longer with her life of lies: what should she -do? - -Sir Robert’s man of business came from Edinburgh as soon as the news -reached him. He told her that she was, as she had a right to be, her -uncle’s sole heir, there being no other relation near enough to be taken -into consideration at all. Should she tell him at once what her real -position was? It was a painful thing for Lily to do, and until she was -able to set out upon that search for her child, which was still her -first object, she had a superstitious feeling that something might -happen, something that would detain or delay her, if she told her secret -at once. She had arranged to go away on the morning after the funeral. -That day, before Mr. Wallace left Dalrugas, she resolved that she would -tell him, and, through him, all who were there. Her heart beat very loud -at the thought. To keep it so long, and then in a moment give it up to -the discussion of all the world! To reveal--was it her shame? Oh, shame, -indeed, to have deceived every one, her uncle, every creature who knew -her. But yet not shame, not shame, in any other way. Much surprised was -Mr. John Wallace, W. S., Sir Robert’s man of business, to find how -indifferent Miss Ramsay was as to the value and extent of the property -her uncle had left her. She said “Yes,” to all his statements, sometimes -interrogatively, sometimes in simple assent; but he saw that she did -not take them in, that the figures had no meaning for her. Her mind was -otherwise absorbed. She was thinking of something. When he asked her, -not without a recollection of things he had heard, as he said to -himself, “long ago,” when Sir Robert’s niece had been sent off to the -wilds out of some young birky’s way, whether there was any one whom she -would like specially summoned for the funeral, Lily looked up at him -with a quick, almost terrified glance, and said: “No, no!” She had, he -felt, certainly something on her mind. I don’t know whether, in those -days, the existence of a private and hidden story was more common than -now: there were always facilities for such things in Scotland in the -nature of the marriage laws, and many anxious incidents happened in -families. A man acknowledging a secret wife, of whose existence nobody -had known, was common enough. But a young lady was different. At all -events there could be no doubt that this young lady had something on her -mind. - -The arrangements were all made in a style befitting Sir Robert’s -dignity. The persons employed came from Edinburgh with a solemn hearse -and black horses, and all the gloomiest paraphernalia of death. A great -company gathered from the country all about. They had begun to arrive, -and a number of carriages were already waiting round to show the respect -of his neighbors for the old gentleman, of whom they had actually known -so little. The few farmers who were his tenants on the estate, which -included so little land of a profitable kind among the moors (not yet -profitable) and the mountains, waited outside in their rough gigs, but -several of the gentlemen had gathered in the drawing-room, where cake -and wine were laid out upon a table, and Mr. Douglas, now the minister -of Kinloch-Rugas, stood separate, a little from the rest, prepared to -“give the prayer.” The Church of Scotland knew no burial service in -those days other than the prayer which preceded the carrying forth of -the coffin. Two ladies had driven over, with their husbands, to stay -with Lily when the procession left the house. They did not know very -much of her, but they were sorry for her in her loneliness. The -appearance of a woman at a funeral was an unknown thing in those days in -Scotland, and never thought of. This little cluster of black dresses was -in a corner of the room, in the faint light of the shadowed windows, -Lily’s pale face, tremulous with an agitation which was not grief, -forming the point of highest light in the sombre room, among the -high-colored rural countenances. She meant to tell them on their return. - -It was at this moment, in the preliminary pause, when Mr. Douglas, -standing out in the centre of the room, was about to lift his hand as -the signal for the prayer--about to begin--that a rapid step became -audible, coming up the stairs, stumbling a little on the uppermost steps -as most people did. It was nothing wonderful that some one should be a -little late, yet there was something in the step which made even the -most careless member of the company look round. Lily, absorbed in her -thoughts, was startled by the sound, she could not tell why. She moved -her head a little, and it so happened that the gentlemen standing about -by an instinctive movement stepped aside from between her and the door, -so as to leave room for the entrance of the new-comer. He was heard to -quicken his pace, as if fearing to be too late, and the minister stood -with his hand raised, waiting till the interruption should be over and -the tardy guest had appeared. - -Then the door opened quickly, and Ronald Lumsden came in. He was in full -panoply of mourning, according to the Scotch habit, his hat, which was -in his hand, covered with crape, his sleeves with white “weepers,” his -appearance that of chief mourner. “I am not too late?” he said, as he -came in. Who was he? Some of those present did not know. Was he some -unacknowledged son, turning up at the last moment to turn away the -inheritance? Mr. Wallace stepped out a little to meet him, in -consternation. Suddenly it flashed through his memory that this was the -young fellow out of whose way Lily Ramsay had been sent by her uncle. -He knew Lumsden well enough. He made a sign to him to be silent, -pointing to the minister, who stood interrupted, ready to begin. - -“I see,” said Ronald in the proper whisper, with a nod of his head; and -then he stepped straight up, through the little lane made for him, to -where Lily sat, like an image of stone, her lips parted with a quick, -fluttering breath. He took her hand and held it in his, standing by her -side. “Pardon me that I come so late,” he said, “I was out of town; but -I am still in time. Mr. Wallace, I will take my place after the coffin -as the representative of my wife.” This was said rapidly, but calmly, in -the complete self-possession of a man who knows he is master of the -situation. There was scarcely a pause, the astonished company had -scarcely time to look into each other’s face, when the proceedings went -on. The minister’s voice arose, with that peculiar cadence which is in -the sound of prayer. The men stood still, arrested in their excitement, -shuffling with their feet, covering their faces with one hand so long as -they could keep up that difficult position. But this was all unlike a -funeral prayer. The atmosphere had suddenly become full of excitement, -the pulsations quickened in every wrist. - -Lily remained in her chair; she did not rise. It was one of the points -of decorum that a woman should not be able to stand on such an occasion. -The two ladies, all one quiver of curiosity, stood behind her, and -Ronald by her side, holding her hand. He did not give it up, though she -had tried to withdraw it, but stood close by her, holding his hat, with -its long streamers of crape, in his other hand, his head drooped a -little, and his eyes cast down in reverential sympathy. To describe what -was in her mind would be impossible. Her heart had given one wild leap, -as if it would have choked her, and then a sort of calm of death had -succeeded. He held her hand, pressing it softly from time to time. He -gave no sign but this of any other feeling but the proper respectful -attention, while she sat paralyzed. And then came the stir--the -movement. He let her hand drop, and, bending over her, touched her -forehead with his lips; and then he made a sign to the astonished men -about, even to Mr. Wallace, who had been, up to this moment, the chief -authority, to precede him. There was a sort of a gasp in the astonished -assembly, but every one obeyed Ronald’s courteous gesture. There was -nothing presumptuous, nothing of the upstart, in it: it was the calm and -dignified confidence of the master of the house. He was the last to -leave the room, which he did with another pressure of Lily’s hand, and a -glance to the ladies behind, which said as distinctly as words: “Take -care of my wife.” And he was the first in the procession, placing -himself at once behind the coffin. The burying-ground was not far away; -it was one of those lonely places among the hills, with a little chapel -in ruins, a relic of an older form of faith, within its gray walls, -which are so pathetic and so solemn. The long line of men walking two -and two made a great show in their black procession, their feet ringing -upon the hard frost-bound road. But Ronald walked alone, in front, as if -he had been Sir Robert’s son. And his heart was full of a steady and -sober elation. It had been a hard fight, but he had conquered. Though he -was not a son, but an enemy, he was, as he had always intended, Sir -Robert’s heir. - - - - -CHAPTER XLV - - -“But this is all very strange and requires explanation. I do not doubt -in the least what you say, but it requires explanation,” Mr. Wallace -said. - -Only a few of the gentlemen returned with him to the house. Two of them -were the husbands of the two ladies who had been with Lily, and who now, -with each a volume in her face, joined the surprised and curious men. -Lily, too, had come back to the room. It was now that she had intended -to make her statement, and it had become unnecessary. She was saved -something, and yet there was worse before her than if this had not been -saved. - -“There is no explanation we are not ready to give,” said Ronald calmly. -“We were married four years ago, in the Manse of Kinloch-Rugas, by Mr. -Douglas’s predecessor, dead, I am sorry to hear, the other day. My wife -has the lines, which she will give you. Two witnesses of the marriage -are in the house. Every thing is in perfect order and ready for any -examination. The reason of the secrecy we were obliged to keep up was -the objection of Sir Robert, whom we have just laid with every respect -in his grave.” - -“With every respect!” Mr. Wallace said with emphasis, and there was a -murmur of agreement from the company round. - -“These are my words--with every respect. One may respect a man and yet -fail to sacrifice one’s own happiness entirely to him. My wife and I -were in accord as to saving Sir Robert any thing that might vex him in -his old age.” - -Here Lily raised her head as if about to speak, but said nothing by a -second thought, or perhaps by inability to utter any thing in the midst -of the flow of his address. - -“It is unnecessary to say what it has cost us to keep up this, but we -have done it at every risk. Our duty now is changed, and it is as -necessary to make our position clearly understood as it was before to -keep it private to ourselves. I would not allow Mrs. Lumsden to take -this avowal upon herself, as I am sure she would have done had I not -been here, or to encounter the fatigue of the day alone. I have -preferred to look like an intruder, as I fear some of the gentlemen here -must have thought me.” - -“No intruder,” said one. “No, no, to be sure, no intruder,” said -another. “Not,” said a third, “if this extraordinary story is true.” - -“That’s the whole question,” said Mr. Wallace. “My client knew nothing -of it. He left his money to his niece as to a single woman. The lady -has always been known as Miss Ramsay. How are we to know it is true?” - -“You know me, however,” said Ronald, with a smile: “Ronald Lumsden, -advocate, son of John, of that name, of Pontalloch. I think I have taken -fees from you before now, Mr. Wallace. It is not very likely I should -tell you such a lie as that in the lady’s face.” - -“Miss Ramsay,” said Mr. Wallace--“Lord! if I knew what to call the -lady!--madam, is this true?” - -“It is true that I have deceived my uncle and every one who knew me. It -has been heavy, heavy on my conscience, and a shame in my heart. I can -look no one in the face!” cried Lily. “I meant to confess it to you -to-day, as he says. Yes, it is true!” - -Though the house was still the house of death, according to all -etiquette, and the blinds not yet drawn up from the windows, Mr. -Wallace, W. S., uttered, in spite of himself, a low whistle of -astonishment. And then he coughed, and drew himself up that nobody -should suspect him of such an impropriety. “This is a strange case, a -very strange case! These gentlemen must understand that I had no inkling -of it when I invited them here to-day.” - -“What would it have mattered what inkling you had, Wallace?” said one of -the most important of the strangers. “We cannot change what is done. -Perhaps, indeed, there’s no occasion. It is a dreary moment for -congratulations, Mrs.--Mrs. Lumsden, or I would wish you joy with a good -heart.” - -“You will let me thank you on my wife’s account,” said Ronald. “As you -say, it’s a dreary moment--and we have had a dreary time of it; but that -I hope is all over now.” - -“Over by the death of the poor gentleman that suspected nothing; that -has treated his niece like his own child,” said Mr. Wallace. “It is not -a pretty thing, nor is it a pleasant consideration. I hope you will not -think I am meaning any thing unkind to you, Miss Lily--I beg your -pardon, the other name sticks in my throat. It was not with any thought -of this that my old friend left all his money to his niece; and we are -met here to mourn his death, not to give thanks with these young people -that it’s over. He was a good friend to me, gentlemen. You’ll excuse me; -it sticks in my throat--it sticks in my throat!” - -“The feeling is very natural, and I’m sure we’re all with you, Wallace; -but, as I was saying, what’s done cannot be undone,” said the first -gentleman again. - -“And no doubt it is a painful thing for the young people,” said another -charitably, “to have to tell it at this moment, and to have it received -in such a spirit. No doubt they would rather have put it off to another -season. It’s honest of them, I will say for one, not to put it off.” - -“And there’s the will, I suppose, to read,” said another, “and the days -are short. My presence is certainly not indispensable, and I think I -must be getting home.” - -“You will not take it unkind, Mrs. Lumsden, if we all say the same. It’s -enough to give the horses their deaths, standing about in the cold.” - -“There’s no difficulty about the will,” said Mr. Wallace. “It is just -leaving all to her, and no question about it. Scarcely any thing more -but a legacy or two to the servants. He was a thoughtful man for all -that were kind to him. You can see the will when you please at my -office, and the business can be put into your hands, Lumsden, when you -please. I suppose you’re not intending to remain here?” - -“That is as my wife pleases,” said Ronald. “In that respect I can have -no will but hers.” - -And then they all stood for a moment, in the natural awkwardness of such -a breaking up. No will read; nothing to make a natural point of -conclusion. The ladies came to the rescue, as was their part. One of -them, touched by pity, took Lily into her arms, and spoke tenderly in -her ear. - -“My dear, you must not blame yourself beyond measure,” she said. “You -were very good to the old man. I have thought for a long time you had -something on your mind. But if you had been his daughter ten times -over, and had a conscience void of offence, you could not have been a -better bairn to the old man.” - -“Thank you for saying so,” said Lily. “I will remember you said it as -long as I live.” - -“Hoot!” said the kind woman, “you will soon be thinking of other things. -I will come back soon to see you, and you must just try to forgive -yourself, my dear.” She paused a moment, and Lily divined that she would -have said, “and _him_,” but these words did not come. - -“We will all come back--and bring our good wishes--another day,” said -this lady’s husband, and then they all shook hands with her, with at -least a show of cordiality, the half-dozen men feeling to Lily like a -crowd, the other lady saying nothing to her but a half-whispered -good-by. Ronald elaborately shook hands with them all, with a little -demonstration again as of the master of the house. He went to the door -with them, seeing them off, enquiring about their carriages. He was -perfectly good-mannered, courteous, friendly, but showing a familiarity -with the place, warning the strangers of the dark corners, and -especially of that worn step at the top of the stairs, which was -positively dangerous, Ronald said, and must be seen to at once, and with -an assumption of the position of the man of the house which did not -please the country neighbors. He was too well acquainted with every -thing, too pat with all their names, overdoing his part. - -“Oh, Miss Lily, Miss Lily,” cried old Wallace, who had not called her by -that name since she was a child, “how could you deceive him? a man that -trusted in you with all his heart!” - -“Nobody can blame me,” said Lily drearily, “as I blame myself.” - -“You would never have had his money had he known. The will’s all right, -and nobody can contest it, but that siller would burn my fingers if it -were me. I would have no enjoyment in it. I would think it a fortune -dearly bought.” - -“The money--was I thinking about the money?” Lily cried, with a touch of -scorn which brought back its natural tone to her voice. - -“No, I dare swear you were not,” said the old gentleman; “but if not -you, there were others. It’s never a good thing to play with money: -either it sticks to your fingers and defiles you, or it’s like a canker -on your good name. He’s away to his account, that maybe had something to -answer for. He should have given you your choice--your lad or my siller. -He should have put it into words. He should have given you your choice.” - -“He did,” said Lily, almost under her breath. - -“He did! I’m glad to hear it--it was honest of him--and you--thought it -better to have them both. I understand now. It was maybe wise, but not -what I would have expected of you.” - -Lily had not a word to say; she had hidden her face in her hands. - -“Mr. Wallace,” said Ronald, coming back, “I cannot have my wife -questioned in my absence about things for which, at the utmost, she is -only partially to blame. I am here to answer for her, and myself, too.” - -“You will have enough to do with yourself. Did you think, sir, you were -to come and let off a surprise on us all, and claim Sir Robert’s money, -and receive his inheritance, and never a word said?” - -“If it eases your mind, say as many words as you like!” cried Ronald -cheerfully; “they will not hurt either Lily or me--precious balms that -do not break the head!” - -“I would just like, my young sir, to punish ye well for your mockery of -the Holy Scriptures, if not of me!” - -“The punishment is not in your hand,” said Lily, uncovering her pale -face. “We are not clear of it, nor ever will be; it will last as long as -our lives.” - -“I can well believe that,” said old Wallace. He put up the papers with -which the table was strewn into his bag. “You can come to me in my -office when you like, Mr. Lumsden, and I will show you every thing. It’s -unnecessary that you and me should go over it here,” he said, snapping -the bag upon them, almost with vehemence. “She’s badly hurt enough; -there is no occasion for turning the knife in the wound. I will leave -you to make it up within yourselves,” he said. - -Once more Ronald accompanied the departing guest down stairs. He called -Mr. Wallace’s clerk; he helped Mr. Wallace to mount into the geeg which -awaited him. No master of a house could have been more attentive, more -careful of his guest. He wrought the old gentleman up to such a pitch of -exasperation that he almost swore--a thing which occurred to him only in -the greatest emergencies; and that it was all he could do to prevent -himself from using his whip upon the broad shoulders of the interloper -who was thus speeding the parting guests. But the exigencies of the -coach, which he had to get at Kinloch-Rugas at a certain hour, prevented -much further delay. And Ronald stood and watched the departure of the -angry man of business in the Kinloch-Rugas geeg with a sensation of -relief. Was it relief? He was glad to get rid of him, no doubt, and of -all the consternation and disapproval with which his appearance had been -greeted. No one now had any right to say a word--the first and greatest -ordeal was over. But yet there remained something behind which made -Ronald’s nerves tingle; all that was outside had passed away. He had now -to confront alone an antagonist still more alarming: his Lily, whom he -loved in spite of every thing, whose image had filled this gray old -place with sweetness, who had always, up to their last meeting, been -sweet to him, sweeter than words could say--his first and only -sweetheart, his love, his wife. Now all the strangers were gone the -matter was between him and her alone. And Ronald, though he was so -sensible and so strong, was, for the first time, afraid. - -He came upstairs slowly, collecting himself for what was before him; not -without a pause at the top to examine again that defective step, which -he had so often remarked upon, which now must be seen to at once. He had -accomplished all he had hoped. Sir Robert had not even kept him long -waiting. Two years was not a very long time to wait; two years in -comparison with the lifetime that lay before Lily and himself was -nothing. They were young, and with this foundation of Sir Robert’s -fortune every thing was at their feet: all that his profession could -give, all its prizes and honors, all that was best in life--the ease of -never having to think or scheme about money, the unspeakable freedom and -exemption from petty cares which that insures. To do him justice, he did -not think of the money itself. He thought that now, whether he was -successful or unsuccessful, Lily was safe--that she would have no -struggle to undergo, no discomfort--while, at the same time, he was very -sure now that he would be successful, that every thing was possible to -him. A modest fortune to begin with, enough to keep the wife and family -comfortable, whatever happens, and to free him from every thought but -how to make the best of himself and his powers--was not that the utmost -that a man could desire, the best foundation? He went back to his Lily, -saying all this to himself, but he could not get his heart up to the -height of that elation which had possessed him when he had put on his -weepers and his crape for Sir Robert. He had not quite recognized the -drawbacks then. Half of them--oh, more than half of them--had been got -over. There only remained Lily: Lily, his wife, who loved him, for whom -he had in store the most delightful of surprises, to whom he could show -now, fully and freely, without fear of any man, how much he loved her, -whose future life he should care for in every detail, letting her feel -the want of nothing; oh, far better than that--the possession of every -thing that heart of woman could desire. - -She was sitting as he had left her, in a large chair drawn out almost -into the centre of the room--a sort of chair of state, where she, as the -object of all sympathy, had been surrounded by her compassionate -friends. It chilled him a little to see her there. She wanted that -encirclement the ladies behind her, supporting her, the surrounding of -sympathetic faces. Now that position meant only isolation, separation; -it gave the aspect of one alone in the world. He went up to her, making -a little use of this as a man skilled in taking advantage of every -incident, and took her hand. “Lily, my darling, let me put you in -another place. Here is the chair you used to sit in. Come, it will be -more like yourself.” - -“I am very well where I am,” she said. - -There was the chair beside the fire where she had once been used to sit. -How suggestive these dumb things, these mere articles of furniture, are -when they have once taken the impress of our mortal moods and ways! It -had been pushed by chance, by the movement of many people in the room, -into the very position which Lily had occupied so often, with her lover, -her husband, hanging over her or close beside her, in all the closeness -of their first union, when the snow had built its dazzling drifts on -every road, and shut them out from all the world. To both their minds -there came for a moment the thought of that, the sensation of the chill -fresh air, the white silence, the brilliance of the sun upon the -sparkling crystals. But it was a hard and bitter frost that enveloped -them now--black skies and earth alike, every sound ringing harshly -through. Lily sat unmoving. She looked at him with what seemed a stern -calm. She seemed to herself to have suffered all that could be suffered -in so short a space of time, the shame of her story all laid bare--her -story, which had so different an aspect now, no longer the story of a -true, if foolish and imprudent, love, but of calculation, of fraud, of a -long, bold, ably planned deception for the sake of money. Her neighbors -did not, indeed, think so of her, or speak so of her, as they jogged -along the frost-bound roads, talking of nothing but this strange -incident; but she thought they were doing so, and her heart was seared -and burned up with shame. - -He drew a chair near to her and laid his hand upon hers. “Lily!” he -said. - -She did not move; the touch of his hand made her start, but did not -affect her otherwise. “There is no need for that,” she said, somehow -with an air as if she scorned even to withdraw her hand, which was so -cold and irresponsive. She added with a long-drawn breath: “You can tell -me what you want--now that you have got what you want. It is all that -need be said between you and me.” - -“Lily,” he said, lifting her hand, which was like a piece of ice, and -holding it between his, “what I want is you. What is any thing I can get -or wish for without you?” - -She withdrew her hand with a little force. “All that,” she said, “is -over and past. Why should so sensible a man as you are try to keep up -what is ended, or to go on speaking a language which is--which has lost -its meaning? You and I are not what we were; I at least am not what I -was.” - -“You are my wife, Lily.” - -“Yes, the more’s the pity--the more’s the pity!” she cried. - -“That’s not what I should ever have expected from you. You are angry, -Lily, and I confess there are things which I have done--in haste, or on -the spur of the moment, or considering our joint interests perhaps more, -my dear, than your feelings----” - -“It would be well,” cried Lily with some of her old animation, “to -decide which it was--a hasty impulse, as you say, on the spur of the -moment, or our joint interests, which I deny for one! I never for a day -was for any thing but honesty and openness, and no interest of mine was -in it. But at least make up your mind. It was either in your haste or it -was your calculation--it could not be both.” - -“I did not think you would ever bring logic against me,” he said. - -“Because I was an ignorant girl--and so I was, believing every thing you -said, so many things that turned out one after another to be untrue: -that you were to take me home at once as soon as the snow was over; that -you were to get a house at Whit-Sunday, at Martinmas, and then at -another Whit-Sunday, and then----” Lily had allowed herself to run on, -having once begun to speak, as women are apt to do. She stopped herself -now with an effort. “Of these things words can be said, but of what -remains there are no words to speak. I will not try! I will not try! You -have trampled on my heart and my soul and my life to your own end--my -uncle’s money, my poor uncle that believed me, every word I said! And -now I ask, what do you want more? Let me know it, and if I can, I will -do it.” - -“Do you know,” he cried, suddenly grasping her hand again with an almost -fierce clutch, “that you can do nothing but what I permit? You are my -wife, you have nothing, your uncle’s money or any other, but what I give -you. You’re not your own to do what you like with yourself, as you seem -to think, but mine to do what I like, and nothing else. If we’re to play -at that, Lily, you must know that the strong hand is with me!” - -“So it appears,” she said, with a fierce smile, looking at her fingers, -crushed together, with the blood all pressed out of them, as he dropped -her hand. His threat, his defiance, did not enter into her mind in all -its force. Even in those days such a bondage of one reasonable creature -to another was at first impossible to conceive. And Ronald was quick to -change his tone. Of all things in the world the last he wanted was to -enter into the enjoyment of Sir Robert’s fortune without his wife. - -“Lily,” he said, “Heaven knows it is far from my wish to be tyrannical -to you. There is no happiness for me in this world without you. If you -can do without me, I cannot do without you. Am I saying I am without -fault? No, no! I’ve done wrong, I’ve done many things wrong. But not -beyond forgiveness, Lily--surely not that? What I did I thought was for -the best. If I had thought you would not understand me, would not make -allowance for me--but I believed you would trust me as I trusted you. -Anyway, Lily, forgive me. We’re bound till death us part. Forgive me; a -man can say no more than that.” - -He was sincere enough at least now. And Lily’s heart was torn with that -mingling of attraction and strong repulsion which is the worst of all -such unnatural separations. She said at last: “I am going away -to-morrow, Beenie and me. I had it settled before. You will not stop -that. If you will give your help, I will be thankful. Nothing in this -world, you or any other, can come between me and _that_! If it is a -living bairn, or if it is a green grave----” Lily stopped, her voice -choked, unable to say a word more. - - - - -CHAPTER XLVI - - -Lily was no more visible that day. She retired to her room, having, -indeed, much need of repose, and to be alone and think over all that had -passed. He said a great deal more to her than is here recorded; but -Lily’s powers of comprehension were exhausted, or she did not listen, or -her mind was so much absorbed in her own projects that she was not aware -what he said. His presence produced an agitation in her mind which was -indescribable. At first the sense that he was there, the mere sight of -him, after all that had come and gone, was intolerable to her. But after -a while this changed; his voice became again familiar to her ears, his -presence recalled a hundred and a hundred recollections. This was the -man whom she had chosen from all the world, whose coming had made this -lonely house bright, who had changed her lonely life and every thing in -it, who was hers, her love, her husband, the one man in the world to -Lily. There was no such man living, she said to herself sternly, as the -Ronald of her dreams; but yet this was the being who bore his name, who -bore his semblance, who spoke to her in a voice which had tones such as -no other voice had, and made her heart beat in spite of herself. This -was Ronald--not her Ronald, but Ronald himself--the man who had deceived -her and made her a deceiver, who had robbed her of her child in her -weakness, when she could not go after him, and swore to her a lie that -the child was dead. All that was true; but it is not much of a love -which dies with the discovery that the object of it is unworthy. She had -thought it had done so; all things had seemed easy to her so far as he -was concerned. But now Lily discovered that life was not so easy as -that. The sound of his voice, that so familiar voice which had said so -much to her, had gone through all these delusions like a knife. Was he -to blame that she had made a hero of him, that she had endowed him with -qualities he did not possess? This was Ronald, the real man, and there -was between him and her the bond of all bonds, that which can never be -broken. And she saw confusedly that there had been no false pretences on -his part, that he had been the same throughout, if it had not been that -her eyes were blinded and she saw her own imagination only. The same -man; she did not do him the injustice to think that he had been a cheat -throughout, that he had not loved her. It was not so simple as that -either; but he had determined with that force which some men have that -she should not lose her fortune. Already her heart, excusing him, put it -that way; and he had, through all obstacles, carried out this -determination. Was it her part to blame him? and even if that were her -part, was it the part of a woman never to forgive? - -I do not say that these were voluntarily Lily’s thoughts; but she had -become, as she had never been before, the field of battle where a combat -raged in which she herself seemed to have comparatively little part. -When the one side had made its fiery assault, then the other came in. -There rose up in her with all these meltings and softenings a revulsion -of her whole being against Ronald, the man who had made her lie. Into -what strange thing had he turned her life for all these years? A false -thing, full of concealments, secrets, terrors of discovery. He had led -her on from lie to lie, and then when the climax of all came, there had -been no mercy, no relenting, no remorse in his breast. He had torn her -child from her without care for him or for her, risking the lives of -both, and leaving in the bosom of the outraged mother a wound which -could never be healed. She felt it now as fresh as when she awakened -from her illness and came to life again by means of the pain--even now, -when perhaps, perhaps that wrong was to be put right and her child given -back to her. If he were in her arms now, it would still be there. Such a -blow as that was never to be got over; and it had been inflicted for -what? For no high motive of martyrdom--for the money, the horrible -money, which now, at the cost of so many lies and outrages of nature, -had fallen into his hands. - -Oh, no, no! things are not so easy in this world between human creatures -made of such strange elements as those of which it has pleased the -Master of all things to compound us. It is not all straightforward: -love--or else not love, perhaps hate. Love was on every side, the heart -crying out toward another that was its mate, and at the same time an -insupportable repugnance, revulsion, turning away. He was all that she -had in the world; all protection, companionship, support, that was -possible to her was in him; and yet her heart sickened at him, turning -away, feeling the great gulf fixed which was between them. This great -conflict within deadened Lily to all that was going on outside. She was -too much occupied with the struggle even to see, much less feel, the -state of affairs round her. What she did herself she did mechanically, -carrying on what she had intended beforehand, with the waning strength -of that impulse which had originated in her before this battle began. -She remembered still what she had resolved to do then, and did it dully, -without much consciousness. She had made up her mind to go off at once -upon her search. Had any thing occurred to prevent her doing this? She -could not tell, but she went on in so different a way, carrying out her -resolution. She counted her money, which was all hers now, about which -she could have no scruples. There was some of the housekeeping money, -which still she herself felt was her uncle’s, intrusted to her, but -which certainly, when she came to think of it, was her own now, and some -which Sir Robert had given her, about which there could be no question. -It seemed a large sum of money to her inexperience--if only she knew -where to go, and what to do! - -Robina was packing, or appearing to pack--a piece of work which ought to -have been done before now. Lily reproved her for being so late, but not -with any energy. The things outside of her were but half realized, she -was so busy within. Beenie was in a curious state, not good for much. -She wept into the box over which she stooped, dropping tears on her -mistress’s linen when she did not succeed in intercepting them with her -apron. But though she wept all the time, she sometimes broke into a -laugh under her breath, and then sobbed. It was evident that she had no -heart for her packing. She put in the most incongruous things and then -took them out again, and would rise up stealthily from her knees when -Lily’s back was turned, and run to the window, coming back again with a -hasty “Naething, naething, mem!” when her mistress remarked this, and -asked what she wanted. Down stairs--but Lily did not see it, nor would -have remarked it had she seen--Katrin stood at the open door. She had -her hand curved over her eyes, though there was no sunshine to prevent -her from seeing clearly any thing that might appear on the long, dark, -frost-bound road. Half the morning, to the neglect of every thing -within, Katrin stood looking out. It was a curious thing for the -responsible housekeeper of the house--the cook, with her lunch and her -dinner on her mind--to do; and so the other servants said to themselves, -watching her with great curiosity. Were there any more “ferlies” coming, -or what was it that Katrin was expecting from the town? - -Of these things Lily took no notice. She went into the drawing-room -ready for her journey, conscious that she must see her husband before -she left the house, but with a great failing of heart and strength, -wishing only to get away, to be alone, to go on with the terrible -struggle in her thoughts. There was no one there when she went in, and -it was a relief to her. She sat down to recover her strength, to -recover her breath. She had told him that she was going, and so far as -she could remember he had made no opposition. She had appealed to him to -help her, but so far as she knew he had not attempted to do so. It was -not yet quite time to go, and Beenie was behindhand, as she always was. -Lily was glad, if the word could be used at all in respect to her -feelings at this moment, of the little quiet, the time to breathe. - -There was, however, some strange commotion going on in the house--a -sound outside of cries and laughter, a loud note of Beenie’s voice in -the adjacent room, and then the rush of her heavy footsteps downstairs. -There arose in Lily’s mind a vague wonder at the evanescence of all -impressions in the women’s minds. They had all wept plentifully the day -before at the funeral, and spoken with sickly stifled voices, as if they -had been not only sorrowful, but bowed down with trouble. And now there -was Beenie, loud with a shriek of what sounded like joy, and Katrin’s -voice rising over a little babel of confused sound, in exclamations and -outcries of delight. What could have changed their tone so suddenly? But -Lily asked herself the question very vaguely, having no attention to -give to them. The only external thing that could have thoroughly roused -her would have been her husband’s step, and the thrill of being face to -face with him again. - -It was not long before the sound of approaching footsteps made her heart -leap into the wildest agitation again. The noise had gone on down -stairs, the cries of delight, the sound of sobbing, and for one moment -something--a small brief note which made Lily start even in her -self-absorption. But she had not heeded more than that one quick -heart-beat of surprise. Was that at last Ronald’s step coming quickly up -the winding stair? She clasped her hands firmly together, and wound -herself up as best she could for this meeting, the interview which would -perhaps be their last. Her eyes were fixed upon the door. She was -conscious of sitting there rigidly, like a figure of stone, though her -being was full of every kind of agitation. And then there was a pause. -He had not come in. Why did he not come in? - -Finally the door was slowly opened, but at first no one appeared. Then -there was a whisper and another sound--a sound that went through and -through the listening, waiting, agitated woman, who seemed to have no -power to move, and then---- - -There came in something white into the room, a little speck upon the -darkness of the walls and carpet--low down, white, with something like a -rose above the whiteness. This was what Lily saw: her eyes were dim and -every thing was confused about her. Then the speck moved forward slowly -with tottering, uncertain movements, the whiteness and the rose -wavering. There came a great cry in Lily’s heart, but she uttered not a -word; a terror, lest any movement of hers should dispel the vision, took -possession of her. She rose up noiselessly, and then, not knowing what -she did, dropped upon her knees. The little creature paused, and Lily, -in her semi-conscious state, became aware of the blackness of her own -figure in her mourning, and the great bonnet and veil that covered her -head. Noiselessly she undid the strings and threw them behind her, -scarcely breathing in her suspense. The child moved again toward her, -relieved, too, by the removal of that blackness, and Lily put out her -arms. How can I tell what followed? She could not, nor ever knew. The -child did not shriek or cry, as by all rules he should have done. He -rolled and wavered, the rose growing distinct into a little face, with a -final rush into his mother’s arms. And for a moment, an hour--how long -was it?--Lily felt and knew nothing but that again she had her baby in -her arms--her baby, that had been snatched from her unconscious, that -came back to her with infantile perceptions, smiles, love in its face! -She had her baby in her arms, not shrinking from her, as she had figured -him to herself a hundred times, but putting up his little hands to her -face, pleased with her, not discomposed with her kisses, putting his -soft cheek against hers; the one was as soft as the other, and as the -warm blood rose in Lily’s veins and the light came to her eyes and the -joy to her heart, as softly, warmly tinted, too, one rose against -another. She forgot herself and all about her--time and space, and all -her resolutions and her struggle and strain with herself, and her -mourning and her wrongs. Other people came into the room and stood -round, women crying, laughing, unable to do any thing but exclaim and -sob in their delight. But Lily took no notice. She had her child against -her heart, and her heart was healed. She could not think where all the -pain had gone. Her breath came free and soft, her life sat lightly on -her, her cares were over. She wanted to know nothing, see nothing, hear -nothing more. - -But this could not be. In another minute Ronald came into the room -quickly, no doubt full of anxiety, but full also of the energy of a man -who has the command of the situation and means to settle it in every -way, not unkindly, but yet authoritatively. With a word he dispersed the -women, stopping their outcries, which had been a sort of accompaniment -to the song of content that was in Lily’s heart, and then he came -quickly forward and put his arm round the group of the mother and child. -He pressed them to him and kissed them, first his wife and then the -baby, who sat on her knee. “Now all is well,” he said; “my Lily, all is -well! Every thing is forgiven and forgotten, and you and me are to begin -again!” - -Then Lily came suddenly back out of her rapture. She came back to the -life to which he called her, in which he had played so strange a part. -How her heart had melted toward him when he was not there! To be Ronald -had seemed to her by moments to be every thing. But now that he was -here, kneeling before her, his child on her knee, his arms around her, -his kiss on her cheek, there rose up between them a wall as of iron, -something which it seemed impossible should ever give way, a repulsion -stronger than her own will, stronger than herself. She made an -involuntary movement to free herself. And her face changed, the -rose-hues went out of it, the light from her eyes. All well! How could -all be well? Two years, during which this child had been growing into -consciousness in another house, with other care, with neither father nor -mother; and she left widowed and bereft, to play a lying part and be -another creature--not what she was! And all for money, money--nothing -better! And now the money was won by all those lies and deceptions, now -all was to be well? - -“Let me be,” she said hoarsely, “let me be! A little rest, I want a -rest. I am not equal to any more.” - -He got up to his feet, repulsed and angry. “You do not think what I am -equal to,” he said, “or hesitate to inflict on me what punishment, what -cruelty, you please! And yet every thing that has been done was done in -your own interests, and who but you will get the good of it all?” - -“My interests?” Lily cried. - -And then there came an unexpected interruption. The baby, for all so -young as he was, became aware of the change of aspect of things around -him. His little roselip began to quiver, and then he set up a lamentable -cry which, to the inexperienced heart of Lily, was far more dreadful -than ever was the cry of a child. As she tried to soothe him there -appeared in the doorway Margaret Bland, the woman who had taken him -away. And Lily gave a cry like that of her child, and clung to the baby, -who, for his small part, struggled to get to his nurse, the only -familiar figure to him in all this strange place. “Not you,” cried Lily, -“not that woman who stole him from me! Beenie! not you, not you!” - -“And yet, mem,” said Margaret, “it is me that has been father and mother -and all to him when none of you came near. And the darling is fond o’ me -and me of him like my own flesh and blood.” - -“Beenie, Beenie!” cried Lily, wild with terror, as the child slid and -struggled out of her arms. “Katrin, Katrin! oh, don’t leave her, not for -a moment--don’t let her take him away!” - -Once more the cloud of women appeared at the door, all the maids of the -house delighted over the child, and Beenie in the front, seizing -Margaret by the skirts as she gathered up the child in her arms. “Na, -na, she’ll no take him an inch out o’ my sight!” Beenie cried. - -Lily stood up trembling, breathless, confronting her husband as this -little tumult swept away. A passion of terror had succeeded her rapture -of love and content; and yet there was a compunction in it and almost a -touch of shame. That chorus of excited women did not add to the dignity -of her position. He had not said any thing, but was walking up and down -the room in impatience and annoyance. “Who do you think would take him -from you _now_?” he cried in his exasperation, adding fuel to the fire. - -Oh, not now! There were no interests to be involved now; the money was -safe, for which all these hideous plans had been laid. If this was meant -to soothe, it was an ill-chosen word. And for a moment these two people -stood on the edge of one of those angry recriminations which aggravate -every quarrel and take all dignity and all reason from the breach. -Ronald perceived his mistake even before Lily could take any advantage -of it, had she been disposed so to do. - -“Lily,” he said, “your life and mine have to be decided now. There is -neither credit nor comfort in the position of deadly opposition which -you have taken up. I may have sinned against you. I told you what was -not true about the child, I acknowledge that. I should not have -pretended he was dead. I saw my mistake as soon as I had committed it, -but it was as ineffectual as it was wrong. You did not believe me for a -minute, therefore I did no harm. The rest was all inevitable; it could -not be helped. Enough has been said on that subject. But all necessity -for these expedients is over now. Every thing is plain sailing before -us; we have the best prospects for our life. I can promise that no woman -will have a better husband than you will find me. You have a beautiful -healthy child who takes to you as if you had never been parted from him -for a day. We have a good house to step into----” - -“What house?” she cried, surprised. - -“Oh, not the garret you were so keen about,” he answered, a smile -creeping about the corners of his mouth, “a house worthy of you, fit for -you--the house in George Square!” - -“Uncle Robert’s house!” she cried, almost with a shriek. - -“Yes,” he said, “to which you are the rightful heir, as you are to his -money. They are both very safe, I assure you, in _my_ hands.” - -“You are,” she said breathlessly, “the proprietor--now?” - -“Through you, my bonnie Lily; but there is no mistake or deception about -that,” he said, with a short laugh; “they are very safe in my hands.” - -No man could be less conscious than Ronald, though he was a man full of -ability and understanding, of the effect of these words of his triumph -upon his wife’s mind. He thought he was setting before her in the -strongest way the advantages there were for her, and both, in agreement -and peaceful accord, and how prejudicial to her own position and comfort -any thing else would be. He was perhaps a little carried away by his -success. Even the experiment of this morning--how thoroughly successful -it had been! The child might have been frightened and turned away from -the unknown mother: instead of this, by a providential dispensation, he -had gone to her without hesitation and behaved himself angelically. How -any woman in her senses could resist all the inducements that lay before -her, all the excellent reasons there were to accept the present and -ignore the past--in which nothing had been done that was not for her -interest--he could not tell. He began to be impatient with such folly, -and to think it might be well to let her have a glimpse of what, if she -rejected this better part, lay on the other side. - -Lily had seated herself once more in her chair; it was the great chair -she had occupied when the funeral party assembled, and gave her -something of the aspect of a judge. She had lost altogether the color -and brightness that had come into her face. She was very pale, and the -blackness of her mourning made this more visible. And, she sat silent, -oh, not convinced, as he hoped--far from that--but struck dumb, not -knowing what to say. - -At this moment, however, there was another interruption, and the little -figure of Helen Blythe, covered, too, with crape and mourning, but with -a natural glow and subdued brightness as always upon her morning face, -appeared at the door. - - - - -CHAPTER XLVII - - -Helen was in all her crape, and yet her upper garment was not “deep,” -like that of a woman in her first woe. It was a cloak which suggested -travelling rather than any formality. And it appeared that the bright -countenance with which she came in was one of sympathy for Lily, rather -than of any cheerfulness of her own. She came forward holding out both -her hands, having first deposited her umbrella against the wall. “I am -glad, glad,” she said, “of all this that I hear of you, Lily: that you -have got your husband to take care of you, and, it appears, a delightful -bairn. I knew there was something more than ordinary between you two,” -she said, stopping to shake hands with Ronald in his turn. “And vexed, -vexed was I to see that Mr. Lumsden disappeared when old Sir Robert -came. It must have been a dreadful trial to you, my poor Lily. But I -never knew it had gone so far. Married in my own parlor, by my dear -father, and not a word to me--Lily, it was not kind!” - -Lily had no reply to make to this. It carried her away into a region so -far distant, so dim, like a fairy-tale. - -“But my dear father,” said Helen, “had little confidence in my -discretion, and he might think it better I should know nothing, in case -I should betray myself--and you. Oh, how hard it must have been many a -time to keep your secret; and when your child came, poor Lily, poor -Lily! But I do not yet understand about the bonnie bairn. They tell me -he is a darlin’. But did he come to you in a present, as we used to -think the babies did when we were children, or by what witchcraft did -you manage all that, Lily, my dear?” - -“And where did you hear this story that you have on your fingers’ ends?” -said Ronald, interrupting these troublesome questions. - -“Well,” said Helen, half offended, “if I have it on my fingers’ ends, it -is that I take so much interest in Lily and all that concerns her--and -you, too,” she added, fearing that what she had said might sound severe. -“You forget that there were two years when we saw you often, and then -two years that we saw you not at all; and often and often my father -would ask about you. ‘Where is that young Mr. Lumsden?’ ‘Have you no -word of that young Mr. Lumsden?’ He was very much taken up about you, -and why you did not come back, nor any word of you. To be sure, he had -his reasons for that, knowing more than the like of me.” - -“Those very reasons should have shown him how I could not come back!” -said Ronald sharply. “But you have not told me where it was you got this -story, which few know.” - -“Well--not to do her any harm if you think she should have been more -discreet--it was Katrin that told me. She is a kind, good, honest woman. -She was just out of herself with joy at the coming of the dear bairn. -You will let me see him, Lily?” - -“You look as if you were going on a journey. Oh, Helen, where are you -going?” cried Lily, glad to interrupt the questions, and to give herself -also a moment’s time to breathe. - -“Yes, I am going on a journey,” Helen said, steadfastly looking her -friend in the face. Her eyes were clear; her color, as usual, softly -bright, not paled by the crape, or by her genuine, but not excessive, -grief. She had mourned for her father as truly as she had nursed him, -but not without an acknowledgment that he had lived out his life and -departed in the course of nature. By this time, though but ten days of -common life had succeeded the excitement and commotion of Mr. Blythe’s -funeral, at which the whole countryside had attended, Helen had returned -to the ordinary of existence, and to the necessity of arranging her own -life, upon which there was now no bond. The plea of the assistant and -successor (now minister) of Kinloch-Rugas that there should be no breach -in it at all, that she should accept his love and remain in the house -where she was born as his wife, had not moved her mind for a moment. She -had shaken her head quietly, but very decisively, sorry to hurt him or -any creature, yet fully knowing her own mind; and, in so far as she -could do so in the village, Helen had made her preparations. She had a -little land and a little money, the one in the hands of a trustworthy -tenant, the other very carefully, very safely, invested by her father -with the infinite precautions of a man to whom his little fortune was a -very great matter, affecting the very course of the spheres. Helen had -boldly, with indeed an unspeakable hardihood, notwithstanding the horror -and remonstrances of the man of business, taken immediate steps to -withdraw her money and get it into her possession. All this was done -very quietly, very quickly, and, by good luck, favorably enough. And -then she made arrangements for her venture, the great voyage into the -unknown. - -“Yes,” she said, “I am going on a journey. You will perhaps guess -where--or if not where, for I am not just clear on that point myself, -you will at least know with what end. I have nothing to keep me back -now”--a little moisture came into Helen’s eyes, but that did not affect -her steady, small voice--“and only him in the world that needs me. I am -going to Alick, Lily. You will tell me it’s rash, as every-body does, -and maybe it is rash. If he has wearied at the last and given up all -thoughts of me, I will never blame him; but that I cannot think, and it -is borne in on my mind that he has more need of me than ever. So I am -just taking my foot in my hand and going to him,” she said, looking at -Lily, with a smile. - -“Helen! oh, you will not do that! Go to him, to you know not where, to -circumstances you are quite, quite ignorant of? Oh, Helen, you will not -do that!” - -“Indeed, and that will I,” said Helen, with the same calm and steady -smile. “I am feared for nothing, but maybe that he might hear the news -and start to come to me before I could get to him.” - -“That is enough!” cried Lily. “Oh, wait till he comes; send for him! -Rather any thing than go all that weary way across the sea alone.” - -“I am feared for nothing,” Helen said, still smiling, “and who would -meddle with me? I am not so very bonnie, and I am not so very young. I -am just as safe, or safer, than half the women in the world that have to -do things the other half do not understand.” - -“Like myself, you think,” Lily said; and it was on her lips to add: “If -you succeed no better than me!” But the bondage of life was upon her, -and of the pride and the decorum of life. Ronald had taken no part in -this conversation, but he was there all the time, standing against the -window, looking out. He was very impatient that his conversation with -his wife, so important in every way, should be interrupted. His own -affairs were so full in his mind, as was natural, that any enforced -pause in the discussion of them appeared to him as if the course of the -world had been stopped. And this country girl’s insignificant little -story, perfectly wild and foolish as it was, that it should take -precedence of his own at so great a crisis! He turned round at last and -said in a voice thrilling with impatience: “I hope, as Lily does, that -you will do nothing rash, Miss Blythe. We have a great deal to do -ourselves with our own arrangements.” - -“And I am keeping Lily from you? You will excuse me,” cried Helen, -wounded, “but I am going to do something very rash, as you say, and I -may never come back; and I cannot leave a friend like Lily, and one my -father was proud of, and thought upon on his death-bed, and one that -knows where I am going and why, without a word. There is perhaps nobody -but Lily in the world that knows what I mean, and what I am doing, and -my reasons for it,” Helen said. She took her friend’s hands once more -into her own. “But I will not keep you from him, Lily, when no doubt you -have so much to say.” - -“You shall not go,” said Lily, with something of her old petulance, -“till you have seen what I have to show you, and till you have told me -every thing there is to tell. Oil, my baby, my little bairn, my little -flower! I could be angry that you have put him out of my head for a -moment. Come, come, and see him now.” - -Ronald paced up and down the room when he was left alone; his impatience -was not, perhaps, without some excuse. He was very anxious to come to -some ground of agreement with Lily, some basis upon which their life -could be built. He had hoped much from the great _coup_ of the morning, -from the bringing back of the child, which he had intended to do -himself, taking advantage of the first thrill of emotion, and -identifying himself, its father, with the infant restored to her arms; -but the women, with their folly, had spoiled that moment for him, and -lost him the best of the opportunity, and now there was another woman -thrusting her foolish story into the midst of that crisis in his life. -Ronald was out of heart and out of temper. He began to see, as he had -never done before, the difficulties that seemed to close up his path. He -had feared, and yet not feared, the tempest of reproaches which no doubt -Lily would pour upon him. He did not know her any better than this, but -expected what the conventional woman would do in a book, or a malicious -story, from his wife; and he had expected that there would be a great -quarrel, a heaping up of every grievance, and then tears, and then -reconciliation, as in every story of the kind that had ever been told. -But even if she could resist the sight of him and of his pleading, -Ronald felt a certainty that Lily could not resist the return of her -child; for this she would forgive every thing. This link that held them -together was one that never could be broken. He had calculated every -thing with the greatest care, but he had not thought it necessary to go -beyond that. When she had her child in her arms, Lily, he felt sure, -would return to his, and no cloud should ever come between them more. - -But now this delusion was over. She had not showered reproaches upon -him. She had not done any thing he expected her to do. The dreadful, the -astounding revelation that had been made to him was that this was not -Lily any longer. It was another woman, older, graver, shaped by life and -experience, without faith, with a mind too clear, with eyes too -penetrating. Would she ever turn to him otherwise than with that look, -which seemed to espy a new pretence, a new deception, in every thing he -said? Ronald still loved his wife; he would have given a great deal, -almost, perhaps, the half of Sir Robert’s fortune, to have his Lily back -again as she had been; but he began now for the first time to feel that -it would be necessary to give up that vision, to arrange his life on -another footing. If she would but consent at least to fulfil the -decorums of life, to remain under his roof, to be the mistress of his -house, not to flaunt in the face of the world the division between these -two who had made a love-marriage, who had not been able to keep apart -when every thing was against their union, and now were rent asunder when -every thing was in its favor! What ridicule would be poured upon him! -What talk and discussion there would be! His mind flashed forward to a -vision of himself alone in Sir Robert’s great house in George Square, -and Lily probably here at Dalrugas with her child. Sir Robert’s house -was his, and Sir Robert’s fortune was his. Except what he chose to give -her, out of this much desired fortune--for which, indeed, it was he who -had planned and suffered, not she--she had no right to any thing. There -was so much natural justice in Ronald Lumsden’s mind that he did not -like this, though, as it was the law, and he a lawyer, it cost him less -than it might have done another man; but he meant to make the strongest -and most effective use of it all the same. He meant to show her that she -was entirely dependent upon him--she and her child; that she had nothing -and no rights except what he chose to allow her: and that it was her -interest and that of her child (whom, besides, he could take from her -were he so minded) to keep on affectionate terms with him. - -This, though it gave him a certain angry satisfaction, was a very -different thing, it must be allowed, from what he had dreamed. He had -thought of recovering Lily as she was in the freshness of her love and -faith before even the first stroke of that disappointment about the -house, the garret in Edinburgh, upon which her hopes had been fixed: -full of brightness and variety, a companion of whom one never would or -could tire, whose faith in him would make up for any failure of -appreciation on the part of the rest of the world, nay, make an end of -that--for would not such a faith have inspired him to believe in -himself, to be all she believed him to be? Did he live a hundred years, -and she by his side, Ronald now knew that he would never have that faith -again. And the absence of it would be more than a mere negative: it -would inspire him the wrong way, and make him in himself less and less -worthy--a man of calculations and schemes--all that she most objected -to, but of which he felt the principle in himself. It is not to be -supposed that he himself called, or permitted himself to imagine, these -calculations base. He thought them reasonable, sagacious, wise, the only -way of getting on in the world. They had succeeded perfectly in the -present instance. He was conscious, with a sort of pride, that he had -thus fairly gained Sir Robert’s fortune, which he had set before him as -an object so long ago. He had won it, as it were, with his bow and his -spear, and it was such a gain to a young man as was unspeakable, -helping him in every way, not only in present comfort, but in -importance, in his profession, in the opinion of the solicitors, who had -always more confidence in a man who had money of his own. Ah, yes, he -had won in this struggle--but then something cold clutched at his heart. -He was a young man still, and he loved his wife--he wanted her and -happiness along with all those other possessions; but when he won Sir -Robert’s money, he had lost Lily. Was this so? Must he consent that this -should be so? Were they separated forever by the thing that ought to -unite them? He said to himself: “No, no!” but in his heart he felt that -cold shadow closing over him. They might be together as of old--more -than of old--each other’s constant companions. But Lily would never be -to him what she had been; they would be two, living side by side, -unconsciously or consciously criticising each other, spying upon each -other. They would no more be one! - -To meet this, when one had expected the flush and assurance of success, -has of all things in the world the most embittering and exasperating -effect upon the mind. Ronald had looked for trouble with Lily--the -ordinary kind of trouble, a quarrel, perhaps _à outrance_, involving -many painful scenes--but he had never thought of the real effect of his -conduct upon her mind, the tremendous revulsion of her feelings, the -complete change of his aspect in her eyes, and of that which she -presented to him. A moment of disgust with every thing--with himself, -with her, with his success and all that it could produce--succeeded the -other changes of feeling. It is not unnatural at such a moment to wish -to do harm to somebody, to throw off something of that sense of the -intolerable that is in one’s own mind upon another. And Ronald bethought -himself of what Helen Blythe had said, her complete acquaintance with -the story which had been so carefully concealed from her, and her -confession that she had it from Katrin. A wave of wrath went over him. -Katrin had been in the secret from the beginning, not by any desire of -his, but because the circumstances rendered it inevitable that she -should be so, and nothing could be done without her complicity. He said -to himself that he had never liked her, nor her surly brute of a -husband, who had looked at him with so much suspicion on many of his -visits here. They thought themselves privileged persons, no doubt; -faithful servants, who had been of use, to whom on that account every -thing was to be forgiven; who would be in his own absence, as they had -been in Sir Robert’s, a sort of master and mistress to Dalrugas, -recounting to every-body, and to the child when he grew up, the history -of his parents’ marriage, entertaining all the country neighbors with -it--an intolerable suggestion. With them at least short work could be -made. He rang the bell hastily and desired that Katrin should be sent to -him at once, she and her husband, and awaited their appearance -impatiently, forming sharp phrases in his mind to say to them, with the -full purpose of pouring on their heads the full volume of his wrath. - -Katrin received that summons without surprise. She had thought it likely -that something would be said to her of gratitude for her faithful -service, and for her care of Lily; perhaps a little present given, which -Katrin did not want, but yet would have prized and guarded among her -chief treasures. She called in Dougal from the stable, and hastily -brushed the straws and dust from his rough coat. “But they ken you’re -aye among the beasts!” she said. She herself put on a spotless white -apron, and tied the strings of her cap, which in the heat of the kitchen -were often flying loose. Dougal followed her, with no such look of -pleasure on his face. To him Ronald was still “that birky from -Edinburgh,” whose visits and absences, and all the mystery of his -appearance and disappearance, had so often upset the house and wrought -Miss Lily woe. The wish that he could just have got his two hands on him -had not died out of his mind, and it was bitter to Dougal to feel that -this man was to be henceforth his master, even though he believed he was -about to receive nothing but compliments and gratification from his -hand. Ronald was still walking up and down the room when the -pair--Katrin with her most smiling and genial looks--appeared at the -door. - -“Oh, you are there!” he said hastily with a tone of careless disdain. “I -wished to speak to you at once to let you know what I have settled, that -you may have time to make your own arrangements. There are likely to be -many changes in the house--and the way of living altered altogether. I -think it best to tell you that, after Whit-Sunday, Mrs. Lumsden will -have no further occasion for your services.” - -He had not found it so easy as he thought, in face of Katrin’s changing -face, which clouded a little with surprise and disappointment at his -first words, then rose into flushed amazement, and then to -consternation. “Sir!” she cried, when he paused, aghast, and without -another word to say. - -“I kent it would be that way,” Dougal muttered, behind her, in the -opening of the door. - -“Well!” said Ronald sharply, “have you any thing to say against it? I am -aware you have for a long time considered this house your own, but that -was simply because of the negligence of the master. That time is over, -and it is in new hands. You will understand, though it is not the usual -time for speaking, that I give you lawful notice to leave before the -Whit-Sunday term in this current year.” - -“Sir,” said Katrin again, “I’m thinking I canna rightly trust to my -ears. Are you meaning to send me--me and Dougal, Sir Robert’s auld -servants, and Miss Lily’s faithful servants--away? and take our places -from us that we’ve held this twenty year? I think I maun be bewitched, -for I canna believe my ears!” - -“Let us have no more words on the subject,” said Ronald; “arguing will -make it no better. You are Sir Robert’s old servants, no doubt, but Sir -Robert is dead and buried; and how far you were faithful servants to -him--after all that I know of my own experience--the less said of that -the better, it seems to me.” - -“Dougal,” said Katrin, with a gasp, “haud me, that I dinna burst! He is -meaning the way we’ve behaved to him!” - -“And he has good reason!” said Dougal, his shaggy brows meeting each -other over two fiery sparks of red eyes. “’Od, if I had had my will, -many’s the time, I would have kickit him out o’ the house!” - -Dougal’s words were but as a muttering--the growl of a tempest--but the -two people blocking the door, meeting him with sudden astonishment and a -quick-rising fury of indignation which matched his own, wrought Ronald’s -passion to a climax; he seized up his hat, which was on the table, and -pushed past them, sending the solid figures to right and left. “That’s -enough. I have nothing more to say to you!” he said. - -It was Katrin that caught him by the arm. “Maister Lumsden,” she said, -“ye’ll just satisfy me first! Is it because of what we did for -you--takin’ ye in, makin’ ye maister and mair, keepin’ your secret, -helpin’ a’ your plans--that you’re now turnin’ us out of our daily -bread, out o’ our hame, out o’ your doors?” - -“Cheating your master in every particular,” said Ronald, “as you will -me, no doubt, whenever you have a chance. Yes; that is one of my -reasons. What did you say?” - -He raised the cane in his hand. The movement was involuntary, as if to -strike at the excited and threatening countenance of Dougal behind. They -were huddled in a little crowd on the top of the winding stair. Ronald -had turned round, on his way out, at Katrin’s appeal, and stood with his -back to the stair, close upon the upper step. “What did you say?” he -cried again sharply. Dougal’s utterances were never clear. He said -something again, in which “Go-d!” was the only articulate word, and made -a large step forward, thrusting his wife violently out of the way. - -It all happened in a moment, before they could draw breath. Roland, it -is to be supposed, made a hasty, involuntary step backward before this -threatening, furious figure, with his arm still lifted, and the cane in -it ready to strike, but lost his footing, and thus plunged headforemost -down the deep well of the spiral stair. - - - - -CHAPTER XLVIII - - -Lily was very reluctant to let Helen go. She kept her on pretence of the -child, who had to be exhibited and adored. A great event annihilates -time. It seemed already to Lily that the infant had never been out of -her arms, that he had always found his natural refuge pressed close to -her, with his little head against her breast. She had at first, with -natural but unreasonable feeling, ordered Margaret out of her sight, she -who had been the instrument of so much suffering to her; but the woman -had defended herself with justice. “It is me that have done every thing -for him all this time,” she said. “It is me that have trained him up to -look for his mammaw. Eh, it would have been easy to train the darlin’ to -look to nobody but me in the world; but I have just made it his daily -thought that he was to come to his mammaw, and summer and winter and -night and day I have thought of nothing but that bairn.” Lily had -yielded to that appeal, and Beenie had already made Margaret welcome. -They sat in the little outer room, already established in all the old -habits of their life, sitting opposite to each other, with their -needle-work, and all its little paraphernalia of workboxes and reels of -thread, brought out as if there had never been any interruption of their -life, and the faint, half-whispered sound of their conversation making a -subdued accompaniment; while Lily, with her child on her knee, pausing -every moment to talk to him, to admire him, to respond to the countless -little baby appeals to her attention, appeared to Helen an image of that -perfect happiness which is more completely associated to women with the -possession of a child than with any other circumstance in the world. -Helen did not know, except in the vaguest manner, of any thing that lay -below. She divined that there might be grievances between the two who -had been so long parted. But Helen herself would have forgiven Ronald on -the first demand. His sins would have been to her simply sins, to be -forgiven, not a character with which her own was in the most painful -opposition. She would have entered into no such question. Lily detained -her as long as possible, enquiring into all her purposes, which it was -far too late to attempt to shake. Helen, in her rustic simplicity and -complete ignorance of the world, was going to America, to its most -distant and rudest part, the unsettled and dubious regions of the West, -the backwoods, as they were then called, which might have been in -another planet for any thing this innocent Pilgrim knew of them, and, -indeed, at that time, unless to those who had made it a special study, -those outskirts of civilization were known scarcely to any. “There will -aye be conveyances of some kind. I can ride upon a horse if it comes to -that,” Helen said, with her tranquil smile. “And no doubt he will come -to meet me, which will make it all easy.” - -“And that is the whole of your confidence!” cried Lily. - -“No, no! my confidence is in God, that knows every thing; and, Lily, you -should bless his name that has brought you out of all your trouble, and -given you that darlin’, God bless him, and a good man to stand by you, -and your settled home. Oh, if I can but get Alick to come back, to -settle, to work my bittie of land, and live an honest, quiet life like -our forbears”--the tears stood for a moment in Helen’s eyes--“but I will -think of you, a happy woman, my bonnie Lily, and it will keep my heart.” - -What a strangely different apprehension of her own position was in -Lily’s heart as she sat alone when Helen had gone. The baby had gone to -sleep and had been laid on the bed, and she began to pace slowly about -in her room, as Ronald was doing so near to her, with a heavy heart, -notwithstanding her joy, wondering and questioning with herself what the -life was to be that lay before her. A settled home, a good man to stand -by her, a lovely child. What more could woman want in this world? The -crisis could not continue as it was now; some ground of possibility must -be come to, some foundation on which to build their future life. To -think of accompanying her husband to Edinburgh, taking possession of her -uncle’s house, establishing herself in it, he the master of every thing, -made her heart sick. If they had stolen his money from old Sir Robert, -it would have been less dreadful than thus to take every thing from him, -in defiance of all his wishes, as soon as he was dead, when he could -assert his own will no more. If she could remain where she was, Lily -felt that she could bear it better. But this was only one part of the -question before her which had to be settled. She--who had become -Ronald’s wife in the fervor and enthusiasm of a foolish young love, who -had lived on his coming, on the hope of his return, on the dream of that -complete and perfect union before God and man in which nobody could -shame them or throw a shadow on their honor--to find herself now, after -being betrayed and deceived and outraged, her heart torn out of her -breast, her child out of her arms, the truth out of her life, in the -position of the happy woman, her home assured, her husband by her side, -her child in her arms--to be called upon to thank God for it, to take up -her existence as if no cloud had covered it, and face the world with a -smiling face, forgetting all that interval of misery and deprivation and -falsehood! Her steps became quicker and quicker as the tide of her -thoughts rose. Amid all the surroundings, which were those of perfect -peace--the child asleep in its cradle, the soft undertones of the -attendant women--yet all that passion and agony within! - -But Lily knew this could not be. Dreadful reason and necessity faced her -like two dumb images of fate. Some way of living had to be found, some -foundation on which to build the new, changed, disenchanted life. She -had no desire to shame Ronald in the sight of his friends, to make her -indignation, her disappointment, the property of the world. There would -be critics enough to judge him and his schemes to secure Sir Robert’s -money. It was hers, in the loyalty of a wife, to take her share of the -burden, to let it be believed, at least, that all had been done with her -consent; and obnoxious as this was to Lily, she forced her mind to it as -a thing that had to be. That was, however, an outside matter; the worst -of the question was within: how were they to live together side by side, -to share all the trivialities of life, to watch over together the growth -of their child, to decide together all the questions of existence, like -two who were one, who were all in all to each other--these two who were -so far and so fatally apart? But Lily did not disguise from herself that -this must be done. She calmed herself down with a strong exertion of her -will, and prepared herself to meet her husband, to discuss with him, as -far as was possible, the future conditions of their life. - -She had turned to leave her room in order to join Ronald and proceed to -this discussion when the silence of the house was suddenly disturbed by -a shriek of horror and dismay: no little cry, but one that pierced the -silence like a knife, sharp, sudden, terrible, followed by a voice, in -disjointed sentences, declaiming, praying, crying out like a prophet or -a madman. The two women came rushing to Lily from the outer room, struck -with terror. What was it? Who was it that was speaking? The voice was -not known to any of them; the sound of the broken words, loud, as if -close to their ears, gradually becoming intelligible, yet without any -meaning they could understand, drove them wild with terror. “What is -it?” they all cried. Was it some madman who had broken into the house? -Lily cast a glance--the mother’s first idea--to see that all was safe -with the child, and then hastened through the empty drawing-room, where -she expected to find Ronald. The door was open, and through the doorway -there appeared a tragic, awful figure, a woman with her hands sometimes -lifted to her head, sometimes wildly flung into the air, her voice -growing hoarser, giving forth in terrible succession those broken -sentences, in wild prayer, exhortation, invective, it was impossible to -say which. Some locks of her hair, disturbed by the motion of her hands, -hung loose on her forehead, her eyes were wildly enlarged and staring, -her lips loose and swollen with the torrent of passionate sound. For a -moment Lily stood fixed, terrified, thinking it a stranger, some one she -had never seen before, and the first words were like those of a prayer. - -“Lord hae mercy! Lord hae mercy! Swear ye didna lay a finger on him, no -a finger! Swear ye didna touch him, man! Oh, the bonnie lad! oh, the -bonnie lad!” Then a shriek again, as from something she saw. “Tak’ him -up gently, tak’ him softly! his head, his head! tak’ care of his head! -Oh, the bonnie lad, the bonnie lad! Lord hae mercy, mercy! Say ye didna -lay a finger on him! Swear ye didna touch him! Oh, his head, his head, -it’s his head! Oh, men, lift him like a bairn! Lord hae mercy, hae -mercy! Say ye didna lay a finger on him! Oh, the bonnie lad, the bonnie -lad!” The wild figure clasped its hands, watching intently something -going on below, which now became audible to the terrified watchers -also--sounds of men’s footsteps, of hurried shuffling and struggling, -audible through the broken shrieks and outcries of the woman at the top -of the stairs. - -“Who is it?” cried Lily, breathless with terror, falling back upon her -attendants behind her. - -“Katrin, Katrin, Katrin!” cried Beenie, carried away by the wild -contagion of the moment; “she’s gone mad, she’s gone out of her senses! -Mem, come back to your ain room; come back, this is nae place for you!” - -Katrin! was it Katrin, this wild figure? Lily darted out and caught her -by the arm. - -“Katrin! what has happened? Is it you that have been crying so? Katrin, -whatever it is, compose yourself. Come and tell me what has happened! -Is it Dougal? What is it? We will do every thing, every thing that is -possible.” - -Katrin turned her changed countenance upon her mistress; her swollen -lips hanging apart ceased their utterance with a gasp. She looked wildly -down the stairs, then, putting her hands upon Lily’s shoulders, pushed -her back into the room, signing to Robina behind. “Keep her away, keep -her----” she seemed to them to say, making wild motions with her hands -to the rooms beyond. Her words were too indistinct to be understood, but -her gestures were clear enough. - -“Oh, mem,” cried Beenie, “it will be something that’s no for your eyes! -For mercy’s sake, bide here and let me gang and see!” - -“Whatever has happened, it is for me to see to it,” said Lily. And then, -disengaging herself from them, she said, for the first time very gravely -and calmly: “My husband must have gone out. Go and look for him. -Whatever has happened, it is he who ought to be here.” - -She got down stairs in time to see the stumbling, staggering figures of -the men carrying him into the library. But it was not till some time -afterward that Lily had any suspicion what it was. She thought it was -Dougal, who had met with some dreadful accident. She had the calmness in -this belief to send off at once for a doctor in two different -directions; and, having been begged by her uncle’s valet not to go into -the room till the doctor came, obeyed him without alarm, and went out to -the door to look for Ronald. It was strange he should have gone out at -this moment, but how could he know that any thing would be wanted to -make his presence indispensable? Most likely he was angry with her for -keeping him waiting, for talking to Helen Blythe when there were things -so much more important in hand. She went out to the door to look for -him, not without a sense that to have him to refer to in such an -emergency was something good, nor without the thought that it would -please him to see her looking out for him over the moor. - - * * * * * - -Ronald never spoke again. If his death was not instantaneous in point of -fact, it was so virtually, for he never recovered consciousness. He had -fallen with great force down the stairs from the worn upper step, which -had failed his foot as he made that recoil backward from Dougal’s -threatening advance--the step of which he had so often spoken in half -derision, half seriousness, as a danger for any old man. Neither he nor -any one else could have supposed it was a danger for Ronald, so young, -so full of energy and strength. And many were the reflections, it need -not be said, upon the vicissitudes of life and the fate of the young -man, just after long waiting come into possession of all that was best -in life--fortune and happiness, and all the rest. The story was told all -over the country, from one house to another, and in Edinburgh, where he -was so well known. To have waited so long for the happiness of his life -and then not to enjoy it for a week, to be seized by those grim fangs of -fate in the moment of his victory, in the first hour of his joy! The -papers were not as bold in those days as now. The fashion of -personalities had not come in unless when something very scandalous, -concealed under initials, was to be had. But there was nothing -scandalous in Ronald Lumsden’s story. - -In the enquiry that followed there was at first an attempt to suggest -that Dougal, who was shown to have been always in opposition to him, and -sometimes to have uttered half threats of what he would do if he could -get his hands on that birky from Edinburgh, was instrumental in causing -his death. And poor Katrin, changed into an old woman, with gray hair -that would not be kept in order under her white cap, and lips that hung -apart and could scarcely utter a word clearly, was examined before the -procurator, especially as to what she meant by the words which she had -been heard by all in the house to repeat as she stood screaming at the -head of the stairs: “Swear you never lifted a finger upon him!” Were -these directions she was giving to her husband in case of any future -investigation? or was she adjuring him to satisfy her, to let her know -the truth? But Katrin was in no condition to explain to any one, much -less to the procurator in his court, what she had meant. But there was -no proof against Dougal, and every evidence of truth in his story; and -any doubt that might subsist in the minds of persons apt to doubt every -thing, and to believe the worst in every case, died away into silence -after a while. It is possible that the possibility harmed him, though, -as he retained his place and trust in Dalrugas, even that was of no -great consequence; but Katrin never was, as the country folk said, “her -own woman” again. She never could get out of her eyes the horror of that -sudden fall backward, the sound against the stone wall, on the stone -steps. In the middle of the night, years after, she would wake the -house, calling upon her husband, with pathetic cries, to swear he never -laid a finger on him. This made their lives miserable, though they did -not deserve it; for Katrin knew at the bottom of her heart, as Dougal -knew--but having said it once, would not repeat--that he laid no finger -on Ronald, nor ever, save in the emptiest of words, meant him any harm. - -Lily was lost for a time in a horror and grief of which compunction was -the sharpest part. Her heart-recoil from her husband, her sense of the -impossibility of life by his side, her revulsion against him, -overwhelmed her now more bitterly, more terribly, than the poignant -recollections of happiness past which overwhelm many mourners. The only -thing that gave her a little comfort in those heavy depths was the -remembrance of the moment when, all unknowing that he could never again -come to her, she had gone out to look for Ronald over the moor. There -might have been comfort to her after a while in that moor, which had -been the confidant of so many of her thoughts of him; but to go up and -down, in all the common uses of life, the stairs upon which he died was -impossible. She felt a compunction the more to leave the scene of all -the happier days, the broken life which yet was often so sweet, which -had been the beginning of all. It seemed almost an offence against him -to leave a place so connected with his image, but still it was -impossible to remain. There was a little mark upon the wall which made -them all shudder. And Lily was terrified when her baby was carried up or -down those stairs: the surest foot might stumble where he had stumbled, -and it is not true that the catastrophes of life do not repeat -themselves. Life is all a series of repetitions; and why not that as -well as a more common thing? - -It was this above all things else that made her leave the house of her -fathers, the place where her tragedy had been played out, from its -heedless beginning to its dreadful, unthought-of end. It was not so -common then as now for the wrecked persons of existence to betake -themselves over the world to the places where the sun shines brightest -and the skies are most blue; but still, when the wars were all well -over, it was done by many, and the young widow, with her beautiful -child, and her two women attendants, was met with by many people who -knew, or were told by those who knew, her strange story and pitied her -with all their hearts. They pitied her for other sufferings than those -which were really hers. Those that were attributed to her were common -enough and belong to the course of nature; the others were different, -but perhaps not less true. But it cannot be denied either that as there -was a certain relief even in the first shock of Lily’s grief, a sense of -deliverance from difficulties beyond her power to solve, so there was a -rising of her heart from its oppression, a rebound of nature and life -not too long delayed. Her child made every thing easy to her, and made, -all the more for coming back to her so suddenly, a new beginning of -life. And that life was not unhappy, and had many interests in it -notwithstanding the fiery ordeal with which it began. - -Helen Blythe came back to Kinloch-Rugas within the year, bringing her -husband with her. He was not, perhaps, reformed and made a new man of, -as he vowed he would be in her hands. Perhaps, except in moments of -exaltation, she had not expected that. But she did what she had soberly -declared to be the mission of many women--she “pulled him through.” They -settled upon her little property and farmed it more or less well, more -or less ill, according as Alick could be kept “steady,” and Helen’s -patience. Two children came, both more or less pathetically careful, -from their birth, of their father; and the household, though it bore a -checkered existence, was happy on the whole. When Helen saw the Manse -under the chill celibate rule of the new minister, she was very sorry -for him, but entertained no regrets; and when, later in life, he -married, the preciseness of the new establishment moved her to many a -quiet laugh, and the private conviction, never broken, that, in her own -troubled existence, always at full strain, with her “wild” Alick but -partially reformed, and the many roughnesses of the farmer’s life, her -ambitions for her boy, and her comfort in her girl, she was better off -than in her old sphere. She did not make her husband perfect, but she -“pulled him through.” Perhaps, had she taken the reins of that wild -spirit into her hands at first, she might have made him all that could -have been wished; but as it was she gave him a possible life, a -standing-ground when he had been sinking in the waves, a habitation and -a name. - -Lily came back to the North to establish herself in a house more modern -and comfortable, and less heavy with associations, than Dalrugas, some -years after these events, and there was much friendship between her and -the old minister’s daughter, who had been so closely woven with the most -critical moments of her life. They were different in every possible -respect, but above all in their view of existence. Helen had her serene -faith in her own influence and power to shape the other lives which she -felt to be in her charge, to support her always. But to Lily there -seemed no power in herself to affect others at all. She, so much more -vivacious, stronger, to all appearance of higher intelligence, had been -helpless in her own existence, able for no potent action, swept by the -movements of others into one fated path, loved, yet incapable of -influencing any who loved her. She was now a great deal better off, her -life a great deal brighter, with all manner of good things within her -reach, than Helen, on her little bit of land, pushing her rough husband, -with as few detours as possible, along the path of life, and smiling -over her hard task. Lily was a wealthy woman, with a delightful boy, and -all those openings of new hope and interest before her in him which give -a woman perhaps a more vivid happiness than any thing strictly her own. -But the one mother trembled a little, while the other looked forward -serenely to an unbroken tranquil course of college prizes and bursaries, -and at the end a good manse, and perhaps a popular position for her son. -What should Lily have for hers? She had much greater things to hope for. -Would it be hers to stand vaguely in the way of Fate, to put out -ineffectual hands, to feel the other currents of life as before sweep -her away? Or could she ever stand smiling, like simple Helen, holding -the helm, directing the course, conscious of power to defeat all harm -and guide toward all good? But that only the course of the years could -show. - - -THE END - - * * * * * - -BY W. D. HOWELLS. - - - A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. - - THE COAST OF BOHEMIA. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. - - THE WORLD OF CHANCE. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50; Paper, 60 cents. - - THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50; Paper, 75 cents. - - AN IMPERATIVE DUTY. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00; Paper, 50 cents. - - A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Sir Robert's Fortune - -Author: Margaret Oliphant - -Release Date: December 15, 2016 [EBook #53744] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" title="" /> -</div> - - -<h1>SIR ROBERT’S FORTUNE</h1> - -<p class="cb"><span class="eng">A Novel</span><br /><br /> - -BY<br /> - -M R S. O L I P H A N T<br /> - -<small>AUTHOR OF “CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD” “HARRY JOSCELYN”<br /> -“HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY” ETC.</small><br /> -<br /> -<img src="images/colophon.png" -alt="colophon" -/><br /> -<br /> -NEW YORK<br /> - -HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br /> -1894<br /><br /> -Copyright, 1894, by <span class="smcap">Harper & Brothers</span>. -<br /> -<i>All rights reserved.</i><br /><br /> -<small><i>Printed by the Mershon Company, Rahway, N.J.</i></small> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1"></a>{1}</span></p> - -<h1>SIR ROBERT’S FORTUNE</h1> - -<div style="border:2px solid black;margin:1em auto 1em auto;max-width:30em;"> -<p class="c"> -<a href="#CHAPTER_I">Chapter I, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_II">II, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_V">V, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_X">X, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">XXXII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">XXXIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">XXXIV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">XXXV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">XXXVI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">XXXVII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">XXXVIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">XXXIX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XL">XL, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">XLI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">XLII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">XLIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">XLIV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XLV">XLV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI">XLVI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVII">XLVII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVIII">XLVIII.</a> -</p> - -</div> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">“We </span>are to see each other no more.”</p> - -<p>These words were breathed rather than spoken in the dim recess of a -window, hidden behind ample curtains, the deep recess in which the -window was set leaving room enough for two figures standing close -together. Without was a misty night, whitened rather than lighted by a -pale moon.</p> - -<p>“Who says so?”</p> - -<p>“Alas! my uncle,” said the white figure, which looked misty, like the -night, in undistinguishable whiteness amid the darkness round.</p> - -<p>The other figure was less distinguishable still, no more than a faint -solidity in the atmosphere, but from it came a deeper whisper, the low -sound of a man’s voice. “Your uncle!” it said.</p> - -<p>There was character in the voices enough to throw some light upon the -speakers, even though they were unseen.</p> - -<p>The woman’s had a faint accentuation of feeling, not of anxiety, yet -half defiance and half appeal. It seemed to announce a fact -unchangeable, yet to look and hope for a contradiction. The man’s had a -tone of acceptance and dismay. The fiat which had gone forth was more -real to him than to her, though she was in the position of asserting and -he of opposing it.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said, “Ronald, my uncle—who has the strings of the purse and -every thing else in his hands——”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2"></a>{2}</span></p> - -<p>There was a moment’s pause, and then he said: “How does he mean to -manage that?”</p> - -<p>“I am to be sent off to-morrow—it’s all settled—and if I had not -contrived to get out to-night, you would never have known.”</p> - -<p>“But where? It all depends upon that,” he said with a little impatience.</p> - -<p>“To Dalrugas,” she answered, with a sigh; and then: “It is miles and -miles from anywhere—a moor and a lodge, and not even a cottage near. -Dougal and his wife live there, and take care of the place; not a soul -can come near it—it is the end of the world. Oh, Ronald, what shall I -do? what shall I do?”</p> - -<p>Once more in the passionate distress of the tone there was an appeal, -and a sort of feverish hope.</p> - -<p>“We must think; we must think,” he said.</p> - -<p>“What will thinking do? It will not change my uncle’s heart, nor the -distance, nor the dreadful solitude. What does he care if it kills me? -or any body?” The last words came from her with a shriller tone of -misery, as if it had become too much to bear.</p> - -<p>“Hush, hush, for Heaven’s sake; they will hear you!” he said.</p> - -<p>On the other side of the curtain there was a merry crowd in full career -of a reel, which in those days had not gone out of fashion as now. The -wild measure of the music, now quickening to lightning speed, now -dropping to sedater motion, with the feet of the dancers keeping time, -filled the atmosphere—a shriek would scarcely have been heard above -that mirthful din.</p> - -<p>“Oh, why do you tell me to hush?” cried the girl impetuously. “Why -should I mind who hears? It is not for duty or love that I obey him, but -only because he has the money. Am I caring for his money? I could get my -own living: it would not want much. Why do I let him do what he likes -with me?”</p> - -<p>“My darling,” said the man’s voice anxiously, “don’t do any thing rash, -for God’s sake! Think of our<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3"></a>{3}</span> future. To displease him, to rebel, would -spoil every thing. I see hope in the loneliness, for my part. Be -patient, be patient, and let me work it out.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, your working out!” she cried. “What good has it done? I would cut -the knot. It would be strange if we two could not get enough to live -upon—or myself, if you are afraid.”</p> - -<p>He soothed her, coming closer, till the dark shadow and the white one -seemed but one, and murmured caressing words in her ears: “Let us wait -till the case is desperate, Lily. It is not desperate yet. I see chances -in the moor and the wilderness. He is playing into our hands if he only -knew it. Don’t, don’t spoil every thing by your impatience! Leave it to -me, and you’ll see good will come out of it.”</p> - -<p>“I would rather take it into my own hands!” she cried.</p> - -<p>“No, dearest, no! I see—I see all sorts of good in it. Go quite -cheerfully, as if you were pleased. No, your own way is best—don’t let -us awake any suspicions—go as if you were breaking your heart.”</p> - -<p>“There will be no feigning in that,” she said; “I shall be breaking my -heart.”</p> - -<p>“For a moment,” he said. “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Weeping endureth for a night, but joy cometh -in the morning.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“Don’t, Ronald! I can’t bear to hear you quoting Scripture.”</p> - -<p>“Why not? I am not the devil, I hope,” he said, with a low laugh.</p> - -<p>There was a question in the girl’s hot, impatient heart, and then a -quick revulsion of feeling. “I don’t know what to do, or to think; I -feel as if I could not bear it,” she said, the quick tears dropping from -her eyes.</p> - -<p>He wiped them tenderly away with the flourish of a white handkerchief in -the dark. “Trust to me,” he said soothingly. “Be sure it is for our -good, this. Listen: they are calling for you, Lily.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, what do I care? How can I go among them all,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4"></a>{4}</span> and dance as if I -were as gay as the rest, when my heart is broken?”</p> - -<p>“Not so badly broken but that it will mend,” he whispered, as with a -clever, swift movement he put aside the curtain and led her through. He -was so clever: where any other man would have been lost in perplexity, -or even despair, Ronald Lumsden always saw a way through. He was never -at a loss for an expedient: even that way of getting back to the room -out of the shadow of the curtains no one could have performed so easily, -so naturally as he did. He met and entered into the procession of -dancers going out of the room after the exertions of that reel as if he -and his partner formed part of it, and had been dancing too. People did -not “sit out” in those days, and Ronald was famous for his skill in the -national dance. Nobody doubted that he had been exerting himself with -the rest. Lily was half English—that is, she had been sent to England -for part of her education, and so far as reels were concerned, had lost -some of her native skill, and was not so clever. She was not, indeed, -supposed to be clever at all, though very nice, and pretty enough, and -an heiress—at least she was likely to be an heiress, if she continued -to please her uncle, who was not an easy man to please, and exacted -absolute obedience. There were people who shook their heads over her -chances, declaring that flesh and blood could not stand Sir Robert -Ramsay’s moods; but up to this time Lily had been more or less -successful, and the stake being so great, she had, people said, “every -encouragement” to persevere.</p> - -<p>But Lily was by no means so strong as her lover, who joined the throng -as if he had formed part of it, with a perfect air of enjoyment and -light-heartedness. Lily could not look happy. It may be said that in his -repeated assurance that all would be right, and that he would find a way -out of it, she ought to have taken comfort, feeling in that a pledge of -his fidelity and steadiness to his love. But there was something in this -readiness of resource which discouraged, she could not have told why, -instead<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5"></a>{5}</span> of making her happy. It would have been so much simpler, so -much more satisfactory, to have given up all thoughts of Sir Robert’s -money, and trusted to Providence and their own exertions to bring them -through. Lily felt that she could make any sacrifice, live upon nothing, -live anywhere, work her fingers to the bone, only to be independent, to -be free of the bondage of the uncle and the consciousness that it was -not for love but for his money that she had to accept all his caprices -and yield him obedience. If Ronald would but have yielded, if he would -have been imprudent, as so many young men were, how thankful she would -have been! She would have been content with the poorest living anywhere -to be free, to be with him whom she loved. She would have undertaken the -conduct of their little <i>ménage</i> herself, without even thinking of -servants; she would have cooked for him, cleaned the house for him, -shrunk from nothing. But that, alas, was not Ronald’s way of looking at -the matter. He believed in keeping up appearances, in being rich at -almost any cost, and, at best, in looking rich if he were not really so; -and, above all and beyond all, in keeping well with the uncle, and -retaining the fortune. He would not have any doubt thrown on the -necessity of that. He was confident of his own powers of cheating the -uncle, and managing so that Lily should have all she wanted, in spite of -him, by throwing dust in his eyes. But Lily’s soul revolted against -throwing dust in any one’s eyes. This was the great difference between -them. I do not say that there was any great sin in circumventing a harsh -old man, who never paused to think what he was doing, or admitted a -question as to whether he was or was not absolutely in the right. He was -one of the men who always know themselves to be absolutely right; -therefore he was, as may be said, fair game. But Lily did not like it. -She would have liked a lover who said: “Never mind, we shall be happy -without him and his fortune.” She had tried every thing she knew to -bring young Lumsden to this point. But she was not able to do so: his -opinion was that every thing must be<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_6" id="page_6"></a>{6}</span> done to preserve the fortune, and -that, however hard it might be, there was nothing so hard but that it -must be done to humor old Sir Robert, to prevent him from cutting his -niece out of his will. Was not this right? Was it not prudent, wise, the -best thing? If he, an advocate without a fee, a briefless barrister, -living as best he could on chance windfalls and bits of journalism, had -been as bold as she desired, and carried her off from the house in Moray -Place to some garret of his own up among the roofs, would not every-body -have said that he had taken advantage of her youth and inexperience, and -deprived her of all the comforts and luxuries she was used to? That Lily -cared nothing for those luxuries, and that she was of the mettle to -adapt herself to any circumstances, so long as she had somebody to love -and who loved her, was not a thing to reckon with public opinion about; -and, indeed, Ronald Lumsden would have thought himself quite unjustified -in reckoning with it at all. To tell the truth, he had no desire on his -own part to give up such modest luxuries for himself as were to be had.</p> - -<p>The day of clubs was not yet, at least in Edinburgh, to make life easy -for young men, but yet to get along, as he was doing precariously, was -easier for one than it would be for two. Even Lily, all hot for -sacrifice and for ministering with her own hands to all the needs of -life, had never contemplated the idea of doing without Robina, her maid, -who had been with her so many years that it was impossible for either of -them to realize what life would be if they were separated. Even if it -should be a necessary reality, Robina was included as a matter of -course. How it might be that Lily should require to scrub, and clean, -and cook with her own hands, while she was attended by a lady’s maid, -was a thing she had never reasoned out. You may think that a lady’s maid -would probably be of less use than her mistress had such service been -necessary; but this was not Robina’s case, who was a very capable person -all round, and prided herself on being able to “turn her hand” to any -thing. But then a <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7"></a>{7}</span>runaway match was the last thing that was in -Lumsden’s thoughts.</p> - -<p>It was a dance which every-body enjoyed that evening in the big, -old-fashioned rooms in George Square. George Square has fallen out of -knowledge in all the expansions of new Edinburgh, the Edinburgh that -lies on the other side of the valley, and dates no farther back than -last century. It also is of last century, but earlier than the Moray -Places and Crescents; far earlier than the last developments, the -Belgravia of the town. There Sir Walter once lived, in, I think, his -father’s house; and these substantial, ample, homely houses were the -first outlet of the well-to-do, the upper classes, of Edinburgh out of -the closes and high-up apartments, approached through the atrocities of -a common stair, in which so refined and luxurious a sybarite as Lawyer -Pleydell still lived in Sir Walter’s own time. These mansions are -severely plain outside—“undemonstrative,” as Scotch pride arrogantly -declares itself to be, aping humility with a pretence to which I, for -one, feel disposed to allow no quarter; but they are large and pleasant -inside, and the big square rooms the very thing to dance in or to feast -in. They were full of a happy crowd, bright in color and lively in -movement, with a larger share of golden hair and rosy cheeks than is to -be seen in most assemblies, and, perhaps, a greater freedom of laughter -and talk than would have been appropriate to a solemn ball in other -localities. For Edinburgh was not so large then as now, and they all -knew each other, and called each other by their Christian names—boy and -girl alike—with a general sense of fraternity modified by almost as -many love affairs as there were pairs of boys and girls present. There -were mothers and aunts all round the wide walls, but this did not subdue -the hilarity of the young ones, who knew each other’s mothers and aunts -almost as well as they knew their own, and counted upon their -indulgence. Lily Ramsay was almost the only girl who had nobody of her -own to turn to; but this only made her the more protected and -surrounded, every-body<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8"></a>{8}</span> feeling that the motherless girl had a special -claim. They were by no means angels, these old-fashioned Edinburgh folk: -sharper tongues could not be than were to be found among them, or more -wicked wits; but there was a great deal of kindness under the terrible -turbans which crowned the heads of the elder ladies and the scarfs which -fell from their bare shoulders, and they all knew every one, and every -one’s father and mother for generations back. Their dress was queer, or -rather, I should have said, it was queer before the present revival of -the early Victorian or late Georgian style began. They wore puffed-out -sleeves, with small feather pillows in them to keep them inflated; they -had bare shoulders and ringlets; they had scarfs of lace or silk, -carefully disposed so as not to cover any thing, but considered very -classical and graceful, drawn in over the elbows, by people who knew how -to wear them, making manifest the slender waist (or often the outlines -of a waist which had ceased to be slender) behind. And they had, as has -been said, a dreadful particular, which it is to be hoped the blind fury -of fashion will not bring up again—turbans upon their heads. Turbans -such as no Indian or Bedouin ever wore, of all colors and every kind of -savage decoration, such as may be seen in pictures of that alarming age.</p> - -<p>When young Lumsden left his Lily, it was in the midst of a group of -girls collected together in the interval between two dances, lamenting -that the programme was nearly exhausted, and that mamma had made a point -of not staying later than three o’clock. “Because it disturbs papa!” -said one of them indignantly, “though we all know he would go on snoring -if the Castle Rock were to fall!” They all said papa and mamma in those -days.</p> - -<p>“But mamma says there are so many parties going,” said another: “a ball -for almost every night next week; and what are we to do for dresses? -Tarlatan’s in rags with two, and even a silk slip is shameful to look at -at the end of a week.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9"></a>{9}</span></p> - -<p>“Lily has nothing to do but to get another whenever she wants it,” said -Jeanie Scott.</p> - -<p>“And throw away the old ones, she’s such a grand lady,” said Maggie -Lauder.</p> - -<p>“Hold all your tongues,” said Bella Rutherford; “it does her this good, -that she thinks less about it than any of us.”</p> - -<p>“She has other things to think of,” cried another; and there was a laugh -and a general chorus, “So have we all.” “But, Lily! is Sir Robert as -dour as ever?” one of the rosy creatures cried.</p> - -<p>“I don’t think I am going to any more of your balls,” said Lily; “I’m -tired of dancing. We just dance, dance, and think of nothing else.”</p> - -<p>“What else should we think about at our age?” said Mary Bell, opening -wide a pair of round blue eyes.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have plenty other things to think about, mamma says, and that -soon enough,” said Alison Murray, who was just going to be married, with -a sigh. “But there’s the music striking up again, and who’s my partner? -for I’m sure I don’t remember whether its Alick Scott, or Johnnie -Beatoun, or Bob Murray. Oh! is it you, Bob?” she said with relief, -putting her hand upon an outstretched arm. They were almost all in a -similar perplexity, except, indeed, such as had their own special -partner waiting. Lily was almost glad that it was not Ronald, but a big -young Macgregor, who led her off to the top of the room to a sedate -quadrille. The waltz existed in those days, but it was still an -indulgence, and looked upon with but scant favor by the mothers. The -elder folks were scandalized by the close contact, and even the girls -liked best that it should be an accepted lover, or at the least a -brother or cousin, whose arm encircled their waist. So they still -preferred dances in which there were “figures,” and took their pleasure -occasionally in a riotous “Lancers” or a merry reel with great relief. -Lily was young enough to forget herself and her troubles even in the -slow movement of the quadrilles, with every-body else<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10"></a>{10}</span> round chattering -and beaming and forgetting when it was their turn to dance. But she said -to herself that it was the last. Of all these dances of which they spoke -she would see none. When the others gathered, delighted to enjoy -themselves, she would be gazing across the dark moor, hearing nothing -but the hum of insects and the cry of the curlew, or, perhaps, a -watchful blackbird in the little clump of trees. Well! for to-night she -would forget.</p> - -<p>I need not say it was Lumsden who saw her to her own door on the other -side of the square. No one there would have been such a spoil-sport as -to interfere with his right whatever old Sir Robert might say. They -stole out in a lull of the leave-taking, when the most of the people -were gone, and others lingered for just this “one more” for which the -girls pleaded. The misty moonlight filled the square, and made all the -waiting carriages look like ghostly equipages bent upon some mystic -journey in the middle of the night. They paused at the corner of the -square, where the road led down to the pleasant Meadows, all white and -indefinite in the mist, spreading out into the distance. Lumsden would -fain have drawn her away into a little further discussion, wandering -under the trees, where they would have met nobody at that hour; but Lily -was not bold enough to walk in the Meadows between two and three in the -morning. She was willing, however, to walk up and down a little on the -other side of the square before she said good-night. Nobody saw them -there, except some of the coachmen on the boxes, who were too sleepy to -mind who passed, and Robina, who had silently opened the door and was -waiting for her mistress. Robina was several years older than Lily, and -had relinquished all thoughts of a sweetheart in her own person. She -stood concealing herself in the doorway, ready, if any sound should be -made within which denoted wakefulness on the part of Sir Robert, to -snatch her young lady even from her lover’s arms; and watching, with -very mingled feelings, the pair half seen—the white figure congenial to -the moonlight, and the dark one just visible, like a prop to a flower.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11"></a>{11}</span> -“Lily’s her name and Lily’s her nature,” said Robina to herself, with a -little moisture in her kind eyes; “but, oh! is he worthy of her, is he -worthy of her?” This was too deep a question to be solved by any thing -but time and proof, which are the last things to satisfy the heart. At -last there was a lingering parting, and Lily stole, in her white wraps, -all white from top to toe, into the dark and silent house.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Lily’s</span> room was faintly illuminated by a couple of candles, which, as it -was a large room with gloomy furniture, made little more than darkness -visible, except about the table on which they stood, the white cover of -which, and the dressing-glass that stood upon it, diffused the light a -little. It was not one of those dainty chambers in which our Lilys of -the present day are housed. One side of the room was occupied by a large -wardrobe of almost black mahogany, polished and gleaming with many -years’ manipulation, but out of reach of these little lights. The bed -was a large four-post bed, which once had been hung with those moreen -curtains which were the triumph of the bad taste of our fathers, and had -their appropriate accompaniment in black hair-cloth sofas and chairs. -Lily had been allowed to substitute for the moreen white dimity, which -was almost as bad, and hung stiff as a board from the valance ornamented -with bobs of cotton tassels. She could not help it if that was the best -that could be done in her day. Every thing, except the bed, was dark, -and the distance of the large room was black as night, except for the -relief of an open door into a small dressing-room which Robina occupied, -and in which a weird little dip candle with a long wick unsnuffed was -burning feebly. Nobody can imagine nowadays what it was to have candles -which required snuffing, and which, if not attended to, soon began to -bend and topple over, with a small red<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12"></a>{12}</span> column of consumed wick, in the -midst of a black and smoking crust. A silver snuffer tray is quite a -pretty article nowadays, and proves that its possessor had a -grandfather; but then! The candles on the dressing-table, however, were -carefully snuffed, and burned as brightly as was possible for them while -Robina took off her young mistress’s great white Indian mantle, with its -silken embroideries, and undid her little pearl necklace. Lily had the -milk-white skin of a Scotch girl, and the rose-tints; but she was brown -in hair and eyes, as most people are in all countries, and had no glow -of golden hair about her. She was tired and pale that night, and the -tears were very near her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Ye’ve been dancing more than ye should; these waltzes and new-fangled -things are real exhaustin’,” Robina said.</p> - -<p>“I have been dancing very little,” said Lily; “my heart was too heavy. -How can you dance when you have got your sentence in your pocket, and -the police coming for you to haul you away to the Grassmarket by skreigh -of day?”</p> - -<p>“Hoot, away with ye!” cried Robina, “what nonsense are ye talking? My -bonnie dear, ye’ll dance many a night yet at a’ the assemblies, and go -in on your ain man’s airm——”</p> - -<p>“It’s you that’s talking nonsense now. On whose arm? Have we not got our -sentence, you and me, to be banished to Dalrugas to-morrow, and never to -come back—unless——”</p> - -<p>“Ay, Miss Lily, unless! but that’s a big word.”</p> - -<p>“It is, perhaps, a big word; but it cannot touch me, that am not of the -kind that breaks my word or changes my mind,” said Lily, raising her -head with a gesture full of pride.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily, my dear, I ken what the Ramsays are!” cried the faithful -maid; “but there might be two meanings till it,” and she breathed a half -sigh over her young mistress’s head.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13"></a>{13}</span></p> - -<p>“You think, I know—and maybe I once thought, too; but you may dismiss -that from your mind, as I do,” said the girl, with a shake of the head -as if she were shaking something off. And then she added, clasping her -hands together: “Oh, if I were strong enough just to say, ‘I am not -caring about your money. I am not afraid to be poor. I can work for my -own living, and you can give your siller where you please!’ Oh, Beenie, -that is what I want to say!”</p> - -<p>“No, my darlin’, no; you must not say that. Oh, you must not say that!” -Robina cried.</p> - -<p>“And why? I must not do this or the other, and who are you that dares to -say so? I am my mother’s daughter as well as my father’s, and if that’s -not as good blood, it has a better heart. I might go there—they would -not refuse me.”</p> - -<p>“Without a penny,” said Robina. “Can you think o’t, Miss Lily? And is -that no banishment too?”</p> - -<p>Lily rose from her chair, shaking herself free from her maid, with her -pretty hair all hanging about her shoulders. It was pretty hair, though -it was brown like every-body else’s, full of incipient curl, the -crispness yet softness of much life. She shook it about her with her -rapid movement, bringing out all the undertones of color, and its wavy -freedom gave an additional sparkle to her eyes and animation to her -look. “Without a penny!” she cried. “And who is caring about your -pennies? You and the like of you, but not me, Beenie—not me! What do I -care for the money, the filthy siller, the pound notes, all black with -the hands they’ve come through! Am I minding about the grand dinners -that are never done, and the parties, where you never see those you want -to see, and the balls, where—— Just a little cottage, a drink of milk, -and a piece of cake off the girdle, and plenty to do: it’s that that -would please me!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, my bonnie Miss Lily!” was all that Beenie said.</p> - -<p>“And when I see,” said the girl, pacing up and down the room, her hair -swinging about her shoulders, her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14"></a>{14}</span> white under-garments all afloat about -her in the energy of her movements, “that other folk think of that -first. Whatever you do, you must not risk your fortune. Whatever you -have to bear, you must not offend your uncle, for he has the -purse-strings in his hand. Oh, my uncle, my uncle! It’s not,” she cried, -“that I wouldn’t be fond of him if he would let me, and care for what he -said, and do what he wanted as far as I was able: but his money! I -wish—oh, I wish his money—his money—was all at the bottom of the -sea!”</p> - -<p>“Whisht! whisht!” cried Beenie, with a movement of horror. “Oh, but -that’s a dreadful wish! You would, maybe, no like it yourself, Miss -Lily, for all you think now; but what would auld Sir Robert be without -his money? Instead of a grand gentleman, as he is, he would just be a -miserable auld man. He couldna bide it; he would be shootin’ himself or -something terrible. His fine dinners and his house, and his made dishes -and his wine that costs as much as would keep twa-three honest families! -Oh, ye dinna mean it, ye dinna mean it, Miss Lily! You dinna ken what -you are saying; ye wouldna like it yoursel’, and, oh, to think o’ him!”</p> - -<p>Lily threw herself down in the big chair, which rose above her head with -its high back and brought out all her whiteness against its sober cover. -She was silenced—obviously by the thought thus suggested of Sir Robert -as a poor man, which was an absurdity, and perhaps secretly, in that -innermost seclusion of the heart, which even its possessor does not -always realize, by a faint chill of wonder whether she would indeed and -really like to be poor, as she protested she should. It was quite true -that a drink of milk and a piece of oatcake appeared to her as much -nourishment as any person of refinement need care for. In the novels of -her day, which always affect the young mind, all the heroines lived upon -such fare, and were much superior to beef and mutton. But there were -undoubtedly other things—Robina, for instance; although no thought of -parting from Robina had ever crossed Lily’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15"></a>{15}</span> mind as a necessary part of -poverty. But she was silenced by these thoughts. She had not, indeed, -ever confessed in so many words even to Robina, scarcely to herself, -that it was Ronald who cared for the money, and that it was the want of -any impulse on his part to do without it that carried so keen a pang to -her heart. Had he cried, “A fig for the money!” then it might have been -her part to temporize and be prudent. The impetuosity, the recklessness, -should not, she felt, be on her side.</p> - -<p>It was on the very next day that her decision was to be made, and it had -not been till all other means had failed that Sir Robert had thus put -the matter to the touch. He had opposed her in many gentler ways before -it came to that. Sir Robert was not a brute or a tyrant—very far from -it. He was an old gentleman of fine manners, pluming himself on his -successes with “the other sex,” and treating all women with a superfine -courtesy which only one here and there divined to conceal contempt. Few -men—one may say with confidence, no elderly man without wife or -daughters—has much respect for women in general. It is curious, it is -to some degree reciprocal, it is of course always subject to personal -exceptions; yet it is the rule between the two sections of humanity -which nevertheless have to live in such intimate intercourse with each -other. In an old bachelor like Sir Robert, and one, too, who was -conscious of having imposed upon many women, this prepossession was more -strong than among men of more natural relationships. And Lily, who was -only his niece, and had not lived with him until very lately, had not -overcome all prejudices in his mind, as it is sometimes given to a -daughter to do. He had thought first that he could easily separate her -from the young man who did not please him, and bestow her, as he had a -right to bestow his probable heiress, on whom he pleased. When this -proved ineffectual, he cursed her obstinacy, but reflected that it was a -feature in women, and therefore nothing to be surprised at. They were -always taken in by fictitious qualities—who could know it better than -he?—<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16"></a>{16}</span>and considered it a glory to stick to a suitor unpalatable to -their belongings. And then he had threatened her with the loss of the -fortune which she had been brought up to expect. “See if this fine -fellow you think so much of will have you without your money,” he said. -Lily had never in so many words put Lumsden to the trial, never proposed -to him to defy Sir Robert; but she had made many an attempt to discover -his thoughts, and even to push him to this rash solution, and, with an -ache at her heart, had felt that there was at least a doubt whether the -fine fellow would think so much of her if she were penniless. She had -never put it to the test, partly because she dared not, though she had -not been able to refrain from an occasional burst of defiance and hot -entreaty to Sir Robert to keep his money to himself. And now she was to -decide for herself—to give Ronald over forever, or to give over -Edinburgh and the society in which she might meet him, and keep her love -at the cost of martyrdom in her uncle’s lonely shooting-box on the -moors. There was, of course, a second alternative—that which she had so -often thought of: to refuse, to leave Sir Robert’s house, to seek refuge -in some cottage, to live on milk and oatcake, and provide for herself. -If the alternative had been to run away with her lover, to be married to -him in humility and poverty, to keep his house and cook his dinners and -iron his linen, Lily would not have hesitated for a moment. But he had -not asked her to do this—had not dreamed of it, it seemed; and to run -away alone and work for herself would be, Lily felt, to expose him to -much animadversion as well as herself; and, most of all, it would betray -fully to herself and to her uncle, with that sneer on his face, the -certainty that Ronald would not risk having her without her money, that -discovery which she held at arm’s-length and would not consent to make -herself sure of. All these thoughts were tumultuous in her mind as she -opened her eyes to the light of a new day. This was the final moment, -the turning-point of her life. She thought at first when she woke that -it was still the same misty moonlight on which she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17"></a>{17}</span> shut her eyes, -and that there must still be some hours between her and the day. But it -was only an easterly haar with which the air was full—a state of -atmosphere not unknown in Edinburgh, and which wraps the landscape in a -blinding shroud as of white wool, obliterating every feature in a place -which has so many. Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Craigs and the Castle -Rock had all disappeared in it from those who were in a position to see -them; and here, in George Square, even the brown houses opposite had -gone out of sight, and the trees in the garden loomed dimly like ghosts, -a branch thrust out here and there. Lily asked herself, was it still -night? And then her mind awoke to a state of the atmosphere not at all -unusual, and a sense that the moment of her fate had arrived, and that -every thing must be settled for her for good or for evil this day.</p> - -<p>She was very quiet, and said scarcely any thing even to Robina, who -dressed her young mistress with the greatest care, bringing out a dress -of which Sir Robert had expressed his approval, without consulting Lily, -who indeed paid little attention to this important matter. Considering -the visions of poverty and independence that ran in her mind, it was -wonderful how peaceably she resigned herself to Robina’s administration. -Sometimes, when a fit of that independence seized her, she would push -Robina away and do every thing for herself. Beenie much exaggerated the -misfortunes of the result in such moments. “Her hair just a’ come down -tumbling about her shoulders in five minutes,” she said, which was not -true: though Lily did not deny that she was not equal to the elaborate -braids which were in fashion at the moment, and could not herself plait -her hair in any thing more than three strands, while Beenie was capable -of seven, or any number more.</p> - -<p>But to-day she was quite passive, and took no interest in her -appearance. Her hair was dressed in a sort of coronet, which was a mode -only used on grand occasions. Ordinarily it was spread over the back of -the head in woven coils and circles. There was not any thing -extraordinary<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18"></a>{18}</span> in Lily’s beauty. It was the beauty of youth and -freshness and health, a good complexion, good eyes, and features not -much to speak of. People did not follow her through the streets, nor -stand aside to make way for her when she entered a room. In Edinburgh -there were hundreds as pretty as she; and yet, when all was said, she -was a pretty creature, good enough and fair enough to be a delight and -pride to any one who loved her. She had innumerable faults, but she was -all the sweeter for them, and impulses of temper, swift wrath, and -indignation, and impatience, which proved her to be any thing but -perfect. Sometimes she would take you up at a word and misinterpret you -altogether. In all things she was apt to be too quick, to run away with -a meaning before you, if you were of slow movement, had got it half -expressed. And this and many other things about her were highly -provoking, and called forth answering impatience from others. But for -all this she was a very lovable, and, as other girls said, nice, girl. -She raised no jealousies; she entertained no spites. She was always -natural and spontaneous, and did nothing from calculation, not even so -much as the putting on of a dress. It did not occur to her even to -think, to enquire whether she was looking her best when the hour had -come at which she was to go to Sir Robert. Robina took her by the -shoulders and turned her slowly round before the glass; but Lily did not -know why. She gave her faithful servant a faint smile over her own -shoulder in the mirror, but it did not enter into her mind that it was -expedient to look her best when she went down stairs to her uncle. If -any one had put it into words, she would have asked, what did he care? -Would he so much as notice her dress? It was ridiculous to think of such -a thing—an old man like Sir Robert, with his head full of different -matters. Thus, without any thought on that subject, she went slowly down -stairs—not flying, as was her wont—very sedately, as if she were -counting every step; for was it not her fate and Ronald’s which was to -be settled to-day?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19"></a>{19}</span></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">“So</span> you are there, Lily,” Sir Robert said.</p> - -<p>“Yes, uncle, I am here.”</p> - -<p>“There is one thing about you,” he said, with a laugh: “you never shirk. -Now judicious shirking is not a bad thing. I might have forgotten all -about it——”</p> - -<p>“But I couldn’t forget,” said Lily firmly. These words, however, roused -her to sudden self-reproach. If she had not been so exact, perhaps the -crisis might have been tided over and nothing happened. It was just like -her! Supposing her little affairs were of more importance than any thing -else in the world! This roused her from the half-passive condition in -which she had spent the morning, the feeling that every thing depended -on her uncle, and nothing on herself.</p> - -<p>“Now that you are here,” he said, not at all unkindly, “you may as well -sit down. While you stand there I feel that you have come to scold me -for some fault of mine, which is a reversal of the just position, don’t -you think?”</p> - -<p>“No, uncle,” replied Lily, “of course I have not come to scold you—that -would be ridiculous; but I am not come to be scolded either, for I have -not done any thing wrong.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll come to that presently. Sit down, sit down,” he said with -impatience. Lily placed herself on the chair he pushed toward her, and -then there was a moment’s silence. Sir Robert was an old man (in Lily’s -opinion) and she was a young girl, but they were antagonists not badly -matched, and he had a certain respect for the pluck and firmness of this -little person who was not afraid of him. They were indeed so evenly -matched that there ensued a little pause as they both looked at each -other in the milky-white daylight, full of mist and cold, which filled -the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20"></a>{20}</span> windows. Sir Robert had a fire, though fires had been given -up in the house. It burned with a little red point, sultry and -smouldering, as fires have a way of doing in summer. The room was large -and sombre, with pale green walls hung with some full-length portraits, -the furniture all large, heavy, and dark. A white bust of himself stood -stern upon a black pedestal in a corner—so white that amid all the -sober lines of the room it caught the eye constantly. And Sir Robert was -not a handsome man. His features were blunt and his air homely; his head -was not adapted for marble. In that hard material it looked frowning, -severe, and merciless. The bust had lived in this room longer than Sir -Robert had done, and Lily had derived her first impressions of him from -its unyielding face. The irregularities of the real countenance leaned -to humor and a shrewdness which was not unkindly; but there was no -relenting in the marble head.</p> - -<p>“Well,” he said at last, “now we’ve met to have it out, Lily. You take -me at my word, and it is best so. How old are you now?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t see,” said Lily breathlessly, “what that can have to do with -it, uncle! but I’m twenty-two—or at least I shall be on the 20th of -August, and that is not far away.”</p> - -<p>“No, it is not far away. Twenty-two—and I am—well, sixty-two, we may -say, with allowances. That is a great difference between people that -meet to discuss an important question—on quite an equal footing, Lily, -as you suppose.”</p> - -<p>“I never pretended—to be your equal, uncle!”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t suppose so—not in words, not in experience, and such -like—but in intention and all that, and in knowing what suits -yourself.”</p> - -<p>Lily made no reply, but she looked at him—silent, not yielding, tapping -her foot unconsciously on the carpet, nervous, yet firm, not disposed to -give way a jot, though she recognized a certain truth in what he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21"></a>{21}</span></p> - -<p>“This gives you, you must see, a certain advantage to begin with,” said -Sir Robert, “for you are firmly fixed upon one thing, whatever I say or -any one, and determined not to budge from your position; whereas I am -quite willing to hear reason, if there is any reason to show.”</p> - -<p>“Uncle!” Lily said, and then closed her lips and returned to her -silence. It was hard for her to keep silent with her disposition, and -yet she suddenly perceived, with one of those flashes of understanding -which sometimes came to her, that silence could not be controverted, -whereas words under Sir Robert’s skilful attack would probably topple -over at once, like a house of cards.</p> - -<p>“Well?” he said. While she, poor child, was panting and breathless, he -was quite cool and collected. At present he rather enjoyed the sight of -the little thing’s tricks and devices, and was amused to watch how far -her natural skill, and that intuitive cunning which such a man believes -every woman to possess, would carry her. He was a little provoked that -she did not follow that impetuous exclamation “Uncle!” with any thing -more.</p> - -<p>“Well,” he repeated, wooing her, as he hoped, to destruction, “what -more? Unless you state your case how am I to find out whether there is -any justice in it or not?”</p> - -<p>“Uncle,” said Lily, “I did not come to state my case, which would not -become me. I came because you objected to me, to hear what you wanted me -to do.”</p> - -<p>“By Jove!” said Sir Robert, with a laugh; and then he added, “To be so -young you are a very cool hand, my dear.”</p> - -<p>“How am I a cool hand? I am not cool at all. I am very anxious. It does -not matter much to you, Uncle Robert, what you do with me; but,” said -Lily, tears springing to her eyes, “it will matter a great deal to me.”</p> - -<p>“You little——” He could not find an epithet that suited, so left the -adjective by itself, in sheer disability<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22"></a>{22}</span> to express himself. He would -have said hussy had he been an Englishman. He was tempted to say cutty, -being a Scot—innocent epithets enough, both, but sufficient to make -that little—— flare up. “You mean,” he said, “I suppose, that you have -nothing to do with it, and that the whole affair is in my hands.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, uncle, I think it is,” said Lily very sedately.</p> - -<p>He looked at her again with another ejaculation on his lips, and then he -laughed.</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear,” he said, “if that is the case, we can make short work -of it—as you are in such a submissive frame of mind and have no will or -intentions on your own part.”</p> - -<p>Here Lily’s impatient spirit got the better of the hasty impulse of -policy which she had taken up by sudden inspiration. “I never said -that!” she cried.</p> - -<p>“Then you will be so good as to explain to me what you did say, or -rather what you meant, which is more important still,” Sir Robert said.</p> - -<p>“I meant—just what I have always meant,” said Lily, drawing back her -chair a little and fixing her eyes upon her foot, which beat the floor -with a nervous movement.</p> - -<p>“And what is that?” he asked.</p> - -<p>Lily drew back a little more, her foot ceased to tap, her hands clasped -each other. She looked up into his face with half-reproachful eyes full -of meaning. “Oh, Uncle Robert, you know!”</p> - -<p>Sir Robert jumped up from his chair, and then sat down again. -Demonstrations of wrath were of no use. He felt inclined to cry, “You -little cutty!” again, but did not. He puffed out a quick breath, which -was a sign of great impatience, yet self-repression. “You mean, I -suppose, that things are exactly as they were—that you mean to pay no -attention to my representations, that you choose your own will above -mine—notwithstanding that I have complete power over you, and can do -with you what I will?”</p> - -<p>“Nobody can do that,” said Lily, only half aloud. “I<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23"></a>{23}</span> am not a doll,” -she said, “Uncle Robert. You have the power—so that I don’t like to -disobey you.”</p> - -<p>“But do it all the same!” he cried.</p> - -<p>“Not if I can help it. I would like to do it. I would like to be -independent. It seems dreadful that one should be obliged to do, not -what one wishes, but what another person wills. But you have the -power——”</p> - -<p>“Of the ways and means,” he said; “I have the purse-strings in my hand.”</p> - -<p>It was Lily’s turn now to start to her feet. “Oh, how mean of you, how -base of you!” she said. “You, a great man and a soldier, and me only a -girl. To threaten me with your purse-strings! As if I cared for your -purse-strings. Give it all away from me; give it all—that’s what I -should like best. I will go away with Beenie, and we’ll sew, or do -something else for our living. I’m very fond of poultry—I could be a -henwife; or there are many other things that I could do. Give it all -away! Tie them up tight. I just hate your money and your purse-strings. -I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea!”</p> - -<p>“You would find things very different if they were, I can tell you,” he -said, with a snort.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, very different. I would be free. I would take my own way. I -would have nobody to tyrannize over me. Oh, uncle! forgive me! forgive -me! I did not mean to say that! If you were poor, I would take care of -you. I would remember you were next to my father, and I would do any -thing you could say.”</p> - -<p>He kept his eyes fixed on her as she stood thus, defiant yet -compunctious, before him. “I don’t doubt for a moment you would do every -thing that was most senseless and imprudent,” he said.</p> - -<p>Then Lily dropped into her chair and cried a little—partly that she -could not help it, partly that it was a weapon of war like another—and -gained a little time. But Sir Robert was not moved by her crying; she -had not, indeed, expected that he would be.</p> - -<p>“I don’t see what all this has to do with it,” he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24"></a>{24}</span> “Consider this -passage of arms over, and let us get to business, Lily. It was necessary -there should be a flash in the pan to begin.”</p> - -<p>Lily dried her eyes; she set her little mouth much as Sir Robert set -his, and then said in a small voice: “I am quite ready, Uncle Robert,” -looking not unlike the bust as she did so. He did not look at all like -the bust, for there was a great deal of humor in his face. He thought he -saw through all this little flash in the pan, and that it had been -intended from the beginning as a preface of operations and by way of -subduing him to her will. In all of which he was quite wrong.</p> - -<p>“I am glad to hear it, Lily. Now I want you to be reasonable: the -thunder is over and the air is clearer. You want to marry a man of whom -I don’t approve.”</p> - -<p>“One word,” she said with great dignity. “I am wanting to marry—nobody. -There is plenty of time.”</p> - -<p>“I accept the correction. You want to carry on a love affair which you -prefer at this moment. It is more fun than marrying, and in that way you -get all the advantages I can give you, and the advantage of a lover’s -attentions into the bargain. I congratulate you, my dear, on making the -best, as the preacher says, of both worlds.”</p> - -<p>Lily flushed and clasped her hands together, and there came from her -expanded nostrils what in Sir Robert’s case we have called a snort of -passion. Lily’s nostrils were small and pretty and delicate. This was a -puff of heated breath, and no more.</p> - -<p>“Eh?” he said; but she mastered herself and said nothing, which made it -more difficult for him to go on. Finally, however, he resumed.</p> - -<p>“You think,” he said, “that it will be more difficult for me to restrain -you if you or your lover have no immediate intention of marrying. And -probably he—for I do him the justice to say he is a very acute -fellow—sees the advantage of that. But it will not do for me. I must -have certainty one way or another. I am not going to give the comfort of -my life over into your silly hands.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25"></a>{25}</span> No, I don’t even say that you are -sillier than most of your age—on the contrary; but I don’t mean,” he -added deliberately, “to put my peace of mind into your hands. You will -give me your word to give up the lad Lumsden, or else you will pack off -without another word to Dalrugas. It is a comfortable house, and Dougal -and his wife will be very attentive to you. What’s in a locality? George -Square is pleasant enough, but it’s prose of the deepest dye for a lady -in love. You’ll find nothing but poetry on my moor. Poetry,” he added, -with a laugh, “sonnets such as you will rarely match, and moonlight -nights, and all the rest of it; just the very thing for a lovelorn -maiden: but very little else, I allow. And what do you want more? Plenty -of time to think upon the happy man.”</p> - -<p>His laugh was fiendish, Lily thought, who held herself with both her -hands to keep still and to retain command of herself. She made no -answer, though the self-restraint was almost more than she could bear.</p> - -<p>“Well,” he said, after a pause, “is this what you are going to decide -upon? There is something to balance all these advantages. While you are -thinking of him he will probably <i>not</i> return the compliment. Out of -sight, out of mind. He will most likely find another Lily not so closely -guarded as you, and while you are out of the way he will transfer his -attention to her. It will be quite natural. There are few men in the -world that would not do the same. And while you are gazing over the -moor, thinking of him, he will be taking the usual means to indemnify -himself and forget you.”</p> - -<p>“I am not afraid,” said Lily tersely.</p> - -<p>“Oh, you are not afraid? It’s little you know of men, my dear. Lumsden’s -a clever, ambitious young fellow. He perhaps believes he’s fond of you. -He is fond of any thing that will help him on in the world and give him -what he wants—which is a helping hand in life, and ease of mind, and -money to tide him over till he makes himself known. Oh, he’ll succeed in -the end, there is little doubt<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26"></a>{26}</span> of that; but he shall not succeed at my -expense. Now, Lily, do not sit and glare, like a waxen image, but give -me an answer like a sensible girl, as you can be if you like. Will you -throw away your happy life, and society and variety and pleasure, and -your balls and parties, all for the sake of a man that the moment your -back is turned will think no more of you?”</p> - -<p>“Uncle,” said Lily, clearing her throat. But she could not raise her -voice, which extreme irritation, indignation, and the strong effort of -self-restraint seemed to have stifled. She made an effort, but produced -nothing but a hoarse repetition of his name.</p> - -<p>“I hope I have touched you,” he said. “Come, my dear, be a sensible -lassie, and be sure I am speaking for your good. There are more fish in -the sea than ever came out in a net. I will find you a better man than -Lumsden, and one with a good house to take you home to, and not a -penniless——”</p> - -<p>“Stop!” she cried, with an angry gesture. “Stop! Do you think I am -wanting a man? Me! Just any man, perhaps, you think, no matter who? Oh, -if I were only a laddie instead of a useless girl you would never, never -dare, great man as you are, to speak like that to me!”</p> - -<p>“Certainly I should not,” he said, with a laugh, “for you would have -more sense, and would not think any woman was worth going into exile -for. But, girl as you are, Lily, the choice is in your own hands. You -can have, not love in a cottage, but love on a moor, which soon will be -unrequited love, and that, we all know, is the most tragic and -interesting of all.”</p> - -<p>“Uncle,” said Lily, slowly recovering herself, “do you think it is a -fine thing for a man like you, a grand gentleman, and old, and that -knows every thing, to make a jest and a mockery of one that is young -like me, and has no words to make reply? Is it a joke to think of me -breaking my heart, as you say, among all the bonnie sunsets and the -moonlight nights and the lonely, lonely moor? I may have to do it if -it’s your will; but it’s not for<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27"></a>{27}</span> the like of you, that have your -freedom and can do what you choose, to make a mock at those that are -helpless like me.”</p> - -<p>“Helpless!” he said. “Nothing of the sort; it is all in your own hands.”</p> - -<p>And then there was again a pause. He thought she was making up her mind -to submit to his will. And she was bursting with the effort to contain -herself, and all her indignation and wrath. Her pride would not let her -burst forth into cries and tears, but it was with the greatest -watchfulness upon herself that she kept in these wild expressions of -emotion, and the hot refusals that pressed to her lips—refusals to obey -him, to be silenced by him, to be sentenced to unnatural confinement and -banishment and dreary exile. Why should one human creature have such -power of life and death over another? Her whole being revolted in a -passion of restrained impatience and rage and fear.</p> - -<p>“Well,” he said lightly, “which is it to be? Don’t trifle with your own -comfort, Lily. Just give me the answer that you will see no more of -young Lumsden. Give him no more encouragement; think of him no more. -That is all I ask. Only give me your promise—I put faith in you. Think -of him no more; that is all I ask.”</p> - -<p>“All you ask—only that!” said Lily in her fury. “Only that! Oh, it’s -not much, is it? not much—only that!” She laughed, too, with a sort of -echo of his laugh; but somehow he did not find it to his mind.</p> - -<p>“That is all,” he said gravely; “and I don’t think that it is very much -to ask, considering that you owe every thing to me.”</p> - -<p>“It would have been better for me if I had owed you nothing, uncle,” -said Lily. “Why did you ever take any heed of me? I would have been -earning my own bread and had my freedom and lived my own life if you had -left me as I was.”</p> - -<p>“This is what one gets,” he said, as if to himself, with a smile, “for -taking care of other people’s children. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28"></a>{28}</span> we need not fall into -general reflections, nor yet into recriminations. I would probably not -do it again if I had it to do a second time; but the thing I want from -you at the present moment is merely a yes or no.”</p> - -<p>“No!” Lily said almost inaudibly; but her tightly closed lips, her -resolute face, said it for her without need of any sound.</p> - -<p>“No?” he repeated, half incredulous; then, with a nod, flinging back his -head: “Well, my dear, you must have your wilful way. Dalrugas will daily -be growing bonnier and bonnier at this season of the year; and to-morrow -you will get ready to go away.”</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">“I have</span> been a fool,” said Lily. “I have not said any thing that I meant -to say. I had a great many good reasons all ready, and I did not say one -of them. I just said silly things. He played upon me like a fiddle; he -made me so angry I could not endure myself, and then I had either to -hold my tongue or say things that were silly and that I ought not to -have said.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear me, dear me,” cried Robina, “I just thought you would do that. -If I had only been behind the door to give ye a look, Miss Lily. Ye are -too impetuous when you are left to yourself.”</p> - -<p>“I was not impetuous; I was just silly,” Lily said. “He provoked me till -I did not know what I was saying, and then I held my tongue at the wrong -places. But it would just have come to the same whatever I had said. -He’ll not yield, and I’ll not yield, and what can we do but clash? We’re -to start off for Dalrugas to-morrow, and that’s all that we have to -think of now.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Robina. She wrung her hands, and, with a look of -awe, added: “It’s like thae poor Poles in ‘Elizabeth’ going off in -chains to that place they call<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29"></a>{29}</span> Siberée, where there’s nothing but snow -and ice and wild, wild forests. Oh, my bonnie lamb! I mind the woods up -yonder where it’s dark i’ the mid of day. And are ye to be banished -there, you that are just in your bloom, and every body at your feet? Oh, -Miss Lily, it canna be, it canna be!”</p> - -<p>“It will have to be,” said Lily resolutely, “and we must make the best -of it. Take all the working things you can think of; I’ve been idle, and -spent my time in nothings. I’ll learn all your bonnie lace stitches, -Beenie, and how to make things and embroideries, like Mary, Queen of -Scots. We’ll be two prisoners, and Dougal will turn the key on us every -night, and we’ll make friends with somebody like Roland, the page, that -will make false keys and let us down from the window, with horses -waiting; and then we’ll career across the country in the dead of night, -and folk will take us for ghosts; and then—we’ll maybe ride on -broomsticks, and fly up to the moon!” cried Lily, with a burst of -laughter, which ended in a torrent of tears.</p> - -<p>“Oh, my bonnie dear! oh, my lamb!” cried Beenie, taking the girl’s head -upon her ample breast. It is not to be imagined that these were -hysterics, though hysterics were the fashion of the time, and the young -ladies of the day indulged in them freely at any contrariety. Lily was -over-excited and worn out, and she had broken down for the moment. But -in a few minutes she had raised her head, pushed Beenie away, and got up -with bright eyes to meet her fate.</p> - -<p>“Take books too,” she cried, “as many as you can, and perhaps he’ll let -us keep our subscription to the library, and they can send us things by -the coach. And take all my pencils and my colors. I’ll maybe turn into a -great artist on the moors that Uncle Robert says are so bonnie. He went -on about his sunsets and his moonlights till he nearly drove me mad,” -cried Lily, “mocking! Oh, Beenie, what hard hearts they have, these old -men!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30"></a>{30}</span></p> - -<p>“I would just like,” cried the faithful maid, “to have twa-three words -with him. Oh, I should like to have twa-three words with him, just him -and me by our twa sels!”</p> - -<p>“And much good that would do! He would just turn you outside in with his -little finger,” said Lily in high scorn. But naturally Robina was not of -that opinion. She was ready to go to the stake for her mistress, and -facing Sir Robert in his den was not a bad version of going to the -stake. It might procure her instant dismissal for any thing Beenie knew; -he might tell old Haygate, the old soldier-servant, who was now his -butler, and an Englishman, consequently devoid of sympathy, to put her -to the door; anyhow, he would scathe her with satirical words and that -look which even Lily interpreted as mocking, and which is the most -difficult of all things to bear. But Beenie had a great confidence that -there were “twa-three things” that nobody could press upon Sir Robert’s -attention but herself. She thought of it during the morning hours to the -exclusion of every thing else, and finally after luncheon was over, when -Lily was occupied with some youthful visitors, Beenie, with a beating -heart, put her plan into execution. Haygate was out of the way, too, the -Lord be praised. He had started out upon some mission connected with the -wine-cellar; and Thomas, the footman, was indigenous, had been Tommy to -Robina from his boyhood, and was so, she said, like a boy of her own. He -would never put her to the door, whatever Sir Robert might say. She went -down accordingly to the dining-room, after the master of the house had -enjoyed his good lunch and his moment of somnolence after it (which he -would not for the world have admitted to be a nap), and tapped lightly, -tremulously, with all her nerves in a twitter, at the door. To describe -what was in Beenie’s heart when she opened it in obedience to his call -to come in was more than words are capable of: it was like going to the -stake.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Beenie! so it is you,” the master said.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Deed, it’s just me, Sir Robert. I thought if I might say a word——”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31"></a>{31}</span></p> - -<p>“Oh, say a dozen words if you like; but, mind, I am going out, and I -have no time for more.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Sir Robert.” Beenie came inside the door, and closed it softly -after her. She then took up the black silk apron which she wore, -denoting her rank as lady’s maid, to give her a countenance, and made an -imaginary frill upon it with her hands. “I just thought,” she said, with -her head bent and her eyes fixed on this useful occupation, “that I -would like to say twa-three words about Miss Lily, Sir Robert——”</p> - -<p>“Oh,” he said, “and what might you have to say about Miss Lily? You -should know more about her, it is true, than any of us. Has she sent you -to say that she has recovered her senses, and is going to behave like a -girl of sense, as I always took her to be?”</p> - -<p>Beenie raised her eyes from her fantastic occupation, and looked at Sir -Robert. She shook her head. She formed her lips into a round “No,” -pushing them forth to emphasize the syllable. “Eh, Sir Robert,” she said -at last, “you’re a clever man—you understand many a thing that’s just -Greek and Hebrew to the likes of us; but ye dinna understand a lassie’s -heart. How should ye?” said Beenie, compassionately shaking her head -again.</p> - -<p>Sir Robert’s luncheon had been good; he had enjoyed his nap; he was -altogether in a good humor. “Well,” he said, “if you can enlighten me on -that point, Beenie, fire away!”</p> - -<p>“Weel, Sir Robert, do ye no think you’re just forcing her more and more -into it, to make her suffer for her lad, and to have nothing to do but -think upon him and weary for him away yonder on yon solitary moor? Eh, -it’s like driving her to the wilderness, or away to Siberée, that awfu’ -place where they send the Poles, as ye will read in ‘Elizabeth,’ to make -them forget their country, and where they just learn to think upon it -more and more. Eh, Sir Robert, we’re awfu’ perverse in that way! I would -have praised him up to her, and said there was no man like him in the -world. I would have said he was just the one that cared<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32"></a>{32}</span> nothing for -siller, that would have taken her in her shift—begging your pardon for -sic a common word; I would have hurried her on to fix the day, and made -every thing as smooth as velvet; and then just as keen as she is for it -now I would have looked to see her against it then.”</p> - -<p>“I allow,” said Sir Robert, with a laugh, “that you have a cloud of -witnesses on your side; but I am not quite sure that I put faith in -them. If I were to hurry her on to fix the day, as you say, I would get -rid, no doubt, of the trouble; but I am much afraid that Lily, instead -of starting off on the other tack, would take me at my word.”</p> - -<p>“Sir,” said Beenie in a lowered voice, coming a step nearer, “if we were -to leave it to him to show her the contrary, it would be more effectual -than any thing you could say.”</p> - -<p>“So,” said Sir Robert, with a long whistle of surprise, “you trust him -no more than I do? I always thought you were a woman of sense.”</p> - -<p>“I am saying nothing about that, Sir Robert,” Beenie replied.</p> - -<p>“But don’t ye see, you silly woman, that he would take my favor for -granted in that case, and would not show her to the contrary, but would -marry her in as great haste as we liked, feeling sure that I had -committed myself, and would not then draw back?”</p> - -<p>“He would do ye nae justice, Sir Robert, if he thought that.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean, you libellous person? You think I would encourage her -in her folly in the hope of changing her mind, and then deceive and -abandon her when she had followed my advice? No,” he said, “I am not so -bad as that.”</p> - -<p>“You should ken best, Sir Robert,” said Beenie, “but for me, I would not -say. But if ye will just permit me one more word. Here she has plenty of -things to think of: her parties and her dress, and her friends and her -other partners—there’s three young leddies up the stair<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33"></a>{33}</span> at this moment -talking a’ the nonsense that comes into their heads—but there she would -have no person——”</p> - -<p>“Not a soul, except Dougal and his wife,” said Sir Robert, with a -chuckle.</p> - -<p>“And nothing to think of but just—him. Oh, Sir Robert, think what ye -are driving the bairn to! No diversions and no distractions, but just to -think upon him night and day. There’s things she finds to object to in -him when he’s by her side—just like you and me. But when she’s there -she’ll think and think upon him till she makes him out to be an angel o’ -light. He will just get to be the only person in the world. He will -write to her——”</p> - -<p>“That he shall not do! Dougal shall have orders to stop every letter.”</p> - -<p>Beenie smiled a calm, superior smile. “And ye think Dougal—or any man -in the world—can keep a lad and lass from communication. Eh, Sir -Robert, you’re a clever man! but just as ignorant, as ignorant as any -bairn.”</p> - -<p>Sir Robert was much amused, but he began to get a little impatient. “If -they can find means of communicating in spite of the solitude and the -miles of moor and Dougal, then I really think they will deserve to be -permitted to ruin all their prospects,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Sir Robert!”</p> - -<p>“No more,” he said. “I have already heard you with great patience, -Beenie. I don’t think you have thrown any new light on the subject. Go -and pack your boxes; for the coach starts early to-morrow, and you -should have every thing ready both for her and yourself to-night.”</p> - -<p>Beenie turned away to the door, and then she turned round again. She -stood pinching the imaginary frill on her apron, with her head held on -one side, as if to judge the effect. “Will that be your last word, Sir -Robert?” she said. “She’s your brother’s bairn, and the only one in the -family—and a tender bit thing, no used to unkindness, nor to be left -all her lane as if there was naebody left in the world. Oh, think upon -the bit thing sent into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34"></a>{34}</span> wilderness! It is prophets and great men -that are sent there in the way of Providence, and no a slip of a lassie. -Oh, Sir Robert, think again! that’s no your last word?”</p> - -<p>“Would you like me to ring for Haygate and have you turned out of the -house? If you stay another minute, that will be my last word.”</p> - -<p>“Na,” said Beenie, “Haygate’s out, Sir Robert, and Tommy’s not the -lad——”</p> - -<p>“Will you go, you vixen?” Sir Robert shouted at the top of his voice.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go, since I cannot help it; but if it comes to harm, oh, Sir -Robert! afore God the wyte will be on your head.”</p> - -<p>Beenie dried her eyes as she went sorrowfully upstairs. “The wyte will -be on his head; but, oh, the sufferin’ and the sorrow that will be on -hers!” Beenie said to herself.</p> - -<p>But it was evident there was no more to be said. As she went slowly -upstairs with a melancholy countenance, she met at the door of the -drawing-room the three young ladies who had been—according to her own -description—“talking a’ the nonsense that came into their heads,” with -Lily in the midst, who was taking leave of them. “Oh, there is Robina,” -they all cried out together. “Beenie will tell us what it means. What is -the meaning of it all? She says she is going away. Beenie, Beenie, -explain this moment! What does she mean about going away?”</p> - -<p>“Eh, my bonnie misses,” cried Beenie, “who am I that I should explain my -mistress’s dark sayings? I am just a servant, and ken nothing but what’s -said to me by the higher powers.”</p> - -<p>There was what Beenie afterward explained as “a cackle o’ laughing” over -these words, which were just like Beenie, the girls said. “But what do -you know from the higher powers? And why, why is Lily to be snatched -away?” they said. Robina softly pushed her way through them with the -superior weight of her bigness. “Ye must just ask herself, for it is -beyond me,” she said.</p> - -<p>Lily rushed after her as soon as the visitors were gone,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35"></a>{35}</span> pale with -expectation. “Oh, Beenie, what did he say?” she cried.</p> - -<p>“What did who say, Miss Lily? for I do not catch your meaning,” said the -faithful maid.</p> - -<p>“Do you mean to say that you did not go down stairs——”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Miss Lily, I went down the stairs.”</p> - -<p>“To see my uncle?” said the girl. “I know you saw my uncle. I heard your -voice murmuring, though they all talked at once. Oh, Beenie, Beenie, -what did he say?”</p> - -<p>“Since you will have it, Miss Lily, I did just see Sir Robert. There was -nobody but me in the way, and I saw your uncle. He was in a very good -key after that grand dish of Scots collops. So I thought I would just -ask him if it was true.”</p> - -<p>“And what did he say?”</p> - -<p>Beenie shook her head and said, “No,” in dumb show with her pursed-out -lips. “He just said it was your own doing, and not his,” she added, -after this impressive pantomime.</p> - -<p>“Oh, how did he dare to say so! It was none of my doing—how could he -say it was my doing? Was I likely to want to be banished away to -Dalrugas moor, and never see a living soul?”</p> - -<p>“He said you wouldna yield, and he wouldna yield; and in that case, Miss -Lily, I ask you what could the like of me do?”</p> - -<p>“<i>I</i> would not yield,” said Lily. “Oh, what a story! what a story! What -have I got to yield? It was just him, him, his own self, and nobody -else. He thinks more of his own will than of all the world.”</p> - -<p>“He said you would not give up your love—I am meaning young Mr. -Lumsden—no, for any thing he could say.”</p> - -<p>“And what would I give him up for?” cried Lily, changing in a moment -from pale to red. “What do I ever see of Sir Robert, Beenie? He’s not up -in the morning, and he’s late at night. I have heard you say yourself -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36"></a>{36}</span>about that club—— I see him at his lunch, and that’s all, and how can -you talk and make great friends when your mouth is full, and him so -pleased with a good dish and angry when it’s not to his mind? Would I -give up Ronald, that is all I have, for Sir Robert with his mouth full? -And how does he dare to ask me—him that will not do a thing for me?”</p> - -<p>“That is just it,” said Beenie, shaking her head; “you think a’ the -reason’s on your side, and he thinks a’ the reason is on his; and he’ll -have his own gate and you’ll have your will, and there is no telling -what is to be done between you. Oh, Miss Lily, my bonnie dear, you are -but a young thing. It’s more reasonable Sir Robert should have his will -than you. He’s gone through a great deal of fighting and battles and -troubles, and what have you ever gone through but the measles and the -king-cough, that couldna be helped? It’s mair becoming that you should -yield to him than he should yield to you.”</p> - -<p>“And am I not yielding to him?” said Lily. “I just do whatever he tells -me. If he says, ‘You are to come out with me to dinner,’ though I know -how wearisome it will be, and though I had the nicest party in the world -and all my own friends, I just give in to him without a word. I wear -that yellow gown he gave me, though it’s terrible to behold, just to -please him. I sit and listen to all his old gentlemen grumbling, and to -him paying his compliments to all his old ladies, and never laugh. Oh, -Beenie, if you could hear him!” and here Lily burst into the laugh which -she had previously denied herself. “But when he comes and tells me to -give up Ronald for the sake of his nasty, filthy siller——”</p> - -<p>“Miss Lily, that’s no Mr. Ronald’s opinion.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” cried Lily, stamping her foot upon the ground, while hot tears -rushed to her eyes, “as if that did not make it a hundred times worse!” -she cried.</p> - -<p>And then there was a pause, and Beenie, with great deliberation, began -to take out a pile of dresses from the wardrobe, which she opened out -and folded one after another, patting them with her plump hands upon the -bed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37"></a>{37}</span> Lily watched her for some moments in silence, and then she said -with a faltering voice: “Do you really think, then, that there is no -hope?”</p> - -<p>Robina answered in her usual way, pursing out her lips to form the “No” -which she did not utter audibly. “Unless you will yield,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Yield—to give up Ronald? To meet him and never speak to him? To let -him think I’m a false woman, and mansworn? I will never do that,” Lily -said.</p> - -<p>“But you’ll no marry him, my lamb, without your uncle’s consent?”</p> - -<p>“He’ll not ask me!” cried Lily, desperate. “Why do you torment me when -you know that is just the worst of all? Oh, if he would try me! And who -is wanting to marry him—or any man? Certainly not me!”</p> - -<p>“If you were to give your uncle your word—if you were to say, ‘We’ll -just meet at kirk and market and say good-even and good-morrow,’ but nae -mair. Oh, Miss Lily, that is not much to yield to an old man.”</p> - -<p>“I said as good as that, but he made no answer. Beenie, pack up the -things and let us go quietly away, for there is no help for us in any -man.”</p> - -<p>“A’ the same, if I were you, I would try,” said Robina, taking the last -word.</p> - -<p>Lily said nothing in reply; but that night, when she was returning with -Sir Robert from a solemn party to which she had accompanied him, she -made in the darkness some faltering essay at submission. “I would have -to speak to him when we meet,” she said, “and I would have to tell him -there was to be no more—for the present. And I would not take any step -without asking you, Uncle Robert.”</p> - -<p>Sir Robert nearly sprang from his carriage in indignation at this -halting obedience. “If you call that giving up your will to mine, I -don’t call it so!” he cried. “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Tell him there is to be no more—for the -present!’ That is a bonnie kind of submission to me, that will have none -of him at all.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38"></a>{38}</span></p> - -<p>“It is all I can give,” said Lily with spirit, drawing into her own -corner of the carriage. Her heart was very full, but not to save her -life could she have said more.</p> - -<p>“Very well,” said Sir Robert; “Haygate has his orders, and will see you -off to-morrow. Mind you are in good time, for a coach will wait for no -man, nor woman either; and I’ll bid you good-by now and a better -disposition to you, and a good journey. Good-night.”</p> - -<p>And at seven o’clock next morning, in the freshness of the new day, the -North mail sure enough carried Lily and Robina away.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">A highland</span> moor is in itself a beautiful thing. When it is in full bloom -of purple heather, with all those breaks and edges of emerald green -which betray the bog below, with the sweet-scented gale sending forth -its odor as it is crushed underfoot, and the yellow gorse rising in -broken lines of gold, and here and there a half-grown rowan, with its -red berries, and here and there a gleam of clear dark water, nothing can -be more full of variety and the charm of wild and abounding life. But -when the sky is gray and the weather bleak, and the heather is still in -the green, or dry with the gray and rustling husks of last year’s bloom; -when there is little color, and none of those effects of light and shade -which make a drama of shifting interest upon the Highland hills and -lochs, all this is very different, and the long sweep of wild and broken -ground, under a low and dark sky, becomes an image of desolation instead -of the fresh and blooming and fragrant moor of early autumn. Dalrugas -was a tall, pinched house, with a high gable cut in those rectangular -lines which are called crow steps in Scotland, rising straight up from -the edge of the moor. The height and form of this gave a parsimonious -and niggardly look—though the rooms were by no means contemptible<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39"></a>{39}</span> -within—which was increased by the small windows pierced high up in the -wall. There was no garden on that side, not so much as the little plot -to which even a cottage has a right. Embedded within the high, -sharp-cornered walls behind was a kitchen-garden or kale-yard, where the -commonest vegetables were grown with a border of gooseberries and a few -plants of sweet-william and appleringie; but this was not visible to -give any softness to the prospect. The heather came up uncompromisingly, -with a little hillock of green turf here and there, to the very walls, -which had once been whitewashed, and still in their forlorn dinginess -lent a little variety to the landscape; but this did but add to the -cold, pinched, and resistant character of the house. It looked like a -prim ancient lady, very spare, and holding her skirts close round her in -the pride of penury and evil fortune. The door was in the outstanding -gable, and admitted directly into a low passage from which a spiral -stair mounted to the rooms above. On the ground-floor there was a low, -dark-pannelled dining-room and library full of ancient books, but these -rooms were used only when Sir Robert came for shooting, which happened -very rarely. The drawing-room upstairs was bare also, but yet had some -lingerings of old-fashioned grace. From the small, deep-set, high -windows there was a wide, unbroken view over the moor. The moor -stretched everywhere, miles of it, gray as the low sky which hung over -it, a canopy of clouds. The only relief was a bush of gorse here and -there half in blossom, for the gorse is never wholly out of blossom, as -every-body knows, and the dark gleam of the water in a cutting, black as -the bog which it was meant to drain. The dreary moorland road which -skirted the edge passed in front of the house, but was only visible from -these windows at a corner, where it emerged for a moment from a group of -blighted firs before disappearing between the banks of heather and whin, -which had been cut to give it passage. This was the only relief from the -monotony of the moor.</p> - -<p>It was in this house that Lily and her maid arrived after<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40"></a>{40}</span> a journey -which had not been so uncheerful as they anticipated. A journey by -stage-coach through a beautiful country can scarcely be dreary in the -worst of circumstances. The arrivals, the changes, the villages and -towns passed through, the contact with one’s fellow-creatures which is -inevitable, shake off more or less the most sullen discontent; and Lily -was not sullen, while Beenie was one of the most open-hearted of human -creatures, ready to interest herself in every one she met, and to talk -to them and give her advice upon their circumstances. The pair met all -sorts of people on their journey, and they made almost as many -friendships, and thus partially forgot the penitential object of their -own travels, and that they were being sent off to the ends of the earth.</p> - -<p>It was only when “the gig” met them at the village, where the coach -stopped on its northern route, that their destination began to oppress -either the mistress or the maid. This was on the afternoon of a day -which had been partially bright and partially wet, the best development -of weather to be hoped for in the North. The village was a small -collection of cottages, partly with tiled roofs, making a welcome gleam -of color, but subdued by a number of those respectable stone houses with -blue tiles, which were and are the ideal of comfortable sobriety, which, -in defiance of all the necessities of the landscape, the Scotch middle -class has unfortunately fixed upon. The church stood in the midst—a -respectable oblong barn, with a sort of long extinguisher in the shape -of a steeple attached to it. On the outskirts the cottages became less -comfortable and more picturesque, thatched, and covered with lichens. It -was a well-to-do village. The “merchant,” as he was called, <i>i. e.</i>, the -keeper of the “general” shop, was a Lowland Scot, very contemptuous of -“thae Highlanders,” and there was a writer or solicitor in the place, -and a doctor, besides the minister, who formed a little aristocracy. The -English minister so called, that is, the Episcopalian, came -occasionally—once in two or three Sundays—to officiate in a smaller -barn, without any extinguisher, which held itself<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41"></a>{41}</span> a little apart in a -corner, not to mingle with the common people who did not possess -Apostolical Succession; though, indeed, in those days there was little -controversy, the Episcopalians being generally of that ritual by birth, -and unpolemical, making no pretensions to superiority over the native -Kirk.</p> - -<p>The gig that met the travellers at Kinloch-Rugas was a tall vehicle on -two wheels, which had once been painted yellow, but which was scarcely -trim enough to represent that type of respectability which a certain -young Thomas Carlyle, pursuing the vague trade of a literary man in -Edinburgh, had declared it to be. It was followed closely by a rough -cart, in which Beenie and the boxes were packed away. They were not -large boxes. One, called “the hair trunk,” contained Lily’s every-day -dresses, but no provision for any thing beyond the most ordinary needs, -for there was no society nor any occasion for decorative garments on the -moors. Beenie’s box was smaller, as became a serving-woman. These -accessories were all in the fashion of their time, which was (like -Waverley, yet, ah, so unlike!) sixty years since or thereabout—in the -age before railways, or at least before they had penetrated to the -distant portions of the country. The driver of the gig was a middle-aged -countryman, very decent in a suit of gray “plaidin”—what we now call -tweed—with a head of sandy hair grizzled and considerably blown about -by the wind across the moor. His face was ruddy and wrinkled, of the -color of a winter apple, in fine shades of red and brown, his shaggy -eyebrows a little drawn together—by the “knitting of his brows under -the glaring sun,” and the setting of his teeth against the breeze. He -said, “Hey, Beenie!” as his salutation to the party before he doffed his -bonnet to the young lady. Lily was not sure that it was quite -respectful, but Dougal meant no disrespect. He was a little shy of her, -being unfamiliar with her grown-up aspect, and reverential of her young -ladyhood; but he was at his ease with Robina, who was a native of the -parish, the daughter of the late blacksmith, and “weel connectit” among -the rustic folk.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42"></a>{42}</span> It would have been an ease to Dougal to have had the -maid beside him instead of the mistress, and it was to Beenie he -addressed his first remarks over his shoulder, from pure shyness and -want of confidence in his own powers of entertaining a lady. “Ye’ll have -had a long journey,” he said. “The coach she’s aye late. She’s like a -thriftless lass, Beenie, my woman. She just dallies, dallies at the -first, and is like to break her neck at the end.”</p> - -<p>“But she showed no desire to break her neck, I assure you,” said Lily. -“She was in no hurry. We have just taken it very easy up hill and down -dale.”</p> - -<p>“Ay, ay!” he said, “we ken the ways o’ them.” With a glance over his -shoulder: “Are you sure you’re weel happit up, Beenie, for there’s a -cauld wind crossing the moor?”</p> - -<p>“And how is Katrin, Dougal?” Lily asked, fastening her cloak up to her -throat.</p> - -<p>“Oh, she’s weel eneuch; you’ll see little differ since ye left us last. -We’re a wee dried up with the peat-reck, and a wee blawn aboot by the -wind. But ye’ll mind that fine, Beenie woman, and get used to’t like her -and me.”</p> - -<p>Lily laid impatient fingers on the reins, pulling Dougal’s hand, as if -he had been the unsteady rough pony he drove. “Speak to me,” she said, -“you rude person, and not to Beenie. Do you think I am nobody, or that I -cannot understand?”</p> - -<p>“Bless us all! No such a thought was in my head. Beenie, are ye sitting -straight? for when the powny’s first started whiles he lets out.”</p> - -<p>“Let me drive him!” Lily cried. “I’ll like it all the better if he lets -out; and you can go behind if you like and talk to Beenie at your ease.”</p> - -<p>“Na, na,” said Dougal, with a grin. “He kens wha’s driving him. A bit -light hand like yours would have very sma’ effect upon Rory. Hey, -laddies! get out of my powny’s way!”</p> - -<p>Rory carried out the prognostics of his driver by tossing his shaggy -head in the air, and making a dash forward,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43"></a>{43}</span> scattering the children who -had gathered about to stare at the new arrivals; though before he got to -the end of the village street he had settled into his steady pace, which -was quite uninfluenced by any skill in driving on Dougal’s part, but was -entirely the desire and meaning of that very characteristic member of -society—himself. The day had settled into an afternoon serenity and -unusual quietness of light. The mountains stood high in the even air, -without any dramatic changes, Schehallion, with his conical crest, -dominating the lesser hills, and wearing soberly his mantle of purple, -subdued by gray. The road lay for a few miles through broken ground, -diversified with clumps of wood, wind-blown firs, and beeches tossing -their feathery branches in the air, crossing by a little bridge a brown -and lively trout stream, which went brawling through the village, but -afterward fell into deeper shadows, penetrating between close fir-woods, -before it reached the edge of the moor, round which it ran its lonely -way. Lily’s spirits began to rise. The sense of novelty, the pleasant -feeling of arrival, and of all the possibilities which relieve the -unknown, rose in her breast. Something would surely happen; something -would certainly be found to make the exile less heavy, and to bring back -a little hope. The little river greeted her like an old friend. “Oh, I -remember the Rugas,” she cried. “What a cheery little water! Will they -let me fish in it, Dougal? Look how it sparkles! I think it must -remember me.”</p> - -<p>“It’s just a natural objick,” said Dougal. “It minds naebody; and what -would you do—a bit lady thing—fishing troot? Hoots! a crookit pin in a -burn would set ye better, a little miss like you.”</p> - -<p>In those days there were no ladies who were salmon fishers. Such a thing -would have seemed to Dougal an outrage upon every law.</p> - -<p>“Don’t be contemptuous,” said Lily, with a laugh. “You’ll find I am not -at all a little miss. Just give me the reins and let me wake Rory up. I -mean to ride him about the moor.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44"></a>{44}</span></p> - -<p>“I’m doubting if you’ll do that,” said Dougal, with politeness, but -reserve.</p> - -<p>“Why shouldn’t I do it? Perhaps you think I don’t know how to ride. Oh, -you can trust Rory to me, or a better than Rory.”</p> - -<p>“There’s few better in these parts,” said Dougal with some solemnity. -“He’s a beast that has a great deal of judgment. He kens well what’s his -duty in this life. I’m no thinking you’ll find it that easy to put him -to a new kind of work. He has plenty of his ain work to do.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll see about that,” said Lily.</p> - -<p>“Ah,” replied Dougal cautiously, “we’ll just see about that. We must na -come to any hasty judgment. Cheer up, lad! Yon’s the half of the road.”</p> - -<p>“Is this only the half of the road?” said Lily, with a shudder. They -were coming out of the deep shade of the woods, and now before them, in -its full width and silence, stretched the long levels of the moor. It -was even now, in these days before the heather, a beautiful sight, with -the mountains towering in the background, and the bushes of the ling, -which later in the year would be glorious with blossoms, coming down, -mingled with the feathery plumes of the seeding grass, to the very edge -of the road: beautiful, wild, alive with sounds of insects, and that -thrill of the air which we call silence—silence that could be heard. -The wide space, the boundless sky, the freedom of the pure air, gave a -certain exaltation to Lily’s soul, but at the same time overwhelmed her -with a sense of the great loneliness and separation from all human -interests which this great vacancy made. “Only half-way,” she repeated, -with a gasp.</p> - -<p>“It’s a gey lang road, but it’s a very good road, with few bad bits. An -accustomed person need have nae fear by night or day. There was an ill -place, where ye cross the Rugas again, at the head of the Black Scaur; -but it’s been mended up just uncommon careful, and ye need have nae -apprehension; besides that, there’s me that ken every step, and Rory -that is maist as clever as me.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45"></a>{45}</span></p> - -<p>“But it’s the end of the world,” Lily said.</p> - -<p>“No that, nor even the end of the parish, let alone the countryside,” -said Dougal. “It’s just ignorance, a’ that. It’s the end o’ naething but -your journey, and a bonnie place when you’re there; and a good dinner -waiting for ye; and a grand soft bed, and your grandmither’s ain -cha’lmer, that was one of the grandest leddies in the North Country. Na, -na, missy, it’s no the end of the world. If ye look far ahead, yonder by -the east, as soon as we come to the turn of the road, ye’ll maybe, if -it’s clear, see the tower. That’s just a landmark over half the parish. -Ye’ll mind it, Beenie? It’s lang or ye’ve seen so bonnie a sight.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, ay, I mind it,” said Beenie, subdued. She had once thought, with -Dougal, that the tower of Dalrugas was a fine sight. But she had tasted -the waters of civilization, and the long level of the moor filled her -breast, like that of her mistress, with dismay; though, indeed, it was -with the eyes of Lily, rather than her own, that the kind woman saw this -scene. For herself things would not be so bad. Dougal and Katrin in the -kitchen would form a not uncongenial society for Robina. She did not -anticipate for herself much difficulty in fitting in again to a familiar -place; and she would always have her young mistress to pet and console, -and to take care of. But Lily—where would Lily find anything to take -her out of herself? Beenie realized, by force of sympathy, the weary -gazing from the windows, the vacant landscape, through which no one ever -would come, the loneliness indescribable of the great solitary moor; not -one of her young companions to come lightly over the heather; neither a -lad nor lass in whom the girl would find a playfellow. “Ay, I mind it,” -said Beenie, shaking her head, with big tears filling her eyes.</p> - -<p>Lily, for her part, did not feel disposed to shed any tears; her mind -was full of indignation and harsher thoughts. Who could have any right -to banish her here beyond sight or meeting of her kind? And it was not -less but more bitter to reflect that the domestic tyrant who had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46"></a>{46}</span> -banished her was scarcely so much to blame as the lover who would risk -nothing to save her. If he had but stood by her—held out his hand—what -to Lily would have been poverty or humbleness? She would have been -content with any bare lodging in the old town, high among the roofs. She -would have worked her fingers to the bone—at least Beenie would have -done so, which was the same thing. That was a sacrifice she would have -made willingly; but this that was demanded—who had any right to exact -it? and for what was it to be exacted? For money, miserable money, the -penny siller that could never buy happiness. Lily’s eyes burned like -coal. Her cheeks scorched and blazed. Oh, how hard was fate, and how -undeserved! For what had she done? Nothing, nothing to bring it upon -herself.</p> - -<p>It was another long hour before the gig turned the corner by the trees, -where there was a momentary view of Dalrugas, and plunged again between -the rising banks, where the road ran in a deep cutting, ascending the -last slopes. “We’ll be at the house in five minutes,” Dougal said.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Katrin</span> stood under the doorway, looking out for the party: a spare, -little, active woman, in that native dress of the place, which consisted -of a dark woollen skirt and pink “shortgown,” a garment not unlike the -blouse of to-day, bound in by the band of her white apron round a -sufficiently trim waist. She was of an age when any vanity of personal -appearance, if ever sanctioned at all, is considered, by her grave race, -to be entirely out of place; but yet was trim and neat by effect of -nature, and wore the shortgown with a consciousness that it became her. -A gleam of sunshine had come out as the two vehicles approached in a -little procession; and Katrin had put up her hand to her eyes to shade -them from that faint gleam<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47"></a>{47}</span> of sun as she looked down the road. The less -of sun there is the more particular people are in shielding themselves -from it; which is a mystery, like so many other things in life, small as -well as great. Katrin thought the dazzle was overwhelming as she stood -looking out under the shadow of her curved hand. The doorway was rather -small, and very dark behind her, and the strong gleam of light -concentrated in her pink shortgown, and made a brilliant spot of the -white cap on her head. And to Katrin the two vehicles climbing the road -were as a crowd, and the arrival an event of great excitement, making an -era in life. She was interested, perhaps, like her husband, most -particularly in Robina, who would be an acquisition to their own -society, with all her experience of the grand life of the South; but she -bore a warm heart also to the little lady who had been at Dalrugas as a -child, and of whose beauty, and specially of whose accomplishments, -there had been great reports from the servants in town to the servants -on the moor. She hastened forward to place a stool on which Miss Lily -could step down, and held out both her hands to help, an offer which was -made quite unnecessary by the sudden spring which the girl made, -alighting “like a bird” by Katrin’s side. “Eh, I didna mind how light a -lassie is at your age,” cried the housekeeper, startled by that quick -descent. “And are ye very wearied? and have ye had an awfu’ journey? -and, eh, yonder’s Beenie, just the same as ever! I’m as glad to see ye -as if I had come into a fortune. Let me take your bit bag, my bonnie -lady. Give the things to me.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Beenie is just the same as ever—and you also, Katrin, and the -moor,” said Lily, with a look that embraced them all. She had subdued -herself, with a natural instinct of that politeness which comes from the -heart, not to show these humble people, on her first arrival, how little -she liked her banishment. It was not their fault; they were eager to do -their utmost for her, and welcomed her with a kindness which was as near -love as any inferior sentiment could be—if it was, indeed, an inferior -sentiment<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48"></a>{48}</span> at all. But when she stood before the dark doorway, which -seemed the end of all things, it was impossible not to betray a little -of the loneliness she felt. “And the moor,” she repeated. But Katrin -heard the words in another sense.</p> - -<p>“Ay, my bonnie lamb! the moor, that is the finest sight of a’. It’s just -beautiful when there’s a fine sunset, as we’re going to have the night -to welcome ye hame. Come away ben, my dear; come away in to your ain -auld house. Oh! but I’m thankful and satisfied to have ye here!”</p> - -<p>“Not my house, Katrin. My uncle would not like to hear you say so.”</p> - -<p>“Hoot, away! Sir Robert’s bark is waur than his bite. What would he have -sent such orders for, to make every thing sae comfortable, if there had -been any doubt that it was your very ain house, and you his chosen heir? -If Dougal were to let ye see the letter, a’ full of loving kindness, and -that he wanted a safe hame for his bit lassie while he was away. Oh, -Miss Lily, he’s an auld man to be marching forth again at the head of -his troop to the wars.”</p> - -<p>“He is not going to the wars,” said Lily. She could not but laugh at the -droll supposition. Sir Robert, that lover of comfort and luxury, -marching forth on any expedition, unless it were an expedition of -pleasure! “There are no wars,” she added. “We are at peace with all the -world, so far as I can hear.”</p> - -<p>“Weel, I was wondering,” said Katrin. “Dougal, he says, that reads the -papers, that there’s nae fighting neither in France nor what they ca’ed -the Peninshula in our young days. But he says there are aye wars and -rumor of wars in India, and such like places. So we thought it might, -maybe, be that. Weel, I’m real content to hear that Sir Robert, that’s -an old man, is no driven to boot and saddle at his age.”</p> - -<p>“He is going, perhaps, to London,” Lily said.</p> - -<p>“Weel, weel, and that’s no muckle better than a fight, from a’ we -hear—an awfu’ place, full of a’ the scum of the earth. Puir auld -gentleman! It maun be the king’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49"></a>{49}</span> business, or else something very -important of his ain, that takes him there. Anyway, he’s that particular -about you, my bonnie lady, as never was. You’re to have a riding-horse -when ye please, and Dougal to follow you whenever he can spare the time; -and there’s a new pianny-fortey come in from Perth, and a box full of -books, and I canna tell you all what. And here am I keeping you at the -door, havering all the time. You’ll mind the old stair, and the broken -step three from the top; or maybe you will like to come into the -dining-room first and have a morsel to stay your stomach till the -dinner’s served; or maybe you would like a drink of milk; or maybe—— -Lord bless us! she’s up the stair like a fire flaught and paying no -attention; and, oh, Beenie, my woman, is this you?”</p> - -<p>Beenie was more willing to be entertained than her mistress, whose -sudden flight upstairs left Katrin stranded in the full tide of her -eloquence. She was glad to be set down to a cup of tea and the nice -scones, fresh from the girdle, with which the housekeeper had intended -to tempt Lily. “I’ll cover them up with the napkin to keep them warm, -and when ye have ta’en your cup o’ tea, ye’ll carry some up to her on a -tray, or I’ll do it mysel’, with good will; but I mind ye are aye -fondest of taking care of your bonnie miss yoursel’.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll gie her a wee moment to settle down,” said Robina: “to take a -good greet,” was what she said to herself. She swallowed her tea, always -with an ear intent on the sounds upstairs. She had seen by Lily’s -countenance that she was able for no more, and that a moment’s interval -was necessary; and there she sat consuming her heart, yet perhaps -comforted a little by having the good scones to consume, too. “Oh,” she -said, “ye get nothing like this in Edinburgh; ae scone’s very different -from another. I have not tasted the like of this for many a year.”</p> - -<p>“Ye see,” said Katrin, with conscious success, “a drop of skim-milk like -what ye get in a town is very different from the haill cream of a -milking; and I’m no a woman to spare pains ony mair than stuff. She’s a -bonnie, bonnie<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50"></a>{50}</span> creature, your young lady, Beenie—a wee like her -mother, as far as I mind, that was nothing very much in the way of -blood, ye ken, but a bonnie, bonnie young woman as ever stood. The auld -leddy and Sir Robert were real mad against Mr. Randall for making such a -poor match; but now there’s nobody but her bairn to stand atween the -house and its end. He’ll be rael fond of her, Sir Robert—his bonny wee -heir!”</p> - -<p>“Ay,” said Beenie, “in his ain way.”</p> - -<p>“Weel, it wasna likely to be in a woman’s way like yours or mine. The -men they’ve aye their ain ways of looking at things. I’ll warrant -there’s plenty of lads after her, a bonnie creature like that; and the -name of Sir Robert’s siller and a’.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, ay! she hasna wanted for lads,” Beenie said.</p> - -<p>“And what’ll be the reason, Beenie, since the auld gentleman’s no going -to the wars, as Dougal and me thought—what’ll be the reason, are ye -thinkin’, for the young leddy coming here? He said it was to be safe at -hame while he was away.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe he would be right if that’s what he says.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Beenie, woman,” cried Katrin, “you’re secret, secret! Do you think -we are no just as keen as you to please our young leddy and make her -comfortable? or as taken up to ken why she’s been sent away from a’ her -parties and pleasurings to bide here?”</p> - -<p>“There’s no many parties nor pleasurings here for her,” said Dougal, -joining the two women in the low but airy kitchen, where the big fire -was pleasant to look upon, and the brick floor very red, and the -hearthstone very white. The door, which stood always open, afforded a -glimpse of the universal background, the everywhere-extending moor, and -the air came in keen, though the day was a day in June. Dougal pushed -his bonnet to one side to scratch his grizzled head. In these regions, -as indeed in many others, it is not necessary to take off one’s headgear -when one comes indoors. “There’s neither lad to run after her nor -leddies to keep her company. If she’s light-headed, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51"></a>{51}</span> the like of -that, there canna be a better place than oor moor.”</p> - -<p>“Light-headed!” said Robina in high scorn. “It just shows how little you -ken. And where would I be, a discreet person, if my young leddy was -light-headed? She’s just as modest and as guid as ever set foot on the -heather. My bonnie wee woman! And as innocent as the babe new-born.”</p> - -<p>Dougal pushed his cap to the other side of his head, as if that might -afford enlightenment. “Then a’ I can say is that it’s very queer.” And -he added after an interval: “I never pretend to understand Sir Robert; -he’s an awfu’ funny man.”</p> - -<p>“He might play off his fun better than upon Miss Lily,” said his wife in -anxious tones.</p> - -<p>“And that minds me that I’m just havering here when I should be carrying -up the tray,” said Beenie. “Some of those cream scones—they’re the -nicest; and that fine apple jelly is the best I’ve tasted for long. And -now the wee bit teapot, and a good jug of your nice fresh milk that she -will, maybe, like better than the tea.”</p> - -<p>“And my fine eggs—with a yolk like gold, and white that is just like -curds and cream.”</p> - -<p>“Na,” said Beenie, waving them away, “that would just be too much; let -me alone with the scones, and the milk and the tea.”</p> - -<p>She went up the spiral stairs, making a cheerful noise with her cups and -her tray. A noise was pleasant in this quiet place. Beenie understood, -without knowing how, that the little clatter, the sound of some one -coming, was essential to this new life; and though her arm was very -steady by nature, she made every thing ring with a little tinkle of -cheerfulness and “company.” The drawing-room of the house, which opened -direct from the stairs with little more than a broadened step for a -landing, was a large room occupying all the breadth of the tall gable, -which was called the tower. It was not high, and the windows were small, -set in deep recesses, with spare and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52"></a>{52}</span> dingy curtains. The carpet was of -design unconjecturable, and of dark color worn by use to a deep -dinginess of mingled black and brown. The only cheerful thing in the -room was a rug before the fireplace, made of strips of colored cloth, -which was Katrin’s winter work to beguile the long evenings, and in -which the instinct of self-preservation had woven many bits of red, -relics or patterns of soldiers’ coats. The eye caught that one spot of -color instinctively. Beenie looked at it as she put down her tray, and -Lily had already turned to it a dozen times, as if there was something -good to be got there. The walls were painted in panels of dirty green, -and hung with a few pictures, which made the dinginess hideous—staring -portraits executed by some country artist, or, older relics still, faces -which had sunk altogether into the gloom. Three of the windows looked -out on the moor, one in a corner upon the yard, where Rory and his -companion were stabled, and where there was an audible cackle of fowls, -and sometimes Katrin’s voice coming and going “as if a door were shut -between you and the sound.” Lily had been roaming about, as was evident -by the cloak flung in one corner, the hat in another, the gloves on the -table, the little bag upon the floor. She had gravitated, however, as -imaginative creatures do, to the window, and sat there when Beenie -entered as if she had been sitting there all her life, gazing out upon -the monotonous blank of the landscape and already unconscious of what -she saw.</p> - -<p>“Well, Miss Lily,” said Robina cheerfully, “here we are at last; and -thankfu’ I am to think that I can sit still the day, and get up in peace -the morn without either coach or boat to make me jump. And here’s your -tea, my bonnie dear—and cream scones, Katrin’s best, that I have not -seen the like of since I left Kinloch-Rugas. Edinburgh’s a grand place, -and many a bonnie thing is there; and maybe we’ll whiles wish ourselves -back; but nothing like Katrin’s scones have ye put within your lips for -many a day. My dear bonnie bairn, come and sit down comfortable at this -nice little table and get your tea.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53"></a>{53}</span></p> - -<p>“Tea!” said Lily; her lips were quivering, so that a laugh was the only -escape—or else the other thing. “You mind nothing,” she cried, “so long -as you have your tea.”</p> - -<p>“Weel, it makes up for many things, that’s true,” said Beenie, eager to -adopt her young mistress’s tone. “Bless me, Miss Lily, it’s no the -moment to take to that weary window and just stare across the moor when -ye ken well there is nothing to be seen. It will be time enough when -we’re wearied waiting, or when there’s any reasonable prospect——”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?” cried Lily, springing up from her seat. “Reasonable -prospect—of what, I would like to know? and weary waiting—for whom? -How dare you say such silly words to me? I am waiting for nobody!” cried -Lily, in her exasperation clapping her hands together, “and there is no -reasonable prospect—if it were not to fall from the top of the tower, -or sink into the peat-moss some lucky day.”</p> - -<p>“You’re awfu’ confident, Miss Lily,” said the maid, “but I’m a great -deal older than you are, and it would be a strange thing if I had not -mair sense. I just tell you there’s no saying; and if the Queen of Sheba -was here, she could utter no more.”</p> - -<p>“You would make a grand Queen of Sheba,” said Lily, with eyes sparkling -and cheeks burning; “and what is it your Majesty tells me? for I cannot -make head nor tail of it for my part.”</p> - -<p>“I just tell you, there’s no saying,” Beenie repeated very deliberately, -looking the young lady in the face.</p> - -<p>Poor Lily! her face was glowing with sudden hope, her slight fingers -trembled. What did the woman mean who knew every thing? “When we’re -wearied waiting—when there’s no reasonable prospect.” Oh, what, what -did the woman mean? Had there been something said to her that could not -be said to Lily? Were there feet already on the road, marching hither, -hither, bringing love and bringing joy? “There’s no saying.” A woman -like Robina would not say that without some reason. It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54"></a>{54}</span> enigmatical; -but what could it mean but something good? and what good could happen -but one thing? Beenie, in fact, meant nothing but the vaguest of -consolations—she had no comfort to give; but it was not in a woman’s -heart to shut out imagination and confess that hope was over. Who would -venture to say that there was no hope, any day, any moment, in a young -life, of something happening which would make all right again? No oracle -could have said less; and yet it meant every thing. Lily, in the light -of possibility that suddenly sprang up around her, illuminating the moor -better than the pale sunshine, and making this bare and cold room into a -habitable place, took heart to return to the happy ordinary of -existence, and remembered that she was hungry and that Katrin’s scones -were very good and the apple jelly beautiful to behold. It was a prosaic -result, you may say, but yet it was a happy one, for she was very tired, -and had great need of refreshment and support. She took her simple meal -which was so pretty to look at—never an inconsiderable matter on a -woman’s table; the scones wrapped in their white napkin, the jug of -creamy milk, the glass dish with its clear pink jelly. She ate and drank -with much satisfaction, and then, with Beenie at her side, went -wandering over the house to see if there was any furniture to be found -more cheerful than the curtains and carpets in the drawing-room. The -days of “taste” had not arisen—no fans from Japan had yet been seen in -England, far less upon the moors; but yet the natural instinct existed -to attempt a little improvement in the stiff dulness of the place. Lily -was soon running over all the house with a song on her lips—commoner in -those days when music was not so carefully cultivated—and a skipping -measure in the patter of her feet. “Hear till her,” said Dougal to -Katrin; “our peace and quiet’s done.” “Hear till her indeed, ye auld -crabbit body! It’s the blessing o’ the Lord come to the house,” said -Katrin to Dougal. He pushed his cap now to one side, now to the other, -with a scratch of impartial consultation what was to come of it—but -also a secret pleasure<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55"></a>{55}</span> that brought out a little moisture under his -shaggy eyebrows. The old pair sat up a full half-hour later, out of pure -pleasure in the consciousness of the new inmate under that roof where -they had so long abode in silence. And Lily rushed upstairs and -downstairs, and thrilled the old floor with her hurried feet, but kept -always saying over to herself those words which were the fountain of -contentment—or rather expectation, which is better: “There’s no -saying—there’s no saying!” If Beenie knew nothing in which there was a -reasonable hope, how could she have suffered herself to speak?</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Lily got up next morning, it was to the cheerful sounds of the -yard, the clucking of fowls, the voices of the kitchen calling to each -other, Katrin darting out a sentence as she came to the door, Dougal -growling a bass order to the boy, the sounds of whose hissing and -movement over his stable-work were as steady as if Rory were being -groomed like a racer till his coat shone. It is not pleasant to be -disturbed by Chanticleer and his handmaidens in the middle of one’s -morning sleep, nor to hear the swing of the stable pails, and the hoofs -of the horses, and the shouts to each other of the outdoor servants. I -should not like to have even one window of my bedchamber exposed to -these noises. But Lily sprang up and ran to the window, cheered by this -rustic Babel, and looked out with keen pleasure upon the rush of the -fowls to Katrin’s feet as she stood with her apron filled with grain, -flinging it out in handfuls, and upon the prospect through the stable of -the boy hissing and rubbing down Rory, who clattered with his impatient -hoofs and would not stand still to have his toilet made. Dougal was -engaged in the byre, in some more important operations with the cow, -whose present hope and representative—a weak-kneed, staggering -calf—<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56"></a>{56}</span>looked out from the door with that solemn stare of wondering -imbecility which is often so pathetic. Lily did not think of pathos. She -was cheered beyond measure to look out on all this active life instead -of the silent moor. The world was continuing to go round all the same, -the creatures had to be fed, the new day had begun—notwithstanding that -she was banished to the end of the world; and this was no end of the -world after all, but just a corner of the country, where life kept going -on all the same, whether a foolish little girl had been to a ball -overnight, or had arrived in solitude and tears at the scene of her -exile. A healthful nature has always some spring in it at the opening of -a new day.</p> - -<p>She went over the place under Katrin’s guidance, when she had dressed -and breakfasted, and was as ready to be amused and diverted as if she -had found every thing going her own way; which shows that Lily was no -young lady heroine, but an honest girl of twenty-two following the -impulses of nature. The little establishment at Dalrugas was not a farm. -It had none of the fluctuations, none of the anxieties, which befall a -humble agriculturist who has to make his living out of a few not very -friendly acres, good year and bad year together. Dougal loved, indeed, -to grumble when any harm came over the potatoes, or when his hay was -spoiled, as it generally was, by the rain. He liked to pose as an -unfortunate farmer, persecuted by the elements; but the steady wages -which Sir Robert paid, with the utmost regularity, were as a rock at the -back of this careful couple, whose little harvest was for the sustenance -of their little household, and did not require to be sold to produce the -ready money of which they stood so very little in need. Therefore all -was prosperous in the little place. The eggs, indeed, produced so -plentifully, were not much profit in a place where every-body else -produced eggs in their own barnyards; but a sitting from Katrin’s fowls -was much esteemed in the countryside, and brought her honor and -sometimes a pleasant present in kind, which was to the advantage both of -her comfort and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57"></a>{57}</span> self-esteem. But a calf was a thing which brought in a -little money; and the milk formed a great part of the living of the -house in various forms, and when there was any over, did good to the -poor folk who are always with us, on the banks of the Rugas as in other -places. Dougal would talk big by times about his losses—a farmer, -however small, is nothing without them; but his loss sat very lightly on -his shoulders, and his comfort was great and his little gains very -secure. The little steading which lurked behind Sir Robert’s gray house, -and was a quite unthought-of adjunct to it, did very well in all its -small traffic and barter under such conditions. The mission of Dougal -and his wife was to be there, always ready to receive the master when he -chose to “come North,” as they called it, with the shooting-party, for -whom Katrin always kept her best sheets well aired. But Sir Robert had -no mind to trust himself in the chilly North: that was all very well -when a man was strong and active, and liked nothing so much as to tramp -the moor all day, and keep his friends at heck and manger. But a man’s -friends get fewer as he gets old, and other kinds of pleasure attract -him. It was perhaps a dozen years since he had visited his spare -paternal house. And Dougal and Katrin had come to think the place was -theirs, and the cocks and the hens, and the cows and ponies, the chief -interest in it. But they were no niggards; they would have been glad to -see Sir Robert himself had he come to pay them a visit; they were still -more glad to see Lily, and to make her feel herself the princess, or it -might be altogether more correct to say the suzerain, under whom they -reigned. They did not expect her to interfere, which made her welcome -all the more warm. As for Sir Robert, he might perhaps have interfered; -but even in the face of that doubt Dougal and Katrin would have acted as -became them, and received him with a kindly welcome.</p> - -<p>“Ye see, this is where I keep the fowls,” said Katrin. “It was a kind of -a gun-room once; but it’s a place where a shootin’ gentleman never sets -his fit, and there’s no a gun fired but Dougal’s auld carabeen. What’s -the use of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58"></a>{58}</span> keeping up thae empty places, gaun to rack and ruin, with -grand names till them? The sitting hens are just awfu’ comfortable in -here; and as for Cockmaleerie, he mairches in and mairches out, like Mr. -Smeaton, the school-master, that has five daughters, besides his wife, -and takes his walks at the head of them. A cock is wonderful like a man. -If you just saw the way auld Smeaton turns his head, and flings a word -now and then at the chattering creatures after him! We’ve put the -pig-sty out here. It’s no just the place, perhaps, so near the house; -but it’s real convenient; and as the wind is maistly from the east, ye -never get any smell to speak of. Besides, that’s no the kind of smell -that does harm. The black powny he’s away to the moor for peat; but -there’s Rory, aye taking another rug at his provender. He’s an auld -farrant beast. He’s just said to himself, as you or me might do: ‘Here’s -a stranger come, and I am the carriage-horse; and let’s just make the -most of it.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“He must be very conceited if he thinks himself a carriage-horse,” said -Lily, with a laugh.</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Deed, and he’s the only ane; and no a bad substitute. As our auld -minister said the day yon young lad was preaching: ‘No a bad -substitute.’ I trow no, seeing he’s now the assistant and successor, and -very well likit; and if it could only be settled between him and Miss -Eelen there could be naething more to be desired. But that’s no the -question. About Rory, Miss Lily——”</p> - -<p>“I would much rather hear about Miss Helen. Who is Miss Helen? Is it the -minister’s little girl that used to come out to Dalrugas to play with -me?”</p> - -<p>“She’s a good ten years older than you, Miss Lily.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t think so. I was—how old?—nine; and I am sure she was not -grown up, nor any thing like it. And so she can’t make up her mind to -take the assistant and successor? Tell me, Katrin, tell me! I want to -hear all the story. It is something to find a story here.”</p> - -<p>“There are plenty of stories,” said Katrin; “and I’ll tell you every one -of them. But about Miss Eelen. She’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59"></a>{59}</span> a very little thing. You at nine -were bigger than she was—let us say—at sixteen. There maun be five -years atween you, and now she’ll be six-and-twenty. No, it’s no auld, -and she’s but a bairn to look at, and she will just be a fine friend for -you, Miss Lily; for though they’re plain folk, she has been real well -brought up, and away at the school in Edinburgh, and plays the pianny, -and a’ that kind of thing. I have mair opinion mysel’ of a good seam; -but we canna expect every-body to have that sense.”</p> - -<p>“And why will she have nothing to say to the assistant and successor? -and what is his name?”</p> - -<p>“His name is Douglas, James Douglas, of a westland family, and no that -ill-looking, and well likit. Eh, but you’re keen of a story, Miss Lily, -like a’ your kind. But I never said she would have naething to say to -him. She is just great friends with him. They are aye plotting thegether -for the poor folk, as if there was nothing needed but a minister and -twa-three guid words to make heaven on earth. Oh, my bonnie lady, if it -could be done as easy as that! There’s that drunken body, Johnny Wright, -that keeps the merchant’s shop.” Katrin was a well-educated woman in her -way, and never put <i>f</i> for <i>w</i>, which is the custom of her district; but -she said <i>chop</i> for <i>shop</i>, an etymology which it is unnecessary to -follow here. “But it’s a good intention—a good intention. They are aye -plotting how they are to mend their neighbors; and the strange thing -is—— But, dear, bless us! what are we to be havering about other -folk’s weakness when nae doubt we have plenty of our ain?”</p> - -<p>“I am not to be cheated out of my story, Katrin. Do you mean that the -young minister is not a good man himself?”</p> - -<p>“Bless us, no! that’s not what I mean. He’s just as pious a lad and as -weel living—— It’s no that—it’s no that. It’s just one o’ thae -mysteries that you’re far o’er-young to understand. She’s been keen to -mend other folk, poor lass; and that the minister should speak to them, -and show them the error o’ their ways! But the dreadful thing is that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60"></a>{60}</span> -her poor bit heart is just bound up in a lad—a ne’er-do-weel, that is -the worst of them all. Oh, dinna speak of it, Miss Lily, dinna speak of -it! I’ll tell you anither time; or, maybe, I’ll no tell ye at all. Come -in and see the kye. They’re honest creatures. There’s nothing o’ the -deevil and his dreadful ways in them.”</p> - -<p>“I wouldna be ower sure of that,” said Dougal, who came to meet them to -the door of the byre, his cap hanging on to the side of his head, upon -one grizzled lock, so many pushes and scratches had it received in the -heat of his exertions. “There’s Crummie, just as little open to raison -as if she were a wuman. No a step will she budge, though it’s clean -strae and soft lying that I’m offering till her. Gang ben, and try what -ye can do. She’s just furious. I canna tell what she thinks, bucking at -me, and butting at me, as if I was gaun to carry her off to the butcher -instead of just setting her bed in comfort for her trouble. None of the -deil in them! What d’ye say to Rory? He’s a deil a’thegether, from the -crown of his head to his off leg, the little evil spirit! And what’s -that muckle cock ye’re so proud o’? Just Satan incarnate, that’s my -opinion, stampin’ out his ain progeny when they’re o’ the same sect as -himsel’. Dinna you trust to what she says, Miss Lily. There’s nae place -in this world where <i>he</i> is not gaun about like a roarin’ lion, seekin’, -as the Scripture saith, whom he may devour.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, man,” said his wife, coming out a little red, yet triumphant, “but -you’re a poor hand with your doctrines and your opinions! A wheen soft -words in poor Crummie’s ear, and a clap upon her bonnie broad back, poor -woman, and she’s as quiet as a lamb. Ye’ve been tugging at her, and -swearing at her, though I aye tell ye no. Fleeching is aye better than -fechting, if ye would only believe me—whether it’s a woman or a bairn -or a poor timorsome coo.”</p> - -<p>“Ye’re a’ alike,” said Dougal, with a grunt, returning to his work. “I’m -thinking,” he said, pausing to deliver his broadside, “that, saving your -presence, Miss Lily, weemen<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61"></a>{61}</span> are just what ye may call the head of the -irrational creation. It’s men that’s a little lower than the angels; -we’re them that are made in the image of God. But when ye speak o’ the -whole creation that groaneth and travaileth, I’m thinking——”</p> - -<p>“Ye’ll just think at your work, and haud your ill tongue before the -young lady,” cried his wife in high wrath. But she, too, added as he -swung away with a big laugh: “Onyway, by your ain comparison, we’re at -the head and you’re at the tail. Come away, Miss Lily, and see the -bonnie doos. There is nae ill speaking among them. I’m no so sure,” she -added, however, when out of hearing of her husband, “I’ve heard yon -muckle cushat, the one with the grand ruff about his neck, swearin’ at -his bonnie wifie, or else I’m sair mista’en. It’s just in the nature o’ -the men-kind. They like ye weel enough, but they maun aye be gibing at -ye, and jeerin’ at ye—but, bless me, a bit young thing like you, it’s -no to be expeckit ye could understand.”</p> - -<p>The pigeons were very tame, and alighted not only on Katrin’s capacious -shoulders, who “shoo’d” them off, but on Lily’s, who liked the -sentiment, and to find herself so familiarly accosted by creatures so -highly elevated above mere cocks and hens—“the bonnie creatures,” as -Katrin said, who sidl’d and bridl’d about her, with mincing steps and -graceful movements. “The doocot” was an old gray tower, standing apart -from the barnyard, in a small field, the traditional appendage of every -old Scotch house of any importance. To come upon Rory afterward, -dragging after him the boy, by name Sandy, and not unlike, either in -complexion or shape, to the superior animal whom he was supposed to be -taking out for exercise, brought back, if not the former discussion on -the prevalence of evil, at least a practical instance of “the deevil” -that was in the pony, and was an additional amusement. Lily made instant -trial of the feminine ministrations which had been so effective with the -cow, whispering in Rory’s ear, and stroking his impatient nose, without, -however, any marked effect.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62"></a>{62}</span></p> - -<p>“He’ll soon get used to ye,” Katrin said consolingly, “and then you’ll -can ride him down to the town, and make your bit visits, and get any -thing that strikes your fancy at the shop. Oh, you’ll find there’s -plenty to divert ye, my bonnie leddy, when once ye are settled down.”</p> - -<p>Would it be so? Lily felt, in the courage of the morning, that it might -be possible. She resolved to be good, as a child resolves; there should -be no silly despair, no brooding nor making the worst of things. She -would interest herself in the beasts and the birds, in Rory, the pony, -and Crummie, the cow. She would always have something to do. Her little -school accomplishment of drawing, in which she had made some progress -according to the drawing-master, she would take that up again. The kind -of drawing Lily had learned consisted in little more than copying other -drawings; but that, when it had been carefully done, had been thought a -great deal of at school. And then there was the fine fancy-work which -had been taught her—the wonderful things in Berlin wool, which was -adapted to so many purposes, and occupied so large a share of feminine -lives. Miss Martineau, that strong-minded politician and philosopher, -amused her leisure with it, and why should not Lily? But Berlin -patterns, and all the beautiful shades of the wool, could not, alas! be -had on Dalrugas moor. Lily decided bravely that she would knit stockings -at least, and that practice would soon overcome that difficulty about -turning the heel which had damped her early efforts. She would knit warm -stockings for Sir Robert—warm and soft as he liked them—ribbed so as -to cling close to his handsome old leg, and show its proportions, and -so, perhaps, touch his heart. And then there would, no doubt, turn up, -from time to time, something to do for the poor folk. Surely, surely -there would be employment enough to “keep her heart.” Then she would go -to Kinloch-Rugas and see “Miss Eelen,” Helen Blythe, the minister’s -daughter, whom she remembered well, with the admiration of a little girl -for one much older than herself. Here was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63"></a>{63}</span> something that would interest -her and occupy her mind, and prevent her from thinking. And then there -were the old books in the library, in which she feared there would be -little amusement, but probably a great many good books that she had not -read, and what a fine opportunity for her to improve her mind! Her -present circumstances were quite usual features in the novels before the -age of Sir Walter: a residence in an old castle or other lonely house, -where a persecuted heroine had the best of reading, and emerged quite an -accomplished woman, was the commonest situation. She said to herself -that there would be plenty to do, that she would not leave a moment -without employment, that her life would be too busy and too full to -leave any time for gazing out at that window, watching the little bit of -road, and looking, looking for some one who never came. Having drawn up -this useful programme, and decided how she was to spend every day, Lily, -poor Lily, all alone—even Beenie having gone down stairs for a long -talk with Katrin—seated herself, quite unconsciously, at the window, -and gazed and gazed, without intermission, at the little corner of the -road that climbed the brae, and across the long level of the unbroken -moor.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> days that succeeded were very much like this first day. In the -morning Lily went out “among the beasts,” and visited, with all the -interest she could manage to excite in herself, the byre and the stable, -the ponies and the cows. She persuaded herself into a certain amusement -in contrasting the very different characters of Rory, the spoiled and -superior, with that little sturdy performer of duty without vagary, who -had not even a name to bless himself with, but was to all and sundry the -black powny and no more. Poor little black powny, he supported Rory’s -airs without a word; he gave in to the fact that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64"></a>{64}</span> was the servant and -his stable companion the gentleman. He went to the moor for peat, and to -the howe for potatoes, and to the town for whatever was wanted, without -so much as a toss of his shaggy head. Nothing tired the black powny, any -more than any thing ever tired the “buoy” who drove and fed and groomed -him, as much grooming as he ever had. Sandy was the “buoy,” just as his -charge was the black powny. They went everywhere together, lived -together, it was thought even slept together; and though the “buoy” in -reality occupied the room above the stable, which was entered by a -ladder—the loft, in common parlance—the two shaggy creatures were as -one. All these particulars Lily learned, and tried to find a little fun, -a little diversion in them. But it was a thin vein and soon exhausted, -at least by her preoccupied mind.</p> - -<p>The post came seldom to this place at the end of the world. It never -indeed came at all. When there were other errands to do in the village, -the buoy and the black powny called at the post-office to ask for -letters—when they remembered; but very often Sandy did not mind, <i>i. -e.</i>, recollect, to do this, and it did not matter much. Sir Robert, -indeed, had made known his will that there were to be no letters, and -correspondence was sluggish in those days. Lily had not bowed her spirit -to the point of promising that she would not write to whomsoever she -pleased, but she was too proud to be the first to do so, and, save a few -girl epistles for which, poor child, she did not care, and which secured -her only a succession of disappointments, nothing came to lighten her -solitude. No, she would not write first, she would not tell him her -address. He could soon find that out if he wanted to find it. Sir Robert -Ramsay was not nobody, that there should be any trouble in finding out -where his house was, however far off it might be. Poor Lily, when she -said this to herself, did not really entertain a doubt that Ronald would -manage to write to her. But he did not do so. The post came in at -intervals, the powny and the boy went to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65"></a>{65}</span> town, and minded or did -not mind to call for the letters: but what did it matter when no letters -ever came? Ah, one from Sir Robert, hoping she found the air of the moor -beneficial; one from a light-hearted school-fellow, narrating all the -dances there had been since Lily went away, and the last new fashion, -and how like Alice Scott it was to be the first to appear in it. But no -more. This foolish little epistle, at first dashed on the ground in her -disappointment, Lily went over again, through every line, to see whether -somewhere in a corner there did not lurk the name which she was sick -with longing to see. It might so easily have been here: “I danced with -Ronald Lumsden and he was telling me,” or, “Ronald Lumsden called and -was asking about you.” Such a crumb of refreshment as that Lily would -have been glad of; but it never came.</p> - -<p>Yet she struggled bravely to keep up her heart. One of those early days, -after sundry attempts on the moor, where she gradually vanquished him, -Lily rode Rory into Kinloch-Rugas with only a few controversies on the -way. She was light and she was quiet, making no clattering at his heels -as the gig did, and by degrees Rory habituated himself to the light -burden and the moderate amount of control which she exercised over him. -It amused him after a while to see the whisk of her habit, which proved -to be no unknown drag or other mechanism, but really a harmless thing, -not heavy at all, and as she gave him much of his own way and lumps of -sugar and no whip to speak of, he became very soon docile—as docile as -his nature permitted—and gave her only as much trouble as amused Lily. -They went all the way to the toun together, an incongruous but friendly -pair, he pausing occasionally when a very tempting mouthful of -emerald-green grass appeared among the bunches of ling, she addressing -him with amiable remonstrances as Dougal did, and eventually touching -his point of honor or sense of shame, so that he made a little burst of -unaccustomed speed, and got over a good deal of ground in the stimulus -thus applied. He was not like the trim and glossy steeds on which, with -her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66"></a>{66}</span> long habit reaching half-way to the ground, and a careful groom -behind, Lily had ridden out with Sir Robert in the days of her grandeur, -which already seemed so far off. But she was, perhaps, quite as -comfortable in the tweed skirt, in which she could spring unfettered -from Rory’s back and move about easily without yards of heavy cloth to -carry. The long habit and the sleek steed and the groom turned out to -perfection would have been out of place on the moor; but Rory, jogging -along with his rough coat, and his young mistress in homespun were -entirely appropriate to the landscape.</p> - -<p>It required a good many efforts, however, before the final code of amity -was established between them, the rule of bearing and forbearing, which -encouraged Lily to so long a ride. When she slipped off his back at the -Manse door, Rory tossed his shaggy head with an air of relief, and -looked as if he might have set off home immediately to save himself -further trouble; but he thought better of it after a moment and a few -lumps of sugar, and was soon in the careful hands of the minister’s man, -who was an old and intimate friend, and on the frankest terms of -remonstrance and advice. Lily was not by any means so familiar in the -minister’s house. She went through the little ragged shrubbery where the -big straggling lilac bushes were all bare and brown, and the berries of -the rowan-trees beginning to redden, but every thing unkempt and -ungracious, the stems burned, and the leaves blown away before their -time by an unfriendly wind. The monthly rose upon the house made a good -show with its delicate blossoms, looking far too fragile for such a -place, yet triumphant in its weakness over more robust flowers; and a -still more fragile-looking but tenacious and indestructible plant, the -great white bindweed or wild convolvulus, covered the little porch with -its graceful trails of green, and delicate flowers, which last so short -a time, yet form so common a decoration of the humblest Highland -cottages. Lily paused to look through the light lines of the climbing -verdure as she knocked at the Manse door.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67"></a>{67}</span> It was so unlike any thing -that could be expected to bloom and flourish in the keen northern air. -It gave her a sort of consoling sense that other things as unlike the -sternness of the surroundings might be awaiting her, even here, at the -end of the world.</p> - -<p>And nothing could have been more like the monthly rose on the dark gray -wall of the Manse than Helen Blythe, who came out of the homely parlor -to greet Lily when she heard who the visitor was. “Miss Eelen” was -Lily’s senior by even more than had been supposed, but she did not show -any sign of mature years. She was very light of figure and quick of -movement, with a clear little morning face extremely delicate in color, -mild brown eyes that looked full of dew and freshness, and soft brown -hair. She came out eagerly, her “seam” in her hand, a mass of whiteness -against her dark dress, saying, “Miss Ramsay, Dalrugas?” with a quick -interrogative note, and then Helen threw down her work and held out both -her hands. “Oh, my bonnie little Lily,” she cried in sweet familiar -tones. “And is it you? and is it really you?”</p> - -<p>“I think I should have known you anywhere,” said Lily. “You are not -changed, not changed a bit; but I am not little Lily any longer. I am a -great deal bigger than you.”</p> - -<p>“You always were, I think,” said Helen, “though you were only a bairn -and me a little, little woman, nearly a woman, when you were here last. -Come ben, my dear, come ben and see papa. He does not move about much or -he would have come to welcome you. But wait a moment till I get my seam, -and till I find my thimble; it’s fallen off my finger in the fulness of -my heart, for I could not bide to think about that when I saw it was -you. And, oh, stand still, my dear, or you’ll tramp upon it! and it’s my -silver thimble and not another nearer than Aberdeen.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve got one,” cried Lily, “and you shall have it, Helen, for I fear, I -fear it is not so very much use to me.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, whisht, my dear. You must not tell me you don’t<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68"></a>{68}</span> like your seam. -How would the house go on, and what would folk do without somebody to -sew? For my part I could not live without my seam. Canny, canny, my -bonnie woman, there it is! They are just dreadful things for running -into corners—almost as bad as a ring. But there is a mischief about a -ring that is not in a thimble,” said Helen, rising, with her soft cheeks -flushed, having rescued the errant thimble from the floor.</p> - -<p>“And are you always at your seam,” said Lily, “just as you were when I -was little, and you used to come to Dalrugas to play?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t think you were ever so little as me,” said Helen with her -rustic idiom and accent, her low voice and her sweet look, both as fresh -as the air upon the moor. She did not reach much higher than Lily’s -shoulder. She had the most serene and smiling face, full, one would have -said, of genuine ease of heart. Was this so? or was her mind full, as -Katrin had said, of unhappy love and anxious thoughts? But it was -impossible to believe so, looking at this soft countenance, the mouth -which had not a line, and the eyes which had not a care.</p> - -<p>Nowadays the humblest dwelling which boasts two rooms to sit in -possesses a dining-room and drawing-room, but at that period -drawing-rooms were for grand houses only, and the parlor was the name of -the family dwelling-place. It was very dingy, if truth must be told. The -furniture was of heavy mahogany, with black hair-cloth. Though it was -still high summer, there was a fire in the old-fashioned black grate, -and close beside, in his black easy chair, was the minister, a heavy old -man with a bad leg, who was no longer able to get about, and indeed did -very little save criticise the actions of his assistant and successor, a -man of new-fangled ways and ideas unlike his own. He had an old plaid -over his shoulders, for he was chilly, and a good deal of snuff hanging -about the lapels of his coat. His countenance was large and -fresh-colored, and his hair white. In those days it was not the fashion -to wear a beard.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69"></a>{69}</span></p> - -<p>“So that’s Miss Lily from the town,” he said. “Come away ben, come ben. -Set a chair by the fire for the young lady, Eelen, for she’ll be cold -coming off the moor. It’s always a cold bit, the moor. Many a cough I’ve -catched there when I was more about the countryside than I am now. Old -age and a meeserable body are sore hindrances to getting about. Ye know -neither of them, my young friend, and I hope you’ll never know.”</p> - -<p>“Well, papa, it is to be hoped Lily will live to be old, for most folk -desires it,” said Helen. <i>Papaw</i>, a harsh reporter would have considered -her to say, but it was not so broad as a <i>w</i>; it was more like two -<i>a’s</i>—<i>papaa</i>—which she really said. She smiled very benignantly upon -the old gentleman and the young creature whom he accosted. The name of -gout was never mentioned, was, indeed, considered an unholy thing, the -product of port-wine and made dishes, and not to be laid to the account -of a clergyman. But Mr. Blythe contemplated with emotion, supported on -his footstool, the dimensions of a much swollen toe.</p> - -<p>“Well,” said he, “I hope she’ll never live to have the rose in her foot, -or any other ailment of the kind. And how’s Sir Robert, my dear? Him and -me are neighbor-like; there is not very much between us. Is he coming -North this year to have a pop at the birds, or is he thinking like me, I -wonder, that a good easy chair by the fire is the best thing for an auld -man? and a brace of grouse well cooked and laid upon a toast more -admirable than any number of them on the moor?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t think he is coming for the shooting,” said Lily, doubtful. Sir -Robert was in many respects what was then called a dandy, and any thing -more unlike the exquisite arrangements for his comfort, carried out by -his valet, than the old clergyman’s black cushion and footstool and -smouldering fire could not be.</p> - -<p>“You’ll have had an illness yourself,” said the minister, “though you do -not look like it, I must say. Does she, now, Eelen, with a color like -that? But your uncle would<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70"></a>{70}</span> have done better, my dear, to take you -travelling, or some place where ye would have seen a little society and -young persons like yourself, than to send you here. He’ll maybe have -forgotten what a quiet place it is, and no fit for the like of you. But -I’ll let him know, I’ll let him know as soon as he comes up among us, -which no doubt he will soon do now.”</p> - -<p>“Now, papa,” said Helen, “you will just let Sir Robert alone, and no -plot with him to carry Lily away from me: for I am counting very much -upon her for company, and it will do her no harm to get the air of the -moor for a while and forget all the dissipations of Edinburgh. You will -have to tell me all about them, Lily, for I’m the country mouse that has -never been away from home. Eh,” said Helen, “I have no doubt every thing -is far grander when you’re far off from it than when you’re near. I dare -say you were tired of the Edinburgh parties, and I would just give a -great deal to see one of them. And most likely you thought the Tower -would be delightful, while we are only thinking how dull it will be for -you. That is aye the way; what we have we think little of, and what we -have not we desire.”</p> - -<p>“I was not tired,” said Lily, “except sometimes of the grand dinners -that Uncle Robert is so fond of, and I cannot say that I expected the -Tower to be delightful; but you know I have no father of my own, and I -must just do what I am told.”</p> - -<p>“My dear,” said the old minister, “I see you have a fine judgment; for -if you had a father of your own, like Eelen there, you would just turn -him round your little finger; and I’m much surprised you don’t do the -same, a fine creature like you, with your uncle too.”</p> - -<p>“Whisht, papa,” said Helen; “we’ll have in the tea, which you know -you’re always fond of to get a cup when you can, and it’ll be a -refreshment to Lily after her ride. And in the meantime you can tell her -some of your stories to make her laugh, for a laugh’s a fine thing for a -young creature whatsoever it’s about, if it’s only havers.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71"></a>{71}</span></p> - -<p>“Which my auld stories are, ye think?” said the minister. “Go away, go -away and mask your tea. Miss Lily and me will get on very well without -you. I’ll tell ye no stories. They are all very old, and the most of -them are printed. If I were to entertain ye with my anecdotes of auld -ministers and beadles and the like, ye would perhaps find them again in -a book, and ye would say to yourself, ‘Eh, there’s the story Mr. Blythe -told me, as if it was out of his own head,’ and you would never believe -in me more. But for all that it’s no test being in a book; most of mine -are in books, and yet they are mine, and it was me that put them -together all the same. But I have remarked that our own concerns are -more interesting to us than the best of stories, and I’m a kind of -spiritual father to you, my dear. If I did not christen you, I -christened your father. Tell me, now that Eelen’s out of the way, what -is it that brought ye here? Is it something about a bonnie lad, my -bonnie young lass? for that’s the commonest cause of banishment, and as -it cannot be carried out with the young man, it’s the poor wee lassies -that have the brunt to bear——”</p> - -<p>“I never said,” cried Lily, angry tears coming to her eyes, “that there -was any reason or that it was for punishment. I just came here -because—because Uncle Robert wanted me to come,” she added in a little -burst of indignation, yet dignity; “and nobody that I know has a right -to say a word.”</p> - -<p>“Just so,” said Mr. Blythe; “he wanted you, no doubt, to give an eye to -Dougal and Katrin, who might be taking in lodgers or shooting the moors -for their own profit for any thing that he can tell. He’s an -auld-farrant chield, Sir Robert. He would not say a word to you, but he -would reckon that you would find out.”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Blythe,” cried Lily with fresh indignation, “if you think my uncle -sent me here for a spy, to find out things that do not exist——”</p> - -<p>“No, my dear, I don’t, I don’t,” said the minister. “I am satisfied he -has a mind above that, and you too. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72"></a>{72}</span> he’s not without a thread of -suspicion in him; indeed, he’s like most men of his years and -experience, and believes in nobody. No, no, Dougal does not put the moor -to profit, which might be a temptation to many men; but he has plenty of -sport himself in a canny way, and there’s a great deal of good game just -wasted. You may tell Sir Robert that from his old friend. Just a great -deal of good game wasted. He should come and bring a few nice lads to -divert you, and shoot the moor himself.”</p> - -<p>“That’s just one of papa’s crazes,” said Helen, returning with her -teapot in her hand, the tray, with all its jingling cups and saucers, -having been put on the table in the meantime. “He thinks the gentlemen -should come back from wherever they are, or whatever they may be doing, -to shoot the moors. It would certainly be far more cheery for the -countryside, but very likely Sir Robert cares nothing about the moor, -and is just content with the few brace of grouse that Dougal sends him. -I believe it’s considered a luxury and something grand to put on the -table in other places, but we have just too much of it here. Now draw to -the table and take your tea. The scones are just made, and I can -recommend the shortbread, and you must be wanting something after your -ride. I have told John to give the powny a feed, and you will feel all -the better, the two of you, for a little rest and refreshment. Draw in -to the table, my bonnie dear.”</p> - -<p>These were before the days of afternoon tea; but the institution existed -more or less, though not in name, and “the tea” was administered before -its proper time or repeated with a sense of guilt in many houses, where -the long afternoon was the portion of the day which it was least easy to -get through—when life was most languid, and occupation at a lull. Lily -ate her shortbread with a girl’s appetite, and took pleasure in her -visit. When she mounted Rory again and set forth on her return, she -asked herself with great wonder whether it was possible that there could -be any thing under that soft aspect of Helen Blythe, her serene -countenance and delicate color, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73"></a>{73}</span> could in any way correspond with -the trouble and commotion in her own young bosom? Helen had, indeed, her -father to care for, she was at home, and had, no doubt, friends; but was -it possible that a thought of some one who was not there lay at the -bottom of all?</p> - -<p>Lily confessed to Robina when she got home that she had been much -enlivened by her visit, and that Helen was coming to see her, and that -all would go well; but when Beenie, much cheered, went down stairs to -her tea, Lily unconsciously drew once more to that window, that -watchtower, from which nobody was ever visible. The moor lay in all the -glory of the evening, already beginning to warm and glow with the -heather, every bud of which awoke to brightness in the long rays of the -setting sun. It was as if it came to life as the summer days wore toward -autumn. The mountains stood round, blue and purple, in their unbroken -veil of distance and visionary greatness, but the moor was becoming -alive and full of color, warming out of all bleakness and grayness into -life and light. The corner of the road under the trees showed like a -peep into a real world, not a dreary vacancy from which no one came. -There was a cart slowly toiling its way up the slope, its homely sound -as it came on informing the silence of something moving, neighborly, -living. Lily smiled unconsciously as if it had been a friend. And when -the cart had passed, there appeared a figure, alone, walking quickly, -not with the slow wading, as if among the heather, of the rare, ordinary -passer-by. Lily’s interest quickened in spite of herself as she saw the -wayfarer breasting the hill. Who could he be, she wondered. Some -sportsman, come for the grouse—some gentleman, trained not only to -moorland walking, but to quick progress over smoother roads. He skimmed -along under the fir-trees at the corner, up the little visible ascent. -Lily almost thought she could hear his steps sounding so lightly, like a -half-forgotten music that she was glad, glad to hear again; but he -disappeared soon under the rising bank, as every thing did, and she was -once more alone in the world. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74"></a>{74}</span> sun sank, the horizon turned gray, -the moor became once more a wilderness in which no life or movement was.</p> - -<p>No!—what a jump her heart gave!—it was no wilderness: there was the -same figure again, stepping out on the moor. It had left the road, it -was coming on with springs and leaps over the heather toward the house. -Who was it? Who was it? And then he, he! held up his hand and beckoned, -beckoned to Lily in the wilderness. Who was he? Nobody—a wandering -traveller, a sportsman, a stranger. Her heart beat so wildly that the -whole house seemed to shake with it. And there he stood among the -heather, his hat off, waving it, and beckoning to her with his hand.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> situation of Ronald Lumsden, for whom Lily felt herself to have -sacrificed so much, and who showed, as she felt at the bottom of her -heart, so little inclination to sacrifice any thing for her, was, in -reality, a difficult one. It would have been false to say that he did -not love her, that her loss was no grief to him, or that he could make -himself comfortable without her—which was what various persons thought -and said, and he was not unaware of the fact. Neither was he unaware -that Lily herself had a half grudge, a whole consciousness, that the way -out of the difficulty was a simple one; and that he should have been -ready to offer her a home, even though it would not be wealthy, and the -protection of a husband’s name and care against all or any uncles in the -world. He knew that she was quite willing to share his poverty, that she -had no objection to what is metaphorically called a garret—and would -really have resembled one more than is common in such cases: a little -flat, high up under the roofs of an Edinburgh house—and to make it into -a happy and smiling little home. And as a matter of fact that garret -would not have been inappropriate, or have involved any social<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75"></a>{75}</span> downfall -either on his side or Lily’s. Young Edinburgh advocates in those days -set up their household gods in such lofty habitations without either -shame or reluctance. Not so very long before the man whom we and all the -world know as Lord Jeffrey set out in the world on that elevation and -made his garret the centre of a new kind of empire. There was nothing -derogatory in it: invitations from the best houses in Edinburgh would -have found their way there as freely as to George Square; and Lily’s -friends and his own friends would have filled the rooms as much as if -the young pair had been lodged in a palace. He could not even say to -himself that there would have been privations which she did not -comprehend in such a life; for, little though they had, it would have -been enough for their modest wants, and there was a prospect of more if -he continued to succeed as he had begun to do. Many a young man in -Edinburgh had married rashly on as little and had done very well indeed. -All this Ronald knew as well as any one, and the truth of it rankled in -his mind and made him unhappy. And yet on the other side there was, he -felt, so much to be said! Sir Robert Ramsay’s fortune was not a thing to -be thrown away, and to compare the interest, weight, and importance of -that with the suffering involved to young people who were sure of each -other in merely waiting for a year or two was absurd. According to all -laws of experience and life it was absurd. Lily was very little over -twenty; there was surely no hurry, no need to bring affairs to a climax, -to insist on marrying when it would no doubt be better even for her to -wait. This was what Lumsden said to himself. He would rather, as a -matter of preference, marry at once, secure the girl he loved for his -life-companion, and do the best he could for her. But when all things -were considered, would it be sensible, would it be right, would it be -fair?</p> - -<p>This was how he conversed with himself during many a lonely walk, and -the discussion would break out in the midst of very different thoughts, -even on the pavement of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76"></a>{76}</span> the Parliament House as he paced up and down. -Sir Robert’s fortune—that was a tangible thing. It meant in the future, -probably in the near future, for Sir Robert was a self-indulgent old -man, a most excellent position in the world, safety from all pecuniary -disasters, every comfort and luxury for Lily, who would then be a great -lady in comparison with the struggling Edinburgh advocate. And the cost -of this was nothing but a year’s, a few years’, waiting for a girl of -twenty-two and a young man of twenty-eight. How preposterous, indeed, to -discuss the question at all! If Lily had any feeling of wrong in that -her lover did not carry her off, did not in a moment arrange some -makeshift of a poor life, the prelude to a continual, never-ending -struggle, it could only be girlish folly on Lily’s part, want of power -to perceive the differences and the expediencies. Could any thing be -more just than this reasoning? There is no one in his senses who would -not agree in it. To wait a year or two at Lily’s age—what more natural, -more beneficial? He would have felt that he was taking advantage of her -inexperience if he had urged her to marry him at such a cost. And -waiting cost nothing, at least to him.</p> - -<p>Not very long after Lily left Edinburgh Lumsden had encountered Sir -Robert one evening at one of the big dinner-parties which were the old -gentleman’s chief pleasure, and he had taken an opportunity to address -the young fellow on the subject which could not be forgotten between -them. He warned Lumsden that he would permit no nonsense, no clandestine -correspondence, and that it was a thing which could not be done, as his -faithful servants at Dalrugas kept him acquainted with every thing that -passed, and he would rather carry his niece away to England or even -abroad (that word of fear and mystery) than allow her to make a silly -and unequal marriage. “You are sensible enough to understand the -position,” the old man had said. “From all I hear of you you are no -hot-headed young fool. What you would gain yourself would be only a wife -quite unused to shifts and stress<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77"></a>{77}</span> of weather, and probably a mere -burden upon you, with her waiting-woman serving her hand and foot, and -her fine-lady ways—not the useful helpmate a struggling man requires.”</p> - -<p>“I should not be afraid of that,” said Lumsden, with a pale smile, for -no lover, however feeble-hearted, likes to hear such an account of his -love, and no youth on the verge of successful life can be any thing but -impatient to hear himself described as a struggling man. “I expect to -make my way in my profession, and I have reason to expect so. And -Lily——”</p> - -<p>“Miss Ramsay, if you please. She is a fine lady to the tips of her -fingers. She can neither dress nor eat nor move a step without Robina at -her tail. She is not fitted, I tell you, for the wife of a struggling -man.”</p> - -<p>“But suppose I tell you,” cried Lumsden with spirit, “that I shall be a -struggling man only for a little while, and that she is in every way -fitted to be <i>my</i> wife?”</p> - -<p>“Dismiss it from your mind, sir; dismiss it from your mind,” said Sir -Robert. “What will the world say? and what the world says is of great -consequence to a man that has to struggle, even if it is only at the -beginning. They will say that you’ve worked upon a girl’s inexperience -and beguiled her to poverty. They will say that she did not know what -she was doing, but you did. They will say you were a fool for your own -sake, and they will say you took advantage of her.”</p> - -<p>“All which things will be untrue,” said Lumsden hotly.</p> - -<p>But then they were disturbed and no more was said. This conversation, -though so brief, was enough to fill a man’s mind with misgivings, at -least a reasonable man’s, prone to think before and not after the event. -Lumsden was not one that is carried away by impulse. The first effect -was that he did not write, as he had intended, to Lily. What was the use -of writing if Sir Robert’s faithful servants would intercept the -letters? Why run any risk when there lay behind the greater danger of -having<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78"></a>{78}</span> her carried off to England or “abroad,” where she might be lost -and never heard of more? Ronald pondered all these things much, but his -pondering was in different circumstances from Lily’s. She had nothing to -divert her mind; he had a great deal. Society had ended for her, but it -was in full circulation, and he had his full share in every thing, where -he was. The pressure is very different in cases so unlike. The girl had -nothing to break the monotony of hour after hour, and day after day. The -young man had a full and busy life: so long in the Parliament House, so -long in his chambers; a consultation; a hard piece of mental work to -make out a case; a cheerful dinner in the evening with some one; a -wavering circle of other men always more or less surrounding him. The -difficulty was not having too much time to think, but how to have time -enough; and the season of occupation and company and events hurried on -so that when he looked back upon a week it appeared to him like a day. -And he had no way of knowing how it lingered with Lily. He wondered a -little and felt it a grievance that she did not write to him, which -would have been so very easy. There were no faithful servants on his -side to intercept letters. She might have at least sent him a line to -announce her safe arrival, and tell him how the land lay. He on his side -could quite endure till the Vacation, when he had made up his mind to do -something, to have news of her somehow. Even this determination made it -more easy for him to defer writing, to make no attempt at communication; -for why warn Sir Robert’s servants and himself of what he intended to -do, so that they might concert means to balk him? whereas it was so very -doubtful whether any thing he sent would reach Lily. Thus he reasoned -with himself, with always the refrain that a year or two of waiting at -his own age and Lily’s could do no one any harm.</p> - -<p>Yet Ronald was but mortal, though he was so wise. Sir Robert left -Edinburgh, going to pay his round of visits before he went abroad, which -he invariably did every autumn. There was no Monte Carlo in those days, -and old<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79"></a>{79}</span> gentlemen had not acquired the habit of sunning themselves on -the Riviera; but, on the other hand, there was much more to attract them -at the German baths, which had many of the attractions now concentrated -at Monte Carlo; and Florence possessed a court and society where life -went on in that round of entertainment and congregation which is -essential to old persons of the world. Sir Robert disappeared some time -before the circles of the Parliament House broke up, and young Lumsden -was thus freed from the disagreeable consciousness of being more or less -under the personal observation of his enemy. And he loved Lily, though -he was willing to wait and to be temporarily separated from her in the -interests of their future comfort and Sir Robert’s fortune. So that, -when he was released from his work, and free to direct his movements for -a time as he pleased, an attraction which he could not resist led him to -the place of his lady’s exile. All the good reasons which his -ever-working mind brought forth against this were, I am happy to say, -ineffectual. He said to himself that it was a foolish thing; that if -reported to Sir Robert—and how could it fail to be reported to Sir -Robert, since his servants were so faithful, and it would be impossible -to keep them in the dark?—would only precipitate every thing and lead -to Lily’s transfer to a safer hiding-place. He repeated to himself that -to wait for a year or two at twenty-two and at twenty-eight was no real -hardship: it was rather an advantage. But none of these wise -considerations affected his mind as they ought to have done. He had a -hunger and thirst upon him to see the girl he loved. He wanted to make -sure that she was there, that there was a Lily in the world, that -eventually she would be his and share his life. It was <i>plus fort que -lui</i>.</p> - -<p>He went home, however, as in duty bound, to the spare old house on the -edge of the Highlands, where he and all his brothers and sisters had -been born and bred; where there was a little shooting, soon exhausted by -reason of the many guns brought to bear upon it, and a good deal of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80"></a>{80}</span> -company in a homely way, impromptu dances almost every night, as is the -fashion in a large family, which attracts young people round it far and -near. But in all this simple jollity Ronald only felt more the absence -of his love, and the vacant place in the world which could only be -filled by her; though what, perhaps, had as great an effect upon him as -any thing else was that his favorite sister, whom, next to her, perhaps -he liked best in the world, knew about Lily, having been taken into his -confidence before he had realized all the difficulties, and talked to -him perpetually about her, disapproving of his inactivity and much -compassionating the lonely girl. “Oh, if I were only near enough, I -would go and see her and keep up her heart!” Janet Lumsden would cry, -while her brother was fast getting into the condition of mind in which -to see her, to make sure of her existence, was a necessity. In this -condition the old house at home, with all its simple gayeties and -tumult, became intolerable to him. He could have kicked the brother who -demanded his sympathy in his engagement to a young lady with a fortune, -neither the young lady nor the fortune being worthy to be compared to -Lily, though the family was delighted by such a piece of good luck for -Rob. And it set all his nerves wrong to see the flirtations that went on -around him, though they were frank and simple affairs, the inevitable -preferences which one boy and girl among so many would naturally show -for each other. All this seemed vulgar, common, intolerable, and in the -worst taste to Ronald. It was not that he was really more refined than -his brothers, but that his own affairs had gone (temporarily) so wrong, -and his own chosen one was so far out of the way. All the jolly, hearty -winter life at home jarred on him and upset his nerves, those artificial -things which did not exist in Perthshire at that period, whatever they -may do now.</p> - -<p>At last, when he could not endure it any longer, he announced that he -was going a-fishing up toward the North. He was not a great fisherman, -and the brothers laughed at Ronald setting out with his rod; but he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_81" id="page_81"></a>{81}</span> -the natural gift, common to all Scotsmen of good blood, of knowing most -people throughout his native country, or at least one part of his native -country, and being sure of a welcome in a hundred houses in which a son -of Lumsden of Pontalloch was a known and recognizable person, though -Lumsden of Pontalloch himself was by no means a rich or important man. -This is an advantage which the <i>roturier</i> never acquires until at least -he has passed through three or four generations. Ronald Lumsden knew -that he would never be at a loss, that if rejected in one city he could -flee into another, and that if any impertinent questions were put to him -by Sir Robert’s own faithful servants, he could always say that he was -going to stay at any of the known houses within twenty miles. This -hospitality perhaps exists no longer, for many of these houses now, -probably the greater part of them, are let to strangers and foreigners, -to whom even the native names are strange and the condition of the -country means nothing. But it was so still in those days.</p> - -<p>He set out thus, more or less at his ease, and lingered a little on his -way. Then he bethought himself, or so he said, of the Rugas, in which he -had fished once as a boy, and which justified him in getting off the -coach at the little inn, not much better than a village public-house, -where a bare room and a hard bed were to be had, and a right to fish -could be negotiated for. He had a day’s fishing to give himself a -countenance, enquiring into the history generally of the country, and -which houses were occupied, and which lairds “up for the shooting.”</p> - -<p>“Sir Robert here? Na, Sir Robert’s not here. Bless us a’, what would -bring him here, an auld man like that, that just adores his creature -comforts, and never touches a gun, good season or bad. No, he’s no here, -nor he hasna been here this dozen years. But I’ll tell you wha’s here, -and that’s a greater ferlie: his bonnie wee niece, Maister James’s -daughter, Miss Lily, as they call her. And it’s no for the shooting, -there’s nae need to say, nor for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_82" id="page_82"></a>{82}</span> fishing either, poor bit thing. -But what it is for is more than I can tell ye. It’s just a black, -burning shame——”</p> - -<p>“Why is it a shame? Is the house haunted, or what’s the matter?” Ronald -said, averting his face.</p> - -<p>“Haunted! that’s a pack of havers. I’m not minding about haunted. But I -tell ye what, sir, that bit lassie (and a bonnie bit lassie she is) is -all her lane there, like a lily flower in the wilderness; for Lily she’s -called, and Lily she is—a bit willowy slender creature, bowing her head -like a flower on the stalk.” The landlord, who was short and red and -stout, leaned his own head to one side to simulate the young lady’s -attitude. “She’s there and never sees a single soul, and it’s mair than -her life’s worth if ye take my opinion. If there was any body to keep -her company, or even a lot of sportsmen coming and going, it would be -something; but there she is, all her lane.”</p> - -<p>“Miss Ramsay! I have met her in Edinburgh,” Ronald said.</p> - -<p>“Then, if I were you, I would just take my foot in my hand and gang ower -the moor and pay her a visit. She will have a grand tocher and she is a -bonnie lass, and nowadays ye canna pick up an heiress at every roadside. -It would be just a charity to give the poor thing a little diversion and -make a fool o’ yon old sneck-drawer to his very beard. Lord! but I -wouldna waste a meenit if I were a young man.”</p> - -<p>Ronald laughed, but put on a virtuous mien. He said he had come for the -fishing, not to pay visits, and to the fishing he would go. But when he -had spent the morning on the river, it occurred to him that he might -take “a look at the moor”; and this was how it was that he stole under -the shadow of the bank when the last rays of the sunset were fading, and -suddenly came out upon the heather under Dalrugas Tower.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_83" id="page_83"></a>{83}</span></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Lily</span> could not believe her eyes. That it was Ronald who approached the -house, leaping over the big bushes of ling, seeking none of the little -paths that ran here and there across the moor, did not occur to her. She -was afraid that it was some stranger or traveller, probably an -Englishman, who, seeing a woman’s head at a window, thought it an -appropriate occasion for impertinently attempting to attract her -attention. It was considered in those days that Englishmen and wanderers -unknown in the district were disposed to be jocularly uncivil when they -had a chance, and indeed the excellent Beenie, who had but few personal -attractions, had rarely gone out alone in Edinburgh, as Lily had often -been told, without being followed by some adventurous person eager to -make her acquaintance. Lily’s first thought was that here must be one of -Beenie’s many anonymous admirers, and after having watched breathlessly -up to a certain point she withdrew with a sense of offence, somewhat -haughtily, surprised that she, even at this height and distance, could -be taken for Beenie, or that any such methods should be adopted to -approach herself. But her heart had begun to beat, she knew not why, and -after a few minutes’ interval she returned cautiously to the window. She -did not see any one at first, and with a sigh of relief but -disappointment said to herself that it was nobody, not even a lover of -Beenie, who might have furnished her with a laugh, but only some -passer-by pursuing his indifferent way. Then she ventured to put out her -head to see where the passing figure had gone; and lo, at the foot of -the tower, immediately below the window, stood he whom she believed to -be so far away. There was a mutual cry of “Ronald” and “Lily,” and then -he cried, “Hush, hush!” in a thrilling<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_84" id="page_84"></a>{84}</span> whisper, and begged her to come -out. “Only for a moment, only for a word,” he cried through the pale air -of the twilight. “Has any thing happened?” cried Lily, bewildered. She -had no habit of the clandestine. She forgot that there was any sentence -against their meeting, and felt only that when he did not come to her, -but called to her to go to him, there must be something wrong.</p> - -<p>But presently the sense of the position came back to her. Dougal and -Katrin had given no sign of consciousness that any restraint was to be -exercised, they had not opposed any desire of hers, or attempted to -prevent her from going out as she pleased; therefore the thought that -they were now themselves at supper and fully occupied, though it came -into her mind, did not affect her, nor did she feel it necessary to -whisper back in return. But he beckoned so eagerly that Lily yielded to -his urgency. She ran down stairs, catching up a plaid as she went, and -in a moment was on the moor and by Ronald’s side. “At last,” he said, -“at last!” when the first emotion of the meeting was over.</p> - -<p>“Oh, it is me that should say ‘at last,’<span class="lftspc">”</span> said the girl; “it is not you -that have been alone for weeks and weeks, banished from every thing you -know: not a kent face, not a kind word, and not a letter by the post.”</p> - -<p>“I gave a promise I would not write. Indeed, I wanted to give them no -handle against us, but to come the first moment I could without exciting -suspicion.”</p> - -<p>“You are very feared of exciting suspicion,” she said, shaking her head.</p> - -<p>“Have I not cause? Your uncle upbraided me that I was taking advantage -of your inexperience, persuading you to do things you would repent -after. Can I do this, Lily? Can I lay myself open to such a reproach? -Indeed, I do know the facts of things better than you.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what you call the facts of things,” she said. “Do you know -the facts of this—the moor and nothing but the moor, and the two-three -servants, and the beasts? Could you contrive to get your diversion out -of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_85" id="page_85"></a>{85}</span> the ways of a pony, and the cackle of the cocks and hens? Not but -they are very diverting sometimes,” said Lily, her heart rising. She was -impatient with him. She was even angry with him. He it was who was to -blame for her banishment, and he had been long, long in doing any thing -to enliven it; but still he was here, and the world was changed. Her -heart rose instinctively; even while she complained the things she -complained of grew attractive in her eyes. The pony’s humors brought -smiles to her face, the moor grew fair, the diversion which she had -almost resented when it was all she had now appeared to her in a happy -glow of amusement; though she was complaining in this same breath of the -colorlessness of her life, it now seemed to her colorless no more.</p> - -<p>He drew her arm more closely through his. “And do you think I had more -diversion?” he asked, “feeling every street a desert and my rooms more -vacant than the moor? But that’s over, my Lily, Heaven be praised. I’m -thought to be fishing, and fish I will, hereaway and thereaway, to give -myself a countenance, but always within reach. And the moor will be -paradise when you and I meet here every day.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Ronald, if we can keep it up,” Lily murmured in spite of herself.</p> - -<p>“Why shouldn’t we keep it up, as long, at least, as the Vacation lasts? -After that, it is true, I’ll have to go back to work; but it is a long -time before that, and I will go back with a light heart to do my best, -to make it possible to carry you off one day and laugh at Sir Robert, -for that is what it must come to, Lily. You may have objections, but you -must learn to get over them. If he stands out and will not give in to -us, we must just take it in our own hands. It must come to that. I would -not hurry or press a thing so displeasing if other means will do. And in -the meantime we’ll be very patient and try to get over your uncle by -fair means. But if he is obstinate, dear, that’s what it will have to -come to. No need to hurry you; we’re young enough. But you must prepare -your<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_86" id="page_86"></a>{86}</span> mind for it, Lily, for that is what will have to come if he does -not give way.”</p> - -<p>Lily clung to her lover’s arm in a bewilderment of pleasure which was -yet confusion of thought, as if the world had suddenly turned upside -down. This was her own sentiment, which Ronald had never shared: how in -a moment had it become his, changing every thing, making the present -delightful and the future all hope and light? Sir Robert’s fortune had, -then, begun to appear to him what it had been to her, so secondary a -matter! and Sir Robert himself only a relative worthy of consideration -and deference, but not a tyrant obstructing all the developments of -life. She could not say: “This is how I have felt all through,” for, -indeed, it had never been possible to her to say to him: “Take me; let -us live poorly, but together,” as she had always felt. Was it he who had -felt this all through and not she at all? Lily was bewildered, her -standing-ground seemed to have changed, the whole position was -transformed. Surely it must have been she who held back, who wanted to -delay and temporize, not the lover, to whom the bolder way was more -natural. She did not seem to feel the ground beneath her, all had so -twisted and changed. “That is what it must come to; you must prepare -your mind for it, Lily.” Had that solid ground been cut from under her? -was she walking upon air? Her head felt a little giddy and sick in the -change of the world; yet what a change! all blessedness and happiness -and consolation, with no trouble in it at all.</p> - -<p>“I have thought so sometimes myself,” she said in the great bewilderment -of her mind.</p> - -<p>“But in the meantime we must be patient a little,” he said. “Of course I -am going to take my vacation here where we can be together. What kind of -people are those servants? Do they send him word about every thing and -spy upon all your movements? Never mind, I’ll find a way to baffle them; -I am here for the fishing, you know, and after a little while I’ll find -a lodging nearer, so that we may be the most of the time together while -pretending<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_87" id="page_87"></a>{87}</span> to fish. If we keep up in this direction, we will be out of -the reach of the windows, and you can set Beenie to keep watch and ward. -For I suppose you still tell Beenie every thing, and she is as faithful -to you as Sir Robert’s servants are to him?”</p> - -<p>“I have no doubt they are faithful,” said Lily, a little chilled by this -speech, “but they are not spies at all. They never meddle with me. I am -sure they never write to him about what I am doing; besides, Sir Robert -is a gentleman; he would never spy upon a girl like me.”</p> - -<p>“We must not be too sure of that. He sent you here to be spied upon, at -least to be kept out of every-body’s sight. I would not trust him, nor -yet his servants. And I am nearer to you than Sir Robert, Lily. I am -your husband that is going to be. It might be wrong for you to meet any -other man, which you would never think of doing, but there’s nothing -wrong in meeting me.”</p> - -<p>“I never thought so,” said Lily, subdued. “I am very, very glad to have -you here. It will make every thing different. Only there is no need to -be alarmed about Dougal and Katrin. I think they are fonder of me than -of Uncle Robert. They are not hard upon me, they are sorry for me. But -never mind about that. Will you really, really give up your vacation and -your shooting, and all your pleasure at home, to come here and bide with -me?”</p> - -<p>“That and a great deal more,” said Ronald fervently. He felt at that -moment that he could give every thing up for Lily. He was very much -pleased, elevated, gratified by what he himself had said. He had taken -the burden of the matter on his own shoulders, as it was fit that a man -should do. He had felt when they last parted that in some way, he could -not exactly say what, he had not come up to what was expected of him. He -had not reached the height of Lily’s ideal. But now every thing was -different. He had spoken out, he had assumed a virtue of which he had -not been quite sure whether he had it or not; but now he was sure. He -would not forsake<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_88" id="page_88"></a>{88}</span> her, he would never ask her to wait unduly or to -suffer for him now. To be sure, they would have to wait—they were young -enough, there was no harm in that—but not longer than was fit, not to -make her suffer. He drew her arm within his, leading her along through -the intricacies of the firm turf that formed a green network of softness -amid the heather. It was not for her to stumble among the big bushes of -ling or spring over the tufts. His business was to guard her from all -that, to lead her by the grassy paths, where her soft footsteps should -find no obstacle. There is a moment in a young man’s life when he thinks -of this mission of his with a certain enthusiasm. Whatever else he might -do, this was certainly his, to keep a woman’s foot from stumbling, to -smooth the way for her, to find out the easiest road. The more he did it -the more he felt sure that it was his to do, and should be, through all -the following years.</p> - -<p>Lily was a long time out of doors that night. Robina came upstairs from -the lengthened supper, which was one of the pleasantest moments of the -day down stairs, when all the work was done, and all were free to talk -and linger without any thought of the beasts or the poultry. The cows -and the ponies were all suppered and put to bed. All the chickens, -mothers and children, had their heads under their wings. The -watchfullest of cocks was buried in sleep, the dogs were quiet on the -hearthstone. Then was the time for those “cracks” which the little party -loved. Beenie told her thrice-told tale of the wonders of Sir Robert’s -kitchen, and the goings on of Edinburgh servants, while Katrin gave -forth the chronicles of the countryside, and Dougal, not to be outdone, -poured forth rival recollections of things which he had seen when the -laird’s man, following his master afar, and of the tragedy of Mr. James, -Lily’s father, who had died far from home. They would sometimes talk all -together without observing it, carrying on each in his various strain. -And as there was nobody to interrupt, supper-time was long, and full of -varied interest. Sandy, the boy, sat at the foot of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_89" id="page_89"></a>{89}</span> table with -round and wondering eyes. But though he laid up many an image for future -admiration, his interest flagged after a while, and an oft-repeated -access of sleep made him the safest of listeners. “G’y way to your bed, -laddie,” Katrin would say, not without kindness. “Lord bless us!” cried -Dougal, giving his kick of dismissal under the table. “D’ye no hear what -the mistress tells ye?” But this was the only thing that disturbed the -little party. And Beenie usually came upstairs to find Lily with her -pale face, she who had no cronies, nor any one with whom to forget -herself in talk, “wearying” for her sole attendant.</p> - -<p>But on this night Beenie found no one there when she came upstairs, -running, and a little guilty to think of the solitude of her little -mistress. For a moment Beenie had a great throb of terror in her breast: -the window was open, a faint and misty moon was shining forlorn over the -moor, there were no candles lighted, nor sign of any living thing. -Beenie coming in with her light was like a searcher for some dreadful -thing, entering a place of mystery to find she knew not what. She held -up her candle and cast a wild glance round the room, as if Lily might -have been lying in a heap in some corner; then, with a suppressed -scream, rushed into the adjacent bedroom, where the door stood open and -all was emptiness. Not there, not there! The distracted woman flew to -the open window with a wild apprehension that Lily, in her despair, -might have thrown herself over. “Oh, Miss Lily, Miss Lily!” she cried, -setting down her light and wringing her hands. Every horrible thing that -could have happened rushed through Beenie’s mind. “And what will they -say to me, that let her bide her lane and break her heart?” she moaned -within herself. And so strong was the certainty in her mind that -something dreadful had happened that when a sound struck her ear, and -she turned sharp round to see the little mistress, whom she had in -imagination seen laid out white and still upon her last bed, standing -all radiant in life and happiness behind her, the scream which burst<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_90" id="page_90"></a>{90}</span> -forth from Beenie’s lips was wilder than ever. Was it Lily who stood -there, smiling and shining, her eyes full of the dew of light, and every -line of her countenance beaming? or was it rather Lily’s glorified -ghost, the spirit that had overcome all troubles of the flesh? It was -the mischievous look in Lily’s eyes that convinced her faithful servant -that this last hypothesis could not be the explanation. For mischief -surely will not shine in glorified eyes, or the blessed amuse themselves -with the consternation of mortals. And Beenie’s soul, so suddenly -relieved of its terrors, burst out in an “Oh, Miss Lily!” the perennial -remonstrance with which the elder woman had all her life protested -against, yet condoned and permitted, the wayward humors of the girl.</p> - -<p>“Well, Beenie! and how long do you think you will take to your supper -another time?” Lily said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily, and where have you been? I’ve had a fright that will -make me need no more suppers as long as I live. Supper, did ye say? Me -that thought that you were out of the window, lying cauld and stark at -the foot of the tower. Oh, my bonnie dear, my heart’s beating like a -muckle drum. Where have ye been?”</p> - -<p>“I have been on the moor,” said Lily dreamily. “I’ve had a fine walk, -half the way to the town, while you have been taken up with your -bannocks and your cheese and your cracks. I had a great mind to come -round to the window and put something white over my head and give you a -good fright, sitting there telling stories and thinking nothing of me.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, I wasna telling stories—no me!”</p> - -<p>Why Beenie made this asseveration I cannot tell, for she did nothing but -tell stories all the time that Dougal, Katrin, and she were together; -but it was natural to deny instinctively whatever accusation of neglect -was brought against her. “And eh,” she cried, with natural art, turning -the tables, “what a time of night to be out on that weary moor, a young -lady like you. Your feet will be wet with the dew, and no a thing upon -your shoulders<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_91" id="page_91"></a>{91}</span> to keep you from the cold. Eh, Miss Lily, Miss Lily!” -cried Robina, with all the fictitious indignation of a counter -accusation, “them that has to look after you and keep you out of -mischief has hard ado.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps you will get me a little supper now that you have had plenty -for yourself,” said Lily, keeping up the advantage on her side. But she -was another Lily from that pale flower which had looked so sadly over -the moor before Robina went down stairs to her prolonged meal, a radiant -creature with joy in every movement. What could it be that had happened -to Lily while her faithful woman was down stairs?</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Lily</span> kept the secret to herself as long as it was in mortal power to do -so. She sent Beenie off to bed, entirely mystified and unable to explain -to herself the transformation which had taken place, while she herself -lay down under the canopies of the “best bed” and watched the misty -moonlight on the moor, and pictured to herself that Ronald would be only -now arriving, after his long walk, at his homely lodging. But what did -it matter to him to be late, to walk so far, to traverse, mile after -mile in the dark, that lonesome road? He was a man, and it was right and -fit for him. If he had been walking half the night, it would have been -just what the rural lads do, proud of their sweethearts, for whom they -sacrifice half their rest.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“I’ll take my plaid and out I’ll steal,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And o’er the hills to Nannie O.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>That was the sentiment for the man, and Lily felt her heart swell with -the pride of it and the satisfaction. She had thought—had she really -thought it?—that he was too careful, too prudent, more concerned about -her fortune<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_92" id="page_92"></a>{92}</span> than her happiness, but how false that had all been! or how -different he was now! “To carry you off some day and laugh at Sir -Robert, for that is what it must come to, Lily.” Ah, she had always -known that this was what it must come to; but he had not seen it, or at -least she had thought he did not see it in the Edinburgh days. He had -learned it, however, since then, or else, which was most likely, it had -always been in him, only mistaken by her or undeveloped; for it takes -some time, she said to herself, before a man like Ronald, full of faith -in his fellow-creatures, could believe in a tyranny like Sir Robert’s, -or think that it was any thing but momentary. To think that the -heartless old man should send a girl here, and then go away and probably -forget all about her, leaving her to pine away in the wilderness—that -was a thing that never would have entered into Ronald’s young and -wholesome mind. But now he saw it all, and that passiveness which had -chilled and disappointed Lily was gone. That was what it must come to. -Ah, yes, it was this it must come to: independence, no waiting on an old -man’s caprices, no dreadful calculations about a fortune which was not -theirs, which Lily did not grudge Sir Robert, which she was willing, -contemptuously, that he should do what he pleased with, which she would -never buy at the cost of the happiness of her young life. And now Ronald -thought so too. The little flat high up under the tiles of a tall old -Edinburgh house began to appear again, looming in the air over the wild -moor. What a home it would be, what a nest of love and happiness! Ronald -never should repent, oh, never, never should he repent that he had -chosen Lily’s love rather than Sir Robert’s fortune. How happy they -would be, looking out over all the lights and shadows with the great -town at their feet and all their friends around! Lily fell asleep in -this beatitude of thought, and in the same awakened, wondering at -herself for one moment why she should feel so happy, and then -remembering with a rush of delightful retrospection. Was it possible -that all the world had thus changed in a moment,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_93" id="page_93"></a>{93}</span> that the clouds had -all fled away, that these moors were no longer the wilderness, but a -little outlying land of paradise, where happiness was, and every thing -that was good was yet to be?</p> - -<p>Beenie found her young mistress radiant in the morning as she had left -her radiant when she went to bed. The young girl’s countenance could not -contain her smiles; they seemed to ripple over, to mingle with the -light, to make sunshine where there was none. What could have happened -to her in that social hour when Robina was at supper with her friends, -usually one of the dullest of the twenty-four to lonely Lily? Whom could -she have seen, what could she have heard, to light those lamps of -happiness in her eyes? But Robina could not divine what it was, and Lily -laughed and flouted, and reproached her with smiles always running over. -“You were so busy with your supper you never looked what might be -happening to me. You and Katrin and Dougal were so full of your cracks -you had no eyes for a poor lassie. I might have been lost upon the moor -and you would never have found it out. But I was not lost, you see, only -wonderfully diverted, and spent a happy evening, and you never knew.”</p> - -<p>“Miss Lily,” said Beenie, with tears, “never more, if I should starve, -will I go down to my supper again!”</p> - -<p>“You will just go down to your supper to-night and every night, and have -your cracks with Dougal and Katrin, and be as happy as you can, for I am -happy too. I am lonely no more. I am just the Lily I used to be before -trouble came—oh, better! for it’s finer to be happy again after trouble -than when you are just innocent and never have learned what it is.”</p> - -<p>“The Lord bless us all!” cried Beenie solemnly, “the bairn speaks as if -she had gone, like Eve, into the thickest of the gairden and eaten of -the tree——”</p> - -<p>“So I have,” said Lily. “I once was just happy like the bairn you call -me, and then I was miserable. And now I know the difference, for I’m -happy again, and so I will always be.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_94" id="page_94"></a>{94}</span></p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily,” said Beenie, “to say you will always be is just flying -in the face of Providence, for there is nobody in this world that is -always happy. We would be mair than mortal if we could be sure of that.”</p> - -<p>“But I am sure of it,” said Lily, “for what made me miserable was just -misjudging a person. I thought I understood, and I didn’t understand. -And now I do; and if I were to live to a hundred, I would never make -that mistake again. And it lies at the bottom of every thing. I may be -ill, I may be poor, I may have other troubles, but I can never, never,” -said Lily, placing piously her hands together, “have that unhappiness -which is the one that gives bitterness to all the rest—again.”</p> - -<p>“My bonnie lady! I wish I knew what you were meaning,” Beenie said.</p> - -<p>Lily kept her hands clasped and her head raised a little, as if she were -saying a prayer. And then she turned with a graver countenance to her -wondering maid. “Do you think,” she said, “that Dougal or Katrin—but I -don’t think Katrin—writes to Uncle Robert and tells him every thing I -do?”</p> - -<p>“Dougal or Katrin write to Sir Robert? But what would they do that for?” -said Beenie, with wide-open eyes.</p> - -<p>“Well, I don’t know—yes, I do know. I know what has been said, but I -don’t believe it. They say that Sir Robert’s servants write every thing -to him and tell all I do.”</p> - -<p>“You do nothing, Miss Lily. What should they write? What do they ken? -They ken nothing. Miss Lily, Sir Robert, he’s a gentleman. Do you think -he would set a watch on a bit young creature like you? He may be a hard -man, and no considerate, but he is not a man like that.”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I said!” cried Lily; “but tell me one thing more. Do they -know—did he tell them why—what for he sent me here?”</p> - -<p>A blush and a cloud came over her sensitive face, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_95" id="page_95"></a>{95}</span> then a smile -broke forth like the sunshine, and chased the momentary trouble away.</p> - -<p>“Not a word, Miss Lily, not a word. Was he likely to expose himsel’ and -you, that are his nearest kin? No such thing. Many, many a wonder they -have taken, and many a time they have tried to get it out of me; but I -say it was just because of having no fit home for a young lady, and him -aye going away to take his waters, and to play himself at divers places -that were not fit for the like of you. They dinna just believe me, but -they just give each other a bit look and never say a word. And it’s my -opinion, Miss Lily, that they’re just far fonder of you, Mr. James’s -daughter, than they are of Sir Robert, for Dougal was Mr. James’s ain -man, and to betray you to your uncle, even if there was any thing to -tell—which there is not, and I’m hoping never will be—is what they -would not do. You said yourself you did not believe that Katrin would -ever tell upon you; and I’m just as sure of Dougal, that is very fond of -you, though he mayna show it. And then there’s the grand security of a’, -Miss Lily, that there is nothing to tell.”</p> - -<p>“To be sure, that is, as you say, the grand security of all!” Then -Lily’s face burst into smiles, and she flung discretion to the winds. -“Beenie,” she said, “you would never guess. I was very lonely at the -window last night, wondering and wondering if I would just bide there -all my life, and never see any body coming over the moor, when, in a -moment, I saw somebody! He was standing among the heather at the foot of -the tower.”</p> - -<p>“Miss Lily!”</p> - -<p>“Just so,” said the girl, nodding her head in the delight of her heart, -“it was just—him. When every thing was at the darkest, and my heart was -broken. Oh, Beenie! and it’s quite different from what I thought. I -thought he was more for saving Uncle Robert’s fortune than for making me -happy. I was just a fool for my pains. ‘If he stands out, we must just -take it in our own hands; it must come to that; you must just prepare -your mind for it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_96" id="page_96"></a>{96}</span> Lily.’ That was what he said, and me misjudging and -making myself miserable all the time. That is why I say I will never be -miserable again, for I will misjudge Ronald no more.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, Miss Lily!” Beenie said again. Her mind was in a confusion even -greater than that of her young mistress; and she did not know what to -say. If Lily had misjudged him, so had she, and worse, and worse, she -said to herself! Beenie had not been made miserable, however, by the -mistake as Lily had been, and she was not uplifted by the discovery, if -it was a discovery; a cold doubt still hovered about her heart.</p> - -<p>“I will tell you the truth. I will not hide any thing from you,” said -Lily. “He is at Kinloch-Rugas; he is staying in the very town itself. He -has come here for the fishing. He’ll maybe not catch many fish, but -we’ll both be happy, which is of more importance. Be as long as you like -at your supper, Beenie, for then I will slip out and take my walk upon -the moor, and Dougal and Katrin need never know any thing except that I -am, as they think already, a silly lassie keeping daft-like hours. If -they write that to Uncle Robert, what will it matter? To go out on the -moor at the sunset is not silly; it is the right thing to do. And the -weather is just like heaven, you know it is, one day rising after -another, and never a cloud.”</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Deed, there are plenty of clouds,” said Beenie, “and soon we’ll have -rain, and you cannot wander upon the moor then, not if he were the -finest man in all the world.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll wait till that time comes, and then we’ll think what’s best to -do; but at present it is just the loveliest weather that ever was seen. -Look at that sky,” said Lily, pointing to the vault of heavenly blue, -which, indeed, was not cloudless, but better, flushed with beatific -specks of white like the wings of angels. And then the girl sprang out -of bed and threw herself into Robina’s arms. “Oh, I’ve been faithless, -faithless!” she cried; “I’ve thought nothing but harm and ill. And I was -mistaken,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_97" id="page_97"></a>{97}</span> mistaken all the time! I could hide my face in the dust for -shame, and then I could lift it up to the skies for joy. For there’s -nothing matters in this world so long as them you care for are good and -true and care for you. Nothing, nothing, whether it’s wealth or poverty, -whether it’s parting or meeting. I thought he was thinking more of the -siller than of true love. The more shame to me in my ignorance, the -silly, silly thing I was. And all the time it was just the contrary, and -true love was what he was thinking of, though it was only for an -unworthy creature like me.”</p> - -<p>“I wouldna be so humble as that, my bonnie dear. Ye are nane unworthy; -you’re one that any person might be proud of to have for their ain. I’m -saying nothing against Mr. Ronald, wha is a fine young man and just -suits ye very well if every thing was according. Weel, weel, you need -not take off my head. Ye can say what you like, but he would just be -very suitable if he had a little more siller or a little more heart. Oh, -I am not undoubting his heart in that kind of a way. He’s fond enough of -you, I make no doubt of that. It’s courage is what he wants, and the -heart to take things into his own hands.”</p> - -<p>“Beenie,” said the young mistress with dignity, “when the like of you -takes a stupid fit, there is nothing like your stupidity. Oh! it’s worse -than that—it is a determination not to understand that takes the -patience out of one. But I will not argue; I might have held my tongue -and kept it all to myself, but I would not, for I’ve got a bad habit of -telling you every thing. Ah! it’s a very bad habit, when you set -yourself like a stone wall, and refuse to understand. Go away now, you -dull woman, and leave me alone; and if you like to betray me and him to -those folk in the kitchen, you will just have to do it, for I cannot -stop you; but it will be the death of me.”</p> - -<p>“<i>I</i> betray you!” said Beenie with such a tone of injured feeling as all -Lily’s caresses, suddenly bestowed in a flood, could not calm; but peace -was made after a while,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_98" id="page_98"></a>{98}</span> and Robina went forth to the world as -represented by Katrin and Dougal with an increase of dignity and -self-importance which these simple people could not understand.</p> - -<p>“Bless me, you will have been hearing some grand news or other,” said -Katrin.</p> - -<p>“Me! How could I hear any news, good or bad, and me the same as in -prison?” said Beenie, upon which both her companions burst into derisive -laughter.</p> - -<p>“An easy prison,” said Katrin, “where you can come and gang at your -pleasure and nobody to say, ‘Where are ye gaun?’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“You’re on your parole, Beenie,” said Dougal, “like one of the officers -in the time of the war.”</p> - -<p>“That is just it,” said Robina; “you never said a truer word. I’m just -on my parole. I can go where I please, but no go away. And I can do what -I please, but no what I want to do. That’s harder than stone walls and -iron bars.”</p> - -<p>“But what can ye be wanting to do sae out of the ordinary?” said Katrin. -“Me, I thought we were such good friends just living very peaceable, and -you content, Beenie, more or less, as weel as a middle-aged woman with -nothing happening to her is like to be.”</p> - -<p>“I wasna consulting you about my age or what I expected,” Beenie replied -with quick indignation. It was a taunt that made the tears steal to her -eyes. If Katrin thought it was such a great thing to be married, and -that she, Robina, had not had her chance like another! But she drew -herself up and added grandly: “It is my young lady that is in prison, -poor thing, shut out from all her own kind. And how do I ken that you -two are not just two jailers over her, keeping the poor thing fast that -she should never make a step, nor see a face, but what Sir Robert would -have to know?”</p> - -<p>The two guardians of Dalrugas consulted each other with a glance. “Oh, -is that hit?” said Katrin. It is seldom, very seldom, that a Scotch -speaker makes any<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_99" id="page_99"></a>{99}</span> havoc with the letter <i>h</i>, but there is an occasional -exception to this rule for the sake of emphasis. “Is that hit” is a -stronger expression than “is that it.” It isolates the pronoun and gives -it force. Dougal for his part pushed his cap off his head till it hung -on by one hair. It had been Robina’s object to keep them in the dark; -but her attempt was not successful. It diverted rather a stream of light -upon a point which they had not yet taken into consideration at all. -Many had been the wonderings at first over Lily’s arrival, and Sir -Robert’s reason for sending her here, but no guidance had been afforded -to the curious couple, and their speculations had died a natural death.</p> - -<p>But Robina’s unguarded speech woke again all the echoes. “It will just -be a lad, after a’,” Katrin said to her spouse, when Robina, perceiving -her mistake, retired.</p> - -<p>“I wouldna say but what it was,” answered Dougal.</p> - -<p>“And eh, man,” said his wife, “you and me, that just stable our beasts -real peaceable together, would not be the ones to make any outcry if it -was a bonnie lad and one that was well meaning.”</p> - -<p>“If the lad’s bonnie or not is naething to you or me,” said the husband.</p> - -<p>“I’m no speaking of features, you coof, and that ye ken weel; but one -that means weel and would take the poor bit motherless lassie to a hame -of her ain: eh, Dougal man!” said Katrin, with the moisture in her eyes.</p> - -<p>“How do we ken,” said Dougal, “if there is a lad—which is no way -proved, but weemen’s thoughts are aye upon that kind of thing—that he -is no just after Sir Robert’s fortune, and thinking very little of the -bonnie lass herself?”</p> - -<p>“Eh, but men are ill-thinking creatures,” said Katrin. “Ye ken by -yourselves, and mind all the worldly meanings ye had, when a poor lass -was thinking but of love and kindness. And what for should the gentleman -be thinking of Sir Robert’s fortune? He has, maybe, as good a one of his -ain.”</p> - -<p>“No likely,” said Dougal, shaking his head. But he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a>{100}</span> added: “I’ll no play -false to Maister James’s daughter whatever, and you’ll no let me hear -any clashes out of your head,” he said, with magisterial action striding -away.</p> - -<p>“When it was me that was standing up for her a’ the time!” Katrin cried -with an indignation that was not without justice.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Next</span> night the supper was much prolonged in the kitchen at Dalrugas. The -three <i>convives</i>—for Sandy tumbled off to sleep and was hustled off to -bed at an early hour—told stories against each other with devotion, -Katrin adding notes and elucidations to every anecdote slowly worked out -by her husband, and meeting every wonder of Beenie’s by a more -extraordinary tale. But while they thus occupied themselves with a -strong intention and meaning that Lily’s freedom should be complete, the -thrill of consciousness about all three was unmistakable. How it came -about that they knew this to be the moment when Lily desired to be -unwatched and free neither Dougal nor Katrin could have told. Lily had -been roaming about the moor for a great part of the day, sometimes with -Beenie, sometimes alone; but they had taken no more notice than usual. -Perhaps they thought of the country custom which brings the wooer at -nightfall; perhaps something magnetic was in the air. At all events this -was the effect produced. They sat down in the early twilight, which had -not yet quite lost its prolonged midsummer sweetness, and the moon was -shining, whitening the great breadth of the moor, before they rose. They -had neither heard nor seen any thing of Lily on the previous evening, -though she had gone out with more haste and less precaution than now; -but her movements to-night seemed to send the thrill of a pulse beating -all through the gaunt, high house. Each of them heard her flit down<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a>{101}</span> -stairs, though her step was so light. The husband and wife gave each -other a glance when they heard the sound, though it was no more than the -softest touch, of the big hall-door as she drew it behind her; and -Beenie raised her voice instinctively to drown the noise, as if it had -been something loud and violent. They all thought they heard her step -upon the grass, which was impossible, and the sound of another step -meeting hers. They were all conscious to their finger-tips of what poor -little Lily was about, or what they thought she was about; though, -indeed, Lily had flown forth like a dove, making no noise at all, even -in her own excited ears.</p> - -<p>And as for any sound of their steps upon the mossy greenness of the -grass that intersected the heather, and made so soft a background for -the big hummocks of the ling, there was no such thing that any but fairy -ears could have heard. Ronald was standing in the same place, at the -foot of the tower, when Lily flew out noiseless, with the plaid over her -arm. He had brought a basket of fish, which he placed softly within the -hall-door.</p> - -<p>“You see, I am not, after all, a fisher for nothing,” he whispered, as -he put the soft plaid about her shoulders.</p> - -<p>“Whisht! don’t say any thing,” said Lily, “till we are further off the -house.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t trust them, then?” he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I trust them! but it’s a little dreadful to think one has to trust -any body and to be afraid of what a servant will say.”</p> - -<p>“So it is,” he agreed, “but that is one of the minor evils we must just -put up with, Lily. We would not if we could help it. Still, when your -uncle compels you and me to proceedings like this, he must bear the -guilt of it, if there is any guilt.”</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">‘</span>Guilt’ is a big word,” said Lily; and then she added: “I suppose it is -what a great many do and think no shame.”</p> - -<p>“Shame!” he said, “for two lovers to meet that are kept apart for no -reason in the world! If we were to meet<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a>{102}</span> Sir Robert face to face, I hope -my Lily would not blush, and certainly there would be no shame in me. He -dared us to it when he sent you away, and I don’t see how he can expect -any thing different. I would be a poor creature if, when I was free -myself, I let my bonnie Lily droop alone.”</p> - -<p>“A poor Lily you would have found me if it had lasted much longer,” she -said, “but, oh, Ronald! never think of that now. Here we are together, -and we believe in each other, which is all we want. To doubt, that is -the dreadful thing—to think that perhaps there are other thoughts not -like your own in his mind, and that however you may meet, and however -near you may be, you never know what he may be thinking.” Lily shuddered -a little, notwithstanding that he had put the plaid so closely round -her, and that her arm was within his.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Ronald, “and don’t you think there might be the same dread -in him? that his Lily was doubting him, not trusting, perhaps turning -away to other——”</p> - -<p>“Don’t say that, Ronald, for it is not possible. You could not ever have -doubted me. Don’t say that, or I’ll never speak to you again.”</p> - -<p>“And why not I as well as you?” said Ronald. “There is just as much -occasion. I believe there is no occasion, Lily. Don’t mistake me again, -but just as much occasion.”</p> - -<p>She looked at him for a moment with her face changing as he repeated: -“Just as much occasion.” And then, with a happy sigh: “Which is none,” -she said.</p> - -<p>“On either side. The one the same as the other. Promise me you will -always keep to that, and never change your mind.”</p> - -<p>She only smiled in reply; words did not seem necessary. They understood -each other without any such foolish formula. And how was it possible she -should change her mind? how ever go beyond that moment, which was -eternity, which held all time within the bliss of its content? The -entreaty to keep to that seemed to Lily to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a>{103}</span> without meaning. This was -always; this was forever. Her mind could no more change than the great -blue peak of Schiehallion could change, standing up against the lovely -evening sky. She had recognized her mistake, with what pride and joy! -and that was over forever. It was a chapter never to be opened again.</p> - -<p>The lingering sunset died over the moor, with every shade of color that -the imagination could conceive. The heather flamed now pink, now rose, -now crimson, now purple; little clouds of light detached themselves from -the pageant of the sunset and floated all over the blue, like -rose-leaves scattered and floating on a heavenly breeze; the air over -the hills thrilled with a vibration more delicate than that of the heat, -but in a similar confusion, like water, above the blue edges of the -mountains. Then the evening slowly dimmed, the colors going out upon the -moor, tint by tint, though they still lingered in the sky; then in the -east, which had grown gray and wistful, came up all at once the white -glory of the moon. It was such an evening as only belongs to the North, -an enchanted hour, neither night nor day, bound by no vulgar conditions, -lasting forever, like Lily’s mood, no limits or boundaries to it, -floating in infinite vastness and stillness between heaven and earth. -The two who, being together, perfected this spotless period, wandered -over all the moor, not thinking where they were going, winding out and -in among the bushes of the heather, wherever the spongy turf would bear -a footstep. They forgot that they were afraid of being seen: but, -indeed, there was nobody to see them, not a soul on the high-road nor on -the moor. They forgot all chances of betrayal, all doubts about Sir -Robert’s servants, every thing, indeed, except that they were together -and had a thousand things to say to each other, or nothing at all to say -to each other, as happened, the silence being as sweet as the talk, and -the pair changing from one to the other as caprice dictated: now all -still breathing like one being, now garrulous as the morning birds. They -forgot themselves so far that, after two or<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a>{104}</span> three false partings, -Ronald taking Lily home, then Lily accompanying Ronald back again to the -edge of the moor, he walked with her at last to the very foot of the -tower, from whence he had first called her, though there were audible -voices just round the corner, clearly denoting that the other inmates -were taking a breath of air after their supper at the ha’-door. There -was almost a pleasure in the risk, in coming close up to those -by-standers, yet unseen, and whispering the last good-night almost -within reach of their ears.</p> - -<p>“I do not see why I should carry on the farce of fishing all day long,” -said Ronald, “and see you only in the evening. You can get out as easily -in the afternoon as in the evening, Lily.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, quite as easy. Nobody minds me where I go.”</p> - -<p>“Then come down to the waterside. It is not too far for you to walk. I -will be by way of fishing up the stream; and I will bring my lunch in my -pocket and we will have a little picnic together, you and me.”</p> - -<p>“I will do that, Ronald; but the evening is the bonnie time. The -afternoon is just vulgar day, and this is the enchanted time. It is all -poetry now.”</p> - -<p>“It is you that are the poetry, Lily. Me, I’m only common flesh and -blood.”</p> - -<p>“It is the two of us that make the poetry,” said Lily; “but the -afternoon will be fine, too, and I will come. I will allow you to catch -no fish—little bonnie things, why should they not be happy in the -water, like us on the bank?”</p> - -<p>“I like very well to see them in the basket, and to feel I have been so -clever as to catch them,” said Ronald.</p> - -<p>“And so do I,” cried Lily, with a laugh so frank that they were both -startled into silence, feeling that the audience round the corner had -stopped their talk to listen. This, the reader will see not all -protestations, not all sighs of sentiment, was the manner of their talk -before they finally parted, Ronald making a long circuit so as to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a>{105}</span> -emerge unseen and lower down upon the high-road, on the other side of -the moor. Was it necessary to make any such make-believe? Lily walked -round the corner, with a blush yet a smile, holding her head high, -looking her possible critics in the face. It was Dougal and Katrin, who -had come out of doors to breathe the air after their supper, and to see -the bonnie moor. Within, in the shadow of the stairs, was a vision of -Beenie, very nervous, her eyes round and shining with eagerness and -suspense. Lily coming in view, all radiant in the glory of her youth, -full of happiness, full of life, too completely inspired and lighted up -with the occasion to take any precautions of concealment, was like a -revelation. She was youth and joy and love impersonified, coming out -upon the lower level of common life, which was all these good people -knew, like a star out of the sky. Katrin, arrested in the question on -her lips, gazed at her with a woman’s ready perception of the new and -wonderful atmosphere about her. Dougal, half as much impressed, but not -knowing why, pushed his cap on one side as usual, inserting an -interrogative finger among the masses of his grizzled hair.</p> - -<p>“So you’ve been taking your walk, Miss Lily,” said Katrin, subdued out -of the greater vigor of remark which she had been about to use.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Katrin, while you have been having your supper. Your voices sound -very nice down stairs when you are having your cracks, but they make me -feel all the more lonely by myself. It’s more company on the moor,” Lily -said, with an irrestrainable laugh. She meant, I suppose, to -deceive—that is, she had no desire to betray herself to those people -who might betray her—but she was so unused to any kind of falsehood -that she brought out her ambiguous phrase so as to make it imply, if not -express, the truth.</p> - -<p>“I am glad you should find it company, Miss Lily. It’s awfu’ bonnie and -fresh and full of fine smells, the gale under your foot, and the -wholesome heather, and a’ thae bonnie little flowers.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a>{106}</span></p> - -<p>“Losh me! I would find them puir company for my part,” said Dougal; “but -there is, maybe——”</p> - -<p>“Hold your peace, you coof. Do ye think the like of you can faddom a -young leddy that is just close kin to every thing that’s bonnie? You, an -auld gillie, a Highland tyke, a——”</p> - -<p>“Don’t abuse Dougal, though you have paid me the prettiest compliment. -Could I have the powny to-morrow, Dougal, to go down the water a bit? -and I will take a piece with me, Katrin, in case I should be late; and -then you need never fash your heads about me whether I come in to dinner -or not.”</p> - -<p>“My bonnie leddy, I like every-body to come in to their denner,” said -Katrin, with a cloud upon her face.</p> - -<p>“So do I, in a usual way. But I have been here a long time. How long, -Beenie? A whole month, fancy that! and they tell me there is a very -bonnie glen down by the old bridge that people go to see.”</p> - -<p>“So there is, a real bonnie bit. I’ll take ye there some day mysel’, and -Beenie, she can come in the cairt with the black powny gin she likes. -She’ll mind it well; a’ the bairns are keen to gang in the vacance to -the Fairy Glen.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll not wait for Beenie this time, or you either, Dougal,” said Lily, -again with a laugh. “I will just take Rory for my guide and find it out -for myself. I think,” she added, with a deeper blush and a faltering -voice, “that Miss Helen from the Manse——”</p> - -<p>She did not get far enough to tell that faltering fib. “Oh, if you are -to be with Miss Eelen! Miss Eelen knows every corner of the Fairy Glen. -I will be very easy in my mind,” said Katrin, “if Miss Eelen’s there; -and I’ll put up that cold chicken in a basket, and ye shall have a nice -lunch as ever two such nice creatures could sit down to. But ye’ll mind -not to wet your feet, nor climb up the broken arch of the auld brig -yonder. Eh, but that’s an exploit for a stirring boy, and no a diversion -for leddies. And ye’ll just give the powny a good feed, and take him<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a>{107}</span> -out a while in the morning, Dougal, that he mayna be too fresh.”</p> - -<p>“I’m just thinking,” said Dougal, “there’s a dale to do the morn; but if -ye were to wait till the day after, I could spare the time, Miss Lily, -to take you mysel’.”</p> - -<p>“And if it’s just preceesely the morn that Miss Eelen’s coming!” cried -Katrin, with great and solid effect, while Lily, alarmed, began to -explain and deprecate, pleading that she could find the way herself so -easily, and would not disturb Dougal for the world. She hurried in after -this little episode to avoid any further dangers, to be met by Beenie’s -round eyes and troubled face in the dark under the stair. “Oh, Miss -Lily!” Beenie cried, putting a hand of remonstrance on her arm, which -Lily shook off and flew upstairs, very happy, it must be allowed, in her -first attempt at deceit. Robina looked more scared and serious than ever -when she appeared with a lighted candle in the drawing-room, shaking her -solemn head. Her eyes were so round, and her look so solemn, that she -looked not unlike a large white owl in the imperfect light, and so Lily -told her with a tremulous laugh, to avert, if possible, the coming -storm. But Beenie’s storm, though confused and full of much vague rumble -of ineffectual thunder, was not to be averted. She repeated her -undefined but powerful remonstrance, “Oh, Miss Lily!” as she set down -the one small candle in the midst of the darkness, with much shaking of -her head.</p> - -<p>“Well, what is it? Stop shaking your head, or you will shake it off, and -you and me will break our backs looking for it on the floor, and speak -out your mind and be done with it!” cried Lily, stamping her foot upon -the carpet. Robina made a solemn pause, before she repeated, still more -emphatically, her “Oh, Miss Lily!” again.</p> - -<p>“To bring in Miss Eelen’s name, puir thing, puir thing, that has nothing -to do with such vanities, just to give ye a countenance and be a screen -to you, and you going to meet your lad, and no leddy near ye at a’.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t speak so loud!” cried Lily with an affectation<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a>{108}</span> of alarm; and -then she added: “I never said Helen was coming; I only——”</p> - -<p>“Put it so that Katrin thought that was what you meant. Oh, I ken fine! -It’s no a falsehood, you say, but it’s a falsehood you put into folk’s -heads. And, ’deed, Katrin was a great fool to take heed for a moment of -what you said, when it was just written plain in your eyes and every -line of your countenance, and the very gown on your back, that you had -come from a meeting with your lad!”</p> - -<p>“I wish you would not use such common words, Beenie! as if I were the -house-maid meeting my lad!”</p> - -<p>“I fail to see where the difference lies,” said Beenie with dignity; -“the thing’s just the same. You’re maybe no running the risks a poor -lass runs, that has naebody to take care of her. But this is no more -than the second time he’s come, and lo! there’s a wall of lees rising -round your feet already, trippin’ ye up at every step. What will ye say -to Katrin, Miss Lily, the morn’s night when ye come hame? Will ye keep -it up and pretend till her that Miss Eelen’s met ye at the auld brig? or -will ye invent some waur story to account for her no coming? or what, I -ask ye, will ye do?”</p> - -<p>“Katrin,” said Lily, with burning cheeks, but a haughty elevation of the -head, “has no right to cross-question me.”</p> - -<p>“Nor me either, Miss Lily, ye will be thinking?”</p> - -<p>“It does not matter what I’m thinking. She is one thing and you are -another. I have told you—— Oh, Beenie, Beenie,” cried the girl -suddenly, “why do you begin to make objections so soon? What am I doing -more than other girls do? Who is it I am deceiving? Nobody! Uncle Robert -wanted to make me promise I would give him up, but I would not promise. -I never said I would not see him and speak to him and make him welcome -if he came to me; there was never a word of that between us. And as for -Katrin!” cried Lily with scorn. “Why, Grace Scott met Robbie Burns out -at Duddingston, and told her mother she had only been walking with her -cousin, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a>{109}</span> you just laughed when you told me. And her mother! very -different, very different from Katrin. You said what an ill lassie! but -you laughed and you said Mrs. Scott was wrong to force them to it. That -was all the remark you made, Robina, my dear woman,” said Lily, -recovering her spirit; “so I am not going to put up with any criticism -from you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily!” Robina said. But what could she add to this mild -remonstrance, having thus been convicted of a sympathy with the vagaries -of lovers which she did not, indeed, deny? And it cannot be said that -poor Lily’s suggested falsehood did much harm. Katrin, for her part, had -very little faith in Miss Eelen as the companion of the young lady’s -ramble. She too shook her head as she packed her basket. “I see now,” -she said, “the meaning o’t, which is aye a satisfaction. It’s some fine -lad that hasna siller enough to please Sir Robert. And he’s come after -her, and they’re counting on a wheen walks and cracks together, poor -young things. Maybe if she had had a mother it would have been -different, or if poor Mr. James had lived, poor man, to take care of his -ain bit bairn. Sir Robert’s a dour auld carl; he’s not one I would put -such a charge upon. What does he ken about a young leddy’s heart, poor -thing? But they shall have a good lunch whatever,” the good woman said.</p> - -<p>And when the sun was high over the moor and every thing shining, not too -hot nor too bright, the tempered and still-breathing noon of the North, -Lily set out upon her pony with the basket by her saddle, and all the -world smiling and inviting before her. Never had such a daring and -delightful holiday dawned upon her before. Almost a whole day to spend -together, Ronald all that she dreamed, and not an inquisitive or -unkindly eye to look upon them, not even Beenie to disturb their -absorption in each other. She waved her whip in salutation to the others -behind as they stood watching her set out. “A bonnie day to ye, Miss -Lily,” cried Katrin. “And you’ll no be late?” said anxious Beenie. -“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Od,” cried Dougal, with his cap on<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a>{110}</span> his ear, “I wish I had just put -off thae potataies and gone with her mysel’——” “Ye fuil!” said his -wife, and said no further word. And Lily rode away in heavenly content -and expectation over the moor.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> day was one of those Highland days which are a dream of freshness -and beauty and delight. I do not claim that they are very frequent, but -sometimes they will occur in a cluster, two or three together, like a -special benediction out of heaven. The sun has a purity, a clearness, an -ecstasy of light which it has nowhere else. It looks, as it were, with a -heavenly compunction upon earth and sky, as if to make up for the many -days when it is absent, expanding over mountain and moor with a smiling -which seems personal and full of intention. The air is life itself, -uncontaminated with any evil emanation, full of the warmth of the sun, -and the odor of the fir-trees and heather, and the murmur of all the -living things about. The damp and dew which linger in the shady places -disappear as if by magic. No unkindly creature, no venomous thing, is -abroad; no noise, no jar of living, though every thing lives and grows -and makes progress with such silent and smiling vigor. The two lovers in -the midst of this incense-breathing nature, so still, yet so strong, so -peaceful, yet so vigorous, felt that the scene was made for them, that -no surroundings could have been more fitly prepared and tempered for the -group which was as the group in Eden before trouble came. They wandered -about together through the glen, and by the side of the shining brown -trout stream, which glowed and smiled among the rocks, reflecting every -ray and every cloud as it hurried and sparkled along, always in haste, -yet always at leisure. They lingered here and there, in a spot which was -still more beautiful than all the others, though not so<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a>{111}</span> beautiful as -the next, which tempted them a little further on. Sometimes Ronald’s rod -was taken out and screwed together; sometimes even flung over a dark -pool, where there were driftings and leapings of trout, but pulled in -again before, as Lily said, any harm was done. “For why should any -peaceful creature get a sharp hook in its jaw because you and me are -happy?” she said. “That’s no reason.” Ronald, but for the pride of -having something to carry back in his basket, was much of her opinion. -He was not a devoted fisherman. Their happiness was no reason, clearly, -for interfering with that of the meanest thing that lived. And they -talked about every thing in heaven and earth, not only of their own -affairs, though they were interesting enough. Lily, who for a month had -spoken to nobody except Beenie, save for that one visit to the Manse, -had such an accumulation of remark and observation to get through on her -side, and so much to demand from him, that the moments, and, indeed, the -hours, flew. It is astonishing, even without the impulse of a long -parting and sudden meeting, what wells of conversation flow forth -between two young persons in their circumstances. Perhaps it would not -sound very wise or witty if any cool spectator listened, but it is -always delightful to the people concerned, and Lily was not the first -comer, so to speak. She was full of variety, full of whim and fancy, no -heaviness or monotony in her. Perhaps this matters less at such a moment -of life than at any other. The dullest pair find the art of entertaining -each other, of keeping up their mutual interest. And now that the cold -chill of doubt in respect to Ronald was removed from her mind Lily -flowed like the trout stream, as dauntless and as gay, reflecting every -gleam of light.</p> - -<p>“The worst thing is,” Ronald said, “that the Vacation will come to an -end, not now or soon, Heaven be praised; but the time will come when I -shall have to go back and pace the Parliament House, as of old, and my -Lily will be left alone in the wilderness.”</p> - -<p>“Not alone, as I was before,” said Lily—“never that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a>{112}</span> any more; for now -I have something to remember, and something to look forward to. You’ve -been here, Ronald; nothing can take that from us. I will come and sit on -this stone, and say to myself: ‘Here we spent the day; and here we had -our picnic; and this was what he said.’ And I will laugh at all your -jokes over again.”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” he said, “it’s but a grim entertainment that. I went and stood -behind those curtains in that window, do you remember? in George Square, -and said to myself: ‘Here my Lily was; and here she said——’ But, -instead of laughing, I was much more near crying. You will not find much -good in that.”</p> - -<p>“You crying!” she said, with the water in her eyes, and a little soft -reproving blow of her fingers upon his cheek. “I do not believe it. But -I dare say I shall cry and then laugh. What does it matter which? They -are just the same for a girl. And then I shall say to myself: ‘At the -New Year he is coming back again, and then——’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“What shall we do at the New Year?” he said. “No days like this then. -How can I take my Lily out on the moor among the snow?”</p> - -<p>“If I am a Lily, I am one that can bloom anywhere—in the snow as well -as the sun.”</p> - -<p>“And so you are, my dearest, making a sunshine in a shady place. But -still we must think of that. Winter and summer are two different things. -Cannot we find a friend to take us in?”</p> - -<p>“I will tell you where we shall find a friend. You’ll come to the Tower -with your boldest face as if it was the first time you had been near. -And you will ask: ‘Does Miss Ramsay live here?’ And Katrin will say: -‘’Deed does she, sir. Here and no other place.’ And you will smite your -thigh in your surprise, and say: ‘I thought I had heard that! I am a -friend from Edinburgh, and I just stopped on the road to [here say any -name you please] to say “Good-day” to the young lady, if she was here.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a>{113}</span> -And then you will look about, and you will say: ‘It is rather a lonesome -place.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“Go on,” said Ronald, laughing; “I like the dialogue—though whether we -should trust your keepers so far as that——”</p> - -<p>“My keepers! They are my best of friends! Well, Katrin will look round -too, and she will say, as if considering the subject for the first time: -‘In winter it is, maybe, a wee lonesome—for a young leddy. Ye’ll maybe -be a friend of Sir Robert’s, too?’ And you will say: ‘Oh, yes, I am a -great friend of Sir Robert’s.’ And she will open the door wide and say: -‘Come ben, sir, come ben. It will be a great divert to our young leddy -to see a visitor. And you’re kindly welcome.’ That’s what she will say.”</p> - -<p>“Will she say all that, and shall I say all that? Perhaps I shall, -including that specious phrase about being a friend of Sir Robert’s, -which would surprise Sir Robert very much.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you know him, surely, and you are not unfriends. It strikes me -that, to be a lawyer, Ronald, you are full of scruples.”</p> - -<p>“What a testimonial to my virtue!” he said, with a laugh. “But it is not -scruples; it is pure cowardice, Lily. Are they to be trusted? If Sir -Robert were to be written to, and I to be forbidden the door, and my -Lily carried off to a worse wilderness, abroad, as he threatened!”</p> - -<p>“I will tell you one thing: I will not go!” said Lily, “not if Sir -Robert were ten times my uncle. But you need not fear for Katrin. She -likes me better than Sir Robert. You may think that singular, but so it -is. And I am much more fun,” cried Lily, “far more interesting! I -include you, and you and me together, we are a story, we are a romance! -And Katrin will like us better than one of the Waverley novels, and she -will be true to us to the last drop of her blood.”</p> - -<p>“These Highlanders, you never can be sure of them,” said Ronald, shaking -his head. He spoke the sentiment of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a>{114}</span> his time and district, which was -too near the Highland line to put much confidence in the Celt.</p> - -<p>“But she is not a Highlander. She is Aberdeen,” cried Lily. “Beenie is a -Highlander, if you call Kinloch-Rugas Highland, and she is as true as -steel. Oh, you are a person of prejudices, Ronald; but I trust all the -world,” she cried, lifting her fine and shining face to the shining sky.</p> - -<p>“And so do I,” he cried, “to-day!” And they paused amid all -considerations of the past and future to remember the glory of the -present hour, and how sweet it was above every thing that it should be -to-day.</p> - -<p>Thus the afternoon fled. They made their little table in the sunshine, -for shade is not as desirable in a Highland glen as in a Southern -valley, and ate their luncheon merrily together, Lily recounting, with a -little shame, how it had been intended for Helen Blythe instead of -Ronald Lumsden. “I was very near telling a fib,” she said -compunctiously, “but I did not do it. I left it to Katrin’s -imagination.”</p> - -<p>“Helen Blythe must have a robust appetite if all this was for her,” he -said. “Is this an effort of imagination too? But come, Lily, we must do -our duty by the view. There is the old brig to climb, and all the Fairy -Glen to see.”</p> - -<p>“I promised not to climb the old brig,” she said. “But that promise, I -suppose, was only to hold in case it was Helen Blythe that was with me, -for she could give little help if I slipped, whereas you——”</p> - -<p>“I? I hope I can take care of my Lily,” said the young man; and after -they had packed their basket, and put it ready to be tied once more to -Rory’s saddle, who was picnicking too on the grass in one continuous and -delicate meal, they wandered off together to make the necessary -pilgrimage, though the old brig and the Fairy Glen attracted but little -of the attention of the pair, so fully engrossed in each other. They -climbed the broken arch, however, which was half embedded in the slope -of the bank, and overgrown with every kind of green<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a>{115}</span> and flourishing -thing, arm in arm, Ronald swinging his companion lightly over the -dangerous bits, for love, while Lily, for love, consented to be aided, -though little needing the aid. And how it happened will never be known, -but their happy progress came to a sudden pause on an innocent bit of -turf where no peril was. If it were Ronald who stepped false, or Lily, -neither of them could tell, but in a moment calamity came. He disengaged -himself from her, almost roughly, pushing her away, and thus, instead of -dragging her with him, crashed down alone through the briers and bushes, -with a noise which, to Lily, filled the air like thunder. When she had -slipped and stumbled in her fright and anxiety after him, she found him -lying, trying to laugh, but with his face contorted with pain, among the -nettles and weeds at the bottom. “What has happened? What has happened?” -she cried.</p> - -<p>“What an ass I am,” said he, “and what a nuisance for you, Lily! I -believe I have sprained my ankle, of all the silly things to do! and at -this time, of all others, betraying you!”</p> - -<p>Lily, I need not say, was for a moment at her wit’s end. There were no -ambulance classes in those days, nor attempts to train young ladies in -the means of first help. But there is always the light of nature, a -thing much to be trusted to, all the same. Lily took his handkerchief, -because it was the largest, and bound up his foot, as far as that was -possible, cutting open the boot with his knife; and then they held a -brief council of war. Ronald wished to be left there while she went for -help, but there was no likelihood of obtaining help nearer than -Kinloch-Rugas, and finally it was decided that, in some way or other, he -should struggle on to Rory’s back, and so be led to the Manse, where a -welcome and aid were sure to be found. It was a terrible business -getting this accomplished, but with patience, and a good deal of pain, -it was done at last, the injured foot supported <i>tant bien que mal</i> in -the stirrup, and a woful little group set forth on the way to the -village. But I do wrong to say it was a woful group, for,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a>{116}</span> though the -pain made Ronald faint, and though Lily’s heart was full of anguish and -anxiety, they both exerted themselves to the utmost, each for the sake -of the other. Lily led the reluctant pony along, sometimes running by -his side, sometimes dragging him with both her hands, too much occupied -for thought. What would people think did not occur to her yet. People -might think what they liked so long as she got him safe to the Manse. -She knew that they would be kind to him there. But what an end it was to -the loveliest of days: and the sun was beginning to get low, and the -road so long.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Rory, man!” cried poor Lily, apostrophizing the pony after the -manner of Dougal. “If you would only go steady and go soft to-day! -To-morrow you may throw me if you like, and I will never mind; but, oh, -go canny, if there is any heart in you, to-day!” I think that Rory felt -the appeal by some magnetism in her touch if not by her words, on which -point I cannot say any thing positively; but he did at least overcome -his flightiness, and accomplished the last half of the road at a steady -trot, which gave Ronald exquisite pain, and kept Lily running, but -shortened considerably the period of their suffering. They were received -with a great outcry of sympathy and compassion at the Manse, where -Ronald was laid out at once on the big hair-cloth sofa, and his foot -relieved as much as Helen’s skill, which was not inconsiderable, could -do. It was he who made the necessary explanations, Lily, in her trouble, -having quite forgot the necessity for them.</p> - -<p>“I was so happy,” he said, “so fortunate as to be seen by Miss Ramsay, -who knew me—the only creature hereabouts who does; and you see what she -has done for me: helped me to struggle up, put me on her pony, and -brought me here—a perfect good Samaritan.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, don’t, don’t speak like that!” said Lily in her distress. She felt -she could not at this moment bear the lie. Nobody had ever seen Lily -Ramsay so dishevelled before: her hair shaken out by her run, her skirt -torn<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a>{117}</span> where she had caught her foot in it in her struggles to help -Ronald, and covered with the dust of the road.</p> - -<p>“She would just be that,” said Helen Blythe, receiving the narrative -with faith undoubting, “and what a good thing it was you, my dear, that -knew the gentleman, and not a strange person! And what a grand thing -that you were riding upon Rory! Just lie as quiet as you can; the hot -bathing will relieve the pain, and now the boot’s off ye’ll be easier; -and the doctor will come in to see you as soon as he comes home. Don’t -ye make a movement, sir, that ye can help. Just lie quiet, lie quiet! -that is the chief remedy of all.”</p> - -<p>“He is Mr. Lumsden, Helen,” said Lily, composed, “a friend of my -uncle’s, from Edinburgh. Oh, I am glad he is in your hands. He had -slipped down the broken arch at the old brig, where all the tourists go; -and I had ridden there to-day just to see it.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, my dear, how thankful you must be,” was all Helen’s reply; but it -seemed to Lily that the old minister in his big chair by the fireside -gave her a glance which was not so all-believing as Helen’s.</p> - -<p>“It was just an extraordinary piece of good luck for the young man,” the -minister said. “Things seldom happen so pat in real life. But a young -lady like you, Miss Lily, likes the part of the good Samaritan.”</p> - -<p>She could not look him full in the face, and the laugh with which he -ended his speech seemed the most cruel of mocking sounds to poor Lily. -She put up her hands to her tumbled hair.</p> - -<p>“May I go to your room and make myself tidy?” she said to Helen. “I had -to run most of the way with Rory, and my skirt so long for riding. I -don’t know what sort of dreadful person they must have thought me in the -town.”</p> - -<p>“Nobody but will think all the better of you for your kindness,” said -Helen, “and we’ll soon mend your skirt, for there’s really little harm -done. And I think you should have the gig from the inn to drive you -back, my dear, for your nerves are shaken, and the afternoon’s getting<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a>{118}</span> -late, and you must not stir from here till you have got a good rest and -a cup of tea.”</p> - -<p>“The gig may perhaps take me back to the inn first,” said Ronald, “for -it is there I am staying—for the fishing,” he added, unable to keep out -of his eyes a half-comic glance at the companion of his trouble.</p> - -<p>“Indeed, you are going back to no inn,” said Helen; “you are just going -to stay at the Manse, where you will be much better attended to; and -Lily, my dear, you’ll come and see Mr. Lumsden, that owes so much to you -already, and that will help to make him feel at home here.”</p> - -<p>But when Lily came down stairs, smoothed and brushed, with her hair -trim, and the flush dying off her cheeks, and her skirt mended, though -in many ways the accident had ended most fortunately, she could not meet -the smile in the old minister’s eyes.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">There</span> was great excitement in the Tower when the gig from “the toun” was -seen slowly climbing the brae. Almost every-body in the house was in -commotion, and Beenie, half crazy with anxiety, had been at the window -for hours watching for Lily’s return, and indulging in visions and -conjectures which her companions knew nothing of. All that Dougal and -Katrin thought of was an accident. Though, as they assured each other, -Rory’s bark was worse than his bite, it was yet quite possible that in -one of his cantrips he might have thrown the inexperienced rider in her -long skirt; and even if she was not hurt, she might have found it -impossible to catch him again and might have to toil home on foot, which -would account for the lateness of the hour. Or she might have sprained -her ankle or even broken her arm as she fell, and been unable to move. -When these fears began to take shape, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a>{119}</span> boy had been sent off flying -on the black pony to the scene of the picnic, the only argument against -this hypothesis being that, had any such accident happened, Rory by this -time would in all probability have reached home by himself. Beenie, I -need not say, was tormented by other fears. Was it possible that they -had fled together, these two who had now fully discovered that they -could not live without each other? Had he carried her away, as it had -been on the cards he should have done three months ago? and a far better -solution than any other of the problem. These ideas alternated in -Robina’s mind with the suggestion of an accident. She did not believe in -an accident. Lily had always been masterful, able to manage any thing -that came in her way, “beast or bird,” as Beenie said, and was it likely -she would be beaten by Rory, a little Highland pony, when she had ridden -big horses by Sir Robert’s side, and never stumbled? Na. “She’ll just -have gone away with him,” Beenie said to herself, and though she felt -wounded that the plan had not been revealed to her, she was not sorry, -only very anxious, feeling that Lily would certainly find some -opportunity of sending her a word, and telling her where to join them. -“It is, maybe, the best way out of it,” she said over and over again to -herself, and accordingly she was less moved by Katrin’s wailings than -that good woman could understand. Katrin and Dougal were out upon the -road, while Beenie kept her station at the window. And Dougal’s fears -for the young lady were increased by alarms about his pony, an older and -dearer friend than Lily. “If the poor beast has broken his knees, I’ll -ne’er forgive myself for letting that bit lassie have the charge of him -alone.”</p> - -<p>“The charge of him!” said his wife in high indignation, “and her that -has, maybe, twisted her ankle, or broken her bonnie airm, the darlin’, -and a’ the fault of that ill-willy beast. And it’s us that has the -chairge of her.”</p> - -<p>This argument silenced Dougal for the moment, but he still continued to -think quite as much of Rory as of the young lady, whichever of the two -was responsible for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a>{120}</span> trouble which had occurred. When the boy came -back to report that there was nothing to be found at the old brig but -great marks on the ruin, as if somebody had “slithered down,” branches -torn away, and the herbage crushed at the bottom, the alarm in the house -rose high. And Dougal had fixed his cap firmly on the top of his head, -as a man prepared for any emergency, and taken his staff in his hand to -take the short cut across the moor, and find out for himself what the -catastrophe had been, when a shout from Sandy on the top of the bank, -and Beenie at the window, stopped further proceedings. There was Lily, -pale, but smiling, in the gig from the inn, and Rory, tossing his red -head, very indignant at the undignified position in which he found -himself, tied to that shabby equipage. “The puir beast, just nickering -with joy at the sight of home, but red with rage to be trailed at the -tail of an inn geeg,” Dougal said, hurrying to loose the rope and lead -the sufferer in. He was not without concern for Lily, but she was -evidently none the worse, and he asked no more.</p> - -<p>“I have had such an adventure,” she said, as soon as she was within -hearing, “but I am not hurt, and nothing has happened to me. Such an -adventure! What do you think, Beenie? A gentleman climbed up the old -brig while we were there, and slipped and fell; and when I ran to see, -who should it be but Mr. Lumsden, Ronald Lumsden, whom we used to see so -much in Edinburgh.” Here Lily’s countenance bloomed so suddenly red out -of her paleness that Katrin had a shock of understanding, and saw it all -in a moment, if not more than there was to see. “And he had sprained his -ankle,” Lily said, a paleness following the flush; “he couldn’t move. -You may fancy what a state we were in.”</p> - -<p>“Eh,” said Katrin, with her eyes fixed on Lily’s face, “what a good -thing Miss Eelen was with you, for she kens as much about that sort o’ -thing as the doctor himsel’.”</p> - -<p>“I got him on the pony at last,” said Lily, “and we bound up his foot, -and then we took him to the Manse. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a>{121}</span> was the nearest, and the doctor -just at their door. But, oh, what a race I had with the pony, leading -him, and sometimes he led me till I had to run; and I put my foot -through my skirt, see? We mended it up a little at the Manse, and drew -it out of the gathers. But look here: a job for you, Beenie. And my hair -came down about my shoulders, and if you had seen the figure I was, -running along the road——”</p> - -<p>“But Miss Eelen with ye made a’ right,” said Katrin. “Ah, what a -blessing that Miss Eelen was with ye.”</p> - -<p>Lily was getting out of the gig, from the high seat of which she had -hastened to make her first explanations. It was not an easy thing -getting out of a high gig in those days, and “the geeg from the inn” -was, naturally, without any of the latest improvements. She had to turn -her back to the spectators as she clambered down, and if her laugh -sounded a little unsteady, that was quite natural. “She is, indeed, as -good as the doctor,” she said; “if you had seen how she cut open the -boot and made him comfortable! And Rory behaved very well, too,” she -said. “I spoke to him in his ear as you do, Dougal. I said: ‘Rory, Rory, -my bonnie man, go canny to-day; you can throw me to-morrow, if you like, -an I’ll never mind, but, oh, go canny to-day.’ And you did, Rory, you -dear little fellow, and dragged me, with my hair flying like a wild -creature, along the road,” she added, with a laugh, taking the rough and -tossing head into her hands, and aiming a kiss at Rory’s shaggy -forehead. But the pony was not used to such dainties and tossed himself -out of her hands.</p> - -<p>“You’re awfu’ tired, Miss Lily, though you’re putting so good a face -upon it, and awfu’ shaken with the excitement, and a’ that. And to think -o’ you being the one to find him—just the right person, the one that -knew him—and to think of him being here, Maister Lumsden, touring or -shooting or something, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>Beenie’s speech ended spasmodically in a fierce grip of the arm with -which Lily checked her as she went upstairs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a>{122}</span></p> - -<p>“What need have you,” said the young lady in an angry whisper, “to -burden your mind with lies? Say I have to do it, and, oh, I hate it! but -you have no need. Hold your tongue and keep your conscience free.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, Miss Lily,” said Beenie in the same tone, “I’m no wanting to be -better than you. If ye tell a lee, and it’s but an innocent lee, I’ll -tell one too. If you’re punished for it, what am I that I shouldna take -my share with my mistress? But about the spraining o’ the ankle, my -bonnie dear: that’s a’ true?”</p> - -<p>Lily answered with a laugh to the sudden doubt in Robina’s eyes. She was -very much excited, too much so to feel how tired she was, and capable of -nothing without either laughter or tears. “Oh, yes, it’s quite true; -and, oh, Beenie, he is badly hurt and suffering a great deal of pain. -Poor Ronald! But he will be safe in Helen’s hands. If he were only out -of pain! Perhaps it is a good thing, Beenie. That is what he whispered -when I came away. Oh, how hard it was to come away and leave him there -ill, and his foot so bad! but I am to go down to-morrow, and it will be -a duty to stay as long as I can to cheer him up and to save Helen -trouble, who has so many other things to do. I am not hard-hearted; but -he says himself, if he were only out of pain, perhaps it’s a good -thing.”</p> - -<p>Here Lily stopped and cried, and murmured among her tears: “If it had -only been me! It’s easier for a girl to bear pain than a man.”</p> - -<p>“But if it had been you, Miss Lily, it would have been no advantage. You -can go to him at the Manse, but he could not have come to you here.”</p> - -<p>“That is true,” cried Lily, laughing; “you are a clever Beenie to think -of that. But how am I to live till to-morrow, all the long night -through, and all the morning without news?”</p> - -<p>“A young gentleman doesna die of a sprained ankle,” said Beenie -sedately, “and if you are a good bairn, and will go early to bed, and -take care of yourself, I’ll see that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a>{123}</span> the boy goes into the toun the -first thing in the morning to hear how he is.”</p> - -<p>“You are a kind Beenie,” cried Lily, clasping her arms about her maid’s -neck. But it was a long time before Robina succeeded in quieting the -girl’s excitement. She had to hear the story again half-a-dozen times -over, now in its full reality, now in the form which it had to bear for -the outside world, with all the tears and laughter which accompanied it. -“And he grew so white, so white, I thought he was going to faint,” said -Lily, herself growing pale.</p> - -<p>“I’m thankful ye were spared that. It is very distressing to see a -person faint, Miss Lily.”</p> - -<p>“And then he cheered up and gave a grin in the middle of his pain: I -will not call it a smile, for it was no more than a grin, half fun and -half torture. Poor Ronald! oh, my poor lad, my poor lad!”</p> - -<p>“He was a lucky lad to get you to do all that for him, Miss Lily.”</p> - -<p>“Me! What did it matter if it was me or you or a fishwife,” said Lily, -“when a man is in such dreadful pain?”</p> - -<p>They discussed it over and over again from every point of view, until -Lily fell asleep from sheer weariness in the hundredth repetition of the -story. Beenie, for her part, was exceedingly discreet at supper that -evening. Indeed, she was altogether too discreet to be successful with a -quick observer like Katrin, who saw, by the extreme precautions of her -friend, and the close-shut lips with which Beenie minced and bridled, -and made little remarks about nothing in particular, that there was -something to conceal. Katrin was very near to penetrating the mystery -even now, but she said nothing except those somewhat ostentatious -congratulations to all parties on the fact that Miss Eelen was there, -which were designed to show the growing conviction that Miss Eelen was -not there at all. Beenie was quite quick enough to perceive this, but -she exercised much control over herself, and made no signs before<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a>{124}</span> -Dougal. He was chiefly occupied by the address to Rory which Lily had -made, which struck him as an excellent joke, and which he repeated to -himself from time to time, with a laugh which came from the depths of -his being. “She said till him: ‘Ye can throw me the morn, and welcome, -if ye’ll go canny the day.’ Losh, what a spirit she has, that lassie, -and the fun in her! ‘Go canny the day, and ye can throw me, if ye like, -the morn.’ And Rory to take it a’ in like a Christian!” He laughed till -he held his sides, and then he said feebly: “It’ll be the death of me.”</p> - -<p>The joke did not strike the women as so brilliant. “I hope he’ll no take -her at her word,” said Beenie.</p> - -<p>“Na, na, he’ll no take her at her word: he’s ower much of a gentleman; -but if he does, you’ll see she’ll stand it and never a word in her head. -That’s what I call real spirit, feared at nothing. ‘Go canny the day, -and you can throw me, if you like, the morn.’ I think I never heard any -thing so funny in a’ my born days.”</p> - -<p>“You’re easy pleased,” said his wife, though she was quite inclined to -consider Lily’s speeches as brilliant, and herself as the flower of -human kind, but to let a man suppose that he was the discoverer of all -this was not to be thought of. She communicated, however, some of her -suspicions to Dougal, for want of any other confidant, when they were -alone in the stillness of their chamber. “I have my doubts,” said -Katrin, “that it was nae surprise to her at a’ to find the gentleman, -and that it was him that was the Miss Eelen that met her at the auld -brig.”</p> - -<p>“Him that was Miss Eelen? And how could he be Miss Eelen, a muckle man?” -said Dougal.</p> - -<p>“Oh, ye gowk!” said his wife, and she put back her discoveries into her -bosom, and said no more.</p> - -<p>Lily was very restless next day until she was able to get away on her -charitable mission. “I must go now,” she said, “to help to take care of -him, or Helen will have no time for her other business, and she has so -much to do.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a>{125}</span></p> - -<p>“You maun take care and no find another gentleman with a broken foot,” -said Katrin; “you mightn’t be able to manage Rory so well a second -time.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I am not afraid of Rory,” the girl cried. “I just speak to him, as -Dougal does, in his ear.”</p> - -<p>“Mind you what you’ve promised him, Miss Lily,” said that authority, -chuckling; “he is to cowp you over his head, if he likes, the day.”</p> - -<p>“He’ll not do that!” cried Lily confidently, waving her hand to the -assembled household, who were standing outside the door to see her -start. What a diversion she was, with her comings and goings, her -adventures and mishaps, to that good pair! How dull it must have been -for them before Lily came to excite their curiosity and brighten their -sense of humor. Dougal returned to his work, shaking once more with a -laugh that went down to his boots and thrilled him all over, saying to -himself: “He’s ower much of a gentleman to take her at her word;” while -Katrin stood shading her eyes with her hand, and looking wistfully after -the young creature in her confidence and gayety of youth. “Eh, but I -hope the lad’s worthy of her,” was what Katrin said.</p> - -<p>Ronald was lying once more upon the big hair-cloth sofa, as she had left -him. He would not stay in bed, Helen lamented, though it would have been -so much better for him. “But a simple sprain,” she said, “no -complication. If I could have persuaded him to bide quiet in his bed, he -would have been well at the end of the week; but nothing would please -him but to be down here, limping down stairs, at the risk of a fall, -with two sticks and only one foot. My heart was in my mouth at every -step.”</p> - -<p>“But he is none the worse,” cried Lily, “and I can understand Mr. -Lumsden, Helen. It is far, far more cheery here, where he can see every -thing that is going on, and have you and Mr. Blythe to talk to. A sprain -makes your ankle bad, but not your mind.”</p> - -<p>“That is true,” said Ronald, “and what I have been laboring to say, but -had not the wit. My ankle is bad,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a>{126}</span> but not my mind. I am in no such -hurry to get well as Miss Blythe thinks. Don’t you see,” he said, -looking up in Lily’s face, as she stood beside him, “in what clover I am -here?”</p> - -<p>Lily answered the look, but not the words. A tremulous sense of ease and -happiness arose in her being. The moor was sweet when he was there, and -to look for that hour in the evening had been enough for the first days -to make her happy. But to start out to meet him, nobody knowing, glad as -she had been to do it, cost Lily a pang. There are some people to whom -the stolen joys are the most sweet, but Lily was not one of these. The -clandestine wounded her sense of delicacy, if not her conscience. She -was doing no wrong, she had said to herself, but yet it felt like wrong -so long as it was secret, so long as a certain amount of deception was -necessary to procure it. She was like the house-maid, stealing out to -meet her lover. To the house-maid there was nothing unbecoming in that, -but there was to Lily. She had suffered even while she was happy. But -now the clandestine was all over. The constant presence of the old -minister, who regarded them with eyes in which there was too much -insight and satire for Lily’s peace of mind, was troublesome, but it was -protection; it set her heart at rest. The accident restored all at once -the ease of nature. “It is the best thing that could have happened,” -Ronald said, when Helen left them alone, and Mr. Blythe had hidden -himself behind the large, broad sheet of <i>The Scotsman</i>, the new clever -Whig paper which had lately begun to bring the luxury of news twice a -week to the most distant corners of the land. “I don’t mean to get -better at the end of the week. It was a dreadful business yesterday, but -I see the advantage of it now.”</p> - -<p>“Was it so dreadful yesterday, poor Ronald?” she said in the voice of a -dove, cooing at his ear.</p> - -<p>“It was not delightful yesterday, though I had the sweetest Lily. But -now I warn you, Lily, I mean to keep ill as long as I can. You will come -and stay with me; it<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a>{127}</span> is your duty, for nobody knows me at Kinloch-Rugas -but only you, and you are the good Samaritan. You put me on your own -beast, and brought me to the inn.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, do not speak like that, do not put me in mind that we are both -deceivers! I have forgotten it, now that we are here.”</p> - -<p>“We are no deceivers,” he said. “It is all quite true; you put me on -your own beast. And where did you get all that strength, Lily? You must -have almost lifted me in your arms, you slender little thing, a heavy -fellow like me!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you did very well on your one foot,” said Lily, trying to laugh; -but she shuddered and the tears came into her eyes. She was aching still -with the strain that necessity had put upon her, but he did not think of -that—he only thought how strong she was.</p> - -<p>“Here, you two,” said the minister, “I’m going to read you a bit out of -the paper. It is just full of stories, as good as if I had told them -myself.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, never heed with your stories, father,” said Helen; “keep them till -Lily goes away, for she has a wonderful way with her, and keeps things -going. Our patient will not be dull while Lily is here.”</p> - -<p>Was that all she meant, or did Helen, too, suspect something? The two -lovers interchanged a glance, half of alarm, half of laughter, but Helen -went and came, unconscious, sometimes pausing to turn the cushion under -the bad foot, or to suggest a more comfortable position, with nothing -but kindness in her mild eyes.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Ronald</span> was, as he had prophesied, a long time getting well. Even Helen -was a little puzzled, she who thought no evil, at the persistency of his -suffering; at the end of the second week he could, indeed, stumble about -with his<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a>{128}</span> two sticks, but still complained of great pain when he tried -to walk. The prolonged presence of the visitor began at last to become a -little trouble, even to the hospitable Manse, where strangers were -entertained so kindly, but where there was but one maid-of-all-work, -with the occasional services, chiefly outdoors, of the minister’s man; -and an invalid of Ronald’s robust character, whose presence necessitated -better fare and gave a great deal of additional work, was a serious -addition both to the expenses and labors of the house. It would have -been much against the traditions of the Manse to betray this in any way; -but there was no doubt that the minister was a little more sharp in his -speeches, and apt to throw a secret dart, in the disguise of a jest, at -the guest whose convalescence was so prolonged. Lily rode down from -Dalrugas every day to help to nurse the patient, that Helen might not -have the whole burden of his helplessness on her shoulders; but Lily, -too, became aware that, delightful though this freedom of meeting was, -and the long hours of intercourse which were made legitimate as being a -form of duty, they were beginning to last too long and awaken uneasy -thoughts. Helen, who was so tender to her at first, became a little -wistful as the days went on. The gentle creature could think no harm, -but perhaps it was her father’s remarks which put it into her head that -the two young people were making a convenience of her hospitality, and -that all was not honest in the tale which had brought so unlooked-for a -visitor under the shelter of her roof. And then the village, as was -inevitable, made many remarks. “Bless me, but the young leddy at -Dalrugas is an awfu’ constant visitor, Miss Eelen. She comes just as if -she was coming to her lessons every morning at the same hour.” “She is -the kindest heart in the world,” said Helen. “You see, this gentleman -that sprained his foot is a friend of her uncle’s, and she could not -take him to Dalrugas, where there is nobody but servants; and she will -not let me have all the trouble of him. A man, when he is ill, takes a -great deal of attendance,” said the minister’s daughter, with a smile.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a>{129}</span></p> - -<p>“Losh! I would just let him attend upon himsel’,” said one.</p> - -<p>“He should send for a sister, or somebody belonging to him,” said -another.</p> - -<p>“Oh, not that,” said Helen—“I could not put up a lady, there is but -little room in the Manse—and with Miss Lily’s help we can pull -through.”</p> - -<p>“He should get an easy post-chaise from Aberdeen—there’s plenty easy -carriages to be got there nowadays—and go back to his ain folk. He’s a -son of Lumsden of Pontalloch, they tell me; that’s not so far but that -he might get there in a day.”</p> - -<p>“I have no doubt he will do that as soon as he is well enough,” said -Helen; but all these remarks made her uneasy. Impossible for Scotch -hospitality to give a hint, to intimate a thought, that the visitor had -overstayed his welcome—and a man that had been hurt and was, perhaps, -still suffering! “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. But it troubled -her gentle mind that Lily’s visits should be so remarked, and it was -strange—or was it only the village gossip that made her feel that it -was strange? Lily perceived all this with an uneasy perception of new -elements in the air.</p> - -<p>“Ronald,” she said one day, when they were alone for a few minutes, “you -could put your foot to the ground without hurting when you try. You will -have to go away.”</p> - -<p>“Why should I go away?” he said, with a laugh. “I am very comfortable. -It is not luxury, but it does very well when I see my Lily every -day——”</p> - -<p>“But, oh,” she cried, the color coming to her cheeks, which had been -growing pale these few days, “there are things of more consequence than -Lily! The Manse people are not rich——”</p> - -<p>“You need not tell me that,” he said, looking round at the shabby -furniture with a smile.</p> - -<p>“But, oh, Ronald, you don’t see! They try to get nice things for you, -they spend a great deal of trouble upon you, and they were glad at -first—but it is now a fortnight.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a>{130}</span></p> - -<p>“Lily, my love,” he said quickly, “if you have ceased to care for this -chance of meeting every day—if you want me to go away, of course I will -go.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think it likely I should have ceased to care?” she said, with -tears in her eyes. “But we must think of other people, too.”</p> - -<p>“Thinking of other people is generally a mistake. We all know how to -take care of ourselves best—unless it is here and there some one like -you, if there is any one like my Lily. But, dear, I give very little -trouble. What is there to do for me? Another bed to make, another knife -and fork—or spoon, I should say, for we have broth, broth, and nothing -but broth—and a little grouse now and then, sent to them by somebody, -and therefore costing nothing.”</p> - -<p>“It is ungenerous to say that!” Lily cried.</p> - -<p>“My dearest, you will tell me what present I can send them when at last -I am forced to tear myself away. A good present that will make up to -them—a chest of tea, or a barrel of wine, or—— But I don’t want to go -away, Lily; I would rather stay here and see you every day until I am -forced to go back to my work.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, and so would I!” cried Lily; “but,” she added, with a sigh, “we -must think of them. Mr. Blythe sits always, always in this room. It is -the sunny room in the house, and he likes it best. But you see he has -gone into his little study this day or two—which is very dreary—all -because we are here.”</p> - -<p>“Very considerate of him,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “if that is a -reason for going away, that they now leave us sometimes alone. I fear it -will not move me, Lily; you must find a better than that.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Ronald, will you not see?” cried Lily in distress. But what could a -girl do? She could not put understanding into his eyes nor consideration -into his heart. He was willing to take advantage of these good people, -and the inducement was strong. She spoke against her own heart when she -urged him to go away, and she was glad to be laughed out of her -scruples, to be told of the “good<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a>{131}</span> present” that would make up for every -thing, of the gratitude that he would always feel, and his conviction -that he gave very little trouble, and added next to nothing to their -expenses. “Broth is not expensive,” he said, “and the grouse, you know, -Lily, the grouse!” Lily turned her head away, sick at heart. Oh, it was -not how he should speak of the people who were so kind to him; but -still, when she mounted Rory—now quite docile and accustomed to trot -every day into Kinloch-Rugas—in the afternoon, she could not but be -glad to think that she might still come to-morrow, that there was at -least another day.</p> - -<p>One of these afternoons the parlor was full of people, under whose eyes -Lily could not continue to sit by the side of the sofa and minister to -the robust invalid’s wants. There was the doctor, who gave him a little -slap on his leg and said: “I congratulate ye on a perfect cure. You can -get up and walk when you like, like the man in the Bible.” And the -school-master’s wife, who said: “Eh, what a good thing for you, Mr. -Lumsden, and you been on your back so long.” And there was the assistant -and successor, Mr. Douglas, who was visibly anxious to get rid of all -interlopers and speak a word to Helen. Oh, why did he not follow Helen -when she went out to open the door for her visitors, and leave Lily free -to say once more to Ronald, but more energetically: “You must go!”</p> - -<p>“I was wanting to say, sir,” said Mr. Douglas, “and I may add that I -have Miss Eelen’s opinion all on my side, that I would like very much if -you would say a parting word to the lads that are going out to Canada. -We have taken a great deal of trouble with them, and a word from the -minister——”</p> - -<p>“You are the minister yourself, Douglas; they know more of you than they -do of me.”</p> - -<p>“Not so, Mr. Blythe. I am your assistant, and Miss Eelen she is your -daughter and the best friend they ever had; but it’s your blessing the -callants want, and a word from you——”</p> - -<p>“My blessing!” the old man said, with an uneasy laugh.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a>{132}</span> “You’re -forgetting, my young man, that there’s no sacerdotal pretensions in the -auld Kirk.”</p> - -<p>“You blessed them when they were christened, sir, and you blessed them -and gave them the right hand of fellowship when they came to the Lord’s -table. I’m thinking nothing of sacerdotalism. I’m thinking of human -nature. We have no bishops, but while we have ordained ministers we must -always have fathers in God.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Blythe had never been of this new-fangled type of devotion. He had -been an old Moderate, very shy of overmuch religion, and relying upon -habit and tradition and a good deal of wholesome neglect. But the young -man’s earnestness, backed as it was by the serious light in Helen’s -eyes, brought a color to his old face. He was a little ashamed of the -importance given to him, and half angry at the young people’s high-flown -notions. “I am not sure,” he said, “that I go with you, Douglas, nor -with Eelen either, in your dealings with these lads. You just cultivate -a kind of forced religion in them, that makes a fine show for a moment; -it’s the seed that fell by the wayside and sprang up quickly, but had no -root in itself.”</p> - -<p>“We can never tell that, sir,” said the assistant; “it may help them -when they have no ordinances to mind them of their duty. If they -remember their Creator in the days of their youth——”</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Deed,” said the old minister, “it is just as often as not to forget -every thing all the quicker when they come to man’s estate. Solomon knew -mainy things, but not the lads in a parish so near the Highlant line.”</p> - -<p>“Anyway, father, it will be kindly like, and them going so far, far -away.”</p> - -<p>“That is just it,” said Mr. Blythe: “why should they go far, far away? -Why couldn’t ye let them jog on as their fathers did before them? I’m -not an advocate for emigration. There are plenty of things the lads -could do without leaving their own country. Let them go to Glasgow, -where there’s work for every-body, or to the South. You think you can do -every thing with your arrangements<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a>{133}</span> and your exhortations, and looking -after more than ye were ever asked to look after. I have never approved -of all these meetings and things, and your classes and your lessons, and -all the fyke you make about a few country callants. Let them alone to -their fathers’ advice and their mothers’. You may be sure the women will -all warn them to keep off the drink—and much good it will do, whatever -you may say, either them or you.”</p> - -<p>“But just a word of farewell, sir,” pleaded the assistant; “we ask no -more.”</p> - -<p>“And that is just a great deal too much in present circumstances,” cried -the old minister. “Where would ye have me speak to them—a dozen big -country lads, like colts out of the stable? I cannot go out to the cold -vestry at night, me that seldom leaves the house at all. And the -dining-room is too small, and what other room have we free? Eelen, you -know that as well as me. I cannot have them up in my bedchalmer, and the -kitchen, with lasses in it, would be no place for such a ceremonial. No, -no; we have no room, that is true.”</p> - -<p>“I hope, sir,” said Ronald from his sofa, “you are not saying this from -consideration for me. I’d like nothing better than to see the boys, and -hear your address to them. It would be good, I am sure, and I am as much -in need of good advice as any of them can be.”</p> - -<p>“You are very considerate, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, after a -pause. “It is a great thing to have an inmate that takes so much -thought. But how can I tell that it would not be bad for you in your -delicate state, with your nurses at your side all the day?”</p> - -<p>“Delicate! I am not delicate!” cried Ronald, with a flush. “It is only, -you know, this confounded foot.”</p> - -<p>“Well, Douglas,” said the minister, “between Mr. Lumsden’s confoondit -foot and your confoondit pertinacity, what am I to do? Since your -patient, Eelen, is so kind and permits the use of our best parlor, have -them in, have ben your callants. I must not be less gracious than my own -guest,” the old man said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a>{134}</span></p> - -<p>Lily went away trembling after this scene, giving Ronald a beseeching -glance, but she had no opportunity for a word. Next day, still -tremulous, she returned, to find him still there, a little defiant, not -to be driven out. But a short time after, when she was again preparing -to go into the “toun”—without any pleasant looks now from her -household, or complaisance on the part of Dougal, who openly bemoaned -his pony—the whole population of Dalrugas turned out to see the inn -“geeg” once more climbing the brae. It contained Ronald and his -portmanteau, speeding off to catch the coach, but incapable, as he said, -in the hearing of every-body, of going away without thanking and saying -farewell to his kind nurse. “Do you know what this young lady did for -me?” he said to the little company, which included Rory, ready saddled, -and the black pony harnessed, with the boy at his head. “She lifted me, -I think, from where I lay, and put me on her own beast, like the good -Samaritan. She was more than the good Samaritan to me. Look at her, like -a fairy princess, and me a heavy lump, almost fainting, and with but one -foot. That is what charity can do.”</p> - -<p>“Well, it was a wonderful thing,” Katrin allowed, “but maist more than -that was riding down ance errand to the town to take care of ye every -day.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, that was for Miss Blythe’s sake and not mine,” he said. “May I come -in, Miss Ramsay, to give you her message? Oh, Robina, I am glad to see -you here. I can carry the last news to Sir Robert, and tell him how both -mistress and maid are thriving on the moor.”</p> - -<p>It was all false, false, as false as words that were true enough in -themselves could be. Lily ran up the spiral stair, while Beenie helped -him to follow. The girl’s heart was beating high with more sensations -than she could discriminate. This was the parting, then, after so long a -time together; the farewell, which was more dreadful than words could -say—and yet she was glad he was going. He was her own true-love, and -nobody was like him in the world, and yet Lily’s mind revolted against -every word he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a>{135}</span></p> - -<p>“Why did you say all that?” she cried, breathless, when they were alone. -“It was not wanted, surely, here!”</p> - -<p>“Necessary fibs,” he said. “You are too particular, Lily, for me that am -only carrying out my rôle. You see, I am obeying you and going away at -last.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Ronald, it was not that I wanted you to go away.”</p> - -<p>“No, if I could have gone away, yet stayed all the same. But one can’t -do two opposite things at the same time. And, Lily, it must be good-by -now—for a little while. You will look out for me at the New Year.”</p> - -<p>“Do you call it just a little while to the New Year?” she cried, with -the tears in her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Three months, or a little more. I shall not come to Kinloch-Rugas; I’ll -find a lodging in some little farm. And in the meantime you will write -to me, Lily, and I will write to you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, Ronald,” she said, giving him both her hands. Was this to be all? -It was not for her to ask; it was for him to say:</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily! If I could but carry you off, never to part more! But -if nothing happens to release you, if Sir Robert does not relent, mind, -my dearest, we must make up our minds and take it into our own hands. He -is not to keep us apart forever. You will let me know all that goes on, -and whether those people down stairs have reported the matter; and I, -for my part, will take my measures. When we meet again, every thing will -be clearer. And, Lily, on your side, you will tell me every thing, that -we may see our way.”</p> - -<p>“There will be nothing to tell you, Ronald. There will be no report -sent; Uncle Robert, I think, has forgotten my existence. There will be -nothing, nothing to say but that it is weary living alone here on the -moor.”</p> - -<p>“Not more weary than my life in Edinburgh, pacing up and down the -Parliament House, and looking out for work. But we’ll see what is going -to happen before the New Year; and I will send the present to those good -Manse folk, and you will keep up with them, for they may be very useful<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a>{136}</span> -friends. Is it time for me to go? Well, I will go if I must; and good-by -for the present, my darling, good-by till the New Year!”</p> - -<p>Was it possible that he was gone, that it was all over, and Lily left -again alone on the moor? She ran to Beenie’s room, which was on the -other side of the house, to watch the inn “geeg” as long as it was in -sight. Nothing is ever said of what is intended to be said in a hasty -last meeting like this. It was worse than no meeting at all, leaving all -the ravelled ends of parting. And was it true that all was over, and -Ronald gone and nothing more to be done or said?</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> dead calm into which Lily fell after all the agitations of this -wonderful period was like death itself, she thought, after the tumult -and commotion of a climax of life. Those days during which she had -trotted down to the village on Rory, the mountain breezes in her face, -and all the warmest emotions stirred in her breast, days full of anxiety -and expectation, sometimes of more painful feelings, agitations of all -kinds, but threaded through and through with the consciousness that for -hours to come she would be with her lover, ministering to his wants, -hearing him speak, going over and over with him, in the low-voiced talk -to which the old minister behind his newspaper gave, or was supposed to -give, no heed, their own prospects and hopes, their plans for the -future—all those things that are more engrossing and delightful to talk -of than any other subjects in heaven or earth—were different from all -the days that had passed over her before. Her youthful existence was -like a dream, thrown back into the distance by the superior force and -meaning of all that had happened since: both the loneliness and the -society, the bitter time of self-experience and solitude, the joy of the -reunion, the love so crossed and mingled which had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a>{137}</span> grown with greater -intensity with every chance. The little simple Lily who had “fallen in -love,” as she thought, with Ronald Lumsden, as she might have fallen in -love with any one of a half-dozen of young men, was very, very different -from the Lily who had been torn out of her natural life on his account, -who had doubted him and found him wanting, who had been converted into -the faith of an enthusiast in him, and conviction that it was she, and -not he, that was in the wrong. Their stolen meetings on the moor, which -had startled her back into the joy of existence, which had been so few, -yet so sweet; their little meal together, which was like a high ceremony -and sacrament of a deeper love and union; the tremendous excitement of -the accident, and the agitated chapter of constant yet disturbed -intercourse which followed (disturbed at last by a renewed creeping in -of the old doubts, and anxiety to push him forward, to make him act, to -make him think not always of himself, as he was so apt to do)—all these -things had formed an epoch in her life, behind which every thing was -childish and vague. She herself was not the same. It happens often in a -woman’s life that the change from youth and its lighter atmosphere of -natural, simple things comes before the mind is developed, before the -character is able to bear that wonderful transformation. Lily at first -had been essentially in this condition. Her trial came to her before she -had strength for it, and every new point of progress was marked, so to -speak, with a new wound, quickly healed over, as became her youth, yet -leaving a scar, as all internal wounds do. Even when the thrill of -happiness had been in her young frame and mind it had been intensified -by a thrill of pain: the pang of secrecy, the sharp sting of -falsehood—falsehood which was abhorrent to Lily’s nature. She had -laughed as other girls laugh at the stratagems of lovers, their devices -to escape the observation of jealous parents, the evils that are said to -be legitimate in love and war. Nobody is so severe as to judge harshly -these aberrations from duty. Even the sternest parent smiles at them -when they are not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a>{138}</span> directed against himself. But when it came to -inventing a story day by day; when it came to deceiving Katrin, with her -sharp eyes, at one end, and Helen’s unsuspicious soul at the other—then -Lily could not bear the tangled web in which she had wound herself. She -had to go on; it was too late to tell the truth now, she had said to -herself, day by day, her heart aching from those thanks which Helen -showered upon her for her kind attendance upon the unexpected guest. “If -it had not been for you, Lily, what could I have done?” the minister’s -daughter had said, again and again; and Lily’s heart had grown sick in -the midst of her strained and painful happiness at Ronald’s side.</p> - -<p>Now this was over and another phase come. She had urged him to go, -feeling the position untenable any longer in a way which his robust -self-confidence had not felt; but when suddenly he had taken the step -she urged, Lily felt herself flung back upon herself, the words taken -out of her mouth, and the meaning from her mind. All her little fabric -of life tumbled down about her. Those habits which are formed so -quickly, which a few days suffice to bind upon the soul like iron, -dropped from her, and she felt as if the framework by which she was -sustained had broken down, and she could no longer hold herself erect. -Her life seemed suddenly to have lost all its meaning, all its -occupations. There was no sense in going on, no reason for its -continuance merely to eat meals, to take walks, to go to bed and to get -up again. She looked behind her, to the immediate past, with a pang, and -before her, to the immediate future, with a blank sense of vacancy which -was almost despair. When the “geeg” that carried him away was gone quite -out of sight, Lily went slowly back to the drawing-room, and seated -herself at the window from which she had first seen him appearing across -the moor. It had been then all ablaze with the heather, which now had -died away into rustling bunches of dead flowers, all dried like husks -upon the stalks, gray and dreary, like the dull evening of a glowing -day. Her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a>{139}</span> heart beat dull with the reverberation of all those -convulsions that had gone through it. And now they were all over, like -the glow of the heather—and what was before her? The winter creeping -on, with its short days and long nights; storm and rain, when even Rory -would not face the keen wind; solitude unbroken for weeks and months; -and beyond that what was there to look forward to? Oh, if it had been -but poverty—the little flat under the roofs in a tall Edinburgh house, -and to work her fingers to the bone! Poor Lily, who knew so little what -working your fingers to the bone meant! who thought that would be -blessedness beside one you loved, and in the world where you were born! -So, no doubt, it would have been; but yet, in all probability, though -she did not intend it so, it would have been Robina’s fingers, not hers, -that were worked to the bone.</p> - -<p>I would not have the reader think that, translated into ordinary -parlance, all this meant the vulgar fact that Lily was longing to be -married, and would not accept the counsels of patience and wait, though -she was only twenty-three, and had so many, many years before her. Had -Ronald been an eager lover, ready to brave fortune for her sake, and -consider that, for love, the world were well lost, she would no doubt -have taken the other side of the question, and preached patience to him, -and borne her own part of the burden with a smile. But it is very -different when it is the lover who is prudent, and when the girl, with -an unsatisfied heart, has to wait and know that her happiness, her -society, her life, are of less value to him than the fortune which he -hopes, by patience, to secure along with her; also that she can do -nothing to emancipate herself, nothing to escape from whatever painful -circumstances may surround her, till he gives the word, which he shows -no inclination to give, and which womanly pride and feeling forbid her -even to suggest; also, and above all, that in his hesitation, in his -prudence and delay, he is falling short of the ideal which every lover -should fulfil or lose his place and power. This was the worst of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a>{140}</span> all: -not only that Ronald was acting so, but that it was so far, far -different from the manner in which Ronald, had he been the Ronald she -thought, would have acted. This gave the bitterness under which Lily’s -heart sank. Again, she did not know what he meant to do, or if he meant -to do any thing, or if she were to remain as she was, perhaps for long -years, consuming her heart in loneliness and vacancy, diversified by -moments of clandestine meeting and unlovely happiness, bought by deceit. -She could not again yield to that, she said to herself, with passionate -tears. Though her heart were to break, she would not heal it at the cost -of lies. It might not have given Lily many compunctions, perhaps, to -have deceived her uncle; but to deceive Helen, to deceive kind Katrin -and Dougal, to give false accounts of the simplest circumstances—oh! -no, no; never again, never again! She said this to herself, with -passionate tears falling like rain, as she sat at her lonely window on -many a dreary day, straining her eyes across the moor, where the rain so -often fell to double the effect of those tears. Let them give each other -up mutually; let them part and be done with it if he chose; but to -deceive every-body and meet secretly, or meet openly upon the falsest of -pretences—oh! no, no, Lily said to herself, never more!</p> - -<p>But how these decisions melted when, in the heart of the winter, there -began to dawn the promise of the New Year, it is easy to imagine, and I -do not need to say. Lily, it must be remembered, had no one but Ronald -to represent to her happiness and life. She had never had many people to -love. Her father and mother had both died before she was old enough to -know them. She had no aunt, though that is often an unsatisfactory -relation, not even cousins whom she knew, which is strange to think of -in Scotland—nobody to take her part or whom she could repose her heart -upon but Beenie, her maid, to whom Lily’s concerns were her own -sublimated, and who could only agree in and intensify Lily’s own natural -impulses and thoughts. Ronald was all she had, the only<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a>{141}</span> one who could -help her, the sole deliverer possible, and opener to her of the gates of -life. To be sure, she might have renounced him and so returned to her -uncle, to be dragged about in a back seat of his chariot, if not at its -wheels; though, indeed, even this was problematical, for Sir Robert was -a selfish old man, who was, on the whole, very glad to have got rid of -the burden of a young woman to take about with him, and considered that -she would do very well at the old Tower, and might be quite content with -such a quiet and comfortable home, a good cook (which Katrin was), a -pony to ride upon, and the run of the moor. He had half forgotten her -existence by this time, as Lily divined, and was absent “abroad” in that -vague and wide world of which stayers at home in Scotland knew so much -less then than every-body knows now. And as the time approached for -Ronald’s return, Lily, in her longing for him, added to her longing for -something, for some one, for society, emancipation, something that was -life, began to forget all her old aches and troubles of mind; the doubts -flew away; she remembered only that Ronald was coming, that he was -coming, that the sun was about to shine again, that there was happiness -in prospect, love and company and talk and sympathy, and all that is -good in youth and life. This time she must manage so that the deceit of -old would be necessary no longer. Helen should know that the two who had -met so often in the Manse parlor had come to love each other. What so -natural, what so fitting, seeing they had spent so much time together -under her own wing and her own mild eyes? And Katrin and Dougal should -be permitted to see what Lily was very sure they had divined already, -that the poor gentleman whom Lily had nursed so faithfully was more to -her than any other gentleman in the world. He should come to Dalrugas to -see her, and be with her openly as her lover in the sight of all men. If -Sir Robert heard of it, why, then she must escape, she must fly; the -pair must at last take it, as Ronald had said, into their own hands—and -Lily did not feel that she would be very<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a>{142}</span> sorry if this took place. At -all events now every thing should be open and honest, clandestine no -more.</p> - -<p>It seemed as if he had come to the same decision when he arrived on the -night which was then called in Scotland, and is perhaps still to some -extent, Hogmanay—why I do not know, nor I believe does any one—the -last night of the year. He came in the early twilight, when the short, -dark day was ending, and the long, cheerful evening about to begin. What -a cheerful evening it was! the fire so bright, the candles twinkling, -the curtains drawn, and from the kitchen the sound of the children -singing who had come out in a band all the way from the village to call -upon Katrin:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Get up, gudewife, and shake your feathers,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">And dinna think that we are beggars,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">For we are bairns, come out to play;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Get up and gie’s our Hogmanay.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>Lily was about to go down, flying down the spiral stairs, her heart -beating loud with expectation, wondering breathlessly when he would -come, how he would come, who alone could bring the Hogmanay cheer to -her, and in the meantime ready, for pure excitement, and to keep herself -still, to join the women in the kitchen, and fill the children’s wallets -with cakes, cakes <i>par excellence</i>, the oatmeal cakes to wit, which are -still what is meant in Scotland by that word, baked thin and crisp, and -fresh from the girdle, making a pleasant smell; and over and above these -with shortbread, in fine, brown farls, the true New Year’s dainty, and -great pieces of bun, the Scotch bun, which is something between a -plum-pudding and the Pan Giallo of the Romans, a mass of fruit held -together by flour and water. Great provision of these delights was in -the kitchen, which was all “redd up” and shining for the festival, with -Katrin in her best cap, and Beenie in a silk gown and muslin apron, a -resplendent figure. A band of “guisards” had accompanied the children, -ready to enact some scene of the primitive drama of prehistoric -tradition.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a>{143}</span> Lily was hastening down to join this party, in a white dress -which she too had put on in honor of the occasion. The kitchen was very -noisy, full of these visitors, and nobody but she heard the summons at -the big hall-door. Lily hesitated for a moment, her heart giving a bound -as loud as the knock—then opened it. And there he stood—the hero and -the centre of all!</p> - -<p>“And, eh, what a lucky thing to come this night that Miss Lily may have -her ploy too! You will just stop and eat your bit dinner with her, -Maister Lumsden!” Katrin cried.</p> - -<p>“Will it be a ploy for Miss Lily? I would like to be sure of that.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, nae need to pit it in words,” said Katrin: “look at her bonnie -e’en; and reason good, seeing that she has never spoken to one of her -own kind, and least of all to a young gentleman, since the day ye gaed -away.”</p> - -<p>“I am staying at Tam the shepherd’s, on the other side of the moor,” -said Ronald.</p> - -<p>“Losh me! at Tam the shepherd’s, for the shootin’?” she asked in a tone -of consternation.</p> - -<p>“Well,” he said, with a laugh, “you can judge, Katrin, for yourself.”</p> - -<p>“Ay, ay,” she said, brightening all over, “I judge for mysel’, sir, and -I see it’s just the auld story. Tam the shepherd’s an awfu’ haverel, but -his wife’s an honest woman, and clean,” she added, “as far as she kens. -But you shall have a good dinner with Miss Lily, I promise you, for once -in a way.”</p> - -<p>Lily only half listened, but she heard all that was said. And her heart -danced to see his open look, and the words in which there was no -pretence of shooting, or any reason, save the evident one, for his -presence there. The excuses were all over; there was to be no more -deception. Honestly he came as her lover, endeavoring to throw no dust -in the eyes of her humble guardians. If they had been noble guardians, -holding her fate in their hands, Lily could not have been more happy. -They were not to be deceived.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a>{144}</span> Openness and honesty were to be around -her in the house which was her home. What was wanted but this to make -her the happiest girl that ever piled shortbread into a child’s wallet -in honor of Hogmanay, and the New Year which was coming to-morrow? A new -year, a new life, a different world! Katrin came up to her with -half-affected horror and tender kindness, grasping her arm. “Eh, Miss -Lily,” she cried, “you’ll just ruin the family, and we’ll no have a -single farl of shortbread left for our ain use; and the morn’s the New -Year! Ye are giving every thing away. Na, na, we must mind oursel’s a -wee. No more for you, my wee man. Miss Lily’s just ower good to you. Run -up the stairs, my bonnie leddy, for Beenie is setting the table, and -you’ll get your dinner, you and the gentleman, before the guisards -begin.”</p> - -<p>“The gentleman!” Lily felt her countenance flame, as she laughed and -turned away. “How kind you are, Katrin,” she said, “to provide me with -company, too, me that never sees any body.”</p> - -<p>“Am I no kind,” cried Katrin in triumph, “and him for coming just at the -right moment? I am awfu’ pleased that you have a pairty of your ain to -bring in a good New Year.”</p> - -<p>How strange, how delightful it was to sit down opposite to him at the -table, to eat Katrin’s excellent dinner, which, though it was almost -impromptu, was so good—trout and game, the Highland luxuries, which -were, indeed, almost daily bread on the edge of the moor, but not to -Ronald, who amid all their happiness was man enough to like his dinner -and praise it. “This is how we shall sit at our own table, and laugh at -all our little troubles when they are over,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Ronald!” said Lily, with a little cloud in the midst of joy. They -might be little troubles to him, but not to her, all lonely in the -wilderness.</p> - -<p>“At all events they will soon be over,” he said. His eyes were bright -and his tones assured; there was no longer any doubt in his look, which -she examined in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a>{145}</span> moments when he was not looking at her with an -anxious criticism. “And tell me about the good folk at the Manse, and -kind Miss Eelen and her assistant and successor. Is he to be her -assistant, too, as well as her father’s? I had a famous letter from the -old gentleman about the wine I sent him. And, Lily, I think that with -very little trouble I will get him to do all we want as soon as you can -make up your mind to it. After all this time we must not have any more -delay.”</p> - -<p>“To do all we want?” she said, looking up at him with surprise. The -dinner was over by this time, and they had left the table and were -standing by the fire.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he said. “What do we want but to belong to each other, Lily? You -don’t need grand gowns or all the world at your wedding. Oh, yes, I -should have liked to see my Lily with all her friends about her, and -none so sweet as herself. But since we cannot do that, why should we -mind it, when the old minister here can make every thing right in half -an hour?”</p> - -<p>“Ronald,” she said, with a gasp, “you take away my breath!”</p> - -<p>“Why,” he cried, “is not this what has been in our minds for ever so -long? Have you not promised, however poor I was, in whatever -straits——”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, there is no question of that.”</p> - -<p>“And why, then, should it take away your breath? My bonnie Lily, is it -not an old bargain now? We have waited and waited, but nothing has come -of waiting. And Providence has put us in a quiet place, with nothing but -friends round, and a good old minister, a kind old fellow, who likes a -good glass of wine and knows what he’s drinking!” He laughed at this as -he drew her closer toward him. “Lily, with every thing in our favor, you -will not put me off and make a hesitation now?”</p> - -<p>Oh, this was not quite the way, not the way she looked for! Yet she drew -her breath hard, that breath which fluttered in spite of herself, and -put both her hands in his. No, after so long waiting why should she make -a hesitation<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a>{146}</span> now? And then they went down to the kitchen together, arm -in arm, Lily yielding to the delightful consciousness that there was no -need for concealment, to see the guisards act their primitive drama, and -to bring in the New Year.</p> - -<p>Oh, the New Year! which was coming in amid that rustic mirth among those -true, kind, humble friends to whom the young pair were as gods in the -glory of their love and youth. Lily trembled in her joy: what bride does -not? What would it bring to them, that New Year?</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">This</span> New Year’s Eve remained, amid all the experiences of Lily, a thing -apart. It became painful to her to think of it in after times, but in -the present it was like a completion and climax of life, still all in -the visionary stage, yet so close on the verge of the real that she -became herself like an instrument, thrilling to every touch, answering -every air that blew, every word that was said, in each and all of which -there were meanings hidden of which none was aware but herself. There -was the little dinner first, so carefully prepared by Katrin, so -tenderly served by Beenie, the two young people sitting on either side -of the table as if at their bridal banquet, while the sound of the -festivities going on in the kitchen came up by times when the door was -opened: a squeak of the fiddle, the sound of the stamping of the -guisards as they performed their little archaic drama, adding a franker -note of laughter to the keen supreme pleasure that reigned above. Beenie -went and came, always bringing with her along with every new dish that -little gust of laughter and voices from below, to which she kept open -half an ear, while with the other she attended to what her little -mistress said.</p> - -<p>“You maun come down, Miss Lily, to do them a grace: they a’ say they’ll -no steer till they’ve seen the young<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a>{147}</span> leddy; and they’re decent lads -just come out to play, as the bairns say in their sang, neither beggars -nor yet stravaigers, but lads from the town, to please ye with their bit -performance; and I ken a’ their mothers!” Beenie cried with a little -outburst of affectionate emotion.</p> - -<p>When Lily went down accordingly, followed closely by her lover, the -little primitive drama was repeated, with more stamping and shouting -than ever; and then there was an endless reel, to the sound of the -squeaking fiddle, in which Lily danced as long as she could hold out, -and Beenie held out, as it seemed, forever, wearing out all the lads.</p> - -<p>“Eh! I was a grand dancer in my time,” she admitted, when she had breath -enough, while the fiddle squeaked on and on.</p> - -<p>And then, as was right, Ronald said good-night as the rural band -streamed away from the door. The curious group of the guisards, some of -them in white shirts outside their garments, some in breastplates of -tin, with an iron pot on their heads by way of helmet, “set him home” -with much respectful kindness. “But I wuss ye were coming with us to the -toun, for Tam the shepherd’s is no a howff for a gentleman,” they said.</p> - -<p>“Any hole will do for me,” said Ronald in the exhilaration of the -evening; and all the house came out of doors to speed the parting -guests. The moon shone mistily over the long stretch of the moor, -throwing up a sinister gleam here and there from the deep cuttings, and -flinging a veil as of gossamer over the great breadth of the country. -The air was fresh, not over-cold, “saft,” as Dougal called it, with the -suggestion of rain, and the sudden irruption of voices and steps into -the supreme and brooding silence made the strangest effect in the middle -of the night. Lily stood watching them as they streamed away, Ronald so -distinct from them all as they streamed down under the shadow of the -bank, to show again, chiefly by reason of their disguises, upon the road -a little way down. Lily lingered until a speck of white in the distance -was all that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a>{148}</span> was visible. She was wrapped in a plaid which Ronald had -put round her, drawing the soft green and checkered folds closely around -her face, and as warm physically as she was at heart. Now he was -himself; he had flung all prudences and fancies to the wind; he had -forgotten Sir Robert and his fortune, and every other common thing that -could come between. Lily danced up the spiral staircase with a heart -that sang still more than her lips did as she “turned” the tune to which -they had been dancing. No one can keep still to whom “Tullochgoram” is -sung or played. She danced up the stairs, keeping time faster and faster -to the mad melody—the essence unadulterated of reckless fun and -drollery.</p> - -<p>“Eh, my bonnie leddy!” Beenie cried, who had gone before with the -candles; while Katrin stood looking after her, and Dougal locked and -bolted the great hall-door. Katrin shook her head a little: she was much -experienced. “Eh, if he be but worthy of her!” she sighed.</p> - -<p>“It’s late, late at nicht, and the New Year well begun,” said Robina. -“Eh, Miss Lily, you’ll never forget this New Year?”</p> - -<p>“Why should I forget it?” said Lily. “You had better wait till it is -past before you say that. But maybe you are right, after all, for there -never was a Hogmanay like this; and to think that the morn will come, -and that it will be no more like the other days than this has been! -Beenie, did you ever hear that folk might be as feared for joy as for -trouble? or is it only me that am so timorsome, and cannot tell which it -is going to be?”</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Deed, and I’ve heard o’ that many’s the day. It’s just the common way, -my bonnie dear. Many a bonnie lassie would fain flee to the ends of the -earth the day before her bridal that is just pleased enough when a’s -said and done. You mustna lose heart.”</p> - -<p>“I’m not losing heart,” said Lily. “The day before my bridal! Is that -what it is? I will just be happy to-night and never think of the morn; -for when I begin to think, it takes so many things to be satisfied, and -I<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a>{149}</span> would like to be satisfied just for once, and take no thought.”</p> - -<p>Robina had a great deal to do in Lily’s room that night. She kept moving -to and fro, softly opening and shutting drawers and presses, laying away -her mistress’s things with a care that was scarcely necessary, and meant -only restlessness and excitement and an incapacity to keep still. Long -before she had done moving about the half-lighted room Lily was fast -asleep, her excitement, though presumably greater, not being enough to -keep sleep from the eyes which were dazzled with the sudden gleam of -something so new and strange in her life, as well as tired with an -unusual vigil. Lily slept as soundly as a child till the clear, somewhat -shrill daylight, touched with frost, shone upon her late in the wintry -morning and called her up much more effectually than the wavering call -of Beenie, who was hanging over her in the morning, as she had been at -night, the first to meet her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Eh, Miss Lily, what a grand sleep ye have had!” Beenie cried. She had -slept but little herself, her head full of the new situation and all the -strange things that might be to come. The house in general had a sense -of excitement breathing through it, not visible, indeed, in Dougal, who -was, as usual, wrestling with the powny outside, but very apparent in -Katrin, who went about her morning work with an extremely serious face, -as if all the cares of the world were on her shoulders. Robina and she -had various stolen moments of communication through the day, indeed, -which testified to a degree of confidence between them, and a mutual -preoccupation.</p> - -<p>“I’m no to say a word to her; but how am I to keep my tongue in my head -when Dauvit himself says that when he was musin’ the fire burnt!”</p> - -<p>“Losh,” cried Katrin, “if it was naething but haudin’ your tongue! but -what I’ve to think of is mair than that. Eh, I’m doing that for Miss -Lily I would do for none of my kin, no, nor Dougal himself; and I wish I -was just clean out of it, for I’m no fond of secrets—they are uncanny -things.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a>{150}</span></p> - -<p>“Eh, woman! ye wouldna betray them?” Beenie cried.</p> - -<p>“Betray them? Am I a person to betray what’s trusted to me? But I wish -there were nae secrets in this world. It’s just aye cheating somebody. -Ye canna be straichtforward, do what ye will, when ye’ve got other -folks’ secrets to keep, let alone them that are your ain.”</p> - -<p>“I’m no sae particular,” said Beenie, with a little toss of her head, -“and there will be no stress upon ye for long. It’s just the ae step.”</p> - -<p>“I have my doubts,” said Katrin, shaking her head.</p> - -<p>“Ye have your doubts? And what doubts would ye have? It will a’ be plain -when ance it’s done. There are nae mair secrets after that! It’s just as -I said, the ae step. Eh me, I could have likit it far better in Sir -Robert’s grand house in George Square, and a’ Edinburgh there, and the -Principal himself to join their hands thegether, and my bonnie Miss Lily -in the white satin, and the auld lady’s grand necklace about her bonnie -white neck. But we canna have every thing our ain gate. The Manse parlor -is just a’ that can be desired in the circumstances we’re noo in; and -when it’s done, it will just be done and naething more to say.”</p> - -<p>But Katrin still shook her head. She was a far-seeing woman. “I’m no -just sure we will be out of it sae easy as that,” she said.</p> - -<p>This talk was not completed at once, but came in on various occasions, a -few words here and there, as opportunity secured; and the two women, -though both were excited and disturbed, did no doubt enjoy the rôle of -conspirator, more or less, and felt that those secret consultations -added a zest to life. Beenie, whose lips were sealed in the presence of -her mistress, and Katrin, who had to maintain an aspect of absolute calm -in the sight of Dougal, could not but feel a consciousness of -superiority, which consoled them for much that was uncomfortable. But, -indeed, it was exasperatingly easy to deceive Dougal. He suspected -nothing; secrets or mysteries had never come his way. Life meant to him -his daily work, his daily<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a>{151}</span> parritch, the comfort of a crack now and then -with his friends, a glass of toddy on an occasion, and the prevailing -consciousness of being well done for at all times, with a clean -hearthstone, and the parritch and the broth both well boiled and -appetizing, more than fell to the lot of ordinary men. If he had known -even that Katrin was keeping a secret from him, it is doubtful whether -he would have been at all moved. He would have thought it some -whigmaleerie of the wife’s, and would have remained perfectly easy in -his mind, in the conviction that she would tell him if it was any thing -he had to do with, and if not, wha was minding? Nothing that she did or -said roused his curiosity to any great degree. There had need to be -something more serious than Dougal to account for the little contraction -over Katrin’s eyes.</p> - -<p>This was, perhaps, more visible, however, after the conversation she had -with Mr. Lumsden on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. I cannot tell what -he said to her, but there was something in it additional to what he had -said on the evening before, when he had told her and Beenie what their -parts were to be in the little drama for which he had not yet fully -prepared the chief actor of all. Lily waited for him at the window with -a heart that beat high in her breast on that frosty morning, when all -the stretches of the moor were crisp and white, and every little -rowan-tree and bush of withered heather shone like something of frosted -silver across the gray surface, tinged with a lower tone of whiteness. -Lily saw him almost before he had come within the range of mortal -vision, so far off that the road itself could not be seen, and only a -faint speck that moved was distinguishable in the chill and frozen -silence. The speck moved on, disappeared, came out again till it grew -into absolute sight and knowledge, near enough to be recognized from the -window, and hastily met at the door with a sweep of flying feet and -hands outstretched. “My bonnie Lily! the only flower that’s not -frosted!” he said. The change that had taken place between them was made -plain by this: that he came quite<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a>{152}</span> openly to the door, and that Lily -flew to meet him. There was no longer any occasion for the supposed -accident of meetings on the moor. How this change came about Lily did -not stop to enquire. It was, and that was enough; and she was too happy -in it ever to wonder what could have been said or done underneath to -make the lover’s appearance now a thing expected, and which it was -unnecessary to attempt to conceal.</p> - -<p>“It will perhaps be for to-morrow and perhaps for the day after; I am -not certain yet,” Ronald said.</p> - -<p>“What will perhaps be for to-morrow?” Lily cried, with a sudden flush on -her cheek.</p> - -<p>“We are not going to make any fuss about it, Lily. You promised me you -would not desire that. It’s very easy to be married in our country. If -we were to call Dougal up and Katrin, and say we were man and wife, we -would be married just as fast as by all the ministers in the world.”</p> - -<p>“Ronald!” cried Lily, growing pale.</p> - -<p>“I am not suggesting such a thing. Do you think that I would put a scorn -on my bonnie Lily with a marriage like that? Not I! What I cannot bear -is that you should be stinted of one thing you would like—though, for -my part, the less the better, I say, and the most agreeable to me. But -no; I am not that kind of man. I like the sanction of the Kirk. I like -every thing done decently and in order. That is why I say to-morrow or -the next day, for I have not yet seen Mr. Blythe.”</p> - -<p>“And is it to be so soon as that?” said Lily with awe.</p> - -<p>“My darling, what object have we in waiting? The vacation is short -enough anyway. We must not lose a day. You promised to be ready at a -moment’s warning. Well, I’m giving you a day’s warning. If every thing -had been right, it would have been you to fix the time, and all your -fancies consulted. But we’re past that, Lily. You know you put yourself -into my hands to have it done as soon as was possible.”</p> - -<p>“Did I?” said Lily, confused; and then she added:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a>{153}</span> “I know. I am not one -to make a trouble. It is best to be done when we can—and as soon as we -can—and end this dreary life.”</p> - -<p>“That is what I knew you would say. No certainty, no ground to stand on, -and not knowing what might happen at any moment. No, Lily, it is no time -for scruples now.”</p> - -<p>“Still,” said Lily, “I would have liked to have heard all your plans and -what we are to do. It is fine planning. It is aye a pleasure, even when -it comes to nothing. And now, when it must come to something——”</p> - -<p>“That’s the difference, I suppose, between man and woman,” said Ronald, -with a laugh. “I have no thought of any thing but one thing. I care -nothing about plans. You, that are all made up of imagination, you shoot -past and begin again. But me, I think only of getting my Lily, of having -her for my own. I have neither plots nor plans in my head.”</p> - -<p>“It is a good thing, then, that women think of them, for we can’t do -without them,” Lily said. But she was soothed and pleased that her -bridegroom should have no thought but for herself. Perhaps this was what -was most fit for the man. The woman had the outset to think of, the new -house to live in, and every thing else that was involved. The reverse -thought gives pleasure in other circumstances. There is no consistency -in the reasonings of this period of life.</p> - -<p>“Let us go out now,” said Ronald; “the frost is hard, and it’s fine dry -walking; we’ll get a turn round the moor, and then I will be off to the -‘toun’ to see the minister, and to-night I’ll come back and tell you all -about it. Wrap up well, for it’s cold, but so bright that it does the -heart good. But it is the day itself, and because it is the day, that -does the heart most good,” he said, once more wrapping Lily up, close -round her pretty throat, with the soft, voluminous folds of the plaid. -The two faces so close together, the light in her eyes, the contagious -happiness in his face, took every shadow from Lily’s heart. There had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a>{154}</span> -been no shadows, only a faint sort of floating gossamer, which had no -meaning, and now it melted all away.</p> - -<p>The ramble round the moor filled all the bright noon of the wintry day. -It was not possible to wander among the ling bushes, or by the soft, -meandering lines of turf. All was crisp with the curling whiteness of -the frost, except here and there where a prominent point had been melted -and darkened by the sun. They went along the road, which crackled under -their feet, with small ice crystals in every fissure. The mountains -stood blue in a faint haze that seemed to breathe into the still air, -and the moor stretched white, like a piece of crisp embroidery, under -the shining of the light. How wintry the air was, and how exhilarating, -tightening the nerves and stimulating every force! Toward the north the -sky was heavy and spoke of snow, but there were soft breaks of blue and -lines of yellow light in the brighter quarter. They walked now quickly -as they faced the wind, now slowly as they turned their backs upon it, -and, wrapped in their soft plaids, felt the soft glow and warmth mount -to their youthful cheeks. I doubt if any summer ramble, in the sweetest -air and among the flowers, was more full of pleasure. They talked to -each other incessantly, but perhaps not very much that would bear -repeating; yet there was a little veiled conflict certainly going on all -the time, scarcely conscious, hidden in innocent questions and -suggestions, in innocent seeming evasions. Lily wanted to ask so much, -but half feared to put a direct question lest it should be an offence, -while he wanted to keep every question at arm’s-length, but did not dare -to do so lest it should excite suspicion. There was an occasional flash -of the rapiers, soon covered up in the softest tones and touches, but -still they kept their distinct parts: she anxious to see a little -beyond, he eager to keep her within the limits of the day. He parried -all her thrusts with this pretence: that his thoughts could not stray -beyond to-morrow. “Sufficient unto the day is the happiness thereof,” he -said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a>{155}</span></p> - -<p>Then they went in and had their mid-day meal together, once more -attended by Beenie, with a world of meaning in every glance. “They are -just twa bonnie doos crooning on a branch,” she said to Katrin, as she -came down stairs for another dish. “Doos!” cried Katrin; “they have a -very good will to their meat, that’s a’ that I can say.” “They are like -twa bonnie squirrels in a wood,” cried Beenie, at her next dive into the -kitchen, “givin’ aye a look the one to the ither.” “Squirrels, my certy! -but I wouldna like to gether the nits for them a’ the year through,” -said Katrin. But when Beenie came back for the pudding, and declared -that “they were like twa bonnie fishes side by side in the burn, the ane -mair silvery and golden than the other,” Katrin’s amazement and -ridicule, and the excitement underneath, found vent in a shriek which -brought Dougal hurrying in from the barn. “Losh, woman! are ye burnt in -the fire, or have ye spilt the boiling pot upon ye, or what have ye -done?” “I’ll gie you the boiling pot yourself, and a dishclout to pin to -your tail, and that will learn ye to ask fule questions!” Katrin said.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Ronald</span> walked into Kinloch-Rugas after the plentiful lunch upon which -Katrin had made so many remarks. His head was buzzing and his bosom -thrilling with the excitement natural at that period of existence. He -loved Lily—as well as he was capable of loving—with all the mingled -sentiment and passion, the emotions high and low, the very human and -half divine, which are involved in that condition of mind. He was a -healthy, vigorous, and in no way vicious young man. If he had not the -highest ideal, he had not at all the lowered standard of a man whose -mind has been debased by evil communications. He was, in his way, a true -lover, at the climax of life which is attained by a bridegroom. His -thoughts were<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a>{156}</span> set to a kind of rhythmic measure of “Lily, Lily,” as he -walked swiftly and strongly down the long road toward the village. If -his mind had been laid bare by a touch of the angel’s spear, it would -not, I fear, have satisfied Lily, nor any one who loved her, but it -sufficiently satisfied himself. He did not want to look beyond the next -step, which, he had convinced himself, was the right step to take; what -was to follow was, he tried to assure himself, in the providence of God; -or, if that was too serious (but Ronald was a serious man, willingly -conceding to God the right to influence human affairs), it was open to -all the developments, chances even, if you like to say so, of natural -events. Who could say what would happen on the morrow? In the meantime a -reasonable man’s concern was with the events of the day. And though he -was not a highly strung person by nature, he was to-day all lyrical, and -thrilling with the emotions of a bridegroom. He was not unworthy of the -position. His very foot acknowledged that thrill, and struck the ground -in measure, as if the iron strings of frost had been those of a harp. -The passer-by, plodding along with head down and nose half sheltered -from the cutting wind, took that member half out of the folds of his -plaid to see what it was that was so bye-ordinary in the man he met. He -did not sound like a common man going into the town on common business, -nor look like it when the spectator turned to breathe the softer way of -the wind for a moment and look after the stranger. Neither did Ronald -feel like any one else on that wintry afternoon. He was a bridegroom, -and the thrill of it was in all his veins.</p> - -<p>It was nearly dark when he came in sight of the lights, chiefly -twinkling lights in windows, for there was no gas as yet to illuminate -every little place as we have it now. In the Manse, with its larger -windows, it was still light enough, and the soft yellow and pink of the -frosty evening sky lent color, as well as light, to the calm of the -parlor, facing toward the west, where Mr. Blythe sat alone. It was the -minister’s musing time. Sometimes he had a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a>{157}</span> doze; sometimes he sat by -the fire, but with his chair turned to the sunset, and indulged in his -own thoughts. These were confessedly, in many cases, his old stories, -over which he would go from time to time, with a choke of a laugh in the -stillness over this and that: perhaps there were moments in which his -musings were more solemn, but of these history bears no record. The -Manse parlor had no feature of beauty. It was a very humdrum room; but -to the minister it was the abode of comfort and peace. He wanted nothing -more than was to be found within its four walls; life was quite bounded -to him by these walls, and I think he had no wish for any future that -went beyond them: his <i>Scotsman</i>, which lasted him from one day to -another, till the next (bi-weekly) number came in; his books, chiefly -volumes of old history or Reminiscences, sometimes a Scots (occasionally -printed Scott’s) novel—but that was a rare treat, and not to be -calculated upon; a bout of story-telling now and then with another -clerical brother or old elder whose memory stretched back to those -cheerful, jovial, legendary days, where all the stories come from: these -filled up existence happily enough for the old minister. His work was -over, and I fear that perhaps he had never put very much of his heart -into that, and he had his daughter to serve him “hand and foot,” as the -maids said. He did not need even to take the trouble of finding his -spectacles (which, like most other people, he was always losing) for -himself. “Eelen, where’s my specs?” he said, without moving. Such was -this old Scotch presbyter and sybarite, and though a paradise of black -hair-cloth and mahogany does not much commend itself to us nowadays, I -think Mr. Blythe would gladly have compounded for the deprivation of -pearly gates and golden streets could he have secured the permanence of -this.</p> - -<p>He was very glad to see Ronald, notwithstanding that he had become very -anxious to get rid of him during his stay at the Manse. A visitor of any -kind was a godsend in the middle of winter, and at this time of the -year, and especially a visitor from Edinburgh, with news to tell, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a>{158}</span> -perhaps a fresh story or two of the humors of the courts and the jokes -of the judges, things that did not get in even to <i>The Scotsman</i>. “And -what’s a’ your news, Mr. Lumsden?” he said eagerly. Ronald, who had had -many opportunities of understanding the old minister, had come provided -with a scrap or two piquant enough to please him, and what with the -jokes, and what with the politics, made a very good impression in the -first half-hour of his visit. Then came the turn of more personal -things.</p> - -<p>“Yon was a fine glass of wine, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, with a -slight smack of his lips.</p> - -<p>“I am very glad you liked it, sir; it was chosen by one of my friends -who is learned in such matters. I would not trust it to a poor judge -like myself.”</p> - -<p>“Better for you, Mr. Lumsden, better for you at your age not to be too -good a judge. Look not upon the wine when it is red, says the prophet, -which is just when it’s best, many persons think. I am strongly of his -opinion when your blood’s hot in your veins, like the most of you young -lads; but when a man begins to go down the hill, and when he’s well -exercised in moderation, and to use without abusing, then a grand jorum -of wine like yon makes glad the heart, as is to be found in one rather -mysterious scripture, of God and man.”</p> - -<p>“I hoped it would give you a charitable thought of one that was rather a -<i>sorner</i>, as I remember you said, upon your hospitality.”</p> - -<p>“That was never meant, that was never meant,” said the minister, waving -his large flabby hands. Ronald had risen from his seat and was now -standing by the fire, leaning his arm on the mantel-piece. The slow -twilight was waning, and though the daffodil sky still shone in the -window, the fire had begun to tell, especially in the shadow of the -half-lit room.</p> - -<p>“You see, sir,” said Ronald, with a leap of his heart into his throat, -and of the voice which accompanied it, coming forth with sudden energy, -“there was more in that than met the eye.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a>{159}</span></p> - -<p>“Ay, do ye say so?” said Mr. Blythe, also with a quickened throb of -curiosity in his voice.</p> - -<p>“Miss Ramsay and I—had met in Edinburgh,” said Ronald, clearing his -throat, “we had seen—a great deal of each other. We had, in short——”</p> - -<p>“I always said it, I always said it!” said the minister. “I told Eelen -the very first night. I’ve seen much in my day. ‘These two are -troth-plighted,’ I said to my daughter, before ye had been in my house a -single night.”</p> - -<p>“I thought it was vain to attempt deceiving your clever eyes,” said -Ronald; “I told Lily so; but ladies, you know, are never so sure—they -think they can conceal things.”</p> - -<p>“Thrust their heads into the sand like the ostriches, silly things, and -think nobody can see them!” said the minister. “I know them well; that’s -just what they all do.”</p> - -<p>“Well, so it was, at least,” said Ronald. “You will not, perhaps, wonder -now that I stayed as long as I could, outstaying my welcome, I fear, and -wearing out even your hospitality; but it was a question of seeing Lily, -without exciting any suspicion, in a natural, easy way.”</p> - -<p>“I will not say much about that last, for it was more than suspicion on -my part.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, but every-body is not like you; neither your experience nor your -powers of observation are common,” said Ronald. He paused a moment, to -let this compliment sink in, and then resumed. “Mr. Blythe, I will admit -to you that Sir Robert is not content, and that, in short, Lily was -banished here to take her away from me.”</p> - -<p>“I cannot think it a great banishment to be sent to Dalrugas, which is a -fine house in its way, though maybe old-fashioned, and servants to be at -her call night and day,” said the minister, “but you may easily see it -from another point of view. Proceed, proceed,” he added, with another -wave of his hand.</p> - -<p>“Well, sir, I can but repeat: Sir Robert does not think me rich enough -for his niece. She is his only kin; he would like her to marry a rich -man; he would sacrifice her,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a>{160}</span> my bonnie Lily, to an old man with a -yellow face and bags of money.”</p> - -<p>“Well, well, that’s no so unnatural as you think. I would like my Eelen -to have a warm down-sitting if I could help her to it, to go no further -than myself.”</p> - -<p>“I understand that, sir; my Lily is worthy of a prince, if there could -be a prince that loved her as well as I do. But it is me she has chosen -and nobody else, and she is not one to change if she were shut up in -Dalrugas Tower all her life.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, I would not lippen to that,” said the minister; “she is but a young -thing. Keep you out of the gate, and let her neither hear from you or -see you, and her bit heart, at that age, will come round.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you for the warning, sir,” said Ronald, with a laugh that was -forced and uncomfortable; “that’s what Sir Robert thought, I suppose. -But you may believe there is no pleasure to me in thinking so. And -besides, it would never happen with Lily, for Lily is true as steel.” He -paused for a moment, with a little access of feeling. It remained to be -seen whether he was true as steel himself, and perhaps he was not quite -assured on that point; yet he was capable, so far, of understanding the -matter that he was sure of it in Lily, and the conviction expanded his -breast with pride and pleasure. He paused with natural sentiment, and -partly with the quickening of his breath, to take the full good of that -sensation; and then he resumed:</p> - -<p>“I am not rich, you will easily understand; we are a lot of sons at -home, and my share will not be great. But I have a good profession, and -in a few years, so far as I can see, I may be doing with the best. As -far as family is concerned, there can be no question between any Ramsay -and my name.”</p> - -<p>The minister waved his hand soothingly over this contention. It was not -to be gainsaid, nor was any comparison of races to be attempted. He -said: “In that case, my young friend, if it’s but a few years to wait -and you<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a>{161}</span> will be doing so well, and both young, with plenty of time -before ye, so far as I can see ye can well afford to wait.”</p> - -<p>“I might afford to wait, that am kept to my work, and little enough time -to think, but Lily, Mr. Blythe. Here is Lily alone in the wilderness, as -she says. I’m forbidden to see her, forbidden to write to her.”</p> - -<p>“Restrictions which ye have broken in both cases.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” cried Ronald. “How could we let ourselves be separated, how could -I leave her to languish alone? I tried as long as I could. I did not -write to her. I did not come near her, but flesh and blood could not -bear it. And then when I saw how glad she was to see me, and how her -bonnie countenance changed——” Here he nearly broke down, his voice -trembled, so genuine and true was his feeling. “We cannot do it,” he -said faintly, “and that’s all that’s to be said. Mr. Blythe, you are the -minister, you have the power in your hands——”</p> - -<p>“Eh, man! but I’m only the auld minister nowadays,” cried the old -gentleman, with a sudden outburst of natural bitterness to which he very -seldom gave vent. He was delighted to have nothing to do, but did not -love his supplanter any more on that account. “Ye must ask nothing from -me; go your ways to my assistant and successor—he is your man.”</p> - -<p>“I will go to nobody but you!” cried Ronald, with all the fervor of a -temptation resisted. “Mr. Blythe, will you marry Lily to me?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Blythe made a long pause. “If ye are rightly cried in the kirk, I -have no choice but to marry ye,” he said.</p> - -<p>“But I want it done at once, and very private, without any crying in the -kirk.”</p> - -<p>“That would be very irregular, Mr. Lumsden.”</p> - -<p>“I know it would, but not so irregular as calling up Beenie and Dougal -and Katrin, and saying before them: ‘This is my wife.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“No,” said the minister, “not just so bad as that, but very irregular. -Do ye know, young man, I would be subject to censure by the Presbytery, -and I canna tell what<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a>{162}</span> pains and penalties? And why should I do such a -thing, to save you a month or two, or a year or two’s waiting, that is -nothing, nothing at your age?”</p> - -<p>“It is a great deal when people are in our circumstances,” cried Ronald. -“Lily so lonely, not a creature near her, no pleasure in her life, no -certainty about any thing: for Sir Robert might hear I had been seen -about, and might just sweep her away, abroad, to the ends of the earth. -You say she would forget, but she does not want to forget, nor do I, you -may be sure, whereas, if you will just do this for us, you will make us -both sure of each other forever, and I can never be taken from her, nor -she from me.”</p> - -<p>“Young man,” said the minister impressively, “I got my kirk from the -Ramsays; they’re patrons o’ this parish, and I was a young man with -little influence. I was tutor to Mr. James, but I had little chance of -any thing grander than a parish school, where I might have just -flourished as a stickit minister all my days, and it was the Ramsays -that made me a placed minister, and set me above them a’: that was the -old laird before Sir Robert’s days. But Sir Robert has been very ceevil -the times he has been here. He has asked me whiles to my dinner, and -other whiles he has sent me just as many grouse and paitricks as I could -set my face to. Would it be a just return, think ye, to marry away his -bonnie niece to a landless lad as ye confess ye are, with nothing but -fees at the best, and not too many of them coming in?”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Blythe,” cried Ronald, “if it was Mr. James you were tutor to, it -is to Mr. James you owe all this, and Mr. James, had he been living, -would never have gone against the happiness of his only child!”</p> - -<p>“Eh! but who can tell that?” cried the minister. “Little was he thinking -of that or of any kind of child. He was a young fellow, maybe as -heedless, maybe more than ye are yourself. Na, there was no thought -neither of wife nor bairn in his head.”</p> - -<p>“But,” cried Ronald, “you must feel you have a double<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a>{163}</span> duty to one that -is his child, and his only one, little as he knew of it at the time.”</p> - -<p>“A double duty: and what is that?” said the minister, shaking his head. -“The duty to keep her from any rash step, puir young unfriended thing, -or to let her work out her silly will, which, maybe, in a year’s time -she would rather have put her hand in the fire than have done?”</p> - -<p>“You give a bonnie character of me,” Ronald said, with a harsh laugh.</p> - -<p>“I am giving no character of you. I am thinking nothing of you. I am -thinking of the bit lassie. It is her I am bound to protect, both for -her father’s sake and her own. Most marriages that are made in haste -are, as the proverb says, repented of at leisure. She might be -heart-grieved at me that helped her to her will to-day when she knows -more of life and what it means. Na, na, my young friend, take you your -time and wait. Waiting is aye a salutary process. It brings out many a -hidden virtue, it consolidates the character, and if you are diligent in -your business it brings ye your reward, which ye enjoy more than if you -had snatched it before your time.”</p> - -<p>“I tell you, minister,” cried Ronald, “that we cannot wait, that it’s a -matter of life and death to us, both to Lily and me!”</p> - -<p>“What is that you are saying? I am hoping there is no meaning in it, but -only words,” the old man said sharply in an altered tone.</p> - -<p>The room had grown almost quite dark, the daffodil color had all faded -away, and the heavy curtain of the coming snow was stretching over the -last faint streak of light. The fire was smouldering and added little to -the room, which lay in a ruddy dark, warmed rather than lighted up. -Ronald stood with his elbow on the mantel-piece close to the old -minister, whose face had been suddenly raised toward him with an -expression of keen command and alarm. And who can tell what devil had -stolen in with the dark to put words of shame into the mouth of the -young man who had come down the frosty moorland<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a>{164}</span> road like a song of joy -and youth? It was rapid as a dart. He stooped down and said something in -the old minister’s ear.</p> - -<p>The shameful lie! the shameful, shameful lie! The temptation, the fall, -was so instantaneous that Ronald himself was scarcely conscious of it, -or of what he had done in his haste. The old gentleman uttered into the -darkness a sort of moan. And then he spoke briefly and sharply, with a -keen tone of scorn in his words which stung his companion even through -the confusion of the time.</p> - -<p>“If that’s so, ye’re a disgraceful blackguard! but it’s not my part to -speak. Be here at this house the morn, with her and your witnesses; I -insist upon the witnesses, two of them, to sign the lines. I will send -Eelen out of the way. Come before it’s dark, as ye came to-day; I am -always alone at this hour. That’s enough, man, I hope. What are you -wanting more?”</p> - -<p>“I want only to say that you judge me very hastily, Mr. Blythe.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a case in which least said is soonest mended,” said the minister. -“To-morrow, just before the darkening, and, thank the Lord, there need -not be another word said between you and me!”</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Ronald</span> started back on his way to Dalrugas in the beginning of the -wintry night in a condition very different from that in which he came. -His head was dazed and swimming; something had happened to him; he had -taken a step such as he had never contemplated taking, a step which, did -Lily ever know or suspect it, would, he knew, open such a gulf between -them as nothing could ever bridge over. He was in a hundred minds to -turn back, to confess his sin before he had passed the last house in -the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a>{165}</span> village. We do not call that a temptation when we are impelled to -do right, but it is the same thing, only the temptations to do right are -somehow less potent than those to do wrong. He was torn by a strong -impulse to go back and remedy what he had done: the temptation to commit -that fault had been momentary, but overwhelming; the temptation to go -back and confess was continuous, but evidently feeble, for he went -straight on through all its tuggings, and did not walk more slowly. But -yet it would have done him much good and probably no harm had he done -so: the minister would have forgiven a fault so soon repented of; he -would probably, in the natural feeling toward a penitent sinner, have -acceded to his wishes all the same. These thoughts went through Ronald’s -head without ever stopping his steady and quick walk into the dark. He -repented, if that had been enough, in sackcloth and ashes; he was so -deeply ashamed of what he had done that he felt his countenance flame in -the darkness where nobody could by any possibility see. But he did not -turn back. And presently by repetition the impulse weakened a little, -his brain cleared, and the world became steady once again. The thing was -done; it could not be undone. There was no possibility that Lily should -ever hear of it; nobody would ever know of it but old Blythe and -himself, and old Blythe would die. It would be a recollection which, in -the depth of the night, in moments of solitude, or when awakened by a -sudden touch of the past, would go on stinging him like a serpent all -the days of his life, but it would be otherwise innocuous. Lily would -never hear of it, that was the great thing; there was no chance that she -could ever hear. The old minister’s lips were sealed. It would be -contrary to every rule of honor if he were to betray what had been said -to him. Ronald said to himself that he must accept the stinging of that -recollection, which he would never get rid of all his life, as his -punishment; but no one else would suffer, Lily least of all.</p> - -<p>These feelings were hot and strong in his mind as he set out; but a walk -of four miles against a cold wind, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a>{166}</span> with the snow threatening to -come down every moment, is a very good thing for dispersing troublous -thoughts: they gradually blew away as he went on, and the bridegroom’s -state of triumph and rapture came back, dimly at first, and as if he -dared not indulge it, but gaining strength every moment, until, before -he reached Dalrugas, from the first moment when he saw his love’s light -in her window shining far over the moor, it came back in full force, -driving every thing else away. He saw, first, the little star of light -hanging midway between earth and sky, and then the shape of the window, -and then Lily’s figure or shadow coming from time to time to look out; -and no lover’s heart could have risen higher or beat more warmly. He -entirely forgot how he had wronged her in the glory of having her, of -knowing her to be there waiting for him, and that she would be his wife -to-morrow. She came to the top of the stairs to meet him, while he -rushed up three steps at a time, rubbing against the narrow spiral of -the stair with such passion and force of feeling as the best man in the -world could not have surpassed. One does not require, it is evident, to -be the best man in the world, or even a true man at all, to love truly -and fervently, and with all the force of one’s being. One might say that -it was selfishness on Ronald’s part to appropriate at any cost the girl -he loved; but the fact remained, a fact far deeper than any explanation, -that he did love her as deeply, as warmly, as sincerely as any man -could. Their meeting was a moment of joy to both, like a poem, like a -song; their hearts beat as high as if it had been a first meeting after -years of absence, and yet it would have been less complete had they been -parted for more than the two or three hours which was its real period. I -need not go any further into this record. It did not matter what they -said; words are of little account at such moments. It is only to note -that a man who had just told a disgraceful lie, and put upon his bride a -stigma of the most false and cruel kind, and whose mind was already -shaping thoughts which were destined to work her woe, was at the moment -when he met her with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a>{167}</span> the news that their marriage was to take place -next day as much, as tenderly in love with her as heart could desire. -The problem is one which I have no power to explain.</p> - -<p>Next day being still one of the daft days, bright with the reflection of -the New Year, and the day of the weekly market in Kinloch-Rugas, Katrin -announced early her intention of going in to the toun in the course of -the day, an expedition which Beenie, with much modesty and reference to -Miss Lily, proposed to share. “I havena been in the toun, no to say in -the toun, ither than at the kirk, which is a different thing, since I -came to Dalrugas. I’ll maybe get ye a fairing, laddie, for the sake of -the New Year——”</p> - -<p>“If he gangs very canny with the powny, and tak’s care of a’ our -bundles,” Katrin said.</p> - -<p>“And me, I’m to be left my lane, to keep the hoose,” said Dougal, “like -Joan Tamson’s man.”</p> - -<p>“Weel,” said Katrin, “ye’re in there mony a day and me at hame; it would -be a funny thing if I couldna gang to the market once at the New Year.”</p> - -<p>“I’m saying nothing against you and your market. And here’s Miss Lily -away to her tea at the Manse, and maun have Rory no less to drive her in -the geeg with that lad from Edinburgh. I wish there was less of that lad -from Edinburgh; he’s nae ways agreeable to me.”</p> - -<p>“Losh, man! it’s no you he’s running after,” cried Katrin, “nor me -neither. But he’s a fine lad for all that.”</p> - -<p>“Fine or foul, I would like to see the back of him,” said Dougal; and -the women in their guilty consciences trembled. They had both been -brought to Ronald’s side. Both of them had a soft heart for true love, -and the fact of stealing a march upon Sir Robert was as pleasant to -Katrin as if she had been ten times his housekeeper. The house was full -of subdued excitement, hidden words exchanged between the women on the -stairs and in dark corners, as if they were conspirators or lovers. “Has -he any suspicion, do ye think?” Beenie whispered<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a>{168}</span> in Katrin’s ear. -“Him!” cried Katrin. “If it was put under his nose in black and white, -he would bring it to me to spell it out till him.” “Eh, but sometimes -these simple folks discern a thing when others that are wiser see -nothing.” “Wha said my man was simple? There’s no a simple bit about -him; but he knows I’m a woman to be trusted, and he’ll no gang a step -without Katrin!” It was not, perhaps, a moment when an anxious enquirer -could feel this trust justified. “Eh, Katrin,” cried Robina, “tell me -just what’s the worst that could happen to them if it was found out.” -“The worst is just that he would have to take his bride away, Beenie.” -“Eh! she would no be minding! That’s just what she wants most.” “And -lose her uncle’s siller,” Katrin added, with a deeper gravity of tone. -“That wouldna trouble her either,” said Beenie, shaking her head as over -a weakness of her mistress which she could not deny. “But I am feared, -feared,” said Katrin solemnly, with that repetition which makes an -utterance emphatic, “that it would be a sore trouble to him.” “Anyway, -it’s a’ settled now, and we’ll have to stick to them,” said Beenie -doubtfully. “Oh, I’ll stick to them as long as I can stand,” Katrin said -with vigor; and this was the last word.</p> - -<p>It was clear enough that something was going to take place at the tower -of Dalrugas on that Thursday; but this was sufficiently accounted for by -the fact that Katrin was going to the market, a thing that did not -happen above twice or thrice a year. There were a great many -arrangements to make, and the black powny had begun his toilet, and the -little cart had been scrubbed and brushed before the sun was well up in -the sky to receive the two substantial forms, which, on their side, were -arrayed in their best gowns before the early dinner to which they sat -down, each with her heart in her mouth in all the excitement of the ripe -conspiracy. Only an hour or two now, and the signal would be given, the -cord would be pulled, and the great scene would open upon them. “Will -you and me ever forget this day, Katrin?” Beenie gasped,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a>{169}</span> unable to -control herself. Katrin gave her a push with her shoulder, and took her -own place soberly at the board to dispense the dinner as usual. “There’s -an awfu’ fine piece of beef in the pot,” she said, “ower good for the -like of us; but it’ll mind ye, Dougal, of the day ye keepit the house, -and I gaed to the toun.”</p> - -<p>“It’s no the first day I’ve keepit the house, and you been the one to -gang to the toun.”</p> - -<p>“No, maybe, ye’ve done it four times since you and me were marriet. If -ye ever got better broth than thae broth, it’s no me that made them. -They’re that well boiled they just melt in your mouth with goodness, -with a piece of meat in them fit for the laird’s table. Have ye taken up -some of my broth, Beenie, to the young lady and her friend up the -stair?”</p> - -<p>“You’re no taking much of them yourself,” said Dougal, “nor Beenie -either. Bless the women, your heads are just turned with the grand ploy -o’ going to the market. Me, I gang to the market and say naething about -it, nor ever lose a bite of a bannock on that account. But you’re queer -creatures, no to be faddomed by man. Are ye going to spend a lot o’ -siller that ye’re in siccan a state? Beenie, now, she’ll be wanting a -new gown.”</p> - -<p>“If ye think that I, that am used to a’ the grand shops in Edinburgh, -would buy a gown at Kinloch-Rugas——”</p> - -<p>“Oh, when ye can get nae better, it’s aye grand to tak’ what ye can -get,” said Dougal. “As for Katrin, I canna tell what’s come over her. -Her hand’s shaking——”</p> - -<p>“My hand’s no shakin’!” cried Katrin vehemently. “I’m just as steady as -any person. But I’ve been awfu’ busy this mornin’ putting every thing in -order, and I’ve very little appetite. I’m no a great eater at any time.”</p> - -<p>“Nor me,” said Beenie, “and I’m tired too. I’ve just been turning over -and over Miss Lily’s things.”</p> - -<p>“Ye had very little to do,” said Katrin, resenting the adoption of her -own argument. “Miss Lily’s things could easy wait. Sup up your broth, -and dinna keep us all waiting. Sandy, here’s a grand slice for you. It’s -seldom<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a>{170}</span> you’ve tasted the like of that. And as soon as you’re done, -laddie, hurry and put in the pony, for we must have a good sight o’ the -market, Beenie and me, before it gets dark.”</p> - -<p>Dougal came out to the door to see them off, with his bonnet hanging -upon the side of his head by a hair. He felt the presence of something -in the atmosphere for which he could not account. What was it? It was -some “ploy” among the women, probably not worth a man’s trouble to -enquire into. And, as soon as they were off, he had Rory to put in, and -await the pleasure of “thae twa” upstairs. He could not refuse Lily any -thing, nor, indeed, had he any right to refuse to Sir Robert’s niece the -use of Rory, on whom she had already ridden about so often. But the lad -from Edinburgh was a trial to Dougal. He had an uneasy feeling that it -would not please his master to hear of this visitor, and that a strange -man about the house was not to be desired. “If it had but been a -lassie,” he said, in that case he would have been glad that Miss Lily -had some company to amuse her; but a gentleman, and a gentleman too that -was a stranger, not even of the same county—a lawyer lad from the -Parliament House. He did not willingly trust a long-leggit loon like -that to drive Rory. He was mair fit to carry Rory than Rory to carry -him. So that Dougal’s countenance was entirely overcast.</p> - -<p>There had been some snow in the morning, a sprinkling just enough to -cover the ground more softly and deeply than the hoar frost, but that -was but preliminary—there was a great deal more to come. Dougal stood -when the pony was ready, pushing his cap from side to side and staring -at the sky. “Ye’ll do weel to bide but very short time, Miss Lily,” he -said; “the tea at the Manse is, maybe, very good, but the snow will be -coming down in handfu’s before you get hame.”</p> - -<p>“We shall not stay long, Dougal, I promise you,” Lily said. There was a -tremble in her voice as there had been in Katrin’s and in Robina’s. “The -women are all clean<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a>{171}</span> gyte!” Dougal said to himself. He watched them go -away, criticising bitterly the pose of Ronald as he drove. “A man with -thae long legs has no mortal need for a pony,” he said; “they’re just a -yard longer than they ought to be. I’m about the figure of a man, or -just a thought too tall, for driving a sensitive beast like our Rory. -Puir beast, but he has come to base uses,” said Dougal. I don’t know -where he had picked up this phrase, but he was pleased with it, and -repeated it, chuckling to himself.</p> - -<p>That evening, just before the darkening, when once more the sunset sky -was flushed with all kinds of color, and shone in graduated tints of -rose pink darkening to crimson, and blue melting into green, through the -Manse window, one homely figure after another stole into the Manse -parlor. Katrin had brought the minister a dozen of her own fresh eggs, -and what could he do less than call her in and say, “How is a’ with ye?” -at New Year’s time, when everybody had a word of good wishes to say? -“And this is Robina,” he added, with a touch of reserve and severity in -his tone. Beenie could not understand how to her, always so regular at -the kirk and known for a weel-living woman, the minister should be -severe; but it was easy to understand that on such an occasion he had a -great deal on his mind. There was a chair at either end of the great -sofa that stood against the wall; for in these days furniture was -arranged symmetrically, and it was not permitted that any thing should -be without its proper balance. The two women placed themselves there -modestly one at each end; the great arms of the sofa half hid them in -the slowly growing twilight. Katrin, who was nearest the door, was -blotted out altogether. Beenie, who was at the end nearest the window, -showed like a shadow against the light.</p> - -<p>And then there was a pause; it was a very solemn pause indeed, like the -silence in church. The minister sat in his big chair in the darkest part -of the room, with the red glow of a low fire just marking that there was -something there, but not a word, not a movement, disturbing the dark. -The room after a while seemed to turn round to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a>{172}</span> two watchers, it was -so motionless. When Mr. Blythe drew a long breath, a sort of suppressed -scream came from both of them. Was it rather a death than a marriage -they had come to witness? They had never seen any living thing so still, -and the awe of the old man’s presence was overwhelming enough in itself.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter with you,” he said almost roughly. “Can I not draw my -breath in my own house?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, sir, I beg your pardon,” cried Katrin, thankful to recover her -voice. “It was just so awfu’ quiet, and we’re no used to that. In our -bit houses there’s nobody but says whatever comes into his head, and -we’re awfu’ steering folk up at Dalrugas Tower.”</p> - -<p>“Just in the way o’ kindness, and giving back an answer when you’re -spoken to,” said Beenie deferentially, in her soft, half-apologetic -voice. It was a great comfort to them in the circumstance, which was -very unusual and full of responsibility, to hear themselves speak.</p> - -<p>“Ye must just try and possess your souls in patience till ye get back -again,” the minister said out of his dark corner. It was just a grand -lesson, both thought, and the kind of thing that the minister ought to -say. And the silence fell again with a slow diminution of the light, and -gradual fading of the yellow sky. To sit there without moving, without -breathing, with always the consciousness of the minister unseen, fixing -a penetrating look upon them, which probably showed him, so clever a -man, the very recesses of their hearts, became moment by moment more -than Katrin or Robina could bear.</p> - -<p>“The young fools; I’ll throw it all up if they dinna put in an -appearance before that clock strikes!” cried Mr. Blythe at last. “Look -out of the window, one of you women, and see if ye can see them.”</p> - -<p>“There’s nothing, minister, nothing, but a wheen country carts going -from the market,” said Beenie in the rôle of Sister Anne.</p> - -<p>“The idiots!” said Mr. Blythe again with that force of language peculiar -to his country. “Not for their ain<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a>{173}</span> purposes, and them all but unlawful, -can they keep their time.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, sir, ye mustna be hard upon them at siccan a moment!” cried Katrin, -rocking herself to and fro in anxiety.</p> - -<p>“Eh, but I see the powny!” cried Beenie from the window; “there’s a wee -laddie holding Rory. And will I run and open the door no to disturb -Marget in the kitchen?” she said, not waiting for an answer. The spell -of the quiet had so gained upon Robina, and the still rising tide of -excitement, that she swept almost noiselessly into the narrow hall, and -opened the door mysteriously to the two other shadows who stole in, as -it seemed, out of the yellow light that filled up the doorway behind -into a darkness which, turning from that wistful illumination, seemed -complete.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was all like a dream, a scene without light or sound, shadows moving -in the faint twilight, at first not a word said. Beenie remained at the -door, holding the handle to guard the entrance. Katrin had risen up too, -and stood against the wall, trembling very much, but not betraying it in -this faint light. These two were in the light side of the room, the half -made visible by the window with its fading sunset glimmer. The other two -passed into the darker side and were all but lost to sight. A sudden -flicker of the fire caught the color of Lily’s dress and revealed her -outline for the moment. She had taken off her hat, not knowing why, and -the soft beaver with its feather was hanging down by her side in her -hand. Katrin made a step forward and relieved her of it, trembling lest -some dreadful voice should come to her ears out of the darkness, though -not seeing the minister’s eyes, which shot upon her a fiery glance. Then -he broke that strange haunted silence, in which so many thoughts and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a>{174}</span> -passions were hidden, by his voice suddenly rising harsh, sounding as if -it were loud: it was not at all loud, it was, indeed, a soft voice on -ordinary occasions, only in the circumstances and in the intense quiet -it had a strange tone. To Ronald it sounded menacing, to Lily only half -alarming, as she knew no reason why it should be less kind than usual; -the women were so awe-stricken already that to them it was as the voice -of fate. The brief little ceremony was as simple as could be conceived. -The troth was not given, as in other rites, by the individuals -themselves, but simply said by the old minister’s deepening voice, which -he was at pains to subdue after the shock of the first words, and -assented to by the bride and bridegroom, Lily, to the half horror of the -two women, who gripped each other wildly in their excitement at the -sound, giving an audible murmur of assent, while Ronald bowed, which was -the usual form. “Yon’ll be the English way,” Katrin whispered to Beenie. -“Oh, whisht, whisht!” said the other. And then in the darkness there -ensued a few rolling words of prayer, the long vowels solemnly drawn -out, the long words following each other slowly and with a certain -grandeur of diction in their absolute simplicity, and the formula common -to all: “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” And then -there was a little stir in the darkness and all was over.</p> - -<p>“But there’s just this to say to you, young man,” came out of the gloom -from the old voice, quavering a little with feeling or fatigue: -“Forasmuch as ye have been wanting before, so much the more are ye -pledged now to be all a man ought to be to this young creature that has -trusted herself to you. If ever I hear an ill word of your conduct or -your care, and me living, you will have one to answer to that will have -it in his power to do you an ill turn, and will not refrain. Mind you -this: if I am in the land of the living, and know of any hairm to this -poor lassie, <i>I will not refrain</i>; and ye know what I mean, and that I -am one that will do what I say.”</p> - -<p>“If you think I require to be frightened into loving and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a>{175}</span> cherishing my -bonnie wife——” said Ronald, confused and alarmed, but attempting to -take a high tone.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mr. Blythe!” cried Lily, “how little you know!” She could speak in -the dark, where no one could see, though the light would have reduced -her to silence and blushes. She put her hand with a pretty gesture -within Ronald’s arm.</p> - -<p>“I, maybe, know more than I’m thought to do,” he said gruffly; “light -that candle that you’ll find on the mantel-piece, and let us get our -work done.” The candle brought suddenly to light the confused scene, all -the party standing except the figure of the minister, large and -shapeless in his big chair. And there was a moment of commotion, while -one by one they signed the necessary papers, the young pair quickly, the -women with a grotesqueness of awe and difficulty which might have -transferred the whole scene at once to the regions of the burlesque. -Both to Katrin and Robina it was a very solemn business, slowly -accomplished with much contortion both of countenance and figure. -“Women, can ye not despatch?” Mr. Blythe said sternly. “My daughter may -be here any minute, the time of my supposed rest is over, and this -sederunt should be over too. Marget will be in from the kitchen with the -lamp.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Beenie, be quick, quick!” murmured Lily. She had feared to be -entreated with the constant hospitality of the Manse to wait until Helen -came, and to take tea. It gave her a curious wound to feel that this was -not likely to be the case, even though she was most anxious to escape. -She was indeed a little frightened for Marget and the lamp, and for -Helen and the tea; but it hurt her that the minister who had just made -her Ronald’s wife should have any hesitation. Feelings are not generally -so fine in rural places. A bride is one to be eagerly embraced, not kept -out of sight. Though, indeed, she did not want to see Helen or any one, -she said almost indignantly to herself.</p> - -<p>“And now there are your lines, Mistress Lumsden,” the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a>{176}</span> minister said. -“Keep them safe and never let them out of your own hands, and I wish ye -all that is good. If it’s been a hasty step or an unconsidered, it’s you -that will probably have to bear the wyte of it. I will not deceive you -with smooth things; but if there has been error at the beginning——”</p> - -<p>“Excuse me,” said Ronald in a low fierce voice, “but there is snow in -the sky, and it’s already dark, and I must take my wife away.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you interrupt me,” said the old minister, “or I will, maybe, say -more than I meant to say. If there’s been error at the beginning, my -poor lassie, take you care to be all the more heedful in time to come. -Do nothing ye cannot acknowledge in the face of day. And God bless you -and keep you and lift up the light of his countenance upon you,” he -said, lifting up his arms. The familiar action, the familiar words, -subdued all the group in a moment. He had not meant with these words to -bless the bride that had been brought before him as poor Lily had been, -but it had been drawn from him phrase by phrase.</p> - -<p>And then the door opened, and Lily found herself once more outside in -the keen air touched with the foretaste of snow which is so distinct in -the North. The sky was heavy with it for half the circle from north to -south, but in the west was something of that golden radiance still, and -a clear blueness above, and one or two stars sparkling through the -frost. She lifted her eyes to these with relief, with a feeling of -consolation. Was that the light of His countenance that was to shine -upon her? But below all things were dark and dreary. To the hurry of -excitement which had possessed her before something vexing, troublous, -had come in. She had wished, and was eager to hurry away, to escape -Helen, but why had she been hurried away, made to perceive that she was -not intended to see Helen? It was more fantastic than could be put into -words. And Ronald too was in so great a hurry, eager to get her beyond -the observation of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a>{177}</span> people coming from the market, almost to hide -her in a sheltered corner, while he himself went to get the pony. -“Nobody will see you here,” he said. She wished that nobody should see -her, but yet an uncalled-for tear came to Lily’s eyes as she stood and -waited. It looked almost as if it was a path into heaven, the narrow way -which was spoken of in the Bible, that strip of golden light with the -stars shining above. But it was not to heaven she wanted to go in the -joy of her espousals, on her wedding day. She wanted the life that was -before her—the human, the natural, the life that other women had; to be -taken to the home her husband had made for her, to be free of the bonds -of her girlhood and the loneliness of her previous days. But Lily did -not know, not even a step of the path before her. It rushed upon her now -that he had never said a word, never one definite word. She did not know -what was going to happen to-morrow. To-night it was too late, certainly -too late, to go further than Dalrugas, but to-morrow! She remembered now -suddenly, clearly, that to all her questions and imaginings what they -were to do he had never made one distinct reply. He had allowed her to -talk and to imagine what was going to be, but he had said not a word. -There seemed nothing, nothing clear in all the world but that one golden -path leading up into the sky. “Lift up the light of His countenance upon -you.” That did not mean, Lily thought, half pagan as the youthful -thinker so often is, the blessing that is life and joy, but rather that -which is consolation and calm. And it was not consolation or calm she -wanted, but happiness and delight. She wanted to be able to go out upon -the world with her arm in her husband’s and her head high, and to shape -her new life as other young women did—a separate thing, a new thing, -individual to themselves, not any repetition or going back. Standing -there in the dark corner, hidden till he could find the pony and take -her up secretly out of sight, hurrying away not to be seen by any -one—Lily’s heart revolted at these precautions, even though it had been -to a certain extent her own desire they<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a>{178}</span> should be taken. But, oh! it -was so different, her own desire! that was only the bridal instinct to -hide its shy happiness, its tremor of novelty and wonder. It was not -concealment she had wanted, but withdrawal from the gaze of the crowd; -but it was concealment that was in Ronald’s thought, a thing always -shameful, not modest, not maidenly, but an expedient of guilt.</p> - -<p>Perhaps Ronald was just a little too long getting the pony; but he was -not very long. He had her safely in the little geeg, with all her wraps -carefully round her, before fifteen minutes had passed; but fifteen -minutes in some circumstances are more than as many hours in others. -Lily was very silent at first, and he had hard ado to rouse her from the -reflections that had seized upon her. “What are we going to do?” she -said out of the heaviness of these reflections, when all that found its -way to his lips was the babble of love at its climax. Was it that she -loved him less than he loved her? He whispered this in her ear, with one -arm holding her close, while Rory made his way vigorously along the -road, scenting his stable, and also the snow that was coming. Lily made -no answer to the suggestion. Certainly that murmur of love did not seem -to satisfy her. She was overcome by it now and then, and sat silent, -feeling the pressure of his arm, and the consciousness that there was -nobody but him and herself in the world, with the seductive bewilderment -of emotion shared and intensified, yet from time to time awoke sharply -to feel the force over again of that question: “What are we going to -do?” Oh, why had she not insisted on an answer to it before? The night -grew darker, the snow began to fall in large flakes. They were more and -more isolated from the world which was invisible round them, nothing but -Rory tossing his shaggy ears and snorting at the snow that melted into -his nostrils. By the time they reached the Tower, discovering vaguely, -all at once, the glimmer of the lights and the voice of Dougal calling -to the pony to moderate the impatience of his delight at sight of his -own stable, they were so covered<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a>{179}</span> with snow that it was difficult for -Lily to shake herself clear of it as she stumbled down at the great -door. “Bide a moment, bide a moment; just take the plaid off her bodily. -It’s mair snaw than plaiden!” cried Dougal. “Ye little deevil, stand -still, will ye? Ye’ll get neither bite nor sup till your time comes. -Have ye no seen the ithers on the road? Silly taupies to bide so long, -and maybe be stormsted in the end!”</p> - -<p>“They’re on the road, Dougal,” cried Lily, with humility, remembering -that she had never once thought of Katrin and Beenie. “I am sure they’re -on the road.”</p> - -<p>“They had better be that,” he said angrily. “What keepit them, I’m -asking? Sir, if ye’ll be advised by me, ye’ll just bid good-by to the -young leddy and make your way to Tam’s as fast as ye can, for every -half-hour will make it waur. It’s on for a night and a day, or I have -nae knowledge of the weather.”</p> - -<p>“Half-an-hour can’t make much difference, Dougal,” said Ronald, with a -laugh.</p> - -<p>“Oh, can it no? It’s easy to see ye ken little of our moor. And the e’en -will be as black as midnicht, and the snaw bewildering, so that ye’ll -just turn round and round about, and likely lie down in a whin bush, and -never wake more.”</p> - -<p>A half shriek came from Lily in the doorway, while Ronald’s laugh rang -out into the night. “It will be no worse in half-an-hour,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Ay, will it! There’s a wee bit light in the west the noo, but there -will be nane then. Heigh! is’t you? Weel, that’s aye something,” Dougal -said, as the other little vehicle, with its weight of snow-covered -figures, came suddenly into the light; and in the bustle of the second -arrival, which was much more complicated than the first, nothing more -was said. Katrin and Beenie had shaken off the awe of their conspiracy. -They were full of spirits and laughter, and their little cart crowded -with parcels of every kind. They had found time to buy half the market, -as Dougal said, and they occupied him so completely with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a>{180}</span> their talk, -and the bustle of getting them and their cargo safely deposited indoors, -that the young couple stole upstairs unnoticed. “Tam may whistle for me -to-night,” Ronald said, “and Dougal growl till he’s tired, and the snow -fall as much as it pleases. I’m safe of my shelter, Lily. A friend in -court is worth many a year’s fee.”</p> - -<p>“Who is your friend in court?” she said, shivering a little. The cold -and the agitation had been a little too much for Lily. Her teeth -chattered, the light swam in her eyes.</p> - -<p>It was Katrin who was the Providence of the young people. She it was who -ordained peremptorily, not letting Dougal say a word, that to send Mr. -Lumsden off to Tam’s cottage on such a night was such a thing as had -never been heard of.</p> - -<p>“I wouldna turn out a dog,” she cried, “to find its way, poor beast, -across the moor.”</p> - -<p>“I warned the lad,” said Dougal; “I tell’d him every half-hour would -make it waur. It is his ain fault if he is late. What have you and me to -do harboring a’ the young callants in the country, or out of it, that -may come here after Miss Lily? You’ve just got some nonsense about true -love in your head.”</p> - -<p>“Am I the person,” said Katrin, “to have true love cast in my face, me -that have been married upon you, Dougal, these thirty year? Na, na! I’m -no that kind of woman; but I have peety in my heart, and there’s a dozen -empty rooms in this house. I think it’s just a shame when I think of the -poor bodies that are about, maybe sleepin’ out on the cauld moor. I’ll -not take the life of this young lad, turning him away, and neither shall -you, my man, if you want to have any comfort in your ain life.”</p> - -<p>“I warned him,” said Dougal; “if he didna take my warning, it’s his ain -wyte.”</p> - -<p>“It shanna be mine nor yours either,” said Katrin, and, indeed, even -Dougal, when he looked out, perceived that there was nothing to be said. -The snow had fallen so<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a>{181}</span> continuously since their arrival that already -every trace, either of wheels or hoofs, was filled up. The whiteness lay -unbroken in the court-yard and up to the very door, as if no one had -come near the house for days. Sandy was in the stable with his lantern, -hissing over the little black pony as he rubbed him down; but even -Sandy’s steps to the stable were wiped out by the snow-storm. It covered -every thing, fair things and foul, and, above all, every trace of a path -or road.</p> - -<p>“I’m no easy in my mind about what Sir Robert would say,” he muttered, -pushing his cap to his other ear.</p> - -<p>“And what would Sir Robert say? If it had been a lad on the tramp, a -gangrel person or selling prins about the road, he would never have -grudged him a bed, or at the worst a pickle straw in the stable, on such -a night. And this is a young gentleman of the family of the Lumsdens of -Pontalloch, kent folk, and as much thought of as any person. Is’t a -pickle straw the laird would have offered to a gentleman’s son like -that? He’s just biding here till the storm’s over, if it was a week or a -fortnicht, and I’ll answer for it to the laird!” Katrin cried.</p> - -<p>Dougal looked at her in consternation. “A week or a fortnight! It’s no -decent for the young leddy,” he said.</p> - -<p>“It’s just a grand chance for the young lady—company to pass the time -till her, and her all her lane. If he will bide—but maybe he will not -bide,” said Katrin, with a sigh. Katrin, too, was a little anxious, as -Lily was, for what to-morrow would bring forth. She had but taken the -bull by the horns, in Dougal’s person, saying the worst that could be -said. “But it’s my hope, Beenie,” she said afterward, with an anxious -countenance, “that he’ll just take his bonnie wife away to his ain house -as soon as the snaw’s awa’.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, ay! ye needna have any doubt of that,” said Beenie, with a broad -smile of content.</p> - -<p>“Then you’ll just take off your grand gown and serve them with their -dinner. I have naething but the birds to put to the fire, and that will -take little time; and if they<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a>{182}</span> never had a good dinner before nor after, -they shall have one that any prince might eat, between you and me, -Robina, poor things, on their wedding night.”</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> snow-storm lasted for about a week, day after day, with an -occasional interval, with winds that drifted it, and dreadful nights of -frost that made it shrink, but covered it over with sparkling crystals, -and with occasional movements of a more genial temperature, that touched -the surface only to make it freeze again more fiercely when that -relenting was over. The whole landscape was turned to whiteness, and the -moor, with all its irregular lines, rounded as if a heavy white blanket -had been laid over the hummocks of the ling and the hollows and deep -cuttings. The hills were white, too, but showing great seams and -crevasses of darkness, from which all the magical color had been taken -by the absence of light. Black and white was what every thing was -reduced to, like the winter Alps, with a gray sky overhead still heavy -with inexhaustible snow. This snow-storm was “a special providence” to -the inhabitants of Dalrugas—at least to most of them. Dougal grumbled, -and suggested various ways in which it might be possible for the lad -from Edinburgh to get away. He might walk two miles north, to a village -on the main road, where the coach was bound to pass every lawful day, -whether it snowed or whether it blew; or he might get the geeg from the -inn at Kinloch-Rugas to carry him south, and strike the route of another -coach also bound to travel on every lawful day. But Dougal talked to the -air, and nobody gave him heed: not to say that the gentleman from -Edinburgh found means to conciliate him by degrees, and that, at last, a -crack with Mr. Lumsden became a great relief to Dougal from the -unmitigated chatter<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a>{183}</span> of the womankind by which he was surrounded night -and day.</p> - -<p>This week of snow flew as if on wings. They were shut off from all -intrusion, and even from every invading question, by the impossibility -of overstepping that barrier which nature had placed around them; they -lived as in a dream, which circumstances had thus made possible without -any strain of nature. Nobody could turn a stranger out into the snow, -not Sir Robert himself. Had he been there, however little he liked his -visitor, he would have been compelled to keep him in his house, and -treat him like a favored guest. Not even an enemy’s dog could have been -turned out into the snow. It made every thing legitimate, every thing -simple and natural. I don’t know that Lily required this thought to -support her, for, indeed, she was not at that time aware that any secret -was made of the marriage, that it was concealed from any one in the -house, even Dougal, or that Helen Blythe at the Manse, for instance, had -not been made aware of it by that time. She had never clearly entered -into the question why Helen Blythe had not been present, why the -ceremony had been performed in the darkening, and so much mystery had -surrounded it, except by the natural reason that no observation which -could be avoided should be drawn upon the bride, and that, indeed, all -possibility of vulgar remark should be guarded against. The question, -what was to be done next? had filled Lily’s mind on that day; but the -snow had silenced it and covered it over like the ling bushes and the -burn, which no longer made its usual trill of running remark, but was -also hushed and bound by the new conditions which modified all the life -of this portion of the earth. The moor and all its surroundings hung -between heaven and earth in a great silence during this period. The gray -sky hung low, so that it seemed as if an unwary wayfarer, if he went far -enough against that heavy horizon, might strike against it, blinded as -he must have been by the whirling flakes that danced and fluttered down, -sometimes quickening in pace like the variations of a swift<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a>{184}</span> strathspey, -sometimes falling large and deliberate like those dilated flakes of fire -that fell on the burning sands in the Inferno. There were no images, -however different in sentiment, that might not have been applied to that -constant falling. It was snow, always snow, and yet there was in it all -the variety of poetry when you looked at it, so to speak, from within, -looking through it upon an empty world in which no other life or variety -seemed to be left.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, however, the pair sallied forth, notwithstanding the snow, to -breathe the crisp and frosty air, and to feel with delight the great -atmosphere and outdoor world around them instead of four walls. Lily -wore a great camlet cloak, rough, but a protection against both wet and -chill, with a large silver clasp under her chin, and her head and -shoulders warmly hooded and wrapped in her plaid of the Ramsay color, -which she wore as fair Ramsays did in Allan Ramsay’s verse. Lily’s eyes -sparkled under the tartan screen, and not to risk the chilling of a hand -which it would have been necessary to put forth to clasp his arm, Ronald -in his big coat walked with his arm round her, to steady her on the -snow; for every path was obliterated, and they never knew when they -might not stumble over a stifled burn or among the heathery hillocks of -the moor. These walks were not long, but they were delightful in the -stillness and loneliness, the white flakes clothing them all over in -another coat, lighting upon Lily’s hair and Ronald’s beard, getting into -their eyes, half blinding them with the sudden moisture, and the -laughter that followed. I will not attempt to give any account of the -talk with which they beguiled both these devious rambles and the long -companionship indoors in the warm room from which they looked out with -so much comfort on the white and solitary world. It harmonized and made -every thing legitimate, that lucky snow. One could not ask: “What shall -we do to-morrow?” in the sight of the absolute impossibility of doing -any thing. It was not the bridegroom but Nature herself who had arranged -this honeymoon. If it<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a>{185}</span> would but last! But then it was in the nature of -things that it could not last.</p> - -<p>The frost began to break up a little on the eighth day, or rather it was -not the frost that broke up, but the sky that cleared. In the evening -instead of the heavy gray there came a break which the sky looked -through, and in it a star or two, which somehow changed altogether the -aspect of affairs. That evening, as she stood looking out at the break -so welcome to every-body, but which she was not so sure of welcoming as -other people were, Lily felt the question again stir, like a bird in its -nest, in the hushed happiness of her heart. In the morning, when she -looked out upon a world that had again become light, with blue overhead, -and a faint promise of sun, and no snow falling, it came back more -strongly, this time like a secret ache. The women and Dougal and Sandy -and even the ponies were full of delight in the end of the storm. “What -a bonnie morning!” they shouted to each other, waking Lily from her -sleep. A bonnie morning! There was color again on the hills and color in -the sky. The distance was no longer shut out, as by a door, by the heavy -firmament: it was remote, it was full of air, it led away into the -world, into worlds unseen. As Lily gazed a golden ray came out of it and -struck along the snow in a fine line. Oh, it was bonnie! as they called -to each other in the yard, as Rory snorted in his stable, and all the -chickens cackled, gathering about Katrin’s feet. The snow was over! The -storm was over! In a little while the whiteness would disappear and the -moor would be green again. “What are we going to do?” All nature seemed -to ask the question.</p> - -<p>“I wish,” said Ronald, “those fowls would cease their rejoicings about -the end of the snow. I wish the snow could have lasted another -fortnight, Lily; though perhaps I should not say that, for I could not -have taken advantage of it. I should need to have invented some means of -getting away.”</p> - -<p>“Because you were tired of it, Ronald?” she said, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a>{186}</span> a smile; but the -smile was not so bright as it had been. It was not Lily’s snow-smile, -all light and radiance; it was one into which the question had come, a -little wistful, a little anxious. Ronald saw, and his heart grieved at -the change.</p> - -<p>“That’s the likely reason!” he said, with a laugh; “but, oh, Lily, my -bonnie love, here is the Parliament House all astir again, the judges -sitting, and all the work begun.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” she said, that smile of hers shooting out a pure beam of fire -upon him, “I am ready, Ronald, I am ready, too.”</p> - -<p>“Ready to speed the parting husband, and to wish me good luck?” he said -with a faint quiver in his voice. He was not a coward by nature, but -Ronald this time was afraid. He had not forgotten the question: “What -are we going to do?” which had been expressed in every line of Lily’s -face, in every tone of her voice, before the evening of the marriage. He -knew it had come again, but he did not know how he was to meet it. He -plunged into the inevitable conflict with his heart in his mouth.</p> - -<p>“To speed the parting—— Are you going, Ronald, are you thinking of -going, without me?”</p> - -<p>“My dearest,” he said, spreading out his hands in deprecation, “it’s -like rending me asunder; it is like tearing my heart out of my bosom.”</p> - -<p>“I am not asking you what it is like!” cried Lily. “What I am asking is -your meaning. Were you thinking of going without me?”</p> - -<p>“Lily, Lily!” he said, “don’t be so dreadfully hard upon me! What am I -to do? I know nothing else that I can do.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, if it’s only that,” she said, “I can tell you, and very easy, what -to do. You will just take me down to Kinloch-Rugas, or to that other -place where the coach stops, and wrap me well in my camlet cloak and in -my tartan plaid, and I’ll not feel the cold, not so much as you will, -for women’s blood is warm, and when we get to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a>{187}</span> Edinburgh we will take -the topmost story of a house, and make it as warm as a nest, and get the -first sunshine and the bonnie view away to Fife and the north. And -Beenie will follow us with my things and her own; but we’ll just be all -alone for the first day or two, and I will make you your dinner with my -own hands,” said Lily, holding up those useful implements with a look of -triumph, which was, alas! too bright, which was like the sun when a -storm is coming: brilliant with alarm and a sense of something very -different to come.</p> - -<p>“They don’t look very fit for it, those bits of white hands,” he said, -eager, if possible, by any means to divert her from the more important -question, and he took her hands in his and kissed them; but Lily was not -to be diverted in this way.</p> - -<p>“You may think what you like of how they look, but they are just a very -useful pair of hands, and can cook you a Scots collop or a chicken or -fish in sauce as well as any person. I know what I have undertaken, and -if you think I will break down, you are mistaken, Ronald Lumsden, in -me.”</p> - -<p>“I am not mistaken in you, Lily. I know there is nothing you could not -do if you were to try; but am I to be the one to make a drudge of my -Lily—I that would like her to eat of the fat and drink of the sweet, as -the ministers say, and have no trouble all her days?”</p> - -<p>“It depends upon what you call trouble,” said Lily, still holding up her -flag. “Trouble I suppose we shall have, sooner or later, or we’ll be -more than mortal; but to serve you your dinner is what I would like to -do. You’ll go out to the Parliament House and work to get the siller, -for it must be allowed that between us we have not much of the siller, -and you cannot buy either collops or chuckies without it, nor scarcely -even a haddie or a herring out of the sea. But that’s the man’s share. -And then I will buy it and clean it, and put it on in the pot, and you -will eat of your wife’s cooking and your heart will be glad. Do you -think I want to go back to George Square, or a fine house<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a>{188}</span> in one of the -new Crescents, and sit with my hands before me? Not me, not me!”</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily,” he cried, “it’s a bonnie dream, and like yourself, and -if you only cooked a crust, it would be better than all the grand French -kickshaws in the world or the English puddings to me.”</p> - -<p>“You need not be so humble, sir,” said Lily; “I will cook no crust. It -will be savory meat, such as thy soul loveth; though I’ll not cheat you -as that designing woman Rebekah did.”</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily, you’ll always do more for me, and better for me, than I -deserve,” he cried. “Is that the postman for the first time coming up -the road from the town?”</p> - -<p>They went to the window to look out at this remarkable phenomenon, and -there he kept her, pointing out already the break of the snow upon the -side of the moor, revealing the little current of the burn, and -something of the edge of the road, along which, wonderful sight! that -solitary figure was making its way. “But it will not be passable, I -think, till to-morrow for any wheeled thing, so we will make ourselves -happy for another day,” Ronald said; and this was all the answer he gave -her. He was very full of caresses, of fond speeches, and lover’s talk -all day. He scarcely left an opening for any thing more serious. If Lily -began again with her question, he always found some way of stopping her -mouth. Perhaps she was not unwilling, in a natural shrinking from -conflict, to have her mouth stopped. But there rose between them an -uneasy sense of something to be explained, something to be unravelled, a -desire on one side which was to encounter on the other resistance not to -be overcome.</p> - -<p>Ronald went out to Dougal after dinner and stood by him while he -suppered the pony. “I think the roads will be clear to-morrow, Dougal,” -he said.</p> - -<p>“I wouldna wonder,” said Dougal. His opinion was that the lad from -Edinburgh would just sorn on there forever eating Sir Robert’s good meat -and would never more go away.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a>{189}</span></p> - -<p>“Which do you think would be best? to lend me Rory and the little cart -to take me in to Kinloch-Rugas, or to send for the geeg from the inn to -catch the coach on the South Road at Inverlochers?”</p> - -<p>“I could scarcely gie an opinion,” said Dougal. “A stoot gentleman o’ -your age might maybe just as easy walk.”</p> - -<p>When Dougal said “a stoot gentleman” he did not mean to imply that -Ronald was corpulent, but that he was a strong fellow and wanted no pony -to take him four miles.</p> - -<p>“That’s true enough,” said Ronald; “but there’s my portmanteau, which is -rather heavy to carry.”</p> - -<p>“As grand as you——” Dougal began, but then he stopped and reflected -that he was, so to speak, on his own doorstep (in the absence of Sir -Robert), and that it was a betrayal of all the traditions of hospitality -to be rude to a guest, especially to one who was about to take himself -away. “Weel,” he added quickly, with a push to his bonnet, “I canna -spare you Rory—the young leddy might be wanting a ride; but Sandy and -the black powny will take in the bit box if ye’re sure that you’ve made -up your mind—at last.”</p> - -<p>“I dare say you thought I was never going to do that,” Ronald said, with -a laugh.</p> - -<p>And then Dougal melted too. “Oh,” he said, “I just thought you knew when -you were in good quarters,” in a more friendly voice.</p> - -<p>“And did not you think I was a sensible fellow,” said the amiable guest, -“to lie warm and feed well instead of fighting two or three days, or -maybe more, through the snow? But now the courts are opened, and the -judges sitting, and every-body waiting for me. I would much rather bide -where I am, but I must go.”</p> - -<p>“If it’s for your ain interest,” said Dougal; “and I wudna wonder but -ye’re a wee tired of seeing naebody and doing naething, no even a gun on -your shoulder. I’ll bid the laddie be ready, I’ll say, at sax of the -clock.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a>{190}</span></p> - -<p>“Six o’clock!” said Ronald in dismay; “the coach does not leave till -ten.”</p> - -<p>“Weel, I’ll say aicht if you like. You should be down in good time. -Whiles there are a heap of passengers, and mair especial after a storm -like this, that has shut up a’ the roads.”</p> - -<p>“I shall be very much obliged to you, Dougal. I have been obliged to you -all the time. I will explain the circumstances to Sir Robert if he is in -Edinburgh in the spring, and I will tell him that Katrin and you have -been more than kind.”</p> - -<p>“<span class="lftspc">’</span>Deed, and if I were you,” said Dougal, “I would just keep a calm sough -and say naething to Sir Robert. He might wonder how ye got here; he -would maybe no think that our young leddy—— I’m wanting no certificate -frae any strange gentleman,” said Dougal, “and least said is soonest -mended. There are folk that canna bide to hear their ain house spoke of -by a stranger, nor friends collecting about it that might maybe no just -be approved. No, no, haud you your tongue and keep your ain counsel; and -so far as things have gaen, you’ll hear nae more about it frae Katrin or -me.”</p> - -<p>Ronald was confounded by this speech. “So far as things have gaen.” Had -this rough fellow any idea how far they had gone? Had his wife told him -what happened in the Manse parlor? Had his suspicions penetrated the -whole story? But Dougal turned back to the pony with a preference so -unaffected, and whistled “Charlie is my darling” with so distinct an -intention of dismissing his interlocutor, that Ronald could not imagine -him to see in the least into the millstone of this involved affair. -Dougal was much more occupied with his own affairs than either those of -Lily or those so very little known to him of the strange gentleman who -had kept Lily company during the daft days, the saturnalia of the year. -He proceeded with his work, pausing sometimes to swing his arms and -smite his breast for cold, clanking out and in through the warm -atmosphere of the stable to the wildly cold and sharp air<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a>{191}</span> outside, -absorbed more than was at all necessary in the meal and the toilet of -Rory, and taking no further heed of the guest.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">“At</span> last,” said Ronald, coming upstairs with his light-springing foot -three steps at a time, “at last, Lily, I have settled with Dougal, and I -am starting to-morrow morning: at eight, he says, but nine will do. And -this for a little while, my darling, will be my last night in the nest.”</p> - -<p>The room had undergone a wonderful change since it had first been Lily’s -bower. It had changed much while she was there alone, but the change was -much greater within the last week than all that had happened before. It -had become a home: there were two chairs by the fire, there was an -indefinable consciousness in every thing of two minds, two people, the -union and conjunction which make society. It was all warm, social, -breathing of life, no suggestion in it of loneliness or longing, or -unsatisfied thought, or the solitude which breathes a chill through -every comfort. Lily, sitting alone, had been, it was very clear, left -but for a moment. This sentiment cannot, indeed, expand stone walls, yet -the once dull and chilly drawing-room, with its deep small windows, -seemed to possess a widened circle, a fuller atmosphere. Into this -already had there pushed a care or two, the reflection of the -diversities of two minds as well as their union? If so, it only helped -to widen the sphere still further, to make it more representative of the -world. Lily looked up from the book she had taken up in her husband’s -absence with a change of countenance and sudden exclamation.</p> - -<p>“<i>You</i> are going to-morrow? Not <i>we</i>?” she cried.</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily, you were always reasonable—how could it be <i>we</i>? I’m -thankful, though, that you meant it to be we, for it was not a happy -thought that my own<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a>{192}</span> lassie, my wife of a week old, was pushing me away, -back with the first loosening of the frosts, into the world.”</p> - -<p>“You never thought that, you never could have thought that!” cried Lily, -divided between indignation and a tumult of new feeling that rose in -her. And then she covered her face with her hands. “Are you going to -leave me here, Ronald, my lane, my lane?” she cried, with a tone of -anguish in her voice.</p> - -<p>He was behind her, drawing her head upon his shoulder, soothing her in -every way he knew. “Oh, Lily, my darling, don’t say I have beguiled you! -What could it be else, what could it be? I might have held out by myself -and kept away. I might have sworn I would never go near you, for your -sweet sake. Would you rather I had done that, Lily? Is it not better to -belong to each other, my darling, at any cost, so as to be ready in a -moment to take advantage of a bright day when it comes?”</p> - -<p>“Of a bright day when it comes?” she said, suddenly taking her hands -from her face. A chill as if of the ice outside came upon Lily. She was -as white as the snow, and cold, and trembled. “Is that all—is that all -that is between you and me, Ronald?” she cried.</p> - -<p>“Now, Lily, my dearest, how can you ask such a question? Is that all? -Nothing is all! There are no bounds to what is between you and me; but -because we have to be parted for a time that was not a reason for always -keeping apart, was it, Lily? I thought, my darling, you agreed with me -there. We have had a happy honeymoon as ever any pair had, happier, I -think, than ever any blessed man but me. And now I must go out to the -bleak world to work for my bonnie wife. Oh, it will be a bleak world no -longer; it will all be bright with the thought that it is for my bonnie -Lily. And you will just wait and keep your heart in a kist of gold, and -lock it with a silver key.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, that was what she says she should have done before——” cried Lily -with a sharp ring of pain in her voice. Then she subdued herself and -looked up into his face. “I<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a>{193}</span> am ready to share whatever you have, -Ronald. I want no luxuries, no grand house. I want no time to get ready. -I’ll be up before you to-morrow and my little things in a bundle and -ready to follow you, if it was in a baggage-wagon or at the plough’s -tail!”</p> - -<p>“I almost wish it was that,” he said, eager for any diversion. “If I had -been a ploughman lad, coming over the hills to Nannie O; with a little -cot to take her to as soon as she could be my own!” These were echoes of -the songs Lily had sung to him, and he to her, in their hermitage when -shut in by the snow.</p> - -<p>“But just up under the roof in a high house in the old town, or one of -the new ones out to the west of Princes Street—that new row, with a -nice clean stair and a door to it to shut it in: to me that would be as -good as any little cot upon the ploughed fields.” Lily spoke eagerly, -turning round to him with hands involuntarily clasped.</p> - -<p>“A strange place,” he said, “for Sir Robert Ramsay’s heir.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, what am I caring for Sir Robert Ramsay! If he was ill and wanted -me, I would be at his call night and day—he is my uncle, whatever -happens; but because he is rich and can leave me a fortune! that is -nothing, Ronald, to you and me.”</p> - -<p>He made no immediate reply, but smoothed the little curls of her hair -upon her forehead, which was at once an easier and a much more pleasant -thing to do.</p> - -<p>“Besides,” she said, “I have known plenty of kent folk, as good as you -or me, who lived, and just liked it very well, up a common stair.”</p> - -<p>“I would not like my Lily, coming out of George Square, to set up in -life like that.”</p> - -<p>“Would you like your Lily,” she cried again, turning upon him with -glowing cheeks, “to sit alone and pingle at her seam and eat her heart -away, even at George Square, where she might see you whiles, or, worse -still, here at Dalrugas,” she said, springing from her seat with energy, -“to be smoored in the snow?”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a>{194}</span></p> - -<p>He followed her round to the window, and stood holding her in his arm -and looking at her admiringly. “You will never be smoored in the snow, -my Lily! The fire in you is enough to melt it into rivers all about.”</p> - -<p>“Rivers that will carry me—where?” she cried in a tone half of -laughter, half of despair.</p> - -<p>“Listen to me, my darling,” he said. “We will be practical: there is -always the poetry to fall back upon. For one thing, I’ve no house, even -if it were up a common stair or in the highest house of the old town, to -take you to. Houses, as you know as well as me, can only be got at the -term. There is no chance now till Whit-Sunday of finding one. We must -just be patient, Lily; we can do no more. It is not you, my darling, -that will suffer the most. Think of me in all the old places that will -mind me of you at every moment, and seeing all the folk that know you, -and even hearing your name——”</p> - -<p>“Oh,” cried Lily, and then suddenly she fell a-crying, leaning on her -husband, “I would like to hear your name now and then just to give me -heart, and to see the folk that know you, and the old places——”</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily!” he cried.</p> - -<p>Perhaps this outburst did her good. She cried for a long time, and all -the evening an occasional sob interrupted her voice, like the lingering -passion of a child. But Lily, like a child, had to yield to that voice -of the practical, the voice of reason. She said no more at least, but -sadly assisted at the packing of the portmanteau, which had been brought -across the snow somehow from the cottage in which Ronald had found -refuge before the storm and all its privileges began.</p> - -<p>“I am not going with him,” she said to Robina, when these doleful -preparations were over. “You see, there are no preparations made, and -you cannot get a house between the terms. You might have minded me of -that, Beenie. What is the use of being a person of experience if you -cannot tell folk that are apt to forget?”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a>{195}</span></p> - -<p>“I ought to have minded, my bonnie dear,” said Beenie with penitence.</p> - -<p>“And it’s a long time till Whit-Sunday; but we’ll need to have -patience,” Lily said.</p> - -<p>“So we will, my darling bairn,” Beenie replied.</p> - -<p>“You say that very cut and dry. You are not surprised; you look as if -you had known it all the time.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, Miss Lily, my dear, how could I help but ken? Here’s a young -gentleman that has little siller, and no the mate that Sir Robert would -choose.”</p> - -<p>“I wish,” cried Lily, “that Sir Robert was at the bottom of the sea! No, -no, I’m wishing him no harm, but, oh, if he only had nothing to do with -me!”</p> - -<p>“The only thing ye canna do in this world is to change your blood and -kin,” said Beenie; “but, oh, Miss Lily, ye must just be real reasonable -and think. If he were to take you away, it would spoil a’. He has gotten -you for his ain, and you have gotten him for your ain, and nothing can -come between you two. But he hasna the siller to give ye such a -down-sitting as you should have, and nae house at all possible at this -time of the year. No, I’m no way surprised. I just knew that was how it -had to be, and Katrin too. It would be just flyin’ in the face of -Providence, she says, to take ye away off to Edinburgh, without a place -for the sole of your foot, when ye have a’ your uncle’s good house at -your disposition, and good living and folk about you that tak’ a great -interest in you. Katrin herself she canna bide the thought of losing her -bonnie leddy. ‘If Miss Lily goes, I’ll just take my fit in my hand and -go away after her,’ she says. But what for should ye go? It will be far -more comfortable here.”</p> - -<p>“Comfortable!” said Lily in high disdain, “and parted from my husband!” -The word was not familiar to her lips, and it brought a flush of color -over her face.</p> - -<p>“Oh, whisht, my bonnie leddy,” Beenie cried.</p> - -<p>“Why should I whisht? for it is true. I might not have said it before, -but I will say it now, for where he is I ought to be, and whatever he -has I ought to share, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a>{196}</span> what do I care for Dougal’s birds and -Katrin’s fine cooking when my Ronald (that has aye a fine appetite for -his dinner,” cried Lily in a parenthesis, with a flash of her girlish -humor) “is away?” The last words were said in a drooping tone. Her mood -changed like the changing skies. Even now she had irruptions of laughter -into the midst of her trouble, which was not yet trouble, indeed, so -long as he was still not absolutely gone; and who could tell what might -happen before morning, the chill morning of the parting day?</p> - -<p>Lily was up and astir early on that terrible morning. There had been a -hope in her mind that Providence would re-tighten the bonds of the frost -and bring the snow blinding and suffocating to stop all possibility of -travel; but, alas! that was not the case: bands of faint blue -diversified the yellow grayness of the clouds, and the early sun gave a -bewildering glint over the moor, making the snow garment shrink a little -more and show its rents and crevasses. Every thing was cheerfully astir -in the yard, the black pony rearing as Sandy backed him into the shafts -of the cart, snorting and shaking his head for joy at thought of the -outing, and the sniff of the fresh, exhilarating air into which, as yet, -there had come little of the limpness of the thaw. There was an air out -of doors partly of pleasure in the excitement of the departure, or at -least in the little commotion about something which is an agreeable -break in the monotony of all rural solitudes. Dougal looked on and -criticised with his hands in his pockets and gave Sandy directions as if -this were the first time the boy had ever touched the pony which had -been his charge for more than a year; and Katrin, too, stood at the door -watching all these preparations, though the air was cold as January air -could be. Upstairs there was a very different scene. Lily had tried to -insist upon driving to the town to see her husband off, a proposal which -was crushed by both Ronald and Robina with horror. “Expose yoursel’ to -the whole countryside!” Beenie cried.</p> - -<p>“Expose myself! and me his wife! Who should see<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a>{197}</span> him off if not his -wife?” said Lily. And then Ronald came behind her and drew her against -his breast once more.</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily! We need not yet flourish that before the world. You are -as safe here as a bird in its nest. Why should we set everybody talking -about you and me? Sir Robert will hear soon enough and there is no need -to send him word. There’s nobody to penetrate our secret and publish it -if you will be patient a little till better things can be.”</p> - -<p>“Our secret!” said Lily, springing from his hold with a great cry.</p> - -<p>“A secret that is well shared by those that care for my Lily; but we -need not flourish it before the world.” Lily’s color rose from pale to -red, then faded. She stood apart from him, her countenance changing; her -pride was deeply wounded that she should be supposed to be desirous of -flourishing any thing before the world. It was an injury to her and a -scorn, though this was no moment to resent it, and the sharp impression -only mingled with the anguish of parting a sense of being wronged and -misjudged, which was very hard to bear. “I may come down to the door, I -suppose,” she said, in a voice from which she tried to banish every tone -of offence.</p> - -<p>“No, my darling,” he said, “not even to the door. I could not say -farewell to my Lily with strangers looking on. I will like to think when -I am gone of every thing round you here, all the old chairs and tables -even, where my Lily and I have had our honeymoon.” Oh, there was nothing -to complain of in the warmth of his farewell. No man could have loved -his young wife better, or have held her close to him with deeper -feeling. “I will soon be back, I will soon be back!” he cried. His eyes -were wet like hers. It was as great a thing for him to tear himself away -as it was for her to remain behind and see him go. But then Lily could -only stand trembling and weeping at the head of the stairs, that nobody -might see, and catch a distorted glimpse through the window over the -door of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a>{198}</span> cart, into which he got with Sandy, while Dougal still -murmured that “a stoot gentleman would have done better to walk,” and to -see him hold out his hand to sulky Dougal, and to Katrin, who had her -apron at her eyes, and Beenie, who was sobbing freely! They could stand -there and cry, but she might not go down stairs lest she should flourish -her story before the world. And why should she not, after all, flourish -it before the world? Is a marriage a thing to be hid? When the little -cart drove away, the pony, very fresh after his long confinement, -executing many gambols, Lily went back to her window, from which she -could see them disappear under the high bank, coming out again lower -down. The deep road was so filled up with snow that the moment of -disappearance was a very short one, and then she could trace for a long -time along the road the little dark object growing less and less, till -it disappeared altogether. The pony’s gambols, which, though he was too -far off to be distinctly visible, still showed in the meandering of his -progress and sudden changes of pace, the head of one figure showing over -the other, the gradual obliteration in the gray of distance, kept all -her faculties occupied. It seemed hours, though it was but a very little -time, when Lily let her head droop on the arm of the old-fashioned sofa -and abandoned herself to the long-gathering, long-restrained torrent and -passion of tears.</p> - -<p>It was a heavy, dreary day. When you begin life very early in the -morning, it ought to be for something good, for some natural festivity -or holiday, in the light of which the morning goes brightening on to -some climax, be it a happy arrival for which the moments are counted or -a birthday party. But to begin with a parting and live the livelong day -after it, every hour more mournful and more weary, is a melancholy -thing. This used to be very common in the old days, when travelling was -slower, and night trains not invented, and night coaches not much -thought of. It added a great deal to the miseries of a farewell: in the -evening there is but little time before the people who<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a>{199}</span> are left behind; -they have an excuse for shutting themselves up, going to bed, most -likely, if they are young, sleeping before they know, with to-morrow -always a new day before them. But Lily had to live it all out, not -excused by Beenie or her other faithful retainers a single hour or a -single meal. They brought her her dinner just as though he had not -shared it with her yesterday, and pressed her to eat, and made a -grievance of the small amount she swallowed. “What is the use,” Katrin -said majestically, “of taking all this trouble when Miss Lily turns her -back upon it and will not eat a morsel?” “Oh, try a wee bit, Miss Lily,” -Beenie cried, adding in her ear, with a coaxing kindness that was -insupportable: “Do you think he would relish the cauld snack he’ll be -getting on the road if he thought his bonnie leddy was not touching bite -or sup?”</p> - -<p>“Go away, or you will drive me daft!” said Lily. “He will just clear the -board of every thing that’s on it and never think of me. Why should he, -with such a fine appetite as he has? Do I want him to starve for me?” -she cried, with a laugh. But the result was another fit of tears. In -short, Lily was as silly as any girl could be on the day her lover left -her. She was not even as she had been for a moment, and was bound to be -again, a young wife astonished and disappointed at being left behind, -not knowing how to account for this strange, new authority over her -which had it in its power to change the whole current of her life. She -had never looked at Ronald in that light or thought of him as a power -over her, a judge, a law-giver, whose decisions were to be supreme. She -was astonished to find herself subdued before him now, her own -convictions put aside; but this was not the channel in which for the -moment her thoughts were running. She was weeping for her lover, for the -happiness that was over, for him who was away, and dreaming dreams to -herself of how the coach might be stopped by the snow, or some accident -happen that would still bring him back. She imagined to herself his step -on the stair and the shriek of joy with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a>{200}</span> which she would rush to welcome -him. This was the subject of her thoughts, broken into occasionally by -divergences to other points, by outbursts of astonishment, of -disappointment, almost of resentment, but always returning as to the -background and foundation of every thing. The other thoughts lay in -waiting for her, biding their time. It was the dreadful loss, the blank, -the void, the silence, that afflicted her now. Ronald gone, who for this -week, which had been as years, as a whole life, her life, the real and -true one, to which all the rest was only a preface and preliminary, had -been her companion, almost herself! It was of this that her heart was -full. Without him, what was Lily now? She had been often a weary, angry, -dull, disappointed little girl before, but there were always breaks in -which she felt herself, as she said, her own woman and was herself all -the Lily there was. But now she had merged into another being; she was -Lily no longer, but only a broken-off half of something different, -something more important, all throbbing with enlarged and bigger life. -This consciousness was enough for the girl to master during that -endless, dreary, monotonous day.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> next day after any thing, whether happiness or disaster, is -different from the day on which the event took place. The secondary -comes in to complicate and confuse the original question more or less, -and the abstract ends under that compulsion. Nothing is exactly as it -seems, nor, indeed, as it is; it takes a color from the next morning, -however opaque that morning may be. This was especially the case with -Lily, whom so many of these secondary thoughts had already visited, and -who had now to go back from the dream of that eight days in which every -thing had been put to flight by that extraordinary invasion of the new -and unrealized which comes to every<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a>{201}</span> girl with her marriage, and amid -which it is so difficult to keep the footing of ordinary life. She was -that morning, however, not any longer the parted lover, the mourning -bride, but again, more or less, “her own woman,” the creature, full of -energy and life, and thoughts and purposes of her own, who had not -blindly loved or worshipped, but to whom, at all times, it had been -apparent that Ronald’s way of loving, though it was to her the only way, -was not the way she would have chosen or which she would have adopted -herself had she been the man. A very different man Lily would have made, -much less prudent, no doubt, but how decisive in the beginning of that -youthful career! how determined to have no secrets, but every thing as -open as the day! to involve the woman beloved in no devious paths, but -to preserve her name and her honor above all dictates of worldly wisdom! -Lily would have had her lover vindicate her at once from her uncle’s -tyranny. She would have had him provide the humble home for which she -longed, without even suffering his lady to bear the ignominy of that -banishment to the moor. And now! with what a flame of youthful love and -hope Lily would have had him carry off his bride, snapping his fingers -with a Highland shout at all the powers of evil, who would have had no -chance to touch them in their honest love and honorable union. Oh, if -she had been the man! Oh, if she could have showed him what to do!</p> - -<p>And all these thoughts, intensified and increased, came back to Lily the -day after her husband left her. She was not drooping and longing now for -her departed lover. Her energies, her clear sense of what should have -been, her objection to all that was, came back upon her like a flood. -She sat no longer at the window gazing out upon the expanse of snow, -which shrank more and more, and showed greater and blacker crevasses in -its wide expanse every hour, but walked up and down the room, pausing -now and then to poke the fire with energy, though the glowing peats were -not adapted to that treatment, and flew in tiny morsels about, requiring -Beenie’s swift and careful<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a>{202}</span> ministrations. Lily felt, however, for one -thing, that her position was far better now for expounding her views -than it had ever been. A girl cannot press upon her lover the necessity -of action. She has to wait for him to take the first step, to urge it -upon her, however strongly she may feel the pressure of circumstances, -the inexpediency of delay. But now she could plead her own cause, she -could make her own claim of right, her statement of what she thought -best. She said to herself that she had never yet tried this way. She had -been compelled to wait for him to do it, but perhaps it was no wrong -thing in him, perhaps it was only exaggerated tenderness for her, desire -to save her from privations, or what he thought privations, that had -prevented any bolder action, and made him think first of all of saving -her from any discomfort. It was possible to think that, and it was very -possible to show him now that she cared for no discomfort, that her only -desire was to be with him, that it was far, far better for Lily to meet -the gaze of the world in her own little house, however small it might -be, than hide in the solitude as if there was something about her that -should be concealed. This thought made Lily’s countenance blaze like the -glowing peat. Something about her that should be concealed! a secret -hidden away in the heart of the moor, in the midst of the snow, which -he, going away from her, would keep silent about, silent as if it were a -shame! Lily threw herself into the chair beside her writing-table with -impetuosity, feeling that not a moment should be lost in putting this -impossible case before him and making her claims. She was no fair -Rosamond, but his wife. A thing to be concealed? Oh, no, no! She would -rather die.</p> - -<p>In any case she would have written him a long letter, seizing the first -possible moment of communicating with him, carrying out the first -instinct of her heart to continue the long love-interview which had made -this week the centre of all her days. But Lily threw even more than this -into her letter. She said more, naturally, than she intended to say, and -brought forth a hundred arguments,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a>{203}</span> each more eloquent, more urgent than -the other, to show cause why she should join him immediately, why she -should not be left, nobody knowing any thing about her, in this Highland -hermitage. The lines poured from her pen; she was herself so moved by -her own pleas that she got up once or twice and walked about to -dissipate the impulse which she had to set out at once, to walk if it -were needful to Edinburgh, to claim her proper place. And it was not -till the long, glowing, fervent letter was written that she paused a -little and asked herself if Ronald had really only left her behind -because it was impossible to get a house between the terms, if his first -business was to look out for a house, so as to have it ready for her by -the next term, by Whit-Sunday, was it right to argue with him and -upbraid him as if he intended the separation to go on forever? Lily -threw down her pen which she had dipped in fire—not the fire of anger, -but of love just sharpened and pointed with a little indignation—and -her countenance fell. No, if that were so, she must not address him in -this heroic way. After all it was quite reasonable what he had said: it -was extremely difficult to get a house between the terms. And perhaps he -would not have been justified in engaging one at Michaelmas, before any -thing was decided what to do. He could not have done that; and what, -then, could he do but wait till Whit-Sunday? and, for a man like him, -with his own ways of action, not, unfortunately, though she loved him, -like Lily’s, it was perhaps natural that there should be no premature -disclosure, that as they were parted by circumstances it should remain -so, without taking the world into their confidence, or summoning Sir -Robert to cast his niece who had deceived him out of the shelter which -her husband did not think unbecoming for her now. Lily threw down her -pen, making a splash of ink upon the table—not a large one, to spoil -it, but a mark, which would always remind her of what she had done or -had been about to do.</p> - -<p>And then there fell a pause upon her spirit, and tears<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a>{204}</span> were the only -relief for her. To take the heroic way, to walk to Edinburgh through the -snow, or even to think of doing so, to pour forth an eloquent appeal -against the cruel fate of her isolation and concealment as if it were to -last forever, was an easier method than to wait patiently until -Whit-Sunday and make the best of every thing, which would really be the -wise thing; for what could Ronald do more than that which he could of -course begin to do as soon as he arrived, to look for a house? And how -could it have been expected of him when every thing was so vague, and he -did not know what might happen, to have provided one, months in advance, -on the mere chance that he could persuade her into that strange -marriage, and the minister into doing it? It would be strange and -embarrassing after that scene to see the minister again, and Lily fell -a-wondering how Ronald had persuaded him, what he had said. Mr. Blythe -was not a very amiable man, ready to do what was asked of him. He made -objections about most things and hated trouble. But Ronald could -persuade any body; he could wile a bird from the tree. And what a grand -quality that was for an advocate! and how proud she would be hereafter -to go to the court and hear him make his grand speeches. Perhaps now he -would talk over some man that wanted to get rid of his house, and make -him see that it would be better to do it now than to wait for the term. -There was, indeed, nothing that Ronald could not persuade a man into if -he tried. Lily felt that her own periods were more fiery, those eloquent -sentences which her good sense had already condemned, but Ronald’s -arguments were beyond reply, there was no getting the better of them. -You might not be sure that they were always sound, you might feel that -there was a flaw somewhere; but to find out what it was, or to get your -answer properly formed, or to convict him of error was more than any -one, certainly more than Lily, could do.</p> - -<p>She had risen up, and was stretching her arms above her head in that -natural protest against the languor and solitude which take the form of -weariness, when she saw<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a>{205}</span> a dark speck approaching on the road, and -rushed to the window with the wild hope, which she knew was quite vain, -that it might by some possibility be Ronald coming back. But it was only -a rural geeg from Kinloch-Rugas or some other hamlet, or one of the -farms in the neighborhood, creeping up the road against the wind and the -slippery, thawing snow, with a woman in it beside the driver -undistinguishable in her wraps. While Lily looked out and wondered if by -any chance it might be a visitor, Beenie came in with a look of -importance. “Eh, Miss Lily, do you see who that is?” Robina said.</p> - -<p>“It is a woman, that is all I know, and keen upon her business to come -out on such a day.”</p> - -<p>“Her business?” said Robina. “It’s the Manse geeg, and it’s Miss Eelen -in it, and as far as I can tell she has nae business, but just to spy -out, if she can, the nakedness of the land.”</p> - -<p>“There is no nakedness in the land, and nothing to spy out!” cried Lily, -with a flush. “Have we done any thing to be ashamed of that we should be -feared of a neighbor’s eye?”</p> - -<p>“Bless me, no, Miss Lily!” cried Robina; but she added: “Eh, my bonnie -bairn, there’s many a thing that’s no expedient, though it’s no wrong. I -wouldna just say any thing to Miss Eelen if I was you. She’s maybe no to -be trusted with a story. The minister had sent her out o’ the road yon -evening in the Manse. Baith me and Katrin remarked it, for she’s his -right hand and he can do nothing without her in a common way, but yon -time she just didna appear.”</p> - -<p>“Did he think I was not good enough——” Lily began in a flutter, but -stopped immediately. “What a silly creature I am! as if there could be -any thing in that. Do you think I have such a long tongue that I want to -go and publish to every-body every thing that happens?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily, no me! never such a thought was in my head; but it would -be real natural, and you no a person to speak to except Katrin and me, -that are servants<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a>{206}</span> baith, though we would go through fire and water for -you. But you see she wasna there, and if I were you, Miss Lily——”</p> - -<p>“You happen not to be me,” cried Lily, with eyes blazing, glad of an -opportunity to shed upon Beenie something of the vague irritation in her -heart, “and since we are speaking of that, what do you mean, both Katrin -and you, that were both present, in calling me Miss Lily, Miss Lily, as -if I were a small thing in the nursery, when you know I am a married -woman?” Lily cried, throwing back her head.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Robina, with a suppressed shriek, running to the -door. She looked out with a little alarm, and then came back -apologetically. “You never ken who may be about. That Dougal man might -have been passing, though he has nothing ado up the stair.”</p> - -<p>“And what if he had been passing?” Lily said in high disdain.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Robina, again giving the girl a troubled look.</p> - -<p>“Do you mean to say that Dougal does not know? Do you mean he -thinks—that man that is my servant, that lives in the house—— Oh, -what can he think?” cried Lily, clasping her hands together in the -vehemence of her horror and shame.</p> - -<p>“He just thinks nothing at a’. He’s no a man to trouble any body with -what he thinks. He’s keepit very weel in order, and if he daured to fash -his head with what he has nae business with! He just guesses you twa are -troth-plighted lovers, Miss Lily, and glad he was to get our young -maister away.”</p> - -<p>Lily covered her face with her hands. “Am I a secret, then, a secret!” -she cried. “Something that’s hidden, just a lie, no true woman! How -dared you let me do it, then—you that have been with me all my days? -Why did ye not step in and say: ‘Lily, Lily, it’s all deceiving. It’s a -secret, something to be hidden!’ Would I ever have bound myself to a -secret, to be a man’s wife and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a>{207}</span> never to say it? Oh, Beenie, I thought -you cared, that you were fond of me, and me not a creature to tell me -what I was doing! No mother, no friend, nobody but you.”</p> - -<p>“Miss Lily, Miss Lily, we thought it was for the best. Oh, we thought it -was for the best, both Katrin and me! For God’s sake dinna make an -exhibition before Miss Eelen! Here she is, coming up the stair. For -peety’s sake, Miss Lily, for a’ body’s sake, if ye have ainy -consideration——”</p> - -<p>“Go away from me, you ill woman!” cried Lily, stamping her foot on the -ground. She stood in the middle of the room, wild and flushed and -indignant, while Beenie disappeared into the bedchamber within. Helen -Blythe, coming up a little breathless from the spiral staircase, paused -with astonishment to see her friend’s excited aspect, and the sounds of -tempest in the air.</p> - -<p>“Dear me! have I come in at a wrong time?” Helen said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no,” cried Lily, with a laugh of fierce emotion, “at the very best -time, just to bring me back to myself. I’ve been having a quarrel with -Beenie just for a little diversion. We’ve been at it hammer and tongs, -calling each other all the bonnie names—or perhaps it was me that -called her all the names. How do you think we could live out here in the -quiet and the snow if we did not have a quarrel sometimes to keep up our -hearts?”</p> - -<p>“Lily, you are a strange lassie,” said Helen, sitting down by the fire -and loosening her cloak. “You just say whatever comes into your head. -Poor Beenie! how could you have the heart to call her names? She is just -given up to ye, my dear, body and soul.”</p> - -<p>“She is no better than a cheat and a deceiver!” cried Lily. “She makes -folk believe that she does what I tell her, and never opposes me, when -she just sets herself against her mistress to do every thing I hate and -nothing I like, as if she were a black enemy and ill-wisher instead of a -friend!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a>{208}</span></p> - -<p>This speech was delivered with great fervor, and emphasized by the sound -of a sob from the inner room.</p> - -<p>“Poor Beenie!” cried Helen with mingled amusement and concern, “how is -she to take all that from you, Lily? But you do not mean it in your -heart?”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t mean a word of it,” cried Lily, “and it’s just an old goose -she is if she thinks I do! But for all that she is the most exasperating -woman! I never saw any body like her to be faithful as all the twelve -apostles, and yet make you dance for rage half the time.”</p> - -<p>A faint “Oh, Miss Lily!” was heard from the inner room, and then a door -was softly opened and shut, and it was evident that Beenie had slipped -away.</p> - -<p>“I heard ye were down at the Manse one day that I was away. It’s seldom, -seldom I am from home, and at that hour above all. But I had to see some -new folk at the Mill, and it was a good thing I went, for there has not -been an open day since then. And I heard ye had a visitor with you, -Lily.”</p> - -<p>Lily’s heart seemed to stand still, but she made a great effort and -mastered herself. “Yes,” she said, “it was Mr. Lumsden [many married -persons call their husbands Mr. So-and-So] that had come in quite -suddenly with the guisards on the last night of the year.”</p> - -<p>“I understand,” said Helen, with a smile; “he wanted—and I cannot blame -him—to be your first foot.”</p> - -<p>The first person who comes into a house in the New Year is called the -first foot in Scotland, and there are rules of good luck and bad -dependent upon who that is.</p> - -<p>“It might be so,” said Lily dreamily, “and I think he was, if that was -what he wanted; but the kitchen was full of dancing and singing, the -guisards making a great noise, as it was Hogmanay night.”</p> - -<p>“That was to be expected,” said Helen, “and I am glad you had a man, and -a young man, and a weel-wisher, or I am sore mistaken, for your first -foot. It brings luck to the New Year.”</p> - -<p>A “weel-wisher” means a lover in Scotland, just as<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a>{209}</span> in Italy a girl will -say, <i>Mi vuol bene</i>, when she means to say that some one loves her.</p> - -<p>“He was here after, twice or thrice, and he wanted to thank the minister -for all his kindness, and as I was at the market with Beenie and Katrin, -and he had offered to drive the pony, I went too. I thought I would have -seen you, but you were not there.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, how sorry I was, Lily! but a sight of the market would aye be -something. It’s not like your grand ploys in Edinburgh, but it’s -diverting too.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes,” said Lily, with great gravity, “it is diverting too.”</p> - -<p>“And you had need of something to divert you. What have you been doing, -my bonnie wee lady, all this dreadful storm? I hope at least they have -kept you warm. It is a dreadful thing a winter in the country when you -are not used to it. But now the snow is over and the roads open: you and -me must take a little comfort in each other, Lily. I’m too old for you, -and not so cheery as I might be.”</p> - -<p>Lily, suddenly looking at her visitor, saw that Helen’s mild eyes were -full of tears, and with one of her sudden impulsive movements, flung -herself down on her knees at her friend’s feet. “Oh, why are you not -cheery, Helen? you that do every thing you should do, and are so good.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m far, far from good! It’s little you know!” said Helen. “My -heart just turns from all the good folk, whiles out of a yearning I take -for those that are the other way.”</p> - -<p>“You have some trouble, Helen, some real trouble!” cried Lily with a -tone of compassion. “Will you tell me what it is?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe another time, maybe another time,” said Helen, “for my heart’s -too full to-day, and I can hear your poor Robina, that you have been so -cruel to, coming up the stair, the kind creature, with a cup of tea.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a>{210}</span></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Helen</span> stayed till the first shade of the darkening stole over the moor, -and till the minister’s man had told all the “clash” of the countryside -to Katrin and Dougal, and received but a very limited stock of -information in return. There was, indeed, much more danger to the secret -which now dominated and filled the house of Dalrugas like an actual -personage from that chatter in the kitchen than from any thing that -could have taken place upstairs. For the minister’s man was dimly aware -that the young lady from Dalrugas had been in the village on that day -when something mysterious was believed to have taken place in the Manse -parlor; that she had been seen with a gentleman, and that Katrin and -Robina had also been visible at the Manse. “Ay, was I,” said Katrin; “I -just took the minister a dizzen of my eggs. In this awfu’ weather nobody -has an egg but me. I just warm them up and pepper them up till they’ve -nae idea whether it’s summer or winter, and we lay regular a’ the year -round. I never grudge twa-three new-laid eggs to a delicate person, and -the minister, poor gentleman, is no that strong, I’m feared.”</p> - -<p>“He’s just as strong as a horse,” said the minister’s man, “and takes -his dinner as if he followed the ploo, but new-laid eggs are nae doubt -aye acceptable. The gentleman was from here that was paying him yon -veesit twa days after the New Year?”</p> - -<p>“We have nae gentleman here,” said Katrin, stolid as her own cleanly -scrubbed table, on which she rested her hand. Dougal cocked his bonnet -over his right ear, but gave no further sign. “There’s been a gentleman, -a friend of Sir Robert’s, at Tam Robison’s and we had to give him a bed -a nicht or twa on account of the snaw.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a>{211}</span> Now I think o’t, he was a friend -o’ the minister’s too. It’s maybe him you’re meaning? but he’s back in -Edinburgh as far as I ken, these twa-three——”</p> - -<p>“Weel, it would be him, or some other person,” said the minister’s man -with an affectation of indifference; but he returned to the subject -again and again, endeavoring, if he had been strong enough for the rôle, -or if he had been confronted by a weak enough adversary, to surprise her -into some avowal; but Katrin was too strong for him. It was with -difficulty she could be got to understand what he meant. “Oh, it’s aye -yon same gentleman you’re havering about! Eh, what would I ken about a -strange gentleman? The minister is no my maister nor yet Dougal’s. He -might get a visit from Auld Nick himself and it would be naething to him -or me.”</p> - -<p>“It might be much to me,” said the minister’s man, who was known for a -“bletherin’ idiot” all over the parish. “It’s just a secret, and a -secret is aye worth siller.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I wish ye may get it,” Katrin said. During this time she was, to -tell the truth, more or less anxious about the demeanor of her husband. -It was true that Dougal knew nothing unless what he might have found out -for himself, putting two and two together. Katrin had great confidence -in the slowness of his intellect and his incapacity to put together two -and two. Perhaps her trust was too great in this incapacity, and too -little in the dogged loyalty with which Dougal respected his own -roof-tree and all that sheltered under it. At least the fact is certain -that the authorized gossip of the parish carried very little with him to -compensate him for the cold drive and all the miseries of the way.</p> - -<p>Lily took out her letter and went over it again when Helen had gone. She -found it far too eloquent, too argumentative, too full of a foregone -conclusion. Why should she assume that Ronald did not mean to provide a -home for her, that there was any reason to believe in an intention on -his part of keeping their marriage a secret and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a>{212}</span> their lives apart? All -his behavior during the past week had been against this. How could there -have been a more devoted lover, a husband more adoring? She asked -herself what there was in him to justify such fears, and answered -herself: Nothing, nothing! not a shadow upon his love or delight in her -presence, the happiness of being with her, for which he had sacrificed -every thing else. He might have spent that New Year amid all the mirth -and holiday of his kind: in the merry crowd at home, or in Edinburgh, -where he need never have spent an hour alone; and he had preferred to be -shut up all alone with her on the edge of a snowy wintry moor. Did that -look as if he loved her little, as if he made small account of her -happiness? Oh, no, no! It was she who was so full of doubts and fears, -who had so little trust, who must surely love him less than he loved -her, or such suggestions would never have found a place in her heart. If -she already felt this in the evening, how much more did she feel it next -morning, when the post brought her a little note all full of love, and -the sweet sorrow of farewell, which Ronald had slipped into the post in -the first halting-place beyond Dalrugas?</p> - -<p>It was written in pencil, it was but three lines, but after she received -it Lily indignantly snatched her letter from the blotting-book and flung -it into the fire, which was too good an end for such a cruel production. -Was it possible that she had questioned the love of him who wrote to her -like <i>that</i>? Was it possible that she, so adored, so longed for, should -doubt in her heart whether he did not mean to conceal her like a guilty -thing? Far from her be such unkind, disloyal thoughts. Ronald had gone -off into the world, as it is the man’s right and privilege and his duty -to do, to provide a nest for his mate. If she were left solitary for a -moment, that was inevitable: it was but the natural pause till he should -have prepared for her, as every husband did. Instead of the indignation, -the resentment, the bitter doubt she had felt, nothing but compunction -was now in Lily’s mind. It was not he but she who was to blame. She was -the unfaithful one, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a>{213}</span> weak and wavering soul who could never hold -steadily to her faith, but doubted the absent as soon as his back was -turned, and was worthy of nothing except to undergo the fate which her -feeble affection feared. She was, perhaps, a little high-flown in the -revulsion of her feelings, as in the fervor of these feelings -themselves. A little less might have been expected from Ronald, a little -charity extended to him in his short-coming; and certainly the vehemence -and enthusiasm of her faith in him now was a little excessive. “Yes, it -is better you should call me Miss Lily,” she said to Robina; “it is best -just to keep it to ourselves for a while. Mr. Lumsden thought of all -that, though he left it entirely to me, without a word said. There would -be so many questions asked, even Dougal and Helen Blythe. I would have -had to summer and winter it, and her not very quick at the uptake. It is -a long time till Whit-Sunday,” said Lily, with a little quiver of her -lip. “I will just be Miss Ramsay till then.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, you will aye be Miss Lily to me, whatever!” Beenie cried.</p> - -<p>“And I am just Miss Lily,” said her mistress, with a little air of -dignity which was new to the girl. It was as if a princess had consented -to that humiliation, sweetly, with a grace of self-abnegation which made -it an honor the more.</p> - -<p>It cannot be denied, however, that it was difficult, after all the -agitations that had passed, after the supreme excitement of the New -Year, and the short, yet wonderful, union of their life together, to -fall back upon that solitude, and endeavor, once more, to “take an -interest” in the chickens and the ponies, and the humors of Sandy and -Dougal, which Lily, in the beginning, had succeeded in occupying herself -with to some extent. She did what she could now to rouse her own -faculties, to fill her mind with harmless details of the practical life. -How comforting it would have been had she but been compelled to plan and -contrive like Katrin for all those practical necessities—how to feed -her family, how to make the most of her provisions, how<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a>{214}</span> to diet her -cows and her hens; or like Dougal to care for the comfort of the beasts, -and amuse himself with Rory’s temper, and the remarks that little -snorting critic made upon things in general; or even to look over the -“napery” and see if it wanted any fine darning, as Beenie did, and to -regulate the buttons and strings of the garments and darning of the -stockings. Then Lily might have done something, trying hard to make -volunteer work into duty, and consequently into occupation and pleasure. -But, Beenie being there, she had no need to do what would have simply -thrown Beenie, instead of herself, out of work; and this was still more -completely the case with Katrin, who, gladly as she would have -contributed to the amusement in any way of her little mistress, would -have resented, as well as been much astonished by, any interference with -her own occupations. Lily could not do much more than pretend to be -busy, whatever she did. She knitted socks for Ronald; beguiled by -Beenie, she began with a little enthusiasm the manufacture into -household necessaries of a bale of linen found by Katrin among the -stores of the establishment, but stopped soon with shame, asking herself -what right she had to take Sir Robert’s goods for that “plenishing” of -abundant linen which is dear to every Scotch housewife’s heart. This was -a scruple which the women could not share. “Wha should have it if no -you?” cried Katrin. “Sir Robert he has just presses overflowing with as -nice napery as you would wish to see. There is plenty to set up a hoose -already, besides what’s wanted, and never be missed, let alone that -except yourself, my bonnie Miss Lily, there is nae person to use thae -fine sheets. But the auld leddy’s web that she had woven at the weaver’s -and never lived to make it up—wha should have it, I should like to -know, but you?”</p> - -<p>“Not while my uncle is the master, Katrin.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve nothing to say against Sir Robert,” cried Katrin—“he’s our -maister, it’s true, and no an ill maister, just gude enough as maisters -go—but the auld leddy was just<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a>{215}</span> your ain grandmother, Miss Lily, and -your plenishing would come out of her hands in the course of nature, and -for wha but you would she have given all that yarn (that she span -herself, most likely) to be made into a bonnie web o’ linen? There is -not a word to be said, as Robina will tell ye as weel as me. It’s just a -law afore a’ the laws that a woman has her daughter’s plenishing to look -to as soon as the bairn is born, and her bairn’s bairn with a’ the -stronger reason, the only one that is left in the auld house.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, Miss Lily, that’s just as sure as death,” Beenie said.</p> - -<p>But Lily was not to be convinced. She flung the great web of linen, in -its glossy and slippery whiteness, at the two anxious figures standing -by her, involving them both in its folds. “Take it yourselves, then,” -she said, with a laugh. “I am an honest lass in one way, if not in -another. I will have none of grandmamma’s linen that belongs to Sir -Robert and not to me.”</p> - -<p>And then Lily snatched her plaid from the wardrobe and wrapped it round -her, and ran out from all their exclamations and struggles for a ramble -on the moor. Oh, the moor was cold these February days, the frost was -gone and every thing was running wet with moisture, the turf between the -ling bushes yielding like bog beneath the foot, the long, withered -stalks of the heather flinging off showers of water at every touch, the -black cuttings gleaming, the burn running fast and full. Lily began a -devious course between the hummocks, leaping from one spot to another, -as she had done with Ronald, saturating herself with the chilly -freshness, as well as with the actual moisture, of the moor; but this -was an amusement which soon palled upon the girl alone. She felt the -exercise fatigue her. And the contrast between her solitude and the hand -so ready and so eager to help her was more than she could bear. It was -because they had to cling to each other so, because the mutual help was -so sweet, that they had loved it. Lily was reluctantly obliged to -confess that it was no<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a>{216}</span> fun alone, and though it was a relief to walk -even a little on the road, that was but a faint alleviation of the -monotony of life. Sometimes the aspect of the mountains stole her from -herself, or a sudden pageant of sunset, or something of a darker drama -going on, if she had but any interpretation of it, among those hills. -Any thing going on, if it were but the gathering of the mist and the -scent of the coming storm, was a relief to Lily. It was the long blank, -not a passenger on the road, not an event in the day, which she could -not bear.</p> - -<p>And then even if the walk, by dint of a sunset or some other occurrence, -had been enlivening, there was always the shock of coming back, the -shutting of her door against every invasion of life, the quiet that -might have been comfort to her old grandmother, the old leddy who had -spun the yarn for that web of linen, and received it home with -triumph—was it for the plenishing of Lily unborn? Lily came to have a -little horror of that old leddy. She figured her to herself spinning, -spinning, the little whirr of the wheel in its monotony going on for day -after day. Lily did not think of the sons away in the world—Robert -wherever there was fighting; her own father always in trouble—that -filled the old leddy’s thoughts, which were spun into that yarn, and -might have made many a pattern of mystic meaning in the cold snowy linen -which looked so meaningless. She used to sit in the silent room, feeling -that from some corner the old leddy’s eye was fixed upon her over the -whirring wheel, till she could bear it no more.</p> - -<p>She went down to Kinloch-Rugas to return Helen’s visit, but that was not -a happy experience. The old minister, half seen in the gloaming, seated -like a large shadow by the fire, gave her always a thrill of alarm. She -had hoped that he would not have treated her as a secret, that he would -have addressed her by her new name, and set her at once in a true -position. But he did not do this. He looked at her not unkindly, and -spoke to her with a compassionate tone in his voice. But he too seemed -to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a>{217}</span> accept the necessity which had been forced on her by a kind of -unspoken command, a dilemma from which she could not escape. In that -case the consciousness of being in the presence of a man who knew all, -but made no sign, sitting there by the side of innocent Helen, who knew -nothing, and who treated herself in all simplicity as the girl-Lily, the -same as she had known before, was intolerable; and Lily did not go back -again, much as the refuge of some other house to go to was wanted in her -desolate state. “You’ll come and see me, Helen?” “That will I, my dear. -You must not mind my father. He is kind, kind in his heart, and always a -soft place for you.” “I am not thinking that he is unkind,” said Lily. -Ah, no, the minister was not unkind! He was sorry for the young -abandoned wife; for, as he thought, the young betrayed woman; and Lily, -though she was not aware of this last aggravation, yet resented it, -feeling the pity in his tone. And why should any one pity her, or -venture to be sorry for her, and she, with no secret in her own honest -intention, Ronald Lumsden’s lawful wife?</p> - -<p>As the days lengthened it was possible to be out of doors more, and Lily -began to scour the country upon Rory, and to see, though in the doubly -cold aspect of this formidable northern spring, many places about in -which, in more genial weather, when “the families” were at home, there -might be friends to be made. She had come home tired from one of these -rides, and the day having been dry, had ventured a little on the moor, -holding up her riding-skirt, and looking toward the western hills, where -a great sunset was about to be accomplished and all the unseen -spectators were hastily putting on garments of gold and rose-color and -robes of purple for the ceremony. It was not like a mere bit of limited -sky, but a world of color, one hue of glory surging up after another as -from some great treasury in the depths below, changing, combining, -deepening, melting away in every kind of magical circle. Lily’s heart -was not very light, but it rose instinctively to that wonderful display -of nature. Oh, how beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a>{218}</span> it was! Oh, if there had only been some -one to whom to say that it was beautiful! Whether it was the glorious -color half blinding her with excessive radiance, or the thought of the -unshared spectacle, Lily’s eyes filled full of tears. Either cause was -enough. At Lily’s age, and in such circumstances as hers, the tears are -not slow to come.</p> - -<p>And then in a moment she felt a touch upon her waist and a voice in her -ear. “Was it ever like this before, my Lily, my Lily? or has it all -lighted up for you and me, and because I am back again?”</p> - -<p>There is one compensation for those who suffer from great anxiety, from -the misery of separation, from longing after things that seem -unattainable. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, a flood of -blessedness comes over them in the momentary attainment, the momentary -meeting, the instantaneous relief. It was like a warm tide that flooded -the heart of Lily, sweeping every fancy and every doubt away. She leaned -her head upon his shoulder, and murmured in her rapture: “Oh, Ronald, -you’ve come back!”</p> - -<p>“Did you think I could keep away from you?” he said. No, no; how could -he have kept away from her? He had come to claim her, as he had always -intended to claim her, now, this moment, before the world.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">He</span> had come back; he had come—could there be any doubt on that -point?—to take his wife away, to take her home.</p> - -<p>Lily, at least in her own mind, would admit of no doubt. She was -transported in a moment from the depths to the heights. So much the more -as it had been impossible yesterday to see any light, there was now such -a flushing of the whole horizon that doubt was out of the question. She -came toward the house with him with his arm around her, thinking of no -precautions. Why should they conceal<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a>{219}</span> any thing, this young pair? The -man had come to take his wife away. When he withdrew his arm from her -waist and drew her hand through it, it did not, however, strike her that -there was any thing in that. It was more decorous, like old married -people, no longer mere lad and lass. She walked proudly by his side, -leaning on his arm. Who cared if Sir Robert himself were there to see? -Lily had never cared much for Sir Robert, had always been ready to defy -him and vindicate her rights over her own life. As it happened there was -nobody but Katrin standing at the door, looking out with her hand over -her eyes. Katrin was very quick to make believe that she was dazzled by -any little bit of light.</p> - -<p>And the lonely moor lighted up and became as paradise to Lily. He -brought her all kinds of news, besides the best news of all, which was -to see him there. He brought back her old world to her—the world where -she had been so happy and so full of friends; her new world, where so -soon, in a day or two, she was to find her young companions again, and -resume the former life more cordial, more kind, more full of friendship -and every gentle affection than ever.</p> - -<p>While he sat there thawing, expanding, shaking the cold from him, Lily, -who a little while ago had been the fastidious little maiden, courted -and served, began to move about the room serving him, eager to get every -thing for him he wanted, to undo his muffler, to bring him his slippers. -Yes, she would have liked to bring him his slippers as she brought him, -like a house-maid, on a little silver salver, not a cup of tea, which -probably Ronald would not have appreciated, but something stronger, “to -keep out the cauld,” which Katrin recommended and brought upstairs with -her own hands to the drawing-room door. “You are not going to serve me, -my Lily?” Ronald said. “But I am just going to serve you,” she cried, -with a little stamp of her foot, “and who has a better right? and who -should wait on my man but me that am bound to take care of him? and him -come to take me away.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a>{220}</span></p> - -<p>Was she afraid to say these words out loud lest they should break the -spell? or was he afraid that she might say them and he not be able to -ignore them? But between them something was thrown down, a noise was -made in which they were inaudible. I do not know if Lily had any little -tremor that made her avoid explanation that evening; at all events she -had a sort of hunger to be happy, to enjoy it to the utmost. She laid -the table with her own hands, shutting the door in the face of the -astonished Robina, who hurried up as soon as she came in to have her -share. “I can do without you for all so grand as you think yourself,” -Lily cried; “I am just going to wait upon my own man!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Beenie, terrified; but she added to herself: -“What a good thing there’s naebody in the house! Dougal will not be in -till it’s late, and most likely he’ll be fou when he comes—and be nane -the wiser. And naething will need to be said.” I cannot tell whether -Katrin made quite the same explanation to herself; but she had taken her -precautions in case that should happen to Dougal which happened in these -days to many honest men on a market night without much infringement of -their character for sobriety. It would make the explanation much simpler -about the gentleman upstairs. In short, it would not be necessary to -make any explanation at all.</p> - -<p>“Get out the boxes, Beenie,” said Lily, at a later hour. “Do not make -any fuss or have things lying about, for gentlemen, you know, cannot -endure that; but just prepare quietly, without any fuss.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily! do you think it has come to that?” Beenie cried, -clasping her hands with a start of joyful surprise, but with a -countenance full of doubt.</p> - -<p>“And what else should it come to?” cried Lily, radiant. “Is this what -folk are married for, to live one in Edinburgh and one up far in the -Hielands? And what should my man come for but to take me home?”</p> - -<p>She must have believed it or she would not have said it with such -boldness. She gave Beenie a shake and then a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a>{221}</span> kiss, but cried: “Don’t -make a confusion, don’t leave the things lying about, for that is what -gentlemen cannot endure,” as she ran away to rejoin her husband. Robina -stood immovable, looking after her. “Who has learnt her that?” she said -to herself; and then she began to shake her head. “They soon, soon learn -what a gentleman canna bide; and set him up! that he should not bide any -thing coming from her!” But Beenie did not bring out any boxes. She -concluded that at all events it would be time enough for that to-morrow.</p> - -<p>Ronald remained for three or four days, during which time Dougal, who -had carried out the judicious previsions of the women, and had required -no explanations of any kind on the market night, maintained a very -sullen countenance and did not welcome the visitor, of whom he was -suspicious without well knowing why. During this time there was scarcely -any pretence kept up of sending Ronald off to the cottage of Tam Robison -or in any way making a stranger of him. He was “the young leddy’s -freend.” “Young leddies had nae sic freends in my time,” said Dougal. -“They have aye had them in my time,” said Katrin, “and that cannot be -far different.” He did not know what to say; but he was very glum, and -open to no blandishments on the part of the stranger. And those were -days of anxious happiness for Lily. Ronald said nothing upon that one -sole subject which she longed to know of. He sounded no note of freedom -amid all the litanies he sang to her about her own sweetness, her -beauty, her kindness. Lily grew sick of hearing her own praises. “Oh, if -he would but say I was an ugly, troublesome thing! and then say: ‘You -must be ready, Lily, for we’re going home to-morrow!’<span class="lftspc">”</span> But Lily was very -sweet to her husband; this short visit was full of delight to him; he -loved to look at her, to take her in his arms, to know she was his. -Going away from her was hard to bear. He would have bemoaned his very -hard case if he had not feared that she would beseech him to put an end -to it, to take her away with him, and that it need be hard no longer. -That was not what he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a>{222}</span> wanted. He preferred the moments of rapture and -the separations between. At least he preferred them to the loss of many -other things which would be otherwise involved.</p> - -<p>One day they went down to the Manse, Lily riding upon Rory, and her -husband walking by her side. “You can say I have just come over for the -day,” he said. “The minister of course knows very well, but your friend -Miss Helen——”</p> - -<p>“Why should we tell lies about it, Ronald? Isn’t it very easy, very easy -to understand?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes,” he said, “in any case it’s easy to understand; but we might -as well avoid gossip if we could.”</p> - -<p>“There would be no gossip,” cried Lily, “about a man coming to see his -wife! The only thing would be that folk would wonder why he did not take -her home.”</p> - -<p>“Folk would wonder about something, you may be sure; but I’ve noticed -that ladies think less of that than men. You think it is natural that -people’s minds should be occupied with you, my bonnie Lily. And so it -is; but not with a common man. Maybe it is the jealousy that’s in human -nature. I hate the chance of it, you see!”</p> - -<p>He spoke with a little vehemence, and Lily’s eyes filled with tears. It -was almost approaching the border of a first quarrel. “You and me,” she -said plaintively, “though I would not have believed it, Ronald, do not -always think the same.”</p> - -<p>“Did we ever think the same? No, Lily. But so long as we feel the -same—and it’s best to be on the safe side. I’ll say I have come over -for the day from—what do you call that place?—Ardenlennie, on the -other side, where I had to see Sir John’s man of business—which is -true. And I found you coming out to pay your visit and came with you. -Will that do?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, it will do as well as any other—false story,” said Lily, “if we -are to go on telling lies all our days!”</p> - -<p>“Not all our days, I hope,” he said gently. He was very good to her. No -lover could have been more devoted<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a>{223}</span> to her service, with no eyes or ears -but for her. That ride, though Lily was not happy in the depths of her -heart, though she was fretted almost beyond endurance, was yet sweet to -her in spite of herself. “Do you mind how we careered along that other -day, me riding, you running,” he said, “pushing at Rory behind, and -pulling him before, and the poor little beast astonished with the weight -on him of a long-legged chield instead of a bonnie lady? My Lily, what -you did for me that day! What should I have done without you—at that or -any other time?”</p> - -<p>“You have to do without me—not that I think I am much good—when you go -away.”</p> - -<p>“Come,” he said, “you must not harp forever on this going away. Holloa!” -he added immediately, retiring from her side with a sudden impulse as if -some hand had pushed him away, “there is a man I know.”</p> - -<p>“A man you know!” she cried, startled, not so much by this intimation as -by the start it produced in him.</p> - -<p>“Not a very creditable acquaintance,” he went on, with a short laugh, -dropping Rory’s bridle and keeping, as Lily remarked with a pang, quite -apart from her. “I thought he had been at the other end of the world. He -is Alick Duff, one of the Duffs of Blackscaur. They were once the great -people up here; but the present laird, I believe, is never at home. You -might ride on while I say a word to him. He’s not an acquaintance for -you.”</p> - -<p>Rory, however, at this moment did not show any inclination to quicken -his pace, and Lily heard the greeting between the two men. “Holloa, -Lumsden, is that you?” and “Duff! I thought you were at the other end of -the world!”</p> - -<p>“Well, no, here I am—no in such clover as you,” said the new-comer, -with a rough laugh. “Present me to the lady, Ronnie—Miss Ramsay, I’m -sure.”</p> - -<p>“This is Mr. Alick Duff—Miss Ramsay,” Lumsden said with a dark color on -his face. “We are going the same way.”</p> - -<p>“And I’m going the contrary road—I’m sorry,” said the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a>{224}</span> stranger, who -was a heavy man, older and far less well looking than Ronald. “I’m going -to have a look at the old place and see if they’ll have any thing to say -to me there. Then I’m off again to the ends of the world, as you say; -and the further the better,” he added, again with a harsh laugh. Rory by -this time had moved on, and Lily, though she heard the men’s voices -almost loud on the still air, did not make out what they said. In a few -moments Ronald rejoined her almost out of breath.</p> - -<p>“That’s the black sheep of the family,” he said; “not likely he’ll get -much of a reception at home, even if there’s any body there. The only -thing that could be wished, for all belonging to him, is that he should -never be heard of more.”</p> - -<p>“He is a dreadful-looking man,” said Lily, with a shudder, “and seems to -laugh at every thing, and looks as if he might do any terrible thing.”</p> - -<p>“You should ask Helen Blythe about that,” Ronald said. He was still -keeping at a certain distance, the other wayfarer being still in sight. -Ronald did not know that, when at the sudden turn of the next corner he -resumed his place at Rory’s bridle, it was almost in the heart of his -wife to have pushed him back with her hands. This incident stopped the -question about Helen Blythe which was trembling on Lily’s lips. What -could he know about Helen Blythe, and what could she have to do with -this dreadful man?</p> - -<p>The minister sat in his big chair as usual, immovable, by the fire, with -a keen glance at Ronald and another at Lily as they came in. Lily was a -little flushed with the fresh air and exercise, and with the -associations of the place, and the sense that to one person here at -least her secret was known. She would not take upon herself a syllable -of the explanation which Ronald hastened to give fluently over her -shoulder. “I am up at Ardenlennie, on business with Sir John’s factor,” -he said, “and I was so fortunate as to find Miss Ramsay just setting out -on a visit to you, so I thought I might come too.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a>{225}</span></p> - -<p>“You’re welcome,” said the minister curtly. “Come in to the fire, my -dear young lady, and take a seat here.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, Lily, my dear,” cried Helen, “I am feared you are not well, for -you’ve turned white in a moment after that bonnie color you had!” Helen -herself was not looking well. There was a little redness in her eyes, as -if she had been crying, and her cheeks were still paler than Lily’s. She -was interrupted by her father’s peremptory voice:</p> - -<p>“If you would but let your friends be! Sit down here and rest. No doubt -ye’re both tired and cold. And, Eelen, if you had any sense, you would -get the tea.”</p> - -<p>“That’s one word for you, Lily, and two for himself,” said Helen, with a -smile. “He’s as fond of his tea as if he were an old woman. I will just -tell Marget and come back in a moment.” Perhaps she was glad to be out -of sight, even for that moment; but poor Lily, wholly occupied with her -own concerns, and wondering whether Helen knew any thing, or how much -she knew, or what she would think of this dreadful deception, had no -leisure in her mind to think of any possible troubles of Helen’s own.</p> - -<p>“Did you meet any—waif characters on the road?” the minister said, with -a bitter pause before the last words to give emphasis. It was said loud -enough for Helen to hear.</p> - -<p>“We met—Alick Duff; I thought he was in Australia or America. He is not -precisely what one would call a—fine character,” Lumsden said.</p> - -<p>“There are not very many of them about,” said the old man; “some take -one turn and some another; but them that stick to the straight road are -few, as was said on a—more important occasion. And how will you be -liking your stay in Dalrugas, Miss Lily, after all the daffing of the -New Year is over? A visitor for a day or so maybe makes it bearable; but -it’s lonely for the like of you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh,” cried Lily, involuntarily putting her hands together, “I get very -tired of it! But I think,” she added, with a confidence she was far from -feeling, “that I shall not be very long there now.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! ye think ye will not be very long there?” he repeated<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a>{226}</span> after her. -There was not very great assurance or encouragement in his voice.</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Helen, who had come back, “I understand it’s dull for you; -but here is one person that will be very sorry, Lily. It will, maybe, be -better for you, but the whole countryside will miss you; for many a one -takes pleasure to see you pass—you and the powny—that never has said a -word to you. She is just a public benefit,” said the minister’s -daughter, “with her bonnie face.”</p> - -<p>A silence ensued, nobody said a word, and it became visible that Helen’s -cheeks were a little glazed, as if by sudden application of cold water -to wash away certain stains from her eyes. She had seated herself for a -moment where all the light from the window fell on her, but restlessly -jumped up again and began to remove her work and some books from the -table in preparation for tea. “And when are you leaving this -neighborhood, Mr. Lumsden? I hope you have some time to stay.”</p> - -<p>“Alas! I am going to-morrow. A man who has his work to do has little -leisure,” said Ronald. “We must keep our noses to the grindstone -whatever happens. Ladies are better off.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think we are better off,” said Helen, with a sigh, “to bide at -home whatever happens, and wait for news that maybe never comes? to see -the others go away, and never be able to follow them, except with the -longings of our hearts? I have had two brothers——” she said, with a -sudden little catch in her throat.</p> - -<p>“Eelen,” said the minister, “I never knew you for a hypocrite, whatever -you were. It is none of your brothers——”</p> - -<p>“Oh, father, how can you ken? Do I wear my heart on my sleeve that you -can tell what’s in it? You never thought much about them yourself, and -how could you know what was in another’s heart? But it’s not for me to -speak. I have aye my duty. It’s just Mr. Lumsden’s notion that it’s a -fine thing for us to sit quiet at home and endure all things and never -hear.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a>{227}</span></p> - -<p>“Well, here is your tea at all events,” said Mr. Blythe, “and I see -James Douglas passing the window to get a cup. When there’s nothing to -do in an afternoon and every thing low, as it is at that period in the -day, there is a great diversion in tea. In fact,” he added, “the best of -meals is just the diversion they make. You are shaken out of yourself. -Ye say your grace and ye carve your chuckie, or even a sheep’s head on -occasion, and your thoughts are taken clean away from the channel, maybe -a troublesome one, that they are in. Still better is a cup of tea. Come -ben, come ben, Mr. Douglas; there’s plenty of room for you. We were just -thinking, Eelen and me, that it is a long time since you have been -here.”</p> - -<p>A pleasant light shone in the young minister’s face. “If I thought I -could make myself missed, I would have the heart to stay away longer -still,” he said, “but then I think that out of sight is often out of -mind.”</p> - -<p>It was pathetic to observe how he sought the eyes of Helen, and how he -contrived to put his chair next hers at the table, round which they all -sat. Helen took but little notice of the gentle young man; she set down -his cup before him with a precipitation that was almost rude, and turned -away to Lily, with whom she talked in an undertone. What about? Neither -one nor the other knew. Yet neither one nor the other had any perception -of what was in her neighbor’s bosom. Helen’s trouble to her filled all -the world. It was greater than anything else she knew; the air tingled -with it; the very horizon could scarcely contain it. Lily, a child, with -all the world smiling upon her!—what could there be in her lot to -approach the greatness of the pain which Helen had to bear? She was half -angry with the girl for making a fuss about being dull, as if that -mattered; or seeing her sweetheart only by intervals, which was all, she -thought, that Lily had to complain of. The little spoiled child! but -what a real heartbreak was, Helen knew.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a>{228}</span></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">“Did</span> you mean that, Ronald—that you are really going away to-morrow?”</p> - -<p>“Indeed and alas, I meant it, Lily. It is the middle of the session. How -could I stay longer? It was, as I said to the minister—though you never -more than half believe what I say—a real piece of business with Sir -John’s factor at Ardenlennie that gave me the occasion of spending a few -days with my Lily, which I seized upon without giving you any warning, -as you know.”</p> - -<p>“And me that thought you could not do without me one day longer, and -were coming hurrying to bring your wife home!”</p> - -<p>“My darling!” said Ronald, with no lack of ardor on his part. “But then -my bonnie Lily has always sense to know that the longing of the heart -changes nothing, and that it is no more the term in March than it is in -January. Where could I find a place to put you now, or till Whit-Sunday -comes?”</p> - -<p>Was it true? Oh, yes; it was true. In Scotland you do not find an empty -house and go into it whenever you want to—especially not in the -Scotland of those days. You have to wait for the term, which is the -legitimate time. Nevertheless Lily was very sure that, if she were now -in Edinburgh looking for a place to establish her nest in, she would -find it; but perhaps a man has not the time, perhaps he cannot take the -trouble, going upstairs and down stairs looking at all kinds of unlikely -places. This, Lily felt sure, was another of the things that gentlemen -could not abide.</p> - -<p>“We must make the best of you, then, while we have you,” she said, -drawing her chair to the side of the fire<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a>{229}</span> after their dinner together. -It was cold at night, though the hardy folk of the North were content to -believe that spring was coming, and that there was a different “feel” in -the air. The wind was sweeping over the moor as keen as a knife, bending -the gray bushes of the ling and spare rowan-trees that cowered before it -like human travellers caught in the cutting breeze. There was a cold -moon shining fitfully, with frightened, swift-flying glimpses from among -the clouds which flew over her face. Colder than the depth of winter -outside, but within, with the firelight and lamplight, and Lily making -the best of her husband’s flying visit, very bright and very warm.</p> - -<p>“I will just look for the next term, Ronald, and pack up all my things -and be ready, so that if you came suddenly, as you did the other -day——”</p> - -<p>“Do you bid me, then,” he said, “not to come till Whit-Sunday? which is -a long time to be without a sight of my Lily. If I should have another -chance like this of getting a day or two—which is better than -nothing——”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, do not miss the day or two,” cried Lily; “how could you think I -meant that? But I’ll look for the term-time, like the maids when they’re -changing their places. It’s more than that to me, for it will be the -first home I have ever had. Uncle Robert’s house was never a home—there -was no woman in it.”</p> - -<p>“Nor will there be any woman, Lily——”</p> - -<p>“I will be the woman,” she cried, with a playful blow on his shoulder; -“it is me that will make it home. And you will be the man. And if any -stranger comes into it—not to say a poor, motherless bairn like what I -was—their hearts will sing for pleasure; for there will be one for -kindness and warmness, and one for protecting and caring, and that will -make it home. Uncle Robert was but one, and not one that was caring. If -you were there, he just let you be. ‘Oh,’ he would say, ‘you are here!’ -as if it was a surprise. Do you wonder that I hunger and thirst for my -own home, Ronald, when I never had in my life any thing but that?”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a>{230}</span></p> - -<p>“It will come in its time, my Lily,” he said, holding her close to him, -with her hands in his.</p> - -<p>“Ay, but you mind what Shakespeare says: ‘While the grass grows——’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“If the proverb was musty then,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “it’s -mustier now.”</p> - -<p>“So it is; but as true as ever. And I weary for it, I weary for it!” -cried the girl. “However, sit you there, and me here; and we’ll think it -is our own house—that you will have come in, and you will have had your -dinner, and you will be telling me every thing that has passed in the -day.”</p> - -<p>“What, all the pleas before the Fifteen, and old Watty’s speeches, and -the jokes of Johnny Law, and the wiles of——”</p> - -<p>“Every one of them! When you are in a profession, you should know every -thing about it. If you were a—tailor, say, who would make your fine -buttonholes, and the braiding of the grand waistcoats, but your wife? Or -a—school-master it would be me to look after the exercises; and -wherefore not an advocate’s wife to know all about the Parliament House, -and how to conduct a case if there should be occasion?”</p> - -<p>“So that you might go down to the court instead of me, and plead for me -if I had a headache,” said Ronald, laughing. “It would be grand for my -clients, Lily, for I’ll answer for it, with Symington on the bench, and -Hoodiecraw and the two Elders, you would gain every plea.”</p> - -<p>“That’s while I am young and——” said Lily, with a little toss of her -head. She was saucy and gay and full of malice, as he had never seen -her, for this was not much Lily’s way. “I did not say I would plead; but -I would have to know. Every thing you would have to tell me, as well as -the jokes of the old lords.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Ronald, “I might do that, and you would take no harm, for -you would not understand them, my Lily. But they all like a bonnie lass, -and you would win every plea. I’ll tell you all the stories, Lily, and -there are<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a>{231}</span> plenty of them. The plainstanes of the Parliament House know -more human trouble and vice than any other place in Edinburgh. I’ll tell -you——”</p> - -<p>“Oh, not the wicked things!” cried Lily, clasping her hands, “for how -could we help those that suffer by them? or what could that have to do -with you and me?”</p> - -<p>“If you leave out the wicked things, there would be little to do,” said -Ronald, “for the courts of law.”</p> - -<p>“But we will leave them out!” cried Lily. “All our cases shall be about -mistakes, or something that comes from not understanding; so that as -soon as you put it to them very clear they will see the right and own it -and go back to the just way. For there is nobody that would not rather -be in the right than in the wrong if they knew, and that is my -principle; things are so twisted in and out it’s hard to understand; and -bad advice and thinking too much of himself make a man do a sudden thing -without thinking, till he finds that it is wrong. And then when he sees, -he is sorry and puts it back.”</p> - -<p>“If it were so easy as all that, Lily, it would be new heavens and a new -earth.”</p> - -<p>“Well, we’ll try,” said Lily gayly. She was so gay, she was so full of -quips and cranks, so ready with amusing turns of speech and audacious -propositions, that Ronald found her a new Lily, full of brightness and -fun and novel, ridiculous suggestions and high-flown notions, which she -was ready herself to laugh at as high-flown, yet taking his sober -thoughts to pieces and turning them upside down. What would it be, -indeed, to carry her away with him, to have her always there, turning -every little misfortune into fun and laughter, making every misadventure -a source of amusement instead of trouble! A gleam of light rose in his -eyes, and then he shook his head slightly to himself and sighed. The -shake of the head and the sigh were when Lily’s back was turned. He -dared not let her see them, divine them, answer them with a hundred -quick-flashing arguments. She had an answer for every thing, he knew. -She cared nothing for the things that were, after all, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a>{232}</span> chief things -to care for—money, progress in the world, that sound foundation in life -without which no man could make sure of rising to the head of his -profession. Some did it without doubt. There was Lord Pleasaunce, that -had fought his way to the bench, marrying a wife and beginning in a -garret, as Lily wished; now he thought of it, she was something like -Lily, the judge’s wife, though fat now and roundabout. They had even -been Lord Advocate in their time, and gone to London (with such a -couple, even Ronald felt instinctively, you don’t say he, but they) and -struggled through somehow; but always poor, always poor! They did not -seem to mind; but then Ronald knew that he would always mind. They had -no fortunes for their daughters nor to put out their sons well in the -world. He shook his head again as he rejected once more that possibility -which for a moment, only for a moment, had caught and almost beguiled -him. Lily had gone out of the room, but, coming back, caught that last -shake of his head.</p> - -<p>“And what is that for?” she said. “You will have been thinking that Lily -is good for very little, that she could not keep the house and make the -meat as she thinks, but would look to be served herself, hand and foot, -as she is here.”</p> - -<p>“Not that—but still my Lily has always been served hand and foot. There -is Beenie, without whom we cannot budge a step——”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Lily gravely, “without Beenie I could not budge a step—not -because Beenie is my maid, and I need her to serve me, but because it -would break her heart.”</p> - -<p>“My love, poor folk as we shall be cannot afford to think of breaking -hearts.”</p> - -<p>“I will break yours rather!” cried Lily, with a little stamp of her -foot. “I will give ye ill dinners and a house that is never redd up, and -keep Beenie like a lady in the best room and give her all the good -things.”</p> - -<p>“That is just what I say,” said Ronald; “we will have a train—all the -old servants that cannot endure their lives without Miss Lily, perhaps -Katrin and Dougal, too.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a>{233}</span></p> - -<p>Lily stood looking at him for a moment, with her eyes enlarged and her -face pale. “Is it in fun, or in earnest?” she said, with a little gasp.</p> - -<p>“Oh, in fun, in fun,” he said hastily, “though considering how they have -fulfilled their duty to Sir Robert, it would not be strange if he turned -them out of his doors—and whom, then, could they turn to but you and -me?”</p> - -<p>“It is not for you and me to blame them,” said Lily, still under the -impression of what he had said, “and this is not the kind of fun that is -good fun. But it is true, after all, though I never thought of that -before. Katrin is kind, but she has, perhaps, not been quite as true to -Uncle Robert as to me; but Dougal, he knows nothing. Dougal has never -known any thing; he has never meant to desert Uncle Robert. Ronald,” -cried Lily, with sudden affright, “we have all been cheating Uncle -Robert! This is what we have done, and nothing else, since you first -came here.”</p> - -<p>“I am well aware of it, Lily,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “and for my -part I am quite agreed to go on cheating Uncle Robert for as long as you -please.”</p> - -<p>“It does not please me!” she said; “I would like to cheat nobody. It is -a new thing to me—I did not think of that. Oh, Ronald, take me away! I -laugh and I chatter, but my heart’s breaking. We are cheating every -body—not Uncle Robert only, but Helen Blythe and every creature that -knows me. What do I care how poor we are, or if I have to work for my -living? I will work, oh, with a good heart! but take me away, take me -away!”</p> - -<p>Ronald held her hands in his and steadied her against her will. He had -foreseen such an outburst, as well as the other manifestations of her -agitated and disturbed life. He was ready to allow even that it was no -wonder she became excited by times, that she had been more patient than -he could have hoped. He was himself very cool, and could afford to be -moderate and humor her. He held her hands in his, and restrained the -violence of her feelings by<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a>{234}</span> that steady clasp. “My Lily, my Lily!” he -said. The girl yielded to that restraining influence in spite of -herself. She could almost have struck him in the vehemence of her -passion and in the intolerable sensation of this sharp light upon the -situation altogether; but the cool touch of his hands, his firm hold, -his soothing voice, subdued her. The question between two people at such -a crisis is almost entirely the question which is stronger, and on this -occasion Ronald was certainly the stronger. When Lily’s passion ended in -the natural flood of tears, she shed them on his shoulder, encircled by -his arm, all her resistance quenched. And he was very kind to her; no -one could have consoled her more lovingly, or more tenderly soothed the -nervous and excited feelings which had got beyond her control. He was -master of the situation, and felt it, but used his power in the most -gentle way. And Lily said not a word more—what was there to be said? -She had put herself in the wrong by her passion and by her tears. This -was not the calm reason with which a woman ought to discuss the -beginning of her life—with which, she said to herself, a man expected -his wife to consider and discuss these affairs. She had neither been -calm nor reasonable. She had been passionate, excited, perhaps -hysterical. Lily was deeply ashamed of herself. She was humble toward -him who must, she thought, be disappointed in her, and find her like the -women in books, all folly and excitement, instead of a creature able to -take all the circumstances into consideration. Nothing could have -subdued her spirits like that sense of being in the wrong.</p> - -<p>Later in the evening she endeavored to make up for her foolishness by -returning to the mood of gayety with which she began the evening. She -gave Ronald a little sketch of the humors of Rory, and the respect in -which Dougal held that small and fiery personage. She told him about -Katrin’s cows and her chickens, and the amusement which these living -creatures had given during the long winter days to the little family at -Dalrugas.</p> - -<p>“But spring is coming,” he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a>{235}</span></p> - -<p>“Oh, yes; spring is coming; the moor will soon be dry enough for -walking, and many a ramble I will have. I am beginning,” said Lily, “to -grow very fond of the moor. You see, it is all we have. It’s cross and -market and college and court and all together to me. In the morning the -bees will be busy among the whins—there is always a bud somewhere on a -whin bush—and full of honey as they can hold; and then in the evening -there is the sunset, and the hills all standing out against the west, -with their old purple cloaks around them. What with the barnyard and -what with the moor, there’s no want of diversion here.”</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily,” he cried in sudden compunction, “not much diversion -for the like of you!”</p> - -<p>“What do you call the like of me? I am very well off. I have neighbors -and all. There is Helen Blythe, poor thing, she is not so well off. The -minister is a handful; he holds her night and day. And who was yon glum -man, Ronald, and what had he to do with her? Her eyes were red, and she -had been crying; and I am sure it was something about that man.”</p> - -<p>“Alick Duff? Nonsense, Lily! He is a black sheep, if ever there was one. -That was all a foolish story, we’ll suppose. A good little thing like -the minister’s daughter should never be thrown away on him.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps she is a good little thing. We are all good little things till -we show ourselves different. But her eyes were red and her cheeks were -pale. I must see if I can comfort her,” said Lily half to herself. “And -now, sir, if you are going away to-morrow, you should go to your bed, -for you’ll have a weary day.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I shall have a weary day; but I could bear that and more to see my -Lily,” Ronald said.</p> - -<p>“Well, if you care for her at all, you would need to do that, for she -must either be there or here,” Lily said. “It’s a pity I’m solid, that I -cannot fly away like the birds, and tap at your window as the lady does -in the ballad. What ballad? I don’t remember. Perhaps it was after<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a>{236}</span> she -was dead. And does Mrs. Buchanan always make you comfortable and cook as -well as Katrin? Oh, Katrin is very good for some things, though you -think her an ill housekeeper for Uncle Robert. But never mind that. Tell -me about Luckie Buchanan. I will wager you a silver bawbee, as Beenie -says, that she does not send you up your bird as good as we do here.”</p> - -<p>“Nothing is so good as it is here. You take me up too quick, Lily.”</p> - -<p>“Me take you up quick? I do nothing but try to please you. But I know -how it is, Ronald. You think shame of Luckie Buchanan. She burns your -bird, and she does your chop in the frying-pan, and her kettle is not -half boiled. Young men are very badly treated in their lodgings. I know -very well. Uncle Robert’s men that came to see him were always -complaining, and they were old men that could make their curries -themselves and drive womenfolk desperate, whereas you’re only young and -would think shame to look as if you cared. I wonder if she brushes your -clothes right, and gives you nice burnished boots, as you like them to -be,” said Lily, with a critical look at the sleeve of his coat, which -she was smoothing down with her hand.</p> - -<p>“You will make me think myself a terrible being, taken up with my own -wants,” he said in a vexed tone.</p> - -<p>“It is me that am taken up with your wants,” she said, “and what more -right than that—a man’s wife! What is the good of her but to look after -her man! And when I cannot do it for failure of circumstances, not good -will, then I must just ask and plague you till you tell me there’s -nothing more for me to do—till the term comes, and I go home to my -place,” cried Lily, with a laugh, but with two tears, which she turned -away her head that he might not see. “It’s my first place!” she cried. -“You cannot wonder I am excited about it, Ronald; and I hope I will give -you satisfaction—Beenie and me!”</p> - -<p>Next morning Lily got up without, as appeared, any cloud on her face, -and gave him his breakfast, and saw to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a>{237}</span> the packing of his bag, and that -his big coat was well strapped on to Sandy’s shoulders, who was to walk -into the town with him and carry his small belongings. “You will not -want it walking, but you will want it in the coach,” she said, “and be -sure you keep yourself warm, for, though it’s March, the wind is -terrible cold over the moor; and here is a scarf to put round your neck -for the night journey. It will keep you warm, and it will mind you of -me.”</p> - -<p>“Do I want that to mind me of my Lily?” he said reproachfully.</p> - -<p>“No, after I have been giving you such a taste of my humors, and you -know I am not just the good thing you thought. But you might be more -grateful for my bonnie scarf that I took out of the lavender to give you -to wrap round your throat at night! And it is a very bonnie scarf,” said -Lily; “look at the flowers worked upon it, the same on both sides, and -as soft as a dove’s feathers that are of silver. You will put it round -your neck and say Lily gave me this; and then at Whit-Sunday, when I -take up my place, I will find it again, laid away in some drawer, and I -will take it back, and it will belong then both to you and me.”</p> - -<p>“That is a bargain,” he said, more moved by the parting than he had ever -been; but Lily went with him to the head of the stairs, and there stood -looking after him from the staircase window, to keep up some sort of -transparent fiction for Dougal’s sake, with her eyes shining and a smile -upon her mouth. She was resolved that this was how he should see her -when he went away. There should be no more breakings down. She would -importune him no more. She would not shed a tear. When he turned round -to wave his hand before he disappeared under the bank, she was still -smiling and calm. It was, perhaps, a little startling to Ronald, who had -never seen her so reasonable before—and reasonableness, though so -desirable, is sometimes a little alarming too.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a>{238}</span></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">When</span> she was sure that the travellers were out of sight, Lily flew down -the spiral stairs, snatched her plaid from where it hung as she passed, -and rushed out to the only shelter and refuge she had—the loneliness -and silence of the moor. She had to push through between the two women, -who would so fain have stopped her to administer their consolation and -caresses, but whom, in her impatience, she could not tolerate, shaking -her head as they called after her to put on her plaid and that she would -get her death of cold. It was March and a beautiful morning, the air -almost soft in the broad beaming of the sun, and the moisture, which lay -heavy on the moss-green turf and ran and sparkled in little pools and -currents everywhere; but the breeze was keen and cold, and blew upon her -with a sharp and salutary chill, cooling her heated cheeks. Lily sprang -over the great bushes of the ling, which, bowed for a moment by her -passage, flung back upon her a shower of dew-drops as they recovered -their straightness, and the whins caught at the plaid on her arm as she -brushed past; but she took no notice of these impediments, nor of the -wetness under her feet, nor the chill of the air upon her uncovered -head, and shoulders clothed only in her indoor dress. She paused upon a -little green hillock slightly rising over the long level, which was a -favorite point of vision, and from which, as she had often found, the -furthest view was possible of any thing within the horizon of this -little world. But it was not to see that little speck on the road, which -was Ronald, that Lily had made this rush into the heart of the moor. It -was for the utter solitude, the silence which enclosed and surrounded -her, the separation from every thing that could intrude upon that little -speck of herself, so insignificant in the great fresh<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a>{239}</span> shining world, -yet so much more living in her trouble than all the mountains and the -moors. Lily sank down on the mossy green and covered her face with her -hands. She had shed passionate tears on her husband’s shoulder last -night, but these were different which forced their way now without any -thing to restrain them. They were not mere tears of a parting, which, -after all, was no wonderful thing. He would come again. Lily had no fear -that he would come again. She had no doubt of his love, no thought that -he might grow cold to her. Of the two it was Ronald who was the warmer -lover, holding her in perfect admiration as well as in all the fondness -of a young husband, which was not exactly what could be said on her -side. But his love was of a different kind, as perhaps a man’s always -is. He did not want all that she did in their marriage. A little house -of their own, wherever it was—a home, a known and certain place: was it -the woman who thought of this rather than the man? It gave her a pang -even to think that it might perhaps be so, or at least that Ronald did -not care for what she might suffer in this respect. He might be content -with casual visits, but what she wanted was her garret, her honest name, -and honor and truth.</p> - -<p>And then Whit-Sunday, Whit-Sunday, the term when people did their -flitting, and the maids went to their new places! Oh, happy, honest -prose that had nothing to do, Lily thought, with romance or poetry. -Would it come—in two months, not much more—and make an end of all -this? or would it never come? Poor Lily’s heart was so wrung out of its -right place that she lost her confidence even in the term; she could -scarcely think of any thing in earth or heaven, she who had once been so -confident, of which she could now think that there was no fear.</p> - -<p>By this time the cold had begun to creep to Lily’s heart, her fever of -excitement having found vent, and she was glad to wrap herself closely -in her plaid, putting it over her head and gathering the soft folds -round her throat. She put back the hair which the cold breeze and the -disorder<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a>{240}</span> of her weeping had brought about her face, smoothing it back -under the tartan screen, the soft warm folds that gave a little color to -her pale face. Oh, if she could have had a plaid, but that of Ronald’s -tartan, to wrap about her heart, the chilled spirit and soul that had no -warmth of covering! But that must not be thought of now, when Lily’s -business was to go back to her dreary home, to meet the eyes that would -be fixed upon her, to bear her burden worthily, and to betray to no one, -even her most confidential companion, the doubts and terrors that were -in her own heart.</p> - -<p>As she came out upon the road, having made a long round of the moor to -give herself more time, Lily perceived two figures in front of her, whom -she did not at once recognize; but after a moment or two her attention -was attracted by the voice of the man, who spoke loudly, and by -something in the attitude of the little figure walking by his side, and -replying sometimes in an inaudible monosyllable, sometimes by a -deprecating gesture only, to his vehement words. Was it Helen Blythe who -was here so far from home by the side of a man who spoke to her almost -roughly, certainly not as so gentle a creature ought ever to have been -spoken to? It was some time before Lily’s faculties were sufficiently -roused to hear what he was saying, or at least to discover that she -could hear if she gave her attention; when, however, a sudden “If you -had ever loved me, Helen!” caught her ear, Lily cried out in alarm: “Oh, -whisht, whisht! Whoever you are, I am coming behind you and I can hear -what you say.”</p> - -<p>The man turned round almost with rage, showing her the dark and clouded -face of the stranger whom she had met the day before with Ronald, and -who was the cause, as she had divined, of Helen’s sad eyes. “Confound -you!” he cried in his passion, “can ye not pass on, and leave the road -free to folk going about their own business?” These words came out with -a rush, and then he paused and reddened, and took off his hat. “Miss -Ramsay!” he said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a>{241}</span> “I beg your pardon,” placing himself hastily between -her and his companion.</p> - -<p>“I neither want to see nor hear,” cried Lily. “Let me pass; you need -have no fear of me.”</p> - -<p>At the voice Helen came quietly out of his shadow. “You need not hide me -from Lily,” she said, “for Lily is my dear friend. I’ve walked far, far -from home, Lily, with one that—one that—I may never see again,” she -said, turning a pathetic look upon the man by her side. “He blames me -now, and perhaps I am to be blamed. But to think it is, maybe, the last -time, as he is telling me, breaks my heart. Lily, will you take us in, -if it was only for half-an-hour? I feel as if I could not go on another -step, for my heart fails me as well as my feet.”</p> - -<p>“You never told me you were wearied, Helen!” he cried in a tone of -fierce penitence. “How was I to know? I could have carried you like a -feather.”</p> - -<p>She shook her head. “You could carry more weight than me, Alick, but as -soon Schiehallion as me. And I was not wearied till I saw rest at hand.”</p> - -<p>“Miss Ramsay,” he said, “you know what she and I are to each other.”</p> - -<p>“I know nothing,” cried Lily, “and you need not tell me, for what Helen -does is always right; but come in and welcome, and have your talk out in -peace. Never mind to explain to me—I scarcely know your name.”</p> - -<p>“It is, alas, no credit, or rather I am no credit to a good name that -has been well kept on this countryside; but we are old, old friends, -Helen Blythe and me. She should have been my wife, Miss Ramsay, though -you might not think it, nearly ten long years ago. If she had kept her -promise, they would never have called me wild Alick Duff, and the black -sheep of the family, as they do now. This is the third time I’ve come -back to bid her keep her word; for I have her word, rough and careless -as you may think me. Each time I’m less worth taking than I was the time -before, and I’m not going to risk it any more. When she drops me this -time, I will just go to the devil,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a>{242}</span> which is the easiest way, and -trouble nobody more about me.”</p> - -<p>“And why should you go to the devil?” said Lily, “for that is what -nobody except your own self can make you do.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, do not hearken to him, Lily; let us come in for half-an-hour, for -neither will my feet carry me nor will my heart hold me up if there is -more.”</p> - -<p>Lily made her guests enter before her when they reached the door of -Dalrugas; but lingering behind as Helen made her way slowly with her -tired steps up the spiral stairs, caught Duff by the sleeve and spoke in -his ear: “Do you not think shame of yourself to break her heart, a -little thing like that, with putting the weight of your ill deeds upon -her, and you a big strong man?”</p> - -<p>“Me—think shame!” he said, with a low laugh.</p> - -<p>“<i>I</i> would think shame,” cried Lily vehemently, all her hot blood -surging up in her veins, “to lay the burden of a finger’s weight upon -her, and her not a half or a quarter so big as me!”</p> - -<p>This sharp, indignant whisper Helen heard as a murmur behind her while -she went up the stairs. She turned round when she reached the -drawing-room, meeting the others as they appeared after her. “And what -were you two saying to each other?” she asked, with a tremulous smile.</p> - -<p>“I am going,” said Lily, “to leave you to yourselves; and when you have -had your talk out, you will come down to me to have something to eat; -and then we will think, Helen, how we are to get you home.”</p> - -<p>“You are coming in here, Lily. Him and me we have said all there is to -be said. And he has told you what there is between us, as perhaps I -would never have had the courage to do. Come and tell him over again, -Lily, you that are a young lass and have known no trouble—tell him what -a woman can do and cannot do, for he will not believe me.”</p> - -<p>“How can I tell? that have known no trouble, as you say,” cried Lily. -But Helen knew nothing to explain the keen tone of irony that was in the -words, and looked at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a>{243}</span> girl with an appeal in her patient eyes, too -full of her own sorrow to remember that, perhaps, this younger creature -might have sorrows too. “How should I know,” said Lily, “what a woman -cannot do? If it is to keep a man from wrong-doing, is that a woman’s -business, Helen? How do I know? They say in books that it’s the women -that drive them to it. Are you to take him on your shoulders and carry -him away from the gates of —— Or what are you expected to do?”</p> - -<p>“If she had married me when I asked her,” cried Duff, “she would have -done that. Ay, that she would! From the gates of hell, that a little -thing like you daren’t name. I would never have known the way they lay -if she had put her hand in mine and come with me. And that I have told -you, Helen, a hundred times, and a hundred more.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Alick, Alick!” was all that Helen said.</p> - -<p>“And you never would have thought shame,” cried Lily, “to ride by on her -shoulders, instead of walking on your own feet? I would have set my face -like a flint and passed them by, and scorned them that wiled me there! I -would have laid it upon nobody but myself if I had not heart enough to -save my own head!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Lily, Lily!” cried Helen, turning upon her champion, “my bonnie -dear! it’s you that are too young to understand. Maybe he’s wrong, but -he’s a kind of right, too. I am not blaming him for that. Many a woman -keeps a man on the straight road almost without knowing, and him no -worse of it nor her either. I could tell you things! And, Alick, I will -not deceive you; if I had not been so young that time—if I had only had -the courage—for there was no reason then, but just that I was a young -lass, and frightened, and did not know—— There was no -reason—then——”</p> - -<p>“Except that I was wild Alick Duff, that they said would settle to -nothing, and not a man that would ever make salt to his kale.”</p> - -<p>Helen made no answer, but shook her head with a sigh.</p> - -<p>“How can I stand between you and him?” said Lily.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a>{244}</span> “You take away my -breath. I cannot understand the tongue you are speaking. It’s not good -English nor Scots either, but another language. Are we angels, to make -men good? and is it no matter what evil thing a woman takes into her -heart if she can but make her man look like a whited sepulchre, and keep -him, as you say, on the straight road? Is that what we were made for?” -she cried in all the indignation of her youth.</p> - -<p>Duff, a little surprised, a little confused by this unexpected -controversy, too much occupied with his own purpose not to be impatient -with any digression, yet uncertain whether this strange digression might -not serve his cause in the end, made answer, first fixing his eyes upon -Lily, the little girl who knew no trouble: “I’m thinking that was a good -part of it,” he said. “You had the most to do with bringing ill into the -world; you should have the most to do with driving it out. But what do I -care about women?” he cried. “It’s Helen I’m thinking of. There might -never be such another, but there she is that could have done it, and -would not lift her little finger. And now she will smile and send me -away.”</p> - -<p>“He speaks,” cried Lily, “as if it were your responsibility and not -his—as if you would be answerable!”</p> - -<p>“Oh,” said Helen in a hurried undertone, “and that is what I lie and -think upon in the watches of the night. Will the Lord demand an account -at my hands? Will he say: ‘Helen, where is thy brother?’ I that was -maybe appointed for him to be his keeper, to take care of him, with all -his hot blood and all his fancies that nobody understood but me!”</p> - -<p>Duff was walking impatiently about the room, not listening to what the -two women spoke between themselves, and Lily was too much bewildered by -this new view to make any answer, except by a brief exclamation: “It is -like a coward to put the blame upon you!”</p> - -<p>“I would not shrink from it if I might bear it,” said Helen. “It’s not -that. But to think it might be a man’s ruin that a poor frightened -creature of a woman—no, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a>{245}</span> lassie, twenty years old, no more—could not -see her duty. For there was no reason then. My mother was living, my -father was a strong man. The boys had been unlucky, but me, I was free. -And I let him go away. Oh, lay the wyte on me!” she said, clasping her -hands. “Oh, lay the wyte on me!”</p> - -<p>Duff came suddenly to a stand-still before her, catching up something of -what she said. “I’ll forgive you all that’s come and gone, and all that -might have been, and the vows I’ve broken, and the little good I’ve ever -done”—a tender light came over his dark face—“Helen, I’ll forgive you -all my ruin, and we’ll gather up the fragments that are left, if you -will but come with me now.”</p> - -<p>“Forgive her!” cried Lily, indignant.</p> - -<p>“Ah, forgive her! you that know nothing of the heart of man. Can she -ever give it back? She says herself the Lord will seek my blood at her -hands: how much more me, that knows what might have been and never has -been because she was not there? But, Helen, let it be now! It may be but -the hinder end of life that’s left, but better that than nothing at all. -We are not so old yet, neither you nor me. And there’s the fragments -that remain—the fragments that remain.” He held out his hands toward -her, the face that Lily had thought so dark and forbidding melting in -every line, the lowering brows lifted, the fierce eyes softened with -moisture. And Helen looked up at him with her own overflowing, and a -light as of martyrdom on her face.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Alick, my father, my father! I cannot leave my father now.”</p> - -<p>He kicked away a footstool on the carpet with a sudden movement which, -to Lily, at first appeared as if he were offering violence to Helen -herself. “Your father!” he cried, “the minister that will have no broken -man for his daughter nor ill name for his house, that wants the siller -of them that come to woo, that would sell you away to that white-faced -lad because he has something to the fore and a respectable name! Oh, -don’t speak to me of your<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a>{246}</span> father, Helen Blythe, him that should be all -spirit and that’s all flesh! Confound him and you and all your sleekit -ways! In what way is he better than me?”</p> - -<p>“Man! you will kill her!” cried Lily, springing forward and putting -herself between them. “How dare you swear at her, that is far, far too -good for you!”</p> - -<p>But Helen was not horrified, like Lily. She looked at him still, bending -her head to the other side. “My father,” she said, “has his faults, like -us all. He is a mixture, as you are yourself. I am not angry at what you -say. He likes his pleasure as you do, Alick. He is more moderate: he is -a minister. He has not, maybe, been tempted like you, but I allow that -it is not far different. Perhaps in the sight of God——” But here her -voice failed her, suddenly interrupted by something deeper than tears.</p> - -<p>“He likes his pleasure,” said Duff, with a short laugh; “he likes a good -glass of wine, not to say whiskey, and a good dinner, and tells his -stories, and is no more particular when he’s with his cronies than me. -Only I’ll tell you what he does, Helen, that me I cannot do. Would he -have had it in him if he had not been a minister, nor had a wife, nor -been kept from temptation? That is what none of us can tell. He knows -when to stop; he likes himself better than his pleasures. He keeps the -string about his neck and stops himself when he’s gone far enough. I do -not esteem that quality,” cried the big man, striding about the room, -making the boards groan and creak. “I am not fond of calculation. Alick -Duff has cost me many a sore head and many a sore heart. I scorn him,” -he cried, with a strong churning out of the fierce letters that make up -that word, “both for what he’s done and what he hasn’t done. But it’s no -for him I would draw bridle if I were away in full career. But I would -for you!” he said, suddenly sinking his voice, and throwing himself in a -chair that swung and rocked under him by Helen’s side. “Helen, I would -for you!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a>{247}</span></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Lily</span> had an agitating and troubled day between this strange pair, which -had the good effect upon her, however, of turning her thoughts entirely -away from her own affairs, the struggle and trouble of which seemed of -so little importance beside this conflict which had the air of being for -life or death. She did not understand either of the combatants: the man -who so fearlessly owned his weaknesses, and put the weight of his soul -upon the woman who ought to have saved him; or the woman who did not -deny that responsibility, nor claim independence or a right irrespective -of him to follow her own way. Helen Blythe had ideas of life, it was -evident, very different from those that had ever come into Lily’s mind. -In those days there were no discussions of women’s rights; but in those -days, alas! as in all other periods, the heart of a high-spirited young -woman here and there swelled high with imagination, wrath, and -indignation at the thought of those indignities which all women had to -suffer. That it should be taken as a simple thing that any man, after he -had gone through all the soils and degradations of a reckless life, -should have a spotless girl given to him to make him a new existence, -was one of those bitter thoughts that rankled in the minds of many -women, though nothing was said on the subject in public, and very little -even among themselves. For those were subjects which girls shrank from -and blushed to hear of. The knowledge was horrible, and made them feel, -when any chance fact came their way, as if their very souls were soiled -by the hearing. Not that the elder women, especially those inconceivably -experienced and impartial old ladies of society, who see every thing -with the sharpest eyesight, and discuss every thing with words that cut -and glance like steel, and who<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a>{248}</span> have surmounted all that belongs to sex, -except a keen dramatic interest in its problems, did not talk of these -matters after their kind, as in all the ages. But the girls were not -told, they did not know, they shrank from information which they would -not have understood had it been conveyed to them, except, indeed, a few -principles that were broad and general: that to marry a girl to an old -man or a wicked man was a hideous thing, and that the old doctrine of a -reformed rake, which had been preached to their mothers, was a scorn to -womankind, and no longer to be suggested to them. For the magic of the -Pamelas was over, and Sir Walter had arisen in the sky, which cleared -before him, all noisome things flying where he made his honest, noble -way. Not much these heroes of his, people say, not worth a Tom Jones -with his stress and storm of life; but bringing in a new era, the young -and pure with the young and true, and not a whitewashed Lovelace in the -whole collection. Lily was of Scott’s age; and when she saw this wolf -approaching the lamb, or rather this black sheep, as every-body called -him, demanding a maiden sacrifice to clean him from his guilt, her heart -burned with indignation and the rage of innocence. She could not -understand Helen’s strange acquiescence, nor her sense of possible guilt -in not having accepted that part which was offered to her. The very -atmosphere which surrounded Duff was obnoxious to Lily: the roughness of -his tones and his clothes, his large, noisy movements and vehemence and -gestures. He had lost, she thought, that air of a gentleman which is the -last thing a man loses who is born to it, and never, as she believed, -loses innocently.</p> - -<p>She was glad beyond description when, after much more conversation, and -a meal to which his excitement and passion did not prevent him from -doing a certain justice, Duff was got out of the house, leaving Helen -behind, for whom the cart with the black pony had to be brought out once -more. Helen was greatly exhausted by all the agitations of the day. He -had left her without<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a>{249}</span> bringing her to any change of mind, yet vowing he -would see her once again and make her come with him still, that he would -not yet abandon all hope, while she sat tired out, shaking her head -softly, with a melancholy smile on her face—a smile more pitiful than -many complaints. She did not rise from her chair to see him go away, but -followed him with wistful eyes to the door—eyes that were full of a dew -of pain that flooded them, but did not fall. She did not say any thing -for a long time after he had gone. Was she listening to his steps as he -went away, leaving on the air a lingering sound, measured and heavy? -Helen had thought that footstep like music. She had watched for it many -a day, and heard it, as she thought, miles off, in the stillness of the -long country roads, and again, in imagination, many and many a day when -he was far out of hearing. She heard it now, long after it had been lost -by every ear but her own. Her face had a strained look, as if that sound -drew her after him, yet stronger resolution kept her behind.</p> - -<p>“You did not mean that, Helen—oh, not that!” Lily said, encircling her -friend with her arm.</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily! but that I did, with all my heart!”</p> - -<p>“That you, a good woman, would go away out into the world with an ill -man, knowing he was an ill man, and thinking that you could turn him and -mend him! Oh, Helen, Helen! take him to your heart, that is pure as -snow, knowing he was an ill man?”</p> - -<p>“Lily, you are very young—you are little more than a bairn. What are -our small degrees of good and ill—or rather of ill and worse—before -our Maker? Do you think he judges as we judge? They say my poor Alick is -wild, and well I wot he is wild, and has taken many, many a wrong step -on the road. Oh, if you think it presumptuous of me to believe I could -have held him fast so that he should not fall, that would be more true! -But, Lily, if ye were long in this countryside, you would see it with -your own e’en. The women long ago were not so feared as we were. They -just married the lad they liked, and if<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a>{250}</span> he were wild, forgave him; and -I’ve known goodwives that have just pushed them through—oh, just pushed -them through!—till they came to old age with honor on their heads and a -fine family about them, that would have sunk into the miry pit and the -horrible clay if the woman had not had the heart to do it. I am not -saying I had not the heart,” said Helen, with a melancholy shake of her -head, “but I was young and knew nothing, and the moment passed away.”</p> - -<p>“It can never be right,” cried Lily, “to run such a dreadful risk! Oh, -if they cannot guide themselves, who are we that we should guide them? I -am not like you, Helen. I know for myself I could guide no man.”</p> - -<p>No! well she knew that! Not so much as for the taking of a little -house—not so much as the simplest duty as ever lay in a man’s road. -Helen was not so clever as Lily, she had no such pretensions in any way; -every thing—blood and breeding, and the habit of carrying out her own -projects and holding her head high—was in the favor of the younger. But -Lily had no such confidence as Helen. She did not believe in any -influence she could exert. Her opinion, her entreaties, were of no use. -They did not move Ronald. He dismissed them with a kiss and a smile. “I -could guide no man,” she repeated with a bitter conviction in her heart.</p> - -<p>“It would, maybe, not be a perfect life,” said Helen; “far from that; -there would be many an ill moment. The goodwife has her cross to carry, -and it’s not light; but, oh, Lily, better that than ruin to the man, and -a lonely life, with little use in it, to <i>her</i>; and there is aye the -hope of the bairns that will do better another day.”</p> - -<p>“The bairns,” said Lily, “that would be the worst of all. An ill man’s -bairns—to carry on the poison in the blood.”</p> - -<p>“You are a hard judge,” said Helen, pausing to look at her, “for one so -young; but it’s because you are so young, my bonnie dear. We are all ill -men and women, too. There’s a line of poetry that comes into my head, -though it’s a light thing for such a heavy subject, and I cannot<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a>{251}</span> mind -it exact to a word. It says we were all forfeit once, but he that might -have best took the advantage found out the remedy. It is bonnier than -that, and it is just the truth. The Lord said: ‘Neither do I condemn -thee.’ Ye will mind that at least, Lily.”</p> - -<p>“I mind them both,” cried Lily, piqued to have her knowledge doubted, -“but yet——”</p> - -<p>“And you must not speak of my poor Alick as an ill man. Oh, if I could -but let you see how little he is an ill man! His heart is just as -innocent as a bairn’s in some things, I’m not saying in all things. He -is wild, poor lad, the Lord forgive him! He does a foolish thing, and -then he thinks after that he shouldn’t have done it. If I were there, I -would make him think first, I would think for him; and then, if the -thing was done, there would be me to try to mend it and him, too. But -why should I speak as if that was in my power?” cried Helen, with a -sudden soft momentary rush of tears, “for I cannot, I cannot, go with -Alick and leave my father! I will have to stand by and see my poor lad -go out again without a friend by his side into the terrible, terrible -world.”</p> - -<p>Lily put her arm round her friend, kneeling beside her, giving a warm -clasp of sympathy if nothing more. Helen’s heart was beating sadly, with -a suppressed passion, but Lily felt as if her slim young frame was all -one desperate pulse, clanging in her ears and tingling to her fingers’ -ends. Was it her fault that in all her veins there burned this sense of -impotence, this dreadful miserable consciousness that she could do -nothing, move no one, and was powerless to shape her own fate? Helen was -powerless too, but in how different a way! sure that she would have been -able to fulfil that highest purpose if only her steps had been free, -whereas Lily was humiliated by the certainty that there was no power at -all in her, that to everybody with whom she was connected she was a -creature without individual potency, whose fate was to be decided for -her by the will of others. The contrast of Helen’s feeling, which was so -different, gave a bitterness to her pain.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a>{252}</span></p> - -<p>“It was all very simple,” said Helen. “My father—you have never seen -him at his best, Lily; there is not a cleverer man, nor a better -learned, in all this countryside—was tutor to Mr. Duff when they were -both young, and the boys, as they grew up, used to come to him for -lessons. Alick was the youngest, just two years older than me, that am -the last of all. They were great friends with our own boys, who are both -out in the world, and, oh, alack! not doing so very well that we should -cast a stone at other folk. Eh but he was a bonnie boy! dark, always -dark, like his mother, but the flower of the flock, and courted and -petted wherever he went. He was a wild boy, and wild he was, I will not -deny it, in his youth, and began by giving me a very sore heart; for, -from the first that I can mind of, I have never thought of any man but -him. And then he was sent away abroad—oh, not for punishment—to do -better and make up the lost way. He came to my father and he said: ‘Let -Helen go with me and I’ll do well.’ I was but nineteen, Lily, and him -twenty-one. They just laughed him to scorn. ‘It would be the Babes in -the Wood over again,’ they said, and what was I, a little lass at home, -that I could be of any help to a man? Lily!” cried Helen, her mild eyes -shining, her cheeks aglow, “I knew better myself, though I dared not say -it, and he, poor laddie, he knew best of all. I should have gone with -him then! that very moment! if I had but seen it; and, oh, I did see, -but I was so young, and no boldness in my heart. My father said: ‘Work -you your best for five years and wipe out all the old scores, and come -back and ye shall have her, whether it pleases your father or no.’ For -the family would not have it. I was not good enough for them. But little -was my father minding for that. He never thought upon the old laird but -as a boy he had given palmies to, and kept in for not knowing his -lessons. He did not care a snap of his fingers for the old laird.”</p> - -<p>“At nineteen, and him twenty-one!” Lily said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes—they all said it was folly, and maybe I would<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a>{253}</span> say so, too, if -I saw another pair. But for all that it was not folly, Lily. He wanted -me to run away with him and say no word. And, oh, but I was in a -terrible swither what to do. It’s peetiful to be so young: you have no -experience; you cannot answer a word when they preach you down with -their old saws. I thought upon my mother that was weakly, and Tom and -Jamie giving a good deal of trouble. And at the last I would not. It was -my moment,” she said softly, with a sigh, “and I had a perception of it; -but I was frightened, Lily, and, oh, so silly and young!”</p> - -<p>“Helen, you could not, you should not, have done it. It would have been -impossible! It would have been wrong!”</p> - -<p>Helen only shook her head with a melancholy smile. “And then he came -back,” she said, “at the end of the five years. Never, never, Lily, may -you have the feeling I had when I saw Alick Duff again. Something said -in me: ‘Eelen, Eelen, that is your work!’ The light had gone from his -eyes, and the open look; his bonnie brow was all lined. He had grown to -be the man you saw to-day. But what would that have mattered to me? He -had but the more need of me. Alas, alas! my mother was dead, the boys -all adrift, and my father taken with his illness, and what could I do -then? He pleaded sore and my heart went with him. Oh, I fear he had been -wild, wild! He came back without a shilling in his pocket or a prospect -before him. The old laird was still living and went about with a brow -like thunder. He looked as if he hated every man that named Alick’s -name; but them that knew best said he was the favorite still of all the -sons. And Mrs. Duff, that had been so proud, that would not have the -minister’s daughter for her bonnie boy, she came to me herself, Lily. -You see, it was not me only that thought it. She said: ‘Eelen, if you -will marry him, you will save my bonnie lad yet.’ But I could not, I -could not, Lily. How could I leave my own house, that had trouble in it, -and nobody to make a stand but me?”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a>{254}</span></p> - -<p>“They were selfish and cruel!” cried Lily; “they would have sacrificed -you for the hope of saving an ill man!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, whisht, whisht,” cried Helen again. “And now he has come back. And -every thing is changed. The old laird is dead and gone, and John Duff, -that was never very kind, is laird in his stead, and there’s no home for -him there in his father’s house. And he’s a far older man—eight years -it was this time that he was away. And you will wonder to hear me say a -bonnie lad when you look at that black-browed man. But I see my bonnie -lad in him still, Lily; he is aye the same to me. And, oh, if you knew -how it drags my heart out of my bosom when he bids me come with him and -I cannot! He says we might save the fragments that remain—but there’s -more than that, more than that! He has wasted his youth, but he has not -yet lived half his life. And there’s that to save, Lily; and him and me -together we could stand. Oh, Lily, there’s neither man nor devil that I -would fear for Alick’s sake, and at Alick’s side, to save him—before it -is too late!”</p> - -<p>“Helen,” cried Lily, “what do I know? I dare not speak; but what if -after all you could not save him? If he cannot stand by himself, how -could you make him? You are but a little delicate woman; you are not fit -to fight. Oh, Helen, Helen, what if you could not save him when all is -done!”</p> - -<p>“I am not feared,” Helen said with a serene countenance. And then there -suddenly came a cloud over her, and tears came to her eyes. “What is the -use of speaking,” she said, throwing up her hands with an impatience -unlike her usual calm, “when I can do nothing? when he must just go away -again without hope, my poor Alick! and come back no more? And that will -be the end both of him and me,” she went on, “two folk that might have -made a home, and served God in our generation, and brought up children -and received strangers and held our warm place in the cold world. One of -us will perish away yonder, among wild beasts and ill men, and one of us -will<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a>{255}</span> just fade away on the roadside like a flower thrown away when its -sweetness is gone—and it will be no better for any mortal, but maybe -worse, that Alick Duff and Helen Blythe were born into this weary -world.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Helen, Helen!” cried Lily, “I think Alick Duff must have been the -cloud that has come over your life and turned its brightness to dark. If -you had not always been thinking of him, you would have had another home -and a brighter life. And even now—can I not see myself?—don’t you know -very well there is a good man——”</p> - -<p>“Oh,” cried Helen, rising up with sudden animation, almost pushing -Lily’s kneeling figure from her, “go away from me with your good man! It -is enough to make a person unjust, to make ye hate the name of good! How -do you know whether they are good or no, one of them? Were they ever -tempted like him? Had they ever the fire of hot thoughts in their head, -or the struggle in their hearts? Was nature ever in them running free -and wild like a great river, carrying the brigs and the dams away? or -just a drumlie quiet stream, aye content in its banks, and asking no -more? Oh, dinna speak to me of your good man! It’s blasphemy, it’s -sacrilege, it’s the sin that will never be pardoned! There is but one -man, be he good or bad, and one woman that is bound to do her best for -him; and ill be her lot if she fails to do it, for it is not herself she -will ruin,—that would matter little—the feckless creature, no worth -her salt,—but him, too, but him, too!”</p> - -<p>She sat down again after this little outburst and dried her eyes. Lily, -who had risen hurriedly to her feet, too, startled and almost angry, -stood irresolute, not knowing how to reply, when Helen put out to her a -trembling hand. “You are not to be troubled about me,” she said; “you -are not to be angry at what I say. It is a comfort to speak out my mind. -Who can I speak to, Lily? Not to my father, who stands between me and my -life; not to <i>him</i>, that rages at me as you have heard because I cannot -arise and follow him, as I would do if I could, to the end of the world. -Oh, Lily, it is good for the heart, when it is full<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a>{256}</span> like mine, to -speak. It takes away a little of the burden. ‘I leant my back until an -aik’—do you mind the old song? You are not an oak, you’re only a -lily-plant, but, oh! the comfort to lean on you, Lily, just for a -moment, just till I get my breath.”</p> - -<p>“Say to me whatever you like, Helen; say any thing. I may not agree——”</p> - -<p>“I am not asking you to agree—how should you agree, you that know -nothing? Oh, Lily, my bonnie Lily,” cried Helen, suddenly looking in her -face, “am I speaking blasphemy, too? You may know more than I think; -there is that in your face that was not there six months ago.”</p> - -<p>The color changed in Lily’s cheek, but she did not flinch. “If I know -any thing,” she said, “it is not in your way, Helen. I am not the kind -of woman that can change a man’s thoughts or his life. I am one that has -no power. If I tried your way, I would fail. No one has changed a -thought or a purpose in all my life for me. I am useless, useless. I -have to do what other folk tell me, and wait other folk’s pleasure, and -blow here and blow there like a straw in the wind. And I love it not, I -love it not!” she cried. “It is as bad for me as for you.”</p> - -<p>Helen thought she knew what the girl meant. She was here in durance, -bound by her uncle’s hard will; prevented, too, from carrying out the -choice of her heart. It had not yet dawned upon the elder woman that -Lily’s experience had gone further than this. And it is possible that -the gentle Helen, used all her life to an influence over others far -stronger than seemed natural to her character, and believing fully and -strongly in that power, could not have understood the higher trial of -the far more vivacious and vigorous nature beside her, which flung -itself in vain against the rock of another mind inaccessible to any -power it possessed, and, clear-sighted and strong-willed, had yet to -submit and do nothing but submit.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a>{257}</span></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Alick</span> Duff went away from the valley of the Rugas, calling on heaven and -earth to witness that he would never be seen there more, and that from -henceforward he was to be considered as an altogether shipwrecked and -ruined man. “There is nobody that will contradict you there,” the -minister said sternly, “and nothing but the grace of God, my man, for -all you threep and swear to make my poor Eelen meeserable, that would -ever have made any difference.” “And who will say,” cried Duff, “that it -was not just <i>her</i> that would have been the grace o’ God?” The minister -shook his head, yet was a little startled by the argument. As for Helen, -she said little more to her strange lover. “It is no use speaking now. -There is nothing more to say. I cannot leave my father.” Lily, to whom -this story had come like a revelation in the midst of the quiet country -life which seems, especially in Scotland, never to be ruffled by -emotion, much less passion, and on whom it acted powerfully, restoring -her mental balance and withdrawing at least a portion of her thoughts -from herself, was a great deal at the Manse during this agitating -period, which was all the more curious that nothing was ever said about -it on the surface of the life which flowed on in an absolutely unbroken -routine, as if there was no impassioned despairing man outside in the -darkness waiting the moment to fling himself and his terrible needs and -wishes at Helen’s feet, and no terrible question tearing her heart -asunder. That it was there underneath all the time was plain enough to -those who were in the secret. The minister had an anxious look, even -when he laughed and told his stories; and Helen, though her serenity was -extraordinary, grew pale and red with an unconscious listening for every -sound which Lily divined. He might burst in at any moment and make a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a>{258}</span> -scene in the quiet Manse parlor, destroying all the pretence of -composure with which they had covered their life, or, worse still, he -might do something desperate—he might disappear in the river or end his -existence with a shot, leaving an indelible shame on his memory, and -upon those who belonged to him, and upon her who, as the country folk -would say, “had driven him to it.” If she had married Alick Duff and -gone away with him, there would have been an unanimous cry over her -folly; but if in his despair he had cut the thread in any such -conclusive way, Helen never would have been mentioned afterward but as -the woman who drove poor Alick Duff to his death. There was a thrill of -this possibility even in the air of the little town, where he was seen -from time to time wandering about the precincts of the Manse, and where -every-body knew him and his story. But the most exciting thing of all to -Lily was to see the face and watch the ways of the excellent young -minister, Mr. Blythe’s assistant and successor, who went and came -through these troubled days, talking of the affairs of the parish, -sedulously restraining himself that he might not appear to think of, or -be conscious of, any thing else, but with a countenance which reflected -Helen’s, which followed every change of hers, yet when her attention was -attracted toward him, closed up in a moment, with the most extraordinary -effort dismissing all meaning from his countenance. Lily became -fascinated by Mr. Douglas, through whom she could read, as in a mirror, -every thing that was happening. He said not a word on this subject, -which, indeed, nobody spoke of, nor did he betray any consciousness of -the other man’s presence, about which even the maid in the kitchen and -the minister’s man, who never had been so assiduous in the discharge of -his duties as now, were so perfectly informed; but yet she felt sure -that something in him tingled to the neighborhood of his rival like an -elastic chord. He would come in sometimes pale, with a stern look in his -closely drawn mouth, and then Lily would feel sure that he had seen -Alick Duff in the way, waiting till Helen should<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a>{259}</span> appear. And sometimes -the lines of his countenance would relax, so that she felt sure he had -heard good news and believed that haunting figure to have gone away; and -then at a sound which was no sound outside, at the most trifling change -in Helen’s face, the veil, the cloud, would shut again over his face.</p> - -<p>The manner in which Lily attained the possibility of making these -studies was that by the minister’s invitation, seconded, but not with -very much warmth, by Helen, she had come to the Manse on a visit of a -few days. Whatever prejudice Mr. Blythe had against her—and she was -sure he had a prejudice, though she could not imagine any cause for -it—had disappeared under the pressure of his own sore need. He himself -was helpless either to watch over or to protect his daughter, and in -despair he had thought of the other girl, herself caught in a tangle of -the bitter web of life, and full of secret knowledge of its -difficulties, who, though she was so much younger, had learned to some -degree the lesson which Helen was so slow to learn. “She’s but a girl, -but I’ll warrant she could give Eelen a fine lesson what it is to lippen -to a man,” the minister said to himself. He had no high view of human -nature, for his part. To lippen to a man seemed to him, though he had -been in that respect severely virtuous himself, the last thing that a -woman should do. For his own part he lippened to, that is, trusted, -nobody very much, and thought he was wise in so doing. To have Lily -there, seeing every thing with those young eyes, no doubt throwing her -weight on the other side, allowing it at least to be seen that a man was -not so easily turned round a woman’s little finger as poor Helen -thought, would be something gained in the absence of all other help. Mr. -Blythe had a tacit conviction that Lily’s influence would be on the -opposite side, though his chief reason for thinking so was one that was -fictitious.</p> - -<p>This was how Lily came to be acquainted with all that was going on. They -all appealed to her behind backs, each hoping he or she was alone in -calling for her sympathy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a>{260}</span> “You will tell her better than I can; they -all distrust an old man. They think the blood’s dry in his veins and he -has forgotten he was once like the rest. And she will listen to him at -the last. The thought that he’s going away, to fall deeper and deeper, -and that strong delusion she has got that she can save him, will -overcome her, and I’ll be left in the corner of the auld Manse sitting -alone.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, Mr. Blythe, never think that; Helen will not leave you.”</p> - -<p>“I would not trust her, nor one of them,” he cried, and there in the -dark, sitting almost unseen beside the fire, his voice came forth -toneless, like that of a dead man. “I have never been thought to make -much work about my bairns: one has gone and another has gone, and it has -been said that the minister never minded. But there was once an auld man -that said: ‘When I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>Lily put her hand upon the large, soft, limp hand of the old minister in -quick sympathy. “She will never leave you,” she repeated: “you need fear -nothing for that—she will never go away.”</p> - -<p>He shook his head and put his other hand for a moment over hers. “You -may have been led astray,” he said, “poor little thing! but your heart -is in the right place.”</p> - -<p>Lily did not think or ask herself what he meant about being led astray. -She was too much occupied with Helen, who came in at the moment with the -thrill and quiver in her which was the sign that she had seen her lover. -The waning sunset light from the window which had seen so many strange -sights indicated this movement too, the tremor that affected her head -and slight shoulders like a chill of colder air from without. She said -softly as she passed Lily: “There is one at the door would fain speak a -word to you.” It was not a call which Lily was very ready to obey. She -had kept as far as possible out of the reach of Duff, and she had not -the same sympathy for him as for the others involved; indeed, it must be -allowed that, notwithstanding the charm of the romance, Lily’s feelings<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a>{261}</span> -were far more strongly enlisted on the side of the gentle and patient -young minister than on any other. She lingered, putting away some scraps -of work which had been on the table, until she could no longer resist -Helen’s piteous looks. “Oh, go, go!” she whispered close to Lily’s ear. -It was a blustering March night, the wind and the dust blowing in along -the passage when the Manse door was opened, and Lily obeyed, very -reluctantly, the gesture of the dark figure outside, which moved before -her to a corner sheltered by the lilac bushes, which evidently was a -spot very familiar. She felt that she could almost trace the steps of -Helen on the faint line which was not distinct enough to be a path, and -that opening among the branches—was it not the spot where she had -leaned for support through many a trying interview? Duff tacitly ceded -that place to Lily, and then turned upon her with his eyes blazing -through the faint twilight. “You are with them all day, you hear all -they’re saying. They’re all in a conspiracy to keep me hanging on, and -no satisfaction. Tell me: am I to be cast off again like an old clout, -or is there any hope that she’ll come at the last?”</p> - -<p>“There is no hope that she’ll come; how could she?” cried Lily. “Her -father is old and infirm, Mr. Duff, she has told you. It is cruel to -keep her like this, always in agitation. She cannot; how could she? Her -father——”</p> - -<p>“Confound her father!” he cried, swinging his fist through the air. -“What’s her father to her own life and mine? You think one person should -swamp themselves for another, Lily Ramsay. You’ve not been so happy in -doing that yourself, if all tales be true.”</p> - -<p>“What tales?” cried Lily, breathless with sudden excitement; and then -she paused and said proudly: “Take notice, Mr. Duff, that I am not Lily -Ramsay to you!”</p> - -<p>“What are you, then?” he cried, with a laugh of scorn. “If you’ve kept -your father’s name, you are just Lily Ramsay to Alick Duff, and nothing -else. Our forefathers have known each other for hundreds of years. There -was even a kind of a cousinship, a grandmother of mine that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a>{262}</span> was a -Ramsay, or yours that was a Duff, I cannot remember; but if you expect -me, that knew you before you were born, to stand on ceremony—and -Lumsden too,” he added, in a lower tone, “whatever you may be to him.”</p> - -<p>“If it was my concerns you asked me out here to discuss, I think I will -go in,” said Lily, “for it is cold out of doors, and I have nothing to -say to you.”</p> - -<p>“You know well whose concerns it was. Is she coming? Does she understand -that it’s for the last time? I know what she thinks. I’ve been such a -fool hitherto she thinks I will be as great a fool as ever, and come -hankering after her to the stroke of doom. If she thinks that, let her -think it no more. This time I will never come back. I will just let -myself go. Oh, it’s easier, far easier, than to hold yourself in, even a -little bit, as I’ve done. I’ve always had the fear of her before my -eyes. I’ve always said to myself: ‘Not that! not that! or she will never -speak to me again;’ but now——” He swung his fist once more with a -menacing gesture through the dim air. It seemed to Lily as if he were -shaking it in the face of Heaven.</p> - -<p>“And you don’t think shame to say so!” cried Lily, tremulous with cold -and agitation, and finding no argument but this, which she had used -before.</p> - -<p>“Why should I think shame? There are things a woman like Eelen Blythe -can look over, but there are some you would not let her hear of, not to -save your soul. It’s a matter of saving a man’s soul, Lily Ramsay, -whatever ye may think. The worst is she knows every word I have to say: -there’s nothing new to tell her—except just this,” he said with -vehement emphasis: “that this time I will never come back!”</p> - -<p>“And that is not new either. I have heard you tell her so fifty times. -Oh, man,” cried Lily, “cannot you go and leave her at peace? She will -never forget you, but she will accept what cannot be helped. Me, I fight -against it, but I have to submit too. And Helen will not fight. She will -just live quiet and say her prayers for you night and day.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a>{263}</span></p> - -<p>“Her prayers! I want herself to stand by my side and keep my heart.”</p> - -<p>“You would be better with her prayers than with many a woman’s company. -Your heart! Can you not pluck up a spirit and stand for God and what is -right without Helen? How will you do it with her, then? You would mind -her at first—oh, I do not doubt every word she said—but then you would -get impatient, and cry: ‘Hold your tongue, woman!’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“Is that,” he cried quickly, “what he says to you? He is just a sneaking -coward, and that I would tell him to his face!”</p> - -<p>“You are a coward to call any man so that is not here to defend -himself!” cried Lily, wild with rage and pain, “though who you mean I -know not, and what you mean I care not. Never man spoke such words to -me, but you would do it, you are of the kind to do it. You have thought -and thought that she could save you, and then when you found it was not -so, you would be fiercer at her and bitterer at her than you have been -at your own self. Oh, let Helen be! She will never forget you, but she -will never go with you so long as her old father sits there and cannot -move in his big chair.”</p> - -<p>“If I thought that——” he said, then paused. “If that’s what’s to come -of it all after more than a dozen years! Would I have been a vagabond on -the face of the earth if she had taken me then? I trow no. You will -think I am not the kind good men are made of? Maybe no; but there’s more -kinds than one, even of decent men. I would not drag what was her name -in the dust.”</p> - -<p>“You think not,” said Lily, “but if you have dragged your father’s——”</p> - -<p>“You little devil,” he cried, “to mind me of that!” and then he took off -his hat stiffly, and with ceremony, and said: “I beg your pardon, Miss -Ramsay, or whatever your name may be.”</p> - -<p>“You are very insulting to me!” said Lily. “Why should I stand out here -and let you abuse me? What are<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a>{264}</span> you to me that I should bear it?” But -presently she added, softening: “I’m very sorry for you, all the same.”</p> - -<p>She was hurrying away when he seized her by the arm and held her back. -“Do you see that? Am I to stand still and see that, and hold my peace -forever?”</p> - -<p>The corner among the lilacs had this advantage, carefully calculated, -who could doubt, years ago? that those who stood there, though unseen -themselves, could see any one who approached the door of the Manse. The -young minister, Mr. Douglas, had come quietly in while they were -speaking: his footstep was not one that made the gravel fly. He stood, -an image of quietness and good order, on the step, awaiting admittance. -Scotch ministers of that date were not always so careful in their dress, -so regardful of their appearance, as this young Levite. He had his coat -buttoned, his umbrella neatly folded. He was not impatient, as Duff -would have been in his place, but stood immovable, waiting till Marget -in the kitchen had snatched her clean apron from where it lay, and tied -it on to make herself look respectable before she answered the bell. -Duff gripped Lily’s arm, not letting her go, and shaking with fierce -internal laughter, which burst forth in an angry shout when the door was -closed again and the assistant and successor admitted. “Call that a -man!” he said, “with milk in his veins for blood; and you’re all in a -plot to take her from me, and give her to cauld parritch like that!”</p> - -<p>“He would keep her like the apple of his eye. There would no wind blow -rough upon her if he could help it!” cried Lily, shaking herself free.</p> - -<p>“And you think that a grand thing for a woman?” he cried scornfully, -“like a petted bairn, instead of the guardian of a man’s life.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Alick Duff!” cried Lily, half exasperated, half overcome, “come -back, come back an honest man, for her father will not live forever.”</p> - -<p>“What would I want with her then if I was all I wanted without her?” he -said, with another harsh laugh,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a>{265}</span> and then turned on his heel, grinding -the gravel under his foot, and without another word stalked away.</p> - -<p>How strange it was to go in with fiery words ringing in her ears and the -excitement of such a meeting in her veins, and find these people -apparently so calm, sitting in the little dimly lighted parlor, where -two candles on the table and a small lamp by Mr. Blythe’s head on the -mantel-piece were all that was thought necessary! Lily was too much -moved herself to remark how they all looked up at her with a certain -expectation: Helen wistful and anxious, the old minister closing his -open book over his hand, the young one rising to greet her, with almost -an appealing glance. They seemed all, to Lily’s eyes, so harmonious, the -same caste, the same character, fated to spend their lives side by side. -And what had that violent spirit, that uncontrollable and impassioned -man, with his futile ideal, to do in such a place? Mr. Douglas belonged -to it and fell into all its traditions, but the other could never have -had any fit place within the little circle of those two candles on the -table. When the pause caused by her entrance—a pause of marked -expectation, though none of the party anticipated that she would say a -word—was over, the usual talk was resumed, the conversation about the -parish folk who were ill, and those who were in trouble, and those to -whom any special event had happened. John Logan and the death of his -cows, poor things, who were the sustenance of the bairns; and the -reluctance of poor Widow Blair to part with her son, who was a -“natural,” and had just an extraordinary chance of being received into -one of those new institutions where they are said to do such wonderful -things for that kind of poor imbecile creature: this was what Helen and -her friend were talking of. The minister himself had a more mundane -mind. He held his <i>Scotsman</i> fiercely, and read now and then out loud a -little paragraph; and then he looked fixedly at Lily behind the cover of -the newspaper, till his steady gaze drew her eyes to him. Then he put a -question to her with his lips and eyes, without uttering any sound, and -finding that unsuccessful,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a>{266}</span> called her to him. “See you here, Miss Lily: -there’s something here in very small print ye must read to me with your -young eyes.”</p> - -<p>“Can I do it, father?” said Helen.</p> - -<p>“Just let me and Miss Lily be. She will do it fine, and not grudge the -trouble. Is that man hovering about this house? Is he always there? I -will have to send for the constable if he will not go away.”</p> - -<p>“I hope he is gone for to-night, Mr. Blythe.”</p> - -<p>“For to-night—to be back to-morrow like a shadow hanging round the -place. You’re a young woman and a bonnie one, and that carries every -thing with a man like him. Get him away! I cannot endure it longer. Get -him away!”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Blythe——”</p> - -<p>“I am saying to you get him away!” said the minister in incisive, sharp -notes. And then he added: “After all, the old eyes are not so much worse -than the young ones. Many thanks to you all the same.”</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">This</span> agitating episode in Lily’s life was a relief to her from her own -prevailing troubles. They all apologized to her for bringing her into -the midst of their annoyances, but it was, in fact, nothing but an -advantage. To contrast what she had herself to bear with the lot of -Helen even was good for Lily. If she had but known a little sooner how -long and sweetly that patient creature had waited, how many years had -passed over her head, while she did her duty quietly, and neither -upbraided God nor man, Lily thought it would have shamed herself into -quiet, too, and prevented, perhaps, that crowning outcome of impatience -which had taken place in the Manse parlor on that January night. Did she -regret that January night with all its mystery, its hurry, and tumult of -feeling? Oh, no! she<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a>{267}</span> said to herself, it would be false to Ronald to -entertain such a thought; but yet how could she help feeling with a sort -of yearning the comparative freedom of her position then, the absence of -all complication? Lily had believed, as Ronald told her, that all -complications would be swept away by this step. She would be freed, she -thought, at once from her uncle’s sway, and ready to follow her husband -wherever their lot might lie. Every thing would be clear before her when -she was Ronald’s wife. She had thought so with certain and unfeigned -faith. She might perhaps have been in that condition still, always -believing, feeling that nothing was wanted but the bond that made them -one, if that bond had not been woven yet. Poor Lily! She would not -permit herself to say that she regretted it. Oh, no! how could she -regret it? Every thing was against them for the moment, but yet she was -Ronald’s, and Ronald hers, forever and ever. No man could put them -asunder. At any time, in any circumstances, if the yoke became too hard -for her to bear, she could go unabashed to her husband for succor. How, -then, could she regret it? But Helen had waited through years and years, -while Lily had grown impatient before the end of one; or perhaps it was -not Lily, but Ronald, that had grown impatient. No, she could not -shelter herself with that. Lily had been as little able to brave the -solitude, the separation, the banishment, as he. And here stood Helen, -patient, not saying a word, always bearing a brave face to the world, -enduring separation, with a hundred pangs added to it, terrors for the -man she loved, self-reproach, and all the exactions of life beside, -which she had to meet with a cheerful countenance. How much better was -this quiet, gentle woman, pretending to nothing, than Lily, who beat her -wings against the cage, and would not be satisfied? Even now what would -not Helen give if she could see her lover from time to time as Lily saw -her husband, if she knew that he was satisfied, and, greatest of all, -that he was unimpeachable, above all reproach? For that certainty Helen -would be content to die, or to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a>{268}</span> live alone forever, or to endure any -thing that could be given her to bear. And Lily was not content, oh! not -at all content! Her heart was torn by a sense of wrong that was not in -Helen’s mind. Was it that she was the most selfish, the most exacting, -the least generous of all? Even Ronald was happy—a man, who always -wanted more than a woman—in having Lily, in the fact that she belonged -to him; while she wanted a great deal more than that—so much more that -there was really no safe ground between them, but as much disagreement -as if they were a disunited couple, who quarrelled and made scenes -between themselves, which was a suggestion at which Lily half laughed, -half shuddered. If it went on long like this, they might turn to be—who -could tell?—a couple who quarrelled, between whom there was more -opposition and anger than love. Lily laughed at the thought, which was -ridiculous; but there was certainly a shiver in it, too.</p> - -<p>Duff had gone away before her short visit to the Manse came to an end. -He disappeared after a last long interview with Helen under the bare -lilac bushes, of which the little party in the parlor was very well -aware, though no one said a word. The minister shifted uneasily on his -chair, and held his paper with much fierce rustling up in his hands -toward the lamp, as if it had been light he wanted. But what he wanted -was to shield himself from the observation of the others, who sat -breathless, exchanging, at long intervals, a troubled syllable or two. -Mr. Douglas had, perhaps, strictly speaking, no right to be there, -spying, as the old minister thought, upon the troubles of the family, -and, as he himself was painfully conscious, intrusively present in the -midst of an episode with which he had nothing to do. But he could not go -away, which would make every thing worse, for he would then probably -find himself in face of Helen tremblingly coming back, or of the -desperate lover going away. A consciousness that it was the last was in -all their minds, though nobody could have told why. Lily sat trembling, -with her head down over her work, sometimes saying a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a>{269}</span> little prayer for -Helen, broken off in the middle by some keen edge of an intrusive -thought, sometimes listening breathless for the sound of her step or -voice. At last, to the instant consciousness of all, which made the -faintest sound audible, the Manse door was opened and closed so -cautiously that nothing but the ghost of a movement could be divined in -the quiet. No one of the three changed a hair-breadth in position, and -yet the sensation in the room was as if every one had turned to the -door. Was she coming in here fresh from that farewell? Would she stand -at the door, and look at them all, and say: “I can resist no longer. I -am going with him.” This was what the old minister, with a deep distrust -in human nature, which did not except Helen, feared and would always -fear. Or would she come as if nothing had happened, with the dew of the -night on her hair, and Alick Duff’s desperate words in her ears, and sit -down and take up her seam, which Lily, feeling that in such a case the -stress of emotion would be more than she could bear, almost expected? -Helen did none of these things. She was heard, or rather felt, to go -upstairs, and then there was an interval of utter silence, which only -the rustling of the minister’s paper, and a subdued sob, which she could -not disguise altogether, from Lily, broke. And presently Helen came into -the room, paler than her wont, but otherwise unchanged. “It is nine -o’clock, father,” she said; “I will put out the Books.” The “Books” -meant, and still mean, in many an old-fashioned Scotch house, the family -worship, which is the concluding event of the day. She laid the large -old family Bible on the little table by his side, and took from him the -newspaper, which he handed to her without saying a word. And Marget came -in from the kitchen, and took her place near the door.</p> - -<p>Thus Helen’s tragedy worked itself out. There is always, or so most -people find when their souls are troubled, something in the lesson for -the day, or in “the chapter,” as we say in Scotland, when it comes to be -read in its natural course, which goes direct to the heart.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a>{270}</span> Very, very -seldom, indeed, are the instances in which this curious unintentional -<i>sortes</i> fails. As it happened, that evening the chapter which Mr. -Blythe read in his big and sometimes gruff voice was that which -contained the parable of the prodigal son. He began the story, as we so -often do, with the indifferent tones of custom, reverential as his -profession and the fashion of his day exacted, but not otherwise moved. -But perhaps some glance at his daughter’s head, bent over the Bible, in -which she devoutly followed, after the prevailing Scotch fashion, the -words that were read, perhaps the wonderful narrative itself, touched -even the old minister’s heavy spirit. His voice took a different tone. -It softened, it swelled, it rose and fell, as does that most potent of -all instruments when it is tuned by the influence of profound human -feeling. The man was a man of coarse fibre, not capable of the finer -touches of emotion; but he had sons of his own out in the darkness of -the world, and the very fear of losing the last comfort of his heart -made him more susceptible to the passion of parental anguish, loss, and -love. Lower and lower bowed Helen’s head as her father read; all the -little involuntary sounds of humanity, stirrings and breathings, which -occur when two or three are gathered together, were hushed; even Marget -sat against the wall motionless; and when finally, like the very climax -of the silence, another faint, uncontrollable sob came from Lily, the -sensation in the room was as of something almost too much for flesh and -blood. Mr. Blythe shut the book with a sound in his throat almost like a -sob. He waved his hand toward the younger man at the table. “You will -give the prayer,” he said in what sounded a peremptory tone, and leaned -back in the chair, from which he was incapable of moving, covering his -face with his hands.</p> - -<p>It was hard upon the poor, young, inexperienced assistant and successor -to be called upon to “give” that prayer. It was not that he was -untouched by the general emotion, but to ask him to follow the departure -of that prodigal whose feet they had all heard grind the gravel,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a>{271}</span> the -garden gate swinging behind the vehemence of his going—the prodigal who -yet had been all but pointed out as the object of the father’s special -love, and for whom Helen Blythe’s life had been, and would yet be, one -long embodied prayer—was almost more than Helen Blythe’s lover, -waiting, if perhaps the absence of the other might turn her heart to -him, could endure. None of them, fortunately, was calm enough to be -conscious how he acquitted himself of this duty, except, perhaps, Mr. -Blythe himself, who was not disinclined to contemplate the son-in-law -whom he would have preferred as “cauld parritch,” Duff’s contemptuous -description of him. “No heart in that,” the old minister said to himself -as he uncovered his face and the others rose from their knees. The -mediocrity of the prayer, with its tremulous petitions, to which the -speaker’s perplexed and troubled soul gave little fervor, restored Mr. -Blythe to the composure of ordinary life.</p> - -<p>Helen said little on that occasion or any other. “He will be far away -before the end of the week,” she said next morning. “It’s best so, Lily. -Why should he bide here, tearing the heart out of my breast, and his -own, too? if it was not for that wonderful Scripture last night! He’s -away, and I’m content. And all the rest is just in the Lord’s hands.” -The minister, too, had his own comment to make. “She’ll be building a -great deal on that chapter,” he said to Lily, “as if there was some kind -of a spell in it. Do not you encourage her in that. It was a strange -coincidence, I am not denying it; but it’s just the kind of thing that -happens when the spirits are high strung. I was not unmoved myself. But -that lad’s milk and water,” he added, with a gruff laugh, “he let us -easy down.” The poor “lad,” time-honored description of a not fully -fledged minister, whose prayer was milk and water, and his person “cauld -parritch” to the two rougher and stronger men, accompanied Lily part of -the way on foot as she rode home, Rory having come to fetch her, while -the black powny carried her baggage. He was very desirous to unbosom his -soul to Lily, too.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a>{272}</span></p> - -<p>“Miss Ramsay, do you think she will waste all her heart and her life -upon that vagabond?” he said. “It’s just an infatuation, and her friends -should speak more strongly than they do. Do you know what he is? Just -one of those wild gamblers, miners, drinkers—it may be worse for any -thing I know, but my wish is not to say a word too much—that we hear of -in America, and such places, in the backwoods, as they call it—men -without a spark of principle, without house or home. I believe that’s -what this man Duff has come to be. I wish him no harm, but to think of -such a woman as Helen Blythe descending into that wretchedness! It -should not be suffered, it should not be suffered! taking nobody else -into consideration at all, but just her own self alone.”</p> - -<p>“I think so, too, Mr. Douglas,” said Lily, restraining the paces of -Rory, “but then what can any one say if Helen herself——”</p> - -<p>“Helen herself!” he said almost passionately; “what does she know? She -is young; she is without experience. She is very young,” he added, with -a flush that made it apparent for the first time to Lily that he was -younger than Helen, “because she is so inexperienced. She has never been -out of this village. Men, however little they may have seen of -themselves, get to know things; but a woman, a young lady—how can she -understand? Oh, you should tell her, her friends should tell her!” he -cried with vehemence. “It is a wicked thing to let a creature like that -go so far astray.”</p> - -<p>“I agree with you, Mr. Douglas,” said Lily again, “but if Helen in her -own heart says ‘Yes,’ where is there a friend of hers that durst say -‘No’? Her father: that is true. But he will never be asked to give his -consent, for while he lives she will never leave him.”</p> - -<p>“You are sure of that?” the young minister asked.</p> - -<p>“If it had not been so, would she have let him go now? She will never -leave her father, but beyond that I don’t think Helen will ever change, -Mr. Douglas. If he never<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a>{273}</span> comes back again, she will just sit and wait -for him till she dies.”</p> - -<p>“Miss Ramsay, I have no right to trouble you. What foolish things I may -have cherished in my mind it is not worth the while to say. I thought, -when the old man is away, what need to leave the house she was fond of, -the house where she was born, when there was me ready to step in and -give her the full right. It’s been in my thoughts ever since I was named -to the parish after him. It’s nothing very grand, but it’s a decent -down-sitting, what her mother had before her, and no need for any -disagreeable change, or questions about repairs, or any unpleasant -thing. Just her and me, instead of her and him. I would not shorten his -days, not by an hour—the Lord forbid! but just I would be always ready -at her hand.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mr. Douglas,” cried Lily, “her father would like it—and me, I -would like it.”</p> - -<p>“Would you do that?” cried the young minister, laying his hand for a -moment on Lily’s arm. The water stood in his eyes, his face was full of -tender gratitude and hope. But either the young man had pulled Rory’s -bridle unawares, or Rory thought he had done so, or resented the too -close approach. He tossed his shaggy head and swerved from the side of -the path to the middle of the road, when, after an ineffectual effort to -free himself of Lily, he bolted with her, rattling his little hoofs with -triumph against the frosty way. It was perhaps as well that the -interview should terminate thus. It gave a little turn to Lily’s -thoughts, which had been very serious. And Rory flew along till he had -reached that spot full of associations to Lily, where the broken brig -and the Fairy Glen reminded her of her own little romance that was over. -Over! Oh, no, that was far from over; that had but begun that wonderful -day when Ronald and she picnicked by the little stream and the accident -happened, without which, perhaps, her own story would have gone no -further, and Helen’s would never have been known to her. Rory stopped -there, and helped himself to a mouthful or two of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a>{274}</span> fresh grass, as if to -call her attention pointedly to the spot, and then proceeded on his way -leisurely, having given her the opportunity of picking up those -recollections which, though so little distant, were already far off in -the hurry of events which had taken place since then. Had it been -possible to go back to that day, had there been no ascent of that -treacherous ruin, no accident, none of all the chains of events that had -brought them so much closer to each other and wound them in one web of -fate, if every thing had remained as it was before the fated New Year, -would Lily have been glad? That the thought should have gained entrance -into her mind at all gave a heavy aspect to the scene and threw a cloud -over every thing. She did not regret it: oh, no, no! how could she -regret that which was her life? But something intolerable seemed to have -come into the atmosphere, something stifling, as if she could not -breathe. She forced the pony on, using her little switch in a manner -with which Rory was quite unacquainted. Let it not be thought of, let it -not be dwelt upon, above all, let it not be questioned, the certainty of -all that had happened, the inevitableness of the past!</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> spring advanced with many a break and interval of evil weather. The -east winds blew fiercely over the moor, and the sudden showers of April -added again a little to the deceitful green that covered bits of the -bog. But May was sweet that year; in these high-lying regions the whins, -which never give up altogether, lighted a blaze of color here and there -among the green knowes and hollows where there was solid -standing-ground, and where one who did not mind an occasional dash from -the long heads of the ling which began to thrill with sap, or an -occasional sinking of a foot on a watery edge, might now venture again -to trace the devious way upon the most delicious<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a>{275}</span> turf in the world here -and there across the moor. The advancing season brought many a thrill of -rising life to Lily. It seemed impossible to dwell upon the darker side -of any prospect while the sunshine so lavished itself upon the gold of -the whins and the green of the turf, and visibly moved the heather and -the rowan-trees to all the effort and the joyous strain of life. I do -not pretend that the sun always shone, for the history of the north of -Scotland would, I fear, contradict that; but the number of heavenly -mornings there were—mornings which lighted a spark in every glistening -mountain burn and wet flashing rock over which it poured, and opened up -innumerable novelties of height and hollow, projecting points and deep -withdrawing valleys, in a hillside which seemed nothing but a lump of -rock and moss on duller occasions—were beyond what any one would -believe. They are soon over: the glory of the day is often eclipsed by -noon; but Lily, whose heart, being restless, woke her early, had the -advantage of them all. And many a tiny flower began to peep by the edges -of the moor—little red pimpernels, little yellow celandines, smaller -things still that have no names. And the hills stood round serenely -waiting for summer, as with a smile to each other under the hoods which -so often came down upon their brows even while the sun was shining. What -did it matter, a storm or two, the wholesome course of nature? Summer -was coming with robes of purple to clothe them, and revelations of a -thousand mysteries in the hearts of the silent hills.</p> - -<p>Amid such auguries and meditative expectations it was not possible that -Lily could remain unmoved. And thus her expectation, if not so sublime -as that of nature, was at least as exact and as well defined. Alas, the -difference was that nature was quite sure of her facts, while an -unfortunate human creature never is so. The course of the sun does not -fail, however he may delay that coming forth from his chamber, like a -bridegroom, which is the law of the universe. But for the heart of man -no one can answer. It was such a little thing to do, such an easy -thing—no trouble,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a>{276}</span> no trouble! Lily said to herself. To find the little -house they wanted, oh, how easily she could do it if she could but go -and see herself to this, which was really a woman’s part of the -business. Lily imagined herself again and again engaged in that -delightful quest. She saw herself running lightly up and down the long -stairs. Why take Ronald from his work when she could do it so easily, so -gladly, so pleasantly, with so much enjoyment to herself? And though she -had been banished for so long, there was still many a house in Edinburgh -which would take her in with kindly welcome, and rejoice over her -marriage, and help and applaud the young couple in their start. Oh, how -easy it all was were but the first step sure. She had thought, in her -childishness, that the mere fact of marriage would be enough; that it -would bring all freedom, all independence, with it; that the moment she -stood by Ronald’s side as his wife the path of their life lay full in -the sunshine and light of perfect day. Alas, that had not proved so!</p> - -<p>He came again another time between March and May. It was wonderful the -journeys he took, thinking nothing of a long night in the coach coming -and going, to see his love, for the sake of only a couple of days in her -society. The women at Dalrugas were very much impressed, too, by the -money it must cost him to make these frequent visits. “Bless me,” Katrin -said, “he is just throwing away his siller with baith hands; and what -are they to do for their furnishing and to set up their house? I am not -wanting you to go, Beenie—far, far from that. It will be like the sun -gone out of the sky when we’re left to oursel’s in the house, nothing -but Dougal and me. But, oh! only to think of the siller that lad is -wastin’ with a’ his life before him. They would live more thrifty in -their own house than him there and her here, and thae constant traiks -from one place to another, even though her and you at present cost him -naething—but what, after a’, is a woman’s meat?”</p> - -<p>“I wot weel it would be more thrift, and less expense,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a>{277}</span> not to say -better in every way; but if the man does not see it, Katrin, what can -the wife do?”</p> - -<p>“I ken very weel what I would do,” said Katrin, with a toss of her head. -These were the comments below stairs. But when May came and went, and it -was not till early June that Lily received her husband, the fever of -expectation and anxiety which consumed her was beyond expression. She -met him at the head of the spiral stair as usual, but speechless, -without a word to say to him. Her cheeks flamed with the heat of her -hopes, her terrors, her wild uncertainty. She held out her hands in -welcome with something interrogative, enquiring, in them. She did not -wish to be taken to his heart, to be kept by any caress from seeing his -face and reading what was in it. Was it possible that it was not Ronald -at all she was thinking of, but something else—not her husband’s visit, -his presence, his love, and the delight of seeing him? And how common, -how trivial, how paltry a thing it was which Lily was thinking of first, -before even Ronald! Had he found the little house? Had he got it, that -hope of her life? was it some business connected with that that had -detained him? Had he got the key of it, something resembling the key of -it, to lay at her feet, to place in her hand, the charter of her rights -and her freedom? But he did not say a word. Was it natural he should -when he had just arrived, barely arrived, and was thinking of nothing -but his Lily? It was his love that was in his mind, not any secondary -thing such as filled hers. He led her in, with his arms around her and -joy on his lips. His bonnie Lily! if she but knew how he had been -longing for a sight of her, how he had been stopped when he was on the -road, how every exasperating thing had happened to hold him back! Ah, -she said to herself, it would be the landlord worrying for more money, -or some other wicked thing. “But now,” cried Ronald, “the first look of -my Lily pays for all!” That was how it was natural he should speak. She -supported it all, though her bosom was like to burst. She would not -forestall him in his story of how he had secured<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a>{278}</span> it, nor yet chill him -by showing him that while the first thought in his mind was love, the -first in hers was the little house. Oh, no, she would respond, as, -indeed, her heart did; but she was choked in her utterance, and could -speak few words. If he would only say a word of that, only once: “I have -got it, I have got it!” then the floodgates would have been opened, and -Lily’s soul would have been free.</p> - -<p>Ronald spoke no such word; he said nothing, nothing at all upon that -subject, or any thing that could lead to it. He was delighted to see her -again, to hold her in his arms. Half the evening, until Beenie brought -the dinner, he was occupied in telling her that every time he saw her -she was more beautiful, more delightful, in his eyes. And Lily gasped, -but made no sign. She would wait, she would wait! She would not be -impatient; after all, that was just business, and this was love. She -would have liked the business best, but perhaps that was because she was -common, just common, not great in mind and heart like—other folk, a -kind of a housewife, a poor creature thinking first of the poorest -elements. He should follow his own way, he that was a better lover, a -finer being, than she; and in his own time he would tell her—what, -after all, was no fundamental thing, only a detail.</p> - -<p>The dinner passed, the evening passed, and Ronald said not a word, nor -Lily either. She had begun to get bewildered in her mind. Whit-Sunday! -Whit-Sunday! Was it not Whit-Sunday that was the term, when houses were -to be hired in Edinburgh, and the maids went to their new places? And it -was now past, and had nothing been done for her? Was nothing going to be -done? Lily began to be afraid now that he would speak; that he would say -some word that would take away all hope from her heart. Rather that he -should be silent than that! There was a momentary flagging in the -conversation when the dinner was ended, and in the new horror that had -taken possession of her soul Lily, to prevent this, rushed <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a>{279}</span>into a new -subject. She told Ronald about Alick Duff and Helen Blythe, and how she -had received them at Dalrugas, and had passed some days at the Manse -seeing the end of it. Ronald, with the air of a benevolent lord and -master, shook his head at the first, but sanctioned the latter -proceeding with a nod of his head. “Keep always friends with the Manse -people,” he said; “they are a tower of strength whatever happens; but I -would not have liked to see my Lily receiving a black sheep like Alick -Duff here.”</p> - -<p>What had he to do with the house of Dalrugas, or those who were received -there? What right had he to be here himself that he should give an -authoritative opinion? Oh, do not believe that Lily thought this, but it -flashed through her mind in spite of herself, as ill thoughts will do. -She said quickly: “And the worst is I took his part. I would have taken -his part with all my heart and soul.”</p> - -<p>Ronald did nothing but laugh at this protestation. And he laughed -contemptuously at the thought that Helen could have saved the man who -loved her. “That’s how he thinks to come over the women. He would not -dare say that to a man,” he cried. “Helen Blythe, poor little thing!” He -laughed again, and Lily felt that she could have struck him in the -sudden blaze out of exasperation which somewhat relieved her troubled -mind.</p> - -<p>“When you laugh like that, I think I could kill you, Ronald!”</p> - -<p>“Lily!” he cried, sitting up in his chair with an astonished face, “why, -what is the matter with you, my darling?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing is the matter with me! except to hear you laugh at what was -sorrow and pain to them, and deadly earnest, as any person might see.”</p> - -<p>“Havers!” cried Ronald; “he had his tongue in his cheek all the time, -yon fellow. He thought, no doubt, her father must have money, and it -would be worth his while——”</p> - -<p>“If you believe that every-body thinks first of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a>{280}</span> money——” Lily said, -her hand, which was on the table, quivering to every finger’s end.</p> - -<p>“Most of us do,” he said quietly; “but what does it mean that my Lily -should be so disturbed about Alick Duff, the ne’er-do-well, and Helen -Blythe?”</p> - -<p>“I can’t tell you,” cried Lily, struggling with that dreadful, -inevitable inclination to tears which is so hard upon women. “I am—much -alone in this place,” she said, with a quiver of her mouth, “and you -away.”</p> - -<p>“My bonnie Lily!” he cried once more, hastening to her, soothing her in -his arms, as he had done so often before. That was all, that was all he -could say or do to comfort her; and that does not always answer—not, at -least, as it did the first or even the second or third time. To call her -“My bonnie Lily!” to lean her head upon his breast that she might cry it -all out there and be comforted, was no reply to the demand in her heart. -And the hysteria passion did not come to tears in this case. She choked -them down by a violent effort. She subdued herself, and withdrew from -his supporting arm, not angrily, but with something new in her -seriousness which startled Ronald, he could not tell why. “We will go -upstairs,” she said, “or, if you would like it, out on the moor. It is -bonnie on the moor these long, long days, when it is night, and the day -never ends. And then you can tell me the rest of your Edinburgh news,” -she said, suddenly looking into his face.</p> - -<p>Oh, he understood her now! His face was not delicate like Lily’s to show -every tinge of changing color, but it reddened through the red and the -brown with a color that showed more darkly and quite as plainly as the -blush on any girl’s face. He understood what was the Edinburgh news she -wanted. Was it that he had none to give?</p> - -<p>“Let us go out on the moor,” he said. “Where is your plaid to wrap you -round? It may be as beautiful as you like, but it’s always cold on a -north country moor.”</p> - -<p>“Not in June,” she cried, throwing the plaid upon his shoulder. It was -nine o’clock of the long evening, but as<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a>{281}</span> light still as day, a day -perfected, but subdued, without sun, without shadow, like, if any thing -human can be like, the country where there is neither sun nor moon, but -the Lamb is the light thereof. The moor lay under the soft radiance in a -perfect repose, no corner in it that was not visible, yet all mystery, -spellbound in that light that never was on sea or shore. At noon, with -all the human accidents of sun and shade, they could scarcely have seen -their own faces, or the long distance of the broken land stretched out -beyond, or the hills dreaming around in a subdued companionship, as -clearly as now, yet all in a magical strangeness that overawed and -hushed the heart. Even Lily’s cares—that one care, rather, which was so -little, yet so great, almost vulgar to speak of, yet meaning to her -every thing that was best on earth—were hushed. The stillness of the -shining night, which was day; the silence of the great moor, with all -its wild fresh scents and murmurs of sound subdued; the vast round of -cloudless sky, still with traces on it of the sunset, but even those -forming but an undertone to the prevailing softness of the blue—were -beyond all reach of human frettings and struggles. They were on the eve -of discovering that the earth had been rent between them, closely though -they stood together, but in a moment the edges of the chasm had -disappeared, the green turf and the heather, with its buds forming on -every bush, spread over every horrible division. Lily put her arm within -her husband’s with a long, tremulous sigh. What did any uneasy wish -matter, any desire even if desperate, compared with this peace of God -that was upon the hills and the moor and the sky?</p> - -<p>I doubt, however, whether all of this made it easier for Ronald to clear -himself at last of the burden of the unfulfilled trust. When she said -next morning, with a catch in her breath, but as perfect an aspect of -calm as she could put on: “You have told me nothing about our house,” -his color and his breath also owned for a moment an embarrassment which -it was difficult to face. She had said it while he stood at the window -looking out, with his back<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a>{282}</span> toward her. She had not wished to confront -him, to fix him with her eyes, to have the air of bringing him to an -account.</p> - -<p>Ronald turned round from the window after a momentary pause. He came up -to her and took both her hands in his. “My bonnie Lily!” he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh,” she cried with sudden impatience, drawing her hands from him, -“call me by my simple name! I am your wife; I am not your sweetheart. Do -I want to be always petted like a bairn?”</p> - -<p>“Lily!” he said, startled, and a little disapproving, “there is -something wrong with you. I never thought you were one to be affected -with nerves and such things.”</p> - -<p>“Did you ever think I was one to live all alone upon the moor? to belong -to nobody, to see nobody, to be married in a secret, and get a visit -from my man now and then in a secret, too? and none to acknowledge or -stand by me in the whole world?”</p> - -<p>“Lily! Lily!” he cried, “how far is that from the fact? Am I not here -whenever I can find a moment to spare, and ready to come at any time for -any need if you but hold up your little finger? Why is it you are not -acknowledged and set by my side as I would be proud to do? Can you ever -doubt I would be proud to do it? But many a couple have kept their -marriage quiet till circumstances were better. You and I are not the -first—I could tell you of a score—that would not keep apart half their -days and lose the good of their life, but just kept the fact to -themselves till better times should come.”</p> - -<p>“You said nothing to me about better times coming,” said Lily; “you -spoke of the term, and that you could not get a house to live in till -the term.”</p> - -<p>“And I said quite true,” said Ronald. As soon as he got her to discuss -the matter he felt sure of his own triumph. “You knew that as well as I -did. And now here is just the truth, Lily: I am not very well off, and -it does not mend my practice that I’ve been so often here in the North. -Don’t tell me I need not come unless I like;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a>{283}</span> that’s a silly woman’s -saying, it is not like my Lily. I am not very well off, and you have -nothing if there is a public breach with Sir Robert. And for a little -while I have been beginning to think——”</p> - -<p>He paused, hoping she would say something, but Lily said nothing. She -had covered her face with her hands.</p> - -<p>“I have been beginning to think,” he continued slowly, “that this is a -bad time for beginning life in Edinburgh. You are not ignorant of -Edinburgh life, Lily; you know that in the vacations, when the courts -are up, nobody is there. If we had twenty houses, we could not stay in -them in August and September, when every-body is away. As this is a bad -time for beginning in Edinburgh, I was thinking that to take the expense -of a house upon me now would be a foolish thing. Think of a garret in -the old town from this to autumn, with all the smoke and the bad air -instead of the bonnie moor! And in six weeks or a little more, Lily, I -would be able to get some shooting hereabouts, which will be a grand -excuse, and we could be together without a word said, with nobody to -make any criticisms.”</p> - -<p>She cried out, stamping her foot: “Will you never understand? It is the -grand excuse and the nobody to criticise that is insufferable to me. Why -should there be any excuse? Why should there be a word said? I am your -wife, Ronald Lumsden!”</p> - -<p>“My dear, you are ill to please,” he said. “But nobody can see reason -better than you if you will but open your eyes to it. See here, Lily: -two months and more are coming when our house, if we had it, would be -useless to us, and in the meantime you are very well off here.”</p> - -<p>She gave him a sudden glance, and would have said something, but -arrested herself in time.</p> - -<p>“You are very well here,” he repeated, “far better than even going upon -visits, or at some other little country place, where we might take -lodgings, and be very uncomfortable.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a>{284}</span> Your moor is a little estate to -you, Lily; it’s company and every thing. And if I had a little shooting -which I could manage—a man with a gun is not hard to place in Scotland, -and up in the north country there is many an opportunity; and there is -always Tom Robison’s cottage to fall back on, where you are very well -off as long as you neither need to eat there nor to sleep there. Your -servants here are used to me. Whatever explanations Dougal has made to -himself, he has made them long ago. I have no fears for him. Where would -you be so well, my Lily, as in your home?”</p> - -<p>“And where would you be so ill, Ronald,” she cried, “as in—as in——” -But Lily could not finish the sentence. How could it be that he did not -say that to himself, that he left it to her to say—to her, who was -incapable, after all, of saying to the man she loved such hard words? -Her own home, her uncle’s house, who had sent her here to separate her -once for all from Ronald Lumsden, while Ronald arranged so easily to -establish himself under his enemy’s roof.</p> - -<p>“Where would I be so ill as in Sir Robert’s house?” he said, with a -laugh. “On the contrary, Lily, I am very happy here. I have been happier -here than in any other house in the world, and why should I set up -scruples, my dear, when I have none? If Sir Robert had been a wise man -he never would have tried to separate you and me; and now that we have -turned his evil to good, and made his prison a palace, why should we -banish ourselves when all is done to do him a very doubtful pleasure? He -will never hear a word of it in my belief, and if he does, he will hear -far more than that I have come to share your castle for another -vacation. It was the first step that was the worst: yon snow-storm, -perhaps, at the New Year; but that was the power of circumstances, and -no Scots householder would ever have turned a man out into the snow. -When we did that, we did the worst. A few weeks, more or less, after -that—what can it matter? And, short time or long time, it is my belief, -Lily, that he will never<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a>{285}</span> be a pin the wiser. Then why should we trouble -ourselves?” Ronald said.</p> - -<p>As for Lily, this time she answered not a word.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> may be imagined that after this there was very little said of the -house in Edinburgh, which now, indeed, it was impossible to do any thing -about till the term at Martinmas. But Lily, I think, never alluded to -the Martinmas term. Her heart sank so that it recovered itself again -with great difficulty, and the very suggestion of the thing she had so -longed for, and fixed all her wishes upon, now brought over her a -sickness and faintness both of body and soul. When some one talked by -chance of the maids going to their new places at the term, the color -forsook her face, and Helen Blythe was much alarmed on one such -occasion, believing her friend was going to faint. Lily did not faint. -What good would that do? she said to herself with a sort of cynicism -which began to appear in her. She dug metaphorically her heels into the -soil, and stood fast, resisting all such sudden weaknesses. Perhaps -Ronald was surprised, perhaps he was not quite so glad as he expected to -be, when she ceased speaking on that subject; but, on the whole, he -concluded that it was something gained. If he could but get her to take -things quietly, to wait until he was quite ready to set up such an -establishment as he thought suitable, or, better still, till Sir Robert -died and rewarded her supposed obedience by leaving her his fortune, -which was her right, how fortunate that would be! But Lily was taking -things too quietly, he thought, with a little tremor. It was not natural -for her to give in so completely. He watched her with a little alarm -during that short stay of his. Not a word of the cherished object which -had always been coming up in their talk came from Lily’s lips again. -She<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a>{286}</span> made no further allusion to their possible home or life together; -her jests about cooking his dinner for him, about the Scotch collops and -the howtowdie, were over. Indeed, for that time all her jests were over; -she was serious as the gravest woman, no longer his laughing girl, -running over with high spirits and nonsense. This change made Ronald -very uncomfortable, but he consoled himself with thinking that in a -light heart like Lily’s no such thing could last, and that she would -soon recover her better mood again.</p> - -<p>He did not know, indeed, nor could it have entered into his heart to -conceive—for even a clever man, as Ronald was, cannot follow further -than it is in himself to understand the movements of another mind—the -effect that all this had produced upon Lily, the sudden horrible pulling -up in the progress of her thoughts, the shutting down as of a black wall -before her, the throwing back of herself upon herself. These words could -not have had any meaning to Ronald. Why a blank wall? Why a dead stop? -He had said nothing that was not profoundly reasonable. All that about -the vacation was quite true. Edinburgh is empty as a desert when the -courts are up and the schools closed. The emptiness of London after the -season, which is such perfect fiction and such absolute truth, is -nothing to the desolation of Edinburgh in the time of its holiday. To -live, as he said, in a garret in the old town, or even in the top story -of one of the newer, more convenient houses in the modern quarter, while -every-body was away, instead of here on the edge of the glorious -heather, among the summer delights of the moor, was folly itself to -think of. It was impossible but that Lily must perceive that, the moment -she permitted herself to think. Dalrugas might be dreary for the winter, -especially in the circumstances of their separation, he was ready to -allow; but in August, with the birds strong on the wing, and the heather -rustling under your stride, and no separation at all but the punctual -return of the husband to dinner and the evening fire—what was there, -what could there be, to complain of? Sir<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a>{287}</span> Robert’s house an ill place -for him! he said to himself, with a laugh. Luckily he was not so -squeamish. Such delicate troubles did not affect his mind. He could see -what she meant, of course, and he was not very sure that he liked Lily -to remind him of it; but he was of a robust constitution. He was not -likely to be overwhelmed by a fantastic idea like that.</p> - -<p>And the autumnal holiday was, as he anticipated, actually a happy moment -in their lives. Before it came Lily had time to go through many fits of -despair, and many storms of impatience and indignation. To have one -great struggle in life and then to be forever done, and fall into a -steady unhappiness in one portion of existence as you have been -persistently happy in another, is a thing which seems natural enough -when the first break comes in one’s career. But Lily soon learned the -great difference here between imagination and reality. There was not a -day in which she did not go through that struggle again, and sank into -despair and flamed with anger, and then felt herself quieted into the -moderation of exhaustion, and then beguiled again by springing hopes and -insinuating visions of happiness. Thus notwithstanding all the -bitterness of Lily’s feelings on various points, or rather, perhaps, in -consequence of the evident certainty that nothing would make Ronald see -as she did, or even perceive what it was that she wanted and did not -want—the eagerness of her passion for the house, which meant honor and -truth to her, but to him only a rash risking of their chances, and -foolish impatience on her part to have her way, as is the worst of -women—and her bitter sense of the impossibility of his calm -establishment here in her uncle’s house, a thing which he regarded as -the simplest matter in the world, with a chuckle over the discomfiture -of the old uncle—all these things, by dint of being too much to grapple -with, fell from despair into the ordinary of life. And Lily agreed with -herself to push them away, not to think when she could help it, to -accept what she could—the modified happiness, the love and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a>{288}</span> sweetness -which are, alas! of themselves not enough to nourish a wholesome -existence. She was happy, more or less, when he came in with his gun -over his shoulder, and a bag at which Dougal looked with critical but -unapproving eyes. Dougal himself took, or had permission, to shoot over -Sir Robert’s estate, which was not of great extent. These were not yet -the days when even a little bit of Highland shooting is worth a better -rent than a farm, and the birds had grown wild about Dalrugas with only -Dougal’s efforts at “keeping them down.” What the country thought of -Ronald’s position it would be hard to say. He gave himself out as living -at Tam Robison’s, the shepherd’s, and being favored by Sir Robert -Ramsay’s grieve in the matter of the shooting, which there was nobody to -enjoy. No doubt it was well enough known that he was constantly at -Dalrugas, but a country neighborhood is sometimes as opaque to perceive -any thing doubtful as it is lynx-eyed in other cases. And as few people -visited at Dalrugas, there was no scandal so far as any one knew.</p> - -<p>And with the winter there came something else to occupy Lily’s thoughts -and comfort her heart. It made her position ten times more difficult had -she thought of that, but it requires something very terrible indeed to -take away from a young wife that great secret joy and preoccupation -which arise with the first expectation of motherhood. Besides, it must -be remembered that there was in Lily’s mind no terror of discovery. -Perhaps it was this fact which kept her story from awakening the -suspicious and the scandal mongers of the neighborhood. There was no -moment at which she would not have been profoundly relieved and happy to -be found out. She desired nothing so much as that her secret should be -betrayed. This changes very much the position of those who have -unhappily something to conceal, or rather who are forced to conceal -something. If you fear discovery, it dodges you at every step, it is -always in your way. But if you desire it, by natural perversity the -danger is lessened, and nobody suspects what you would wish<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a>{289}</span> found out. -So that even this element added something to Lily’s happiness in her new -prospects. That hope in the mind of most women needs nothing to enhance -it; the great mystery, the silent joy of anticipation, the overwhelming -thought of what is, by ways unknown, by long patience, by suffering, by -rapture, about to be, fills every faculty of being. I am told that these -sentiments are old-fashioned, and that it is not so that the young women -of this concluding century regard these matters. I do not believe it: -nature is stronger than fashion, though fashion is strong, and can -momentarily affect the very springs of life. But when it did come into -Lily’s mind as she sat in a silent absorption of happiness, not thinking -much, working at her “seam,” which had come to be the most delightful -thing in heaven or earth, that the new event that was coming would -demand new provisions and create new necessities which it seemed -impossible could be provided for at Dalrugas, the thought gave an -additional impetus to the secret joy that was in her. Such things, she -said to herself, could not be hid. It would be impossible to continue -the life of secrecy in which she had been kept against her will so long. -Whatever happened, this must lead to a disclosure, to a home of her own -where in all honor her child should see the light of day.</p> - -<p>For a long time Lily had no doubt on this point. She began to speak -again about the term and the upper story in the old town. “But I would -like the other better now,” she said; “it would be better air for——, -and more easy to get out to country walks and all that is needed for -health and thriving.” It had been an uncomfortable sensation to Ronald -when she had renounced all the talk and anticipation of the house to be -taken at the term. But now that he was accustomed to exemption from -troublesome enquiries on that point he felt angry to have it taken up -again. He was disposed to think that she did it only to annoy him, at a -time, too, when he was setting his brain to work to think and to plan -how the difficulties could be got over, and how in the most satisfactory -way, and with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a>{290}</span> least trouble to her, every thing could be arranged -for Lily’s comfort. But he did not betray himself; he took great pains -even to calm all inquietudes, and not to irritate her or excite her -nerves (as he said) by opposition. He tried, indeed, to represent mildly -that of all country walks and good air nothing could be so good as the -breeze over the moors and the quiet ways about, where every thing -delicate and feeble must drink in life. But Lily had confronted him with -a blaze in her eyes, declaring that such a thing was not possible, not -possible! in a tone which she had never taken before. He said nothing -more at that time. He made believe even, when Whit-Sunday returned, that -he had seen a house, which he described in detail, but did not commit -himself to say he had secured it. Into this trap Lily fell very easily. -She had all the rooms, the views from the windows, the arrangement of -the apartment described to her over and over again, and for the great -part of that second summer of her married life there was no drawback to -the blessedness of her life. She spent it in a delightful dream, taking -her little sober walks like a woman of advanced experience, no longer -springing from hummock to hummock like a silly girl about the moor, -taking in, in exquisite calm, all its sounds and scents and pictures to -her very heart. In the height of the summer days, when the air was full -of the hum of the bees, Lily would sit under the thin shade of a -rowan-tree, thinking about nothing, the air and the murmur which was one -with the air filling her every consciousness. Why should she have sought -a deeper shadow. She wanted no shadow, but basked in the warm shining of -the sun, and breathed that dreamy hum of life, and watched, without -knowing it, the drama among the clouds, shadows flitting like breath as -swift and sudden, coming and going upon the hills. All was life all -through, constant movement, constant sound, alternation and change, no -need of thinking, foreseeing, fore-arranging, but the great universe -swaying softly in the infinite realm of space, and God holding all—the -bees, the flickering rowan-leaves, the shadows and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a>{291}</span> mountains and -Lily brooding over her secret—in the hollow of his hand.</p> - -<p>As the summer advanced, however, troubles began to steal in. She was -anxious, very anxious, to be taken to the house, which he allowed her to -believe was ready for her. It must be said that Ronald was very -assiduous in his visits, very anxious to please her in every way, full -of tenderness and care, though always avoiding or evading the direct -question. It went to his heart to disappoint her, as he had to do again -and again. The house was not ready; there were things to be done which -had been begun, which could not be interrupted without leaving it worse -than at first. And then was it not of the greatest importance for her -own health that she should remain as long as possible in the delicious -air of the North—the air which was, if not her own native air, at least -that of her family? Lily had been deeply disappointed, disturbed in her -beautiful calm, and a little excited, perhaps, in the nerves, which she -had never been conscious of before, but which Ronald assured her now -made her “ill to please”—by his unreasonable resistance to her desire -to take refuge in the house which she believed to be awaiting her—when -a curious incident occurred. Beenie appeared one morning with a very -confused countenance to ask whether her mistress would permit her to -receive the visit of a cousin of hers, “a real knowledgable woman,” who -was out of a place and in want of a shelter. “You had better ask Katrin -than me, Beenie,” cried Lily; “I’ve filled the house too much and too -long already. It is not for me to take in strangers.” “Eh, mem,” cried -Katrin, her head appearing behind that of Beenie in the doorway, “it -will be naething but a pleasure to me to have her.” Katrin’s countenance -was anxious, but Beenie’s was confused. She could not look her mistress -in the face, but stood before her in miserable embarrassment, laying -hems upon her apron. “Speak up, woman, canna ye?” cried Katrin, “for -your ain relation. Mem [Katrin never said Miss Lily now], I ken her as -weel as Beenie does. She’s a decent woman and no one that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a>{292}</span> meddles nor -gies her opinion. I’ll be real glad to have her if you’ll give your -consent.” “Oh, I give my consent,” Lily cried lightly. And in this easy -way was introduced into Dalrugas a very serious, middle-aged woman, not -in the least like Beenie, of superior education, it appeared, and a -quietly authoritative manner, whose appearance impressed the whole -household with a certain awe. It was a few days after the termination of -one of Ronald’s visits that this incident occurred, and Lily could not -resist a certain instinctive alarm at the appearance of this new figure -in the little circle round her. “You are sure she is your cousin, -Beenie? She is not like you at all.” “And you’re no like Sir Robert, -Miss Lily, that is nearer to ye than a cousin,” said Beenie promptly. -She added hurriedly: “It’s her father’s side she takes after, and she’s -had a grand education. I’ve heard say that she kent as much as the -doctors themselves. Education makes an awfu’ difference,” said Beenie -with humility. I am not sure that Lily was more attached to this new -inmate on account of her grand education. But that was, after all, a -matter of very secondary importance; and so the days and the weeks went -on.</p> - -<p>There occurred at this time an interval longer than usual between -Ronald’s visits, and Lily lost all her happy tranquillity. She became -restless, unhappy, full of trouble. “What is to become of me, what is to -become of me?” she would cry, wringing her hands. Was she to be left -here at the crisis of her fate in a solitude where there was no help, no -one to stand by her? She felt in herself a reflection, too, of the -visible anxiety of the two women, Beenie and Katrin, who never would let -her out of their sight, who seemed to tremble for her night and day. The -sight of their anxious faces angered her, and roused her occasionally to -send them off with a sharp word, half jest, half wrath. But when she was -freed from these tender yet exasperating watchers, Lily would cover her -face with her hands and cry bitterly, with a helplessness that was more -terrible than any other pain. For what could she<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a>{293}</span> do? She could not set -out, inexperienced, alone, without money, without knowing where to go. -She had, indeed, Ronald’s address; but had he not changed into the new -house, if new house there was? Lily began to doubt every thing in this -dreadful crisis of her affairs. She had no money, and to travel cheaply -in these days was impossible. And how could she get even to -Kinloch-Rugas, she who had avoided being seen even by Helen Blythe? She -wept like a child in the helplessness of her distress. She did not hear -any knock at the door or permission asked to come in, but started to -find some one bending over her, and to see that it was the strange woman -Marg’ret, Beenie’s supposed cousin. Lily made this discovery with -resentment, and bid her hastily go away.</p> - -<p>“Mem, Mrs. Lumsden,” Marg’ret said.</p> - -<p>Lily quickly uncovered her face. “You know!” she cried with a mixture, -which she could not explain to herself, of increased suspicion, yet -almost pleasure; for nobody had as called yet her by that name.</p> - -<p>“I would be a stupid person indeed if I didna know. Oh, madam, I’ve made -bold to come in, for I know more things than that. Beenie would tell you -I’ve had an education. I’ve come to beg you, on my bended knees, to give -up all thoughts of moving—it’s too late, my dear young leddy—and just -make yourself as content as you can here.”</p> - -<p>“Here!” cried Lily, with a scream of distress. “No, no, no, I must be in -my own house. Woman, whoever you are, do you know I’m Miss Ramsay here? -It’s not known who I am, and what will they think if any thing—any -thing—should happen?”</p> - -<p>“Are you wanting to conceal it, Mrs. Lumsden?”</p> - -<p>“No, no, no! Any thing but that! If you will go to the cross of -Kinloch-Rugas and say Lily Ramsay has been Ronald Lumsden’s wife for -more than a year, I will—I will kiss you,” cried Lily, as if that was -the greatest sacrifice she could make. -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a>{294}</span> -“Then why should you not bide still? If it’s found out, it’s found out, -and you’re pleased. And if it’s not found out, maybe the gentleman’s -pleased. Mrs. Lumsden, I’m a real, well-qualified nurse. I will tell you -the truth: they were frightened, thae women. I said, when Beenie told -me, I would come and just be here if there was any occasion. Mistress -Lumsden, I will show you my certificates. I am just all I say, and maybe -a little more. Will you trust yourself to me?”</p> - -<p>And what could Lily do? She was in no condition to enquire into it, to -satisfy herself if it was a plot of Ronald’s making, or only, as this -woman said, a scheme of the women. To think over such subjects was no -exercise for her at that moment. She yielded, for she could do nothing -else. And a very short time after there was an agitated night in the old -tower. It was the night of the market, and Dougal had come in, in the -muzzy condition which was usual to him on such occasions, and -consequently slept like a log and was conscious of nothing that was -going on. Ronald had arrived the day before. And when the morning came, -there was another little new creature added to the population of the -world.</p> - -<p>It was more like a dream than ever to Lily—a dream of rapture and -completion, of every trouble calmed, and every pang over, and every -promise fulfilled. She was surrounded by love and the most sedulous -watching. She seemed to have no longer any wishes, only thanks in her -heart. She even saw her husband go away without trouble. “Come back soon -and fetch us. Come back and fetch us,” she said, smiling at him through -half-closed eyes.</p> - -<p>It was not, however, much more than a week after when Ronald, without -warning or announcement, rushed into her room, pale with fatigue, and -dusty from his journey. “I have come here post-haste!” he cried. “Lily, -your Uncle Robert is in Edinburgh. He is coming on here for the -shooting, and other men with him. If I’m a day in advance, that is all. -I have thought of the only thing that is to be done if you will but -consent.”</p> - -<p>“The only thing to be done,” said Lily, raising herself<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a>{295}</span> in her bed, -with sparkling eyes, “is what I have always wished: to tell him all -that’s happened, and, oh! what a light conscience I will have, and what -a happy heart!”</p> - -<p>“He would turn you out of his doors!” cried Ronald in dismay.</p> - -<p>“Well!” cried Lily, who felt capable of every thing, “I may not be a -great walker yet, but I’ll hirple on till a cart passes or something, -and they’ll take me in at the Manse.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, my darling, don’t think of such a risk!” he cried. “For God’s sake, -keep quiet! Say nothing and do nothing till you hear from me again. I -have thought of a plan. Will you promise to do nothing, to make no -confession, till I’m at your side, or till you hear from me?”</p> - -<p>“Are you not going to stay with me, to meet him?”</p> - -<p>“I cannot, I cannot! I’ve come now at the greatest risk. Lily, you will -promise?”</p> - -<p>“I am going to dress the baby for the night,” said the nurse, -interposing. “Will ye give him a kiss, mem, before I take him away?”</p> - -<p>Lily’s lips settled softly on the infant’s cheeks like a bee on a -flower. “He’s sweeter and sweeter every day. Ronald, you must not ask me -too much. But I will try, so long as all is well and safe with him.”</p> - -<p>“I will see that all is safe with him,” Ronald cried. He lingered a -little with the young mother, half jealous of the looks she cast at the -door for the return of the child in Margaret’s arms.</p> - -<p>“You have told her not to bring him back,” she said with smiling -reproach, “but I’ll have him all to myself after.” She was not afraid of -his news, she was not shaken by his excitement. The approach of this -tremendous crisis seemed only to exhilarate Lily. She was so glad, so -glad, to be found out. It was the only thing that was wanting to her -perfect happiness.</p> - -<p>Ronald’s gig had been waiting all the time while he lingered. He had to -rush away at last in order to catch the night coach from Kinloch-Rugas, -he said; and Lily<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a>{296}</span> waited, with smiles shining through the tears in her -eyes, to hear the sound of the wheels carrying him away. And then she -cried impatiently: “Marg’ret, Marg’ret, bring me my baby!”</p> - -<p>But Marg’ret, it seemed, did not hear.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span> Robert arrived, as they had been warned, next day. An express came -in the morning, preceding him, to order rooms to be prepared for three -guests—to the great indignation of Katrin, who demanded where she was -expected to get provender for four men, and maybe men-servants into the -bargain, that were worse than their masters, at a moment’s notice. “As -if there was naething to do but put linen on the beds,” she cried. “The -auld man must have gaun gyte. Ye canna make a dinner for Sir Robert and -his gentlemen out of a chuckie and a brace o’ birds frae the moor. If I -had but a hare to make soup o’, or a wheen trout, or a single blessed -thing. You’ll just put the black powny in the cart, Dougal, and ye’ll -gang down yoursel’ to the toun. Sandy! What does Sandy ken? How could I -trust that callant to look after Sir Robert’s denner? You’re nane so -clever yoursel’—but it’s you that shall go, and no another. Man, have -ye no thought of your auld maister and his first dinner when the auld -man comes home?”</p> - -<p>“I think of him maybe mair than some folk that have keepit grand goings -on in his auld hoose.”</p> - -<p>“<i>What</i> were ye saying?” cried Katrin, fixing him with a commanding eye. -She pronounced this, as I have gently insinuated before, “F’what,” which -gave great force to the sound. “I might have kent,” she cried, with a -toss of her head, “there wasna a man breathing that could hold his -tongue when he thought he had a story to tell!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a>{297}</span></p> - -<p>“Me—tell a story!” said Dougal in instinctive self-defence. Then he -added: “It a’ depends—on what a man has to tell.”</p> - -<p>“Ye’re born traitors, a’ the race o’ ye, from Adam doun!” cried Katrin -in her wrath, “and aye the women to bear the wyte, accordin’ to you. -Tell till ye burst!” she exclaimed with concentrated fury, “and it’s no -me ’ll say a word; but put the powny in the cart and gang doun to the -town, and try what ye can get for my denner. I’ll no have the auld man -starved, no, nor yet shamed afore his freends, nor served with an ill -denner the first night—him that hasna been in his ain auld hoose for -years.”</p> - -<p>“Ye’re awfu’ particular about his denner, considering every thing that’s -come and gone, and the care you’ve ta’en of him and his.”</p> - -<p>“Yes!” cried Katrin, “I’m awfu’ particular about his denner. Are you -going? or will I have to leave the rooms to settle themselves and go -mysel’?”</p> - -<p>Dougal at last obeyed this strong impulsion; but the black powny and the -cart were not for so important a person as Sir Robert’s factotum the day -his master came home. He put Rory into the geeg, and drove down in such -state as was procured by these means, with his countenance full of -unutterable things. He was, indeed, when the little quarrel with Katrin -was over, a man laden with much thought. Dougal had observed not very -clearly, but yet more than he was believed to have observed. His stolid -understanding had been played upon unmercifully by the women, and he had -been taken in many times in respect to Ronald’s presence or absence in -the house. Often it had occurred that he “could have sworn” the visitor -was there when he was not there, and still oftener he could have sworn -the reverse; but at the end of all the tricks and deceptions he was -tolerably clear as to the position of affairs, if he had possessed the -faculty of speech, and sufficient indifference to other motives to have -used it. But Dougal, who was a very simple soul, was held in the grasp -of as great a complication of influences as if he had been the most -subtle and the most self-analyzing. Should<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a>{298}</span> he tell Sir Robert what he -had seen and guessed? Sir Robert was his master, and it was Dougal’s -duty, as guardian of the house, to report what had occurred in it. Ay! -but would he shame the house by raising a story that maybe never would -be got at by the right end? For what could he say? That a gentleman from -Edinburgh had been about the place, coming and going by night and by -day; that a person could never tell when he was there and when he wasna -there; and, finally, that it was clear as daylight him and Miss Lily -were “great freends.” Ah, Miss Lily! That brought up again another -series of motives. She was his, Dougal’s, young leddy, by every lawful -tie, the only bairn of the house, the real heir. If Sir Robert, as he -was perfectly capable, were to leave Dalrugas away from her the morn, -she would not a whit the less be the only Ramsay left of the old family, -Mr. James’s daughter, who had been Dougal’s adoration in his youth. Was -he to raise a scandal on Miss Lily—he, her own father’s man? Dougal’s -heart revolted at the thought. And Katrin, that spoiled the lassie, that -could see nothing that was not perfect in her—Katrin would never have a -good word for her man again. She would call him a traitor—that word -that burns and never ceases to wound—like black Monteith that betrayed -the Wallace wight, like—— But Dougal’s courage was not equal to that -anticipation; rather any thing than that, rather flee the country than -that—to betray a bit creature that trusted him, Mr. James’s daughter, -the last Ramsay, a little lass that could not fight for herself. “No -me!” cried Dougal to all the winds that blew. “No me!” he said, -confronting old Schiehallion, as if that tranquil mountain had tempted -him. He shook his fist at the hills and at the world. “No me, no me!” he -said.</p> - -<p>I do not believe that Katrin ever was in the least afraid in respect to -Dougal, but a very troubled woman was Katrin that day. She had been in -Ronald Lumsden’s confidence all along, more than his wife knew, and in -her way had abetted him and helped him, though often against her -conscience. Beenie had done the same, but she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a>{299}</span> not Katrin’s head, -and meekly followed where the other led. They had both been partially -guilty in respect to Marg’ret, a woman introduced into the house by the -clumsiest means, which Lily could have seen through in a moment had she -tried, but whose presence was so great a comfort and relief to the other -two that their eagerness to accede to the artifice by which she was -brought as a guest to Dalrugas was very excusable. “What would you and -me do, Beenie?” Katrin had said, for once acknowledging a situation with -which she was not able to cope. They had been able “to sleep at night,” -as they both said, since <i>that</i> woman was there, and there was nothing -to be said against the woman. She was not troublesome, she was kind, she -knew what she was about. That she was Ronald’s emissary was nothing -against her. She was, on the contrary, an evidence of the husband’s -tender care for his wife; his anxiety that she should have the best and -most costly attention. “And a bonnie penny she will cost him,” the two -women said to themselves. But the events of the last twenty-four hours -had altogether overwhelmed Katrin, and she had not the comfort even of -speaking to any one on the subject, of expressing her horror, her -amazement and dismay, for Beenie was shut up with Lily, whose state was -such that she could not be left alone for a moment. It was well for the -housekeeper that her head was filled with Sir Robert’s dinner and the -airing of the mattresses. It gave her a relief from her heavy thoughts -to drag down the feather beds and turn them over and over before a -blazing fire, though it was August, and the sun blazing hot out of -doors. She worked—as a Highland housekeeper works the day the gentlemen -are to arrive—for the credit of the house and her own. “Would I let -strangers find a word to say, or a thing forgotten, and me the woman in -charge of Dalrugas this mony and mony a year?” she said to herself. And -it did Katrin a great deal of good, as she did not hesitate to -acknowledge. It took off her thoughts.</p> - -<p>Sir Robert arrived in the evening with two elderly<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a>{300}</span> friends and one -young one, with all their guns and paraphernalia, Sir Robert’s own man -directing every thing, and at least one other man-servant, bringing -dismay to Katrin’s heart. “You will not have more than two or three good -days on my little bit of moor,” the old gentleman had said with proud -humility, “but the neighbors are very friendly, and no doubt my niece -has got a lot of cheerful Highland lassies about her that will enliven -the time for you, my young friend.” The friends, young and old, had -protested their perfect prospective satisfaction with the entertainment -Sir Robert had to offer, none of them believing, as, indeed, he did not -believe himself, his own disparaging account of the moor. They arrived -very dusty in their post-chaise, but in high spirits, the old gentleman -with an excited pleasure in returning to the old house of his fathers, -which he had not seen for years. Perhaps it looked to him small and gray -and chill, as is the wont of old paternal houses when a long-absent -master comes back. He called out almost as soon as he came in sight of -the door, where Dougal was waiting with his bonnet poised on the extreme -edge of his head, on one hair, and Sandy behind him, ready with awe to -follow the directions of the gentlemen’s gentlemen, and carry the -luggage upstairs. “Where is Miss Lily? Where is my niece?” Sir Robert -cried. “Does she not think it worth her trouble to come and meet her old -uncle at the door?”</p> - -<p>Katrin came forward from the threshold, within which she had been -lurking, and courtesied to the best of her ability. “You’re welcome, Sir -Robert; you’re awfu’ welcome,” she said; “but Miss Lily, I’m sorry to -say, is just very ill in her bed.”</p> - -<p>“Ill in her bed!” cried Sir Robert. “Nonsense! Nonsense! I know that -kind of illness. She is vexed at me for sending her here, and she’s made -up her mind to sulk a little that I may flatter her and plead with her. -You may tell her it won’t do. I’m not that kind of man. I’ll pardon, -maybe, a bonnie lass in all her braws and showing <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a>{301}</span>her pleasure in them, -but a sulky, sour young woman—— Eh, Evandale, what were you saying—an -old house? It’s old enough if ye think that to its credit, and bare -enough. Katrin, I hope you’ll be able to make these gentlemen -comfortable in the old barrack, such as it is.”</p> - -<p>“I hope so, Sir Robert,” said Katrin. She was relieved that his -animadversions on Lily should be cut short.</p> - -<p>And then they mounted the spiral staircase with the worn steps, which in -one or two places were almost dangerous, and which the elder men mounted -very cautiously, one after the other, the loud footsteps of the men -echoing through the place, their deeper voices filling the air.</p> - -<p>“Lord bless us all!” Katrin cried within herself, “if they had arrived -ten days ago!” It was a comfort, in the midst of all the trouble, that -Lily was safe in her bed, and, whatever happened, could not be -disturbed.</p> - -<p>Sir Robert’s enquiries again next morning after his niece were made late -and after long delay. It was the 12th of August, and unnecessary to say -that Dalrugas was full of sound and hurry from an early hour; the -manufacture and consumption of an enormous breakfast, and the -preparations for the first great day with the grouse, occupying -every-body, so that Katrin herself, though very anxious, had not found a -moment to visit Lily’s room, or even to snatch a moment’s talk with -Beenie over her mistress’s state. “Just the same, and that’s very bad,” -Beenie said, through the half-open door, “and just half out of her wits -with the noise, and no able to understand what it means.” “Oh, it’s a’ -thae men!” cried Katrin. “The gentlemen and their grouse, and the others -with the guns and the douges and a’ the rest o’t. Pity me that have not -a moment, that must gang and toil for them and their breakfasts!” When -every thing was ready at last, and the party set out, Sir Robert, whose -shooting days were over, accompanied them to a certain favorite corner -upon Rory, who, though the old gentleman was not a heavy weight, -objected to the unusual length of his limbs and decision of his -proceedings; but he returned to the house shortly after, musing, with a -sigh or two. Perhaps it was a rash experiment<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a>{302}</span> to come back after so -many years; his doctor had advised it strongly, giving him much hope -from his native air, the air of the moors and hills, and from the quiet -and regular hours and rule of measured living which he would have no -temptation to transgress. “We must remember we are not so young as we -once were—any of us,” the physician had said, notwithstanding that he -himself was but forty. When a man is old and ailing, and lives too -perilously well, and sees and does too much in the gayer regions of the -land, and is known at the same time to have a castle in the North, an -old patrimony in the Highlands, delightful in August at least, and -probably the best place in the world for him at all times of the year, -such a prescription is easy. “Your native air, Sir Robert, and a quiet -country life.” The 12th of August, a fine day, and already the sharp, -clear report of the guns in the brilliant air, and a sense of company -and enjoyment about, and the moor a great magnificent garden, purple -with heather, is about as cheerful a moment as could be chosen to make a -beginning of such a life. But old Sir Robert, returning from the -beginning of the sport which he was not able to share to his old house, -his Highland castle, which, as he turned toward it in the glorious -sunshine of the morning, looked so gray and pinched and penurious, with -the tower, that was only a high outstanding gable, and the farm -buildings, which had for so long a time been the chief and most -important points of the cluster of buildings to its humble occupants, -had little to make him cheerful. A sharp sensation almost of shame stung -the old man as he realized what his friends must have thought of his -Highland castle. Taymouth and Inverary are castles, and so are the -brand-new houses down the Clyde in which the Glasgow merchants establish -themselves with all the luxuries which money can buy. But where did old -Dalrugas come in, so spare and poor, rising straight out of the moor -without garden or plaisance, not to speak of parks or woods? He smiled -to himself a little sadly at the misnomer. He was wounded in the pride -with which he had regarded that shrunken, impoverished little<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a>{303}</span> place—a -pride which he felt now was half ludicrous and yet half pathetic. How -was it that he had not thought so when last he was here, then a mature -man and having passed all the glamour of youth? He shook his head at the -pinched, tall gable, the corbie steps cut so clearly against the blue -sky, the gray line of the bare, blank wall. After all, it was but a poor -house for a family with such pretensions as the Ramsays of Dalrugas—a -poor thing to brag to his Southern friends about. And it was not very -gay. He, who had been a man who loved to enjoy himself, and who had done -so wherever he had been, to come back here in the end of his days to -settle down to the dreariness of the solitary moor and the silence of a -country life—was it not a discipline more than he could bear that -“those doctors” had put him under? Was a year or two more of vegetation -here worth the giving up of all his old gratifications and amusements? -It is hard even upon a man who knows he is old, but does not care to -acknowledge it, to accompany on a pony for a little way his friends, who -are keen for their sport, to set them off on the 12th without being able -to go a step or fire a shot with them. Those doctors—what did they -know? They had probably sent him off, not knowing what more to do for -him, that they might not be troubled with the sight of him dying before -their eyes.</p> - -<p>Then, however, there came before Sir Robert, by some more kindly touch -of memory, certain scenes from the old life, when Dalrugas was the -warmest and happiest home in the world, always overflowing with kindly -neighbors and friends of youth. Their names came back to him one by -one—Duffs, Gordons, Sinclairs. Where were they all now? There would be -at least their representatives in all the old places—sons, nay, perhaps -grandsons, of his contemporaries, young asses that would turn up their -noses at a <i>vieille moustache</i>; yet perhaps some of the old folk too. -Lily would know; no doubt but Lily would know every one of them. She -would have her partners among the boys and her cronies among the girls. -He felt glad that Lily was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a>{304}</span> here to renew the alliances of the old -place. What had he sent her here for, by-the-bye? Something about a -silly sweetheart that she would not give up, the silly thing. Probably -she would have forgotten his very name by this time, as Sir Robert did; -and there would be another now waiting his sanction. Well, no harm if it -was a fit match for the last Ramsay. He would insist upon that. Somebody -that had gear enough, and good blood, and a proper place in the world. -No other should poor James’s daughter marry; that was one thing sure.</p> - -<p>And then he began to think what had become of Lily that she had neither -come to meet him last night nor appeared this morning. Was she bearing -malice? or sulking at her old uncle? He would soon see there was an end -to that. If she was ill, she must have the doctor. If it was but some -silly cold or other, or the headache that a woman sets up at a moment’s -notice, she must get up out of her bed, she must come down stairs. -Self-indulgence was good for nobody, especially at Lily’s age. He would -see her woman, Beenie, who was her shadow, and whom Sir Robert began to -recollect he had not seen any more than Lily herself. And then the -alternative should be given her—the doctor, who would stand no -nonsense, or to get up and put a shawl about her, and nurse her cold by -the fireside, where she could talk to him, and be much better than if -she were in bed. Sir Robert quickened Rory’s paces, and, indeed, as the -pony was nothing loath to reach his stable, appeared at the house with -almost undignified haste to put in immediate operation this plan.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">“No</span> better this morning! What is the matter with her? I never heard Lily -was unhealthy or delicate!”</p> - -<p>“She is neither the one nor the other,” said Katrin, indignant, “but -she’s not well to-day. The best of us, Sir Robert, we’re subjeck to -that.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a>{305}</span></p> - -<p>“Ye think so!” he said rather fiercely, as if it were a dogma to -question. And then he added: “There’s that big Beenie creature, that is, -I suppose, as much with her as ever—send her to me.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, Sir Robert, how is she to leave Miss Lily, that is just not well at -all this morning?”</p> - -<p>“Send her to me at once!” the old gentleman said imperatively. He went -into the dining-room, which was on the lower floor and the room he liked -best, the most comfortable in the house. There were no signs of a -woman’s presence in that room. A vague wonder crossed his mind if, after -all, Lily had been here at all. He forgot that he had been much -incommoded the evening before by the books and the work-baskets, the -cushions and the footstools, which had demonstrated the some time -presence of a woman upstairs. He kept walking up and down the room -stiffly, feeling his foot a little, as he owned to himself. Sir Robert -truly felt that he would not be sorry if the prescription of his native -air failed manifestly at once.</p> - -<p>“Well,” he said, turning round hastily at a timid opening of the door. -“How’s your mistress—how’s my niece? What does she mean by taking -shelter in her bed, and never appearing to bid me welcome?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Sir Robert, Miss Lily——” said Beenie. She held the door open and -stood leaning against the edge, as if ready to fly at a call from -without or a thrust from within. Beenie’s hair, which it was difficult -to keep tidy at the best of times, hung over her pale countenance like a -cloud, a short lock standing out from her forehead. We are accustomed -now to every vagary of which hair is capable, and are not disturbed by -loose locks; but in those days strict tidiness was the rule; and Beenie, -very white as to her cheeks and red round the eyes, partly with tears, -partly with watching, was, to Sir Robert, a being unworthy of any -confidence.</p> - -<p>“Woman!” he cried, “you look as if you had been up all night—and not a -fit person to be a lady’s body-servant, and with her night and day!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a>{306}</span></p> - -<p>“Fit or no,” said Beenie, with a sob, “I’m the one Miss Lily’s aye had, -and her and me will never be parted either with her will or mine.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll see about that,” said Sir Robert. But he was wise man enough to -know that a favorite servant was a difficult thing to attack. He asked -peremptorily: “What is the matter with her?” placing himself, like a -judge, in the great chair.</p> - -<p>“Eh, Sir Robert, if Marg’ret, my cousin, had been here, that is half a -doctor herself! but me I know nothing,” cried Beenie, wringing her -hands.</p> - -<p>“Is it a cold?”</p> - -<p>“It was, maybe, a cold to begin with,” said Beenie cautiously, but then -she melted into tears and cried: “She’s awfu’ fevered, she’s the color -o’ fire, and kens nothing,” in a lamentable voice.</p> - -<p>“Bless me,” cried Sir Robert, “is there any fever about?”</p> - -<p>“There’s nae fever about that I ken of—there’s nae folk hereby to get a -fever,” Beenie said.</p> - -<p>“Then I’ll go and see her myself!” cried Sir Robert, rising from his -chair.</p> - -<p>“Eh, Sir Robert!” cried Katrin, from behind the door, “you a gentleman -that could do the puir thing no good! It’s better to leave her to us -women folk.”</p> - -<p>“There is truth in that, too,” Sir Robert said. He took a turn about the -room and then sat down again in his chair, his forehead contracted with -a line of annoyance and perplexity which might have been called anxiety -by a charitable onlooker. Beenie had seized the opportunity of Katrin’s -appearance to hurry away, and he found himself face to face with his -housekeeper. He gave a long breath of relief. “It’s you, Katrin,” he -said; “you’re a sensible person according to your lights. There’s fever -with all things—a wound (but that’s of course impossible for her), or a -cold, or any accident. What’s your opinion? Is it a thing that will pass -away?”</p> - -<p>“Leave her with Beenie and me for another day, Sir<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a>{307}</span> Robert, and the -morn, if she’s no better, I’ll be the first to ask for a doctor; and eh, -I hope it’s safe no to have him the day.” The latter part of this speech -Katrin said to herself under cover of the door.</p> - -<p>“She’ll have got cold coming home late from one of her parties,” said -the old gentleman, regaining his composure.</p> - -<p>“Her pairties, Sir Robert!” said Katrin, almost with a shriek. “And -where, poor thing, would she get pairties here?”</p> - -<p>“She has friends, I suppose?” he said with a little impatience, -“companions of her own age. Where will young creatures like that not -find parties? is what I would ask.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, Sir Robert! but I’m doubting you’ve forgotten our countryside. -There’s Miss Eelen at the Manse that is her one great friend; and John -Jameson’s lass at the muckle farm, that has been at the school in -Edinburgh, and would fain, fain think herself a lady, poor bit thing, -would have given her little finger to be friends with Miss Lily. But you -would not have had her go to pairties in the farmhouse; and at the Manse -they give nane, the minister being such a lameter. Pairties! the Lord -bless us! Wha would ask her to pairties on this side of the moor?”</p> - -<p>“There are plenty of people,” said Sir Robert almost indignantly, “that -should have shown attention to my brother James’s daughter, both for my -sake and his. What do you call the Duffs, woman? and the Gordons of the -Muckle moor, and Sir John Sinclair’s family at the Lews? Many a merry -night have we passed among us when we were all young. The Duffs’ is not -more than a walk, even if Lily were setting up for a fine lady, which, -to do her justice, was not her way.”</p> - -<p>“Eh, hear till him!” breathed Katrin under her breath. She said aloud: -“Times are awfu’ changed, Sir Robert, since your days. The present Mr. -Duff he’s married on an English lady, and they say she cannot bide the -air of the Highlands, though it is well kent for the finest air in a’ -the world. He comes here whiles with a wheen gentlemen for the first of -the shooting—but her never, and there’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a>{308}</span> little to be said for a house -when the mistress is never in it. Of the Gordons there’s nane left but -one auld leddy, the last of them, I hear, except distant connections. -And as for Sir John at the Lews, poor man, poor man, he just died -broken-hearted, one of his bonnie boys going to destruction after the -other. They say the things are to be roupit and the auld mansion-house -to be left desolate, for of the twa that remain the one’s a -ne’er-do-well and the other a puir avaricious creature, feared to spend -a shilling, and I canna tell which is the worst.”</p> - -<p>“Bless me, bless me!” Sir Robert had gone on saying, shaking his head. -He was receiving a rude awakening. He saw in his mind’s eye the old -house running over with lively figures, with fun and laughter—and now -desolate. It gave him a great shock, partly from the simple fact, which -by itself was overwhelming, partly because of a sudden pity which sprang -up in his mind for Lily, and, most of all, for himself. What, nobody to -come and see him, to tell the news and hear what was in the London -papers; no cheerful house to form an object for his walk, no men to talk -to, no ladies to whom to pay his old-fashioned compliments! This -discovery went very much to his heart. After a long time he said: “It -would be better to let the houses than to leave them to go to rack and -ruin, or shut up, as you say—the best houses in the countryside.”</p> - -<p>“Let them!” cried Katrin. “Gentlemen’s ain houses! We’re maybe fallen -low, Sir Robert, but we’re no just fallen to that.”</p> - -<p>“You silly woman! the grandest folk do it,” cried Sir Robert. Then he -added in a lower tone: “Lily, I am afraid, may not have had a very -lively life.”</p> - -<p>“You may well say that!” cried Katrin. “Poor bonnie lassie, if she had -bidden ony gangrel body on the road, or any person travelling that -passed this way, to come in and bear her company, I would not have been -surprised for my part.”</p> - -<p>Katrin spoke very deliberately, <i>avec intention</i>. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a>{309}</span> seemed well to -prepare an argument, in case it might be used with effect another time. -And Sir Robert was much subdued. He had not meant to inflict such a -punishment upon his niece. He had believed, indeed, that her life at -Dalrugas would be even more gay than her life in Edinburgh. There the -parties might occasionally be formal, or the <i>convives</i> bores, according -to his own experience at least; but here there was nothing but the good, -warm, simple intimacy of the country, the life almost in common, the -hospitable doors always open. If a compunctious recollection of Lily -ever crossed his mind in the midst of his own elderly amusements, this -was what he had been in the habit of saying to himself: “There will be -lads enough to make a little queen of her, and lasses enough to keep her -company, for she’s a bonnie bit thing when all is said.” He had always -been a little proud of her, though she had been a great trouble to him; -and he thought he knew that in his old home Lily would be fully -appreciated. That he had sent her out into the wilderness had never -entered his thoughts. He dismissed Katrin with an uneasy mind, imploring -her, almost with humility, to do every thing she could think of for his -poor Lily, and if she was not better in the morning, to send at once for -the best doctor in the neighborhood. Who was the best doctor in the -neighborhood? Indeed, there was but little choice—the doctor at -Kinloch-Rugas, who was not so young as he once was, and had, alas, a -sore weakness for his glass, and the one at Ardenlennie on the other -side, who was well spoken of. “Let it be the one at Ardenlennie,” Sir -Robert said. He spent rather a wretched day afterward, taking two or -three short constitutionals, up and down the high-road, three-quarters -of an hour at a time, to while away the lonely day until his friends -returned from the moor. It was far too painful an ordeal, to spend the -12th of August alone in this place where, in his recollection, the 12th -of August had always been ecstasy. He should have chosen another moment. -He had not imagined that he would have felt so much his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a>{310}</span> -disabilities of old age. He had been wont to boast that he did not feel -them at all, one kind of enjoyment having been replaced by another, and -his desire for athletic pleasures having died a natural death in the -perfection of his matured spirit and changed tastes, which were equal to -better things. But he had certainly subjected himself to too great a -trial now. That the 12th should be his first day at home, and that all -his sport should consist of a convoy given to the sportsmen on the back -of Rory, but not a gun for his own shoulder, not a step on the heather -for his foot! It was too much. He had been a fool. And then this silly -misadventure of Lily and her illness to make every thing worse.</p> - -<p>A moment of comparative comfort occurred in the middle of the day when -he had his luncheon. “Really that woman’s not bad as a cook,” he said to -himself. She was but a woman, and a Scotch, uncultivated creature, but -she had her qualities—and there was taste in what she sent him, that -priceless gift, especially for an old man. He took a little nap after -his luncheon, and then he took another walk, and so got through the day -till the sportsmen came back. They came in noisy and triumphant, with -their bags, and their stories of what happened at this and that corner, -of the cheepers that had been missed and the old birds that were full of -guile. Had they been Sir Robert’s sons it is possible that he might have -listened benignly, and felt more or less the pleasure by proxy which -some gentle spirits taste. But they were strangers, mere “friends” in -the jargon of the world, meaning acquaintances more or less intimate. Of -the three he bore best the laughter and delight and brags and eagerness -to show his own prowess of the young man. The others awakened a sharper -pang of contrast. “Almost my own age!” Alas! the difference between -fifty and seventy is the unkindest of comparisons. They were not even -good companions for him in the evening. When they had talked over every -step of their progress, and every bird that had fallen before them, and -eaten of Katrin’s good<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a>{311}</span> dishes an enormous dinner, the strong air of the -moor, and the hot fire of the peats, and the fatigue of the first day’s -exercise and excitement, overpowered them one after another with sleep. -This would not have been the case had Lily been afoot to sing a song or -two and keep them to their manners. Sir Robert was driven to the -expedient of sending for Dougal when they had all, with many excuses, -gone to bed. Dougal was sleepy, too, and tired, though not so much so as -“the gentlemen,” to whom the grouse and the moor were, more or less, -novelties. He gave his wife a curious look when Sir Robert’s man called -him to his master, and Katrin responded with one that partly entreated -and partly threatened. She said: “You can tell him Miss Lily is very -bad, and I’ll get the doctor the first thing the morn.”</p> - -<p>Dougal uttered no word. He could not wear his bonnet when he went up to -see the laird, but he took it in his hands, which was some small -consolation. He was in a dreadful confusion of mind, not knowing what -was to be said to him, what was to be demanded of him. He might be about -to be put through his “questions,” and want all his strength to defend -himself; or it might be nothing at all—some nonsense about the guns or -the birds. His heavy shock of hair stood up from his forehead, giving -something of an ox-like breadth and heaviness of brow. He held his head -somewhat down, with a trace of defiance. Katrin might gloom; it was -little he cared for Katrin when his blood was up; but there was not a -bit of the traitor in Dougal. No blood of a black Monteith in him, if -they were to put the thumbscrews on him or matches atween his fingers. -That poor bonnie creature, whatever was her wyte—they should get -nothing to trouble her out of him.</p> - -<p>“Well, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, dangerously genial, “you see I’m left -all alone. My friends they have gone to their beds, as if they were -callants home from the school.”</p> - -<p>“The gentlemen would be geyan tired,” said Dougal; “they’re English, and -no accustomed to our moors, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a>{312}</span> some of them no so young either. You -never kent that, Sir Robert, you that were to the manner born.”</p> - -<p>“But too auld for that sort of thing, Dougal, now.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe, and maybe not,” said Dougal. “There’s naething like the auld -blood and the habit o’t. I’d sooner see you cock a rifle, Sir Robert, -though I say it as shouldna, than the whole three of them.”</p> - -<p>“No, no, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, “that’s flattery. They’re not very -good shots, then,” he said, with a smile. He was not indisposed to hear -this of them, though they were his friends.</p> - -<p>“Well, Sir Robert, I wouldna say, on their ain kind o’ ground, among the -stubble and that kind o’ low-country shooting, which, I’m tauld, is the -common thing <i>there</i>; but no on our moors. When you’re used to the -heather, it’s a different thing.”</p> - -<p>“No doubt there is something in that,” Sir Robert allowed with discreet -satisfaction. And then he added: “What’s this I hear from your wife -about all the old neighbors, and that there’s scarcely a house open I -knew in my young days?”</p> - -<p>“What is that, Sir Robert?” said Dougal cautiously.</p> - -<p>“The neighbors, ye dunce, my old friends that were all about the -countryside when I was young, and that I thought would be friends for my -poor little Lily when she came here. I’m told there’s not one of them -left.”</p> - -<p>Dougal did not readily take up what was meant, but he held his own -firmly. “There’s been nae gentleman’s house,” he said, “what you would -call open and receiving visitors round about Dalrugas as long as I -mind—no more than Dalrugas itsel’.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, Dalrugas itself,” said Sir Robert, a little abashed. It was -true—if the others had closed their doors, so had Dalrugas; if they -were left to silence and decay, so had his own house been. Other reasons -had operated in his case, but the result was the same. “I’m afraid, -Dougal,” he said, “that my poor little Lily has had an ill time of it, -which I never intended. Give me your opinion on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_313" id="page_313"></a>{313}</span> subject. Your -wife’s a very decent woman—and an excellent cook, I will say that for -her—but she’s like them all, she stands up for her own side. She would -have me think that my niece has been very solitary among the moors. Now -that was never what I intended. Tell me true: has Miss Lily been a kind -of prisoner, and seen nobody, as Katrin says?”</p> - -<p>Dougal pushed his mass of hair to one side as if it had been a wig. “The -young leddy,” he said, “had none o’ the looks of a prisoner, Sir Robert. -I’ve seen her when you would have thought it was the very sun itsel’ -shining on the moor.”</p> - -<p>“You’re very poetical, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, with a laugh.</p> - -<p>“And she would whiles sing as canty as the birds, and off upon Rory as -light as a feather down to the market to see all the ferlies o’ the -toun, and into the Manse for her tea.”</p> - -<p>“That sounds cheerful enough,” said the old gentleman, “though the -ferlies of the town were not very exciting, I suppose. And old Blythe’s -still at the Manse? He’s one of the old set left at least.”</p> - -<p>“He’s an altered man noo, Sir Robert; never a step can he make out o’ -his muckle chair; they say he’s put into his bed at nicht, but it’s a -mystery to me and many more how it’s done, for he’s a muckle heavy man. -But year’s end to year’s end he’s just living on in his muckle chair.”</p> - -<p>“Lord bless us!” Sir Robert said. He looked down on his own still -shapely and not inactive limbs with an involuntary shiver of comparison, -and then he added, with a half laugh: “A man that liked his good dinner, -and a good bottle of wine, and a good crack, with any of us.”</p> - -<p>“That did he, Sir Robert!” Dougal said.</p> - -<p>“Poor old Blythe! I must go and see him,” said the happier veteran, with -an unconscious stretch of his capable legs, and throwing out of his -chest. It was not any pleasure in the misfortune of his neighbor which -gave him this glow of almost satisfaction. It was the sense of his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a>{314}</span> -superiority in well-being, the comparison which was so much in his own -favor. The comparison this morning had not been in his own favor and he -had not liked it. He felt now, let us hope with a sensation of -thankfulness, how much better off he was than Mr. Blythe.</p> - -<p>“Well, well, the Manse was always something, Dougal,” he said. “Manses -are cheerful places; there’s always a great coming and going. I hope -there was nobody much out of her own sphere that Miss Lily met there—no -young ministers coming up here after her, eh? They have a terrible flair -for lasses with tochers, these young ministers, Dougal?”</p> - -<p>“Ay, Sir Robert, that have they,” said Dougal, “but I’ve seen no -minister here.”</p> - -<p>“That was good luck for Lily—or we that are responsible for her,” said -the old gentleman. “Well, Dougal, my man, you’ll be tired yourself and -ready for your bed, and to make an early start to-morrow with the -gentlemen.”</p> - -<p>“Ay, Sir Robert,” said Dougal. He was very glad to accept his dismissal, -and to feel that without so much as a fib he had kept his own counsel -and betrayed nothing. But when he had reached the door, he turned round -again, crushing his bonnet in his hands. “I was to tell you Miss Lily -was no better, poor thing, and that the women thought the doctor would -have to be sent for the morn.”</p> - -<p>Sir Robert’s countenance clouded over. “Tchick, tchick!” he said, with -an air of perplexity. “You’ll see that the best man in the neighborhood -is the one that’s sent for,” he cried.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">There</span> had been a pause after Lily called to Marg’ret to bring the baby -on the night when Ronald left her. Marg’ret, though very kind, was a -person who liked her own way. If the child’s toilet was not complete, -according<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a>{315}</span> to her own elaborate rule, she did not obey in a moment even -the eager call of the young mother. There were allowances made for her, -as there always are for those who insist upon having their own way.</p> - -<p>Accordingly there was a pause. Lily lay and listened to the wheels of -the geeg which carried Ronald away. They did not bring the same chill to -her heart as usual, and yet a chill began to steal into the room. The -night was warm and soft—the early August, which in the North is the -height of summer—and there was no chill at all in the atmosphere. It -seemed to Lily’s keen ears as she lay listening that the geeg paused as -if something had been forgotten, but then went on at double speed, -galloping up the brae, till the sound of the wheels was extinguished in -the night and distance. Then she called again sharply: “Marg’ret, -Marg’ret! bring in my baby!” But still there was no reply.</p> - -<p>“She’s just a most fastidious woman, with all her dressings and her -undressings. She’ll no have finished him just to the last string tying,” -said Robina.</p> - -<p>“Bid her come at once, at once!” cried Lily. “I want my little man.”</p> - -<p>And Beenie dived into the next room, which was muffled in curtains, -great precautions having been taken lest the cry of the child should be -heard down stairs. There was another room still within that, into which -the nurse occasionally retired; but there was no one in either place, -nor were there any traces of the little garments lying about which -betray a baby’s presence—every thing appeared to have been swept away. -Beenie, who had come for the child with her rosy countenance beaming, -stood still in consternation, her mouth open, her terrified eyes taking -in every thing with speechless dismay; for Marg’ret had never ventured -down stairs as yet, nor had, they flattered themselves, a sound of the -infant been heard, to awaken any question there. Beenie stood silent and -terrified for a moment, and then, instead of returning to her mistress, -she flew down stairs. Katrin was alone, doing some of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_316" id="page_316"></a>{316}</span> delicate -cooking carefully over the fire; all was still, as if nothing but the -most commonplace and tranquil events had ever happened there. Beenie, -who had burst into the place like a whirlwind, again paused, confounded -by this every-day tranquillity. “Katrin, Katrin, where is Marg’ret?” she -cried, adding in a lower tone, “and the bairn?”</p> - -<p>“What a question to ask me!” said Katrin. “She’s with your mistress -without a doubt. Have you ta’en leave of your senses,” she murmured in a -hurried undertone, “to roar out like that about a bairn? What bairn?”</p> - -<p>Here Beenie found herself at the end of all her resources. She burst out -into loud weeping. “She’s no up the stair and she’s no down the stair,” -cried Beenie, “and my bonnie leddy is crying out for her, and will not -be satisfied! And she’s no place that I can find her—neither her nor -yet the bairn.”</p> - -<p>Katrin thrust her saucepan from her as if it had been the offending -thing; she wiped her hands with her apron. She looked at Beenie, both of -them pale with horror. “Oh, the ill man!” she cried. “Oh, the monster! -Oh, sic a man for our bonnie dear! I have been misdoubting about the -bairn—but wha could have expectit that a young man no hardened in -iniquity would have thought of a contrivance like that?”</p> - -<p>Beenie had no thought or time to spare even on such an enormity. “How am -I to face her—and tell her?” she said.</p> - -<p>And at this moment they heard Lily’s voice calling from above, at first -softly, then shouting, screaming all their names. “Marg’ret! Beenie! -Katrin! Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Beenie! Katrin! Where is my bairn? where is -my bairn?”</p> - -<p>The two women flew up the stairs, at the head of which they found Lily -in her white night-dress, with her feet bare, her hair waving wildly -about her head, her face convulsed and drawn. “My bairn!” she cried, “my -bairn! my little bairn! Where is Marg’ret? Where is my baby? Marg’ret!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a>{317}</span> -Marg’ret! Beenie! Katrin! bring me my baby—my baby!” She seized Beenie -wildly with her trembling hands.</p> - -<p>“Oh, my daurlin’!” Beenie cried. “Oh, my bairn—oh, my bonnie Miss -Lily!”</p> - -<p>Lily flung the large weeping woman from her with a passion of -impatience. “Katrin!” she said breathlessly, “you have sense; where is -my baby? bring me my baby! My little bairn! Did ye ever hear that an -infant like that should be kept from his mother? Marg’ret! Marg’ret! -Where has she taken my baby—my baby—my——”</p> - -<p>Lily’s voice rose to a kind of scream. She ceased to have command of her -words, and went on calling, calling, for Marg’ret and for her child in -an endless cry, not knowing what she said.</p> - -<p>“You will come back to your bed first and then I will tell you,” said -Katrin. There was no one in the house but themselves, and they were -isolated in this sudden tragedy from all the world by the distance and -the silence of night and the moor. The door stood open at the foot of -the stairs, and a cold air blew up through the long, many-cornered -passage, chill and searching notwithstanding the warmth of the night. -Lily was glad to lean shivering upon the warm support of the kind woman -who encircled her with her arm. “You will tell me—you will tell me,” -she murmured, permitting herself to be drawn back to her room. The blind -had been raised from one of the windows, and the moonlight streamed in, -crossing the dimly lighted chamber with one white line of light. The -bed, with the little table by it, and the candle burning calmly, seemed -too peaceful for Lily’s mood of suspense and alarm. She stood still in -the moonlight, which seemed to make her figure luminous with her white -bare feet and pale face. “Tell me!” she cried, “tell me! Marg’ret! -Marg’ret! Where has she taken my baby? I want my baby—nothing -more—nothing more.”</p> - -<p>“For the Lord’s sake, mem!” said Katrin, “ye are shivering and -trembling. Go back to your bed.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, my daurlin’!” cried the weeping Beenie. “Oh,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_318" id="page_318"></a>{318}</span> my bonnie lamb, he’s -just away with his father in the geeg. Ye needna cry upon Marg’ret; -she’ll no hear you, for it’s just her that’s taken him away!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you born fool!” Katrin cried, supporting her young mistress with -her arm.</p> - -<p>But Lily twisted out of her hold. She turned upon Beenie, bringing her -hands together wildly with a loud clap that startled all the silences -about like the sudden report of a pistol, and then fell suddenly with a -cry at their feet.</p> - -<p>Since that moment she had not recovered consciousness. Both of them knew -by the force of experience how dangerous a symptom in Lily’s condition -is the strong convulsive shivering which had seized her, and for the -greater part of that dreadful night before Sir Robert’s arrival they -were both by her bedside striving with every kind of hot application to -restore a natural temperature. But when they had partially succeeded in -this, she still lay unconscious, sometimes agitated and disturbed, -flinging herself about with her arms over her head, and once or twice -repeating, what filled them with horror, the extraordinary clap together -of her hands—sometimes quite still, and murmuring under her breath a -continuous flow of inarticulate words, but never conscious of them or -their ministrations, saying no word that had meaning in it. Sir Robert’s -arrival made a certain change, and left the weight of the nursing upon -Beenie, Katrin, with her many additional labors, being unable to bear -her share. They had already, however, had time for several consultations -on the subject, which Sir Robert naturally disposed of with so much -ease, but which to the two women was a much more serious matter—a -doctor. Would not a doctor divine at once with his keen, educated eyes -what had happened so recently? Would not he read as clearly as in a book -what had been the beginning of Lily’s illness? She lay helpless now, -able to give them no assistance in disposing of her—she, so wilful by -nature, who had always got her own way, so far, at least, as they were -concerned. It filled them with awe<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_319" id="page_319"></a>{319}</span> to look at her lying unconscious, -and to feel that her fate was in their hands. What were they to do? They -were responsible for her life or death.</p> - -<p>The doctor, when he came, listened with very small attention to Beenie’s -long and confused story, chiefly made up from things she had read and -heard of the causes of Lily’s illness. Whatever the causes were, the -result was clear enough. She was in a high fever, her faculties all lost -in that confusion of violent illness which takes away at once all -consciousness of the present and all personal control. “Fever” was an -impressive word in those days, more alarming in some senses, less so in -others, than now. It was not mapped out and distinct, with its charts -and its well-known rules. There was not, so far as I am aware, such a -thing as a clinical thermometer known, at least not in ordinary -practice; and the word “fever” meant something dangerously “catching,” -something before which nurses fled and friends retired in dismay—which -is not to say that those who suffered from it were less sedulously -guarded and taken care of by their own people then than now. The first -idea of both Beenie and Katrin, however, was that it must be “catching,” -being fever, and Sir Robert, when he was informed, was not much wiser. -“Fever—where could she have got it?” he said with a sudden imagination -of some wretched beggar-woman with a sick child who might have given it -to the young lady. “It is not a thing of that kind. You are thinking of -scarlatina or maybe typhus. Nothing of that sort. It does not spring -from infection. It is brain-fever,” the medical man said. “Brain-fever!” -said Sir Robert, indignant. “There was never any thing of that kind in -my family.” He took it as a reproach, as if the Ramsays had ever been a -race subject to disturbance in the brain!</p> - -<p>But whatever they said, it mattered little to Lily. She lay on her bed -for hours together moving her restless head to and fro, muttering -inarticulate words, then pouring forth a stream of vague discourse, -through which there gleamed occasionally a ray of meaning, a wild -sudden<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a>{320}</span> demand, a flash of protest and expostulation. “Not that! not -him!” she would sometimes say, “any thing but him!” and the doctor, -making out as much as that one day, believed that the poor girl had been -refused her lover, and that it was the sudden arrival of the uncle, who -was hostile to them, which had brought on or precipitated the trouble in -her brain. Sometimes she would call for “Marg’ret, Marg’ret, Marg’ret!” -in accents now of impatience, now of despair. And then he asked who -Marg’ret was and why she did not come, or rather: “Which of you is -Marg’ret?” to the confusion of the two women. “Oh, sir, neither her nor -me,” cried Beenie, “neither her nor me! but a woman that had something -to do with her—in an ill moment.” “Let her be sent for, then,” he said -peremptorily. Beenie and Katrin had a great deal to bear. Knowing every -thing, they had to pretend they knew nothing, to shake their heads and -wonder why the patient should utter words which were heartrending to -them as betraying the dreadful persistence of that impression of misery -in her mind which they knew so well. They gave themselves the comfort of -exchanging a glance now and then, which was almost all the mutual -consolation they had. For Katrin was very much occupied with the -housekeeping and her work, and the necessity for satisfying her master -and his guests, who, knowing nothing of Sir Robert’s family, and never -having seen his niece, did not propose to go away, as guests in other -circumstances would have done. And Sir Robert was very far from desiring -that they should go away. He was terrified to find himself here alone, -without even Lily’s company, and therefore said very little of her -illness. What difference could it make to her, if she never saw them or -heard of them, whether Sir Robert had company or not? So Katrin labored -morning and night to feed with her best the party in the dining-room, -and with very imperfect help at first to look after all the wants of the -gentlemen, while Beenie, isolated in her mistress’s room, nursed night -and day the helpless, unconscious creature who required so<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a>{321}</span> little, yet -needed so much care. Those were not the days of carefully regulated -nursing, in which the most important matter of all is the preservation -of the nurse’s health and her meals and hours of taking exercise. It was -an age when the household was sufficient for itself, and the domestic -nurse devoted herself night and day to her charge, accepting all the -risks and fatigue as a matter of course. Beenie had no help and wanted -none. Sometimes for a moment’s refreshment she would go down to the -door, and breathe in a long draught of the fresh morning air, while -Katrin stood by Lily’s bed trying to elicit from her a look or sign of -intelligence. But Beenie could not have remained absent from her young -mistress had the wisest of nurses been there to take her place. “Na, na; -I’ve ta’en care of her a’ her days, and I’ll take care of her till the -end,” Beenie said, when Katrin exhorted her to take a few minutes more -of the outdoor freshness. “Hold your tongue, woman, with your ends!” -cried Katrin—“a young thing like that with a’ her life in her! She will -see us baith out.” “Oh, the Lord grant it!” cried Beenie, shaking her -large head. “But how is she to live and face the truth and ken all -that’s happened if ever she comes to herself? She will just sit up in -her bed, and clap her two hands together as she did yon dreadful -night—and give up the ghost.”</p> - -<p>“God forgive him—for I canna!” said Katrin, with a deep-drawn breath.</p> - -<p>“And Marg’ret! What do ye say to her, the deep designing woman, that had -been planning it, nae doubt, all the time?”</p> - -<p>“Marg’ret!” cried Katrin with disdain, with the gesture of throwing -something too contemptible for consideration from her. But she added: -“There is just this to be said: We could not have keepit the bairn. No -possible, her so ill, and the doctor about the house, and a wee thing -that bid to have had the air and could not be keepit silent, nor yet -hid. Oh, mony’s the thought I’ve had on that awful subject. It was the -deed of a villain, Beenie! Maybe God<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a>{322}</span> will forgive him, but never me. -And yet, being done, it’s weel that it was done.”</p> - -<p>“Katrin!” cried Beenie in dismay.</p> - -<p>But something, perhaps, in their low-toned but vehement conversation had -caught some wandering and confused faculty not entirely overwhelmed in -Lily’s bosom. She began to call out their names again with a wild -appeal, “Marg’ret, Marg’ret!” above all the others, flinging out her -arms and rising up in her bed, as Beenie had described in her gloomy -anticipations, as if to give up the ghost.</p> - -<p>And in this way days and weeks passed away. Lily’s fever seemed to have -become a natural part of the life of the house. Robina seemed to herself -unable to remember the time when she went to bed at night and got up -again in the morning like other people, and had ordinary meals and went -and came about the house. And all the incidents that had gone before -became dim. If an answer had been demanded of her hurriedly, she could -scarcely have ventured to affirm that any one was true: the marriage -ceremony in the Manse parlor, the meetings of the young husband and -wife, and above all the last tremendous event, which had seemed in its -turn to be of more importance than any thing else that ever occurred. -They had all faded away into the background, while Lily, sometimes pale -as a ghost, sometimes flushed with the agitation of fever, lay -struggling between life and death. The doctor, an ordinary village -doctor, knew little of such maladies. He was reduced by his practical -ignorance to the passive position which is now so often adopted by the -highest knowledge. He watched the patient with anxious and sympathetic -eyes, naturally sorry for a creature so young, with her girlish beauty -fading like a flower. He did not know what to do, and he wisely did -nothing. He had made, as was natural, many attempts to find out how an -attack so serious had been brought on. Had she received any great shock? -Katrin and Beenie, looking at each other, had answered cautiously that -maybe it might be so, but they could not tell. Had she suddenly heard -any bad<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_323" id="page_323"></a>{323}</span> news? Oh, yes, poor thing, she had done that! very bad news -that had just gone straight to her heart like the shot of a gun. “But, -doctor, you’ll say nothing to Sir Robert of that.” The doctor drew his -own conclusions and satisfied himself. No doubt the shock was the -arrival of the old uncle. He had heard something of the young gentleman -who was always coming and going, and that the two would make a bonnie -couple if every thing went right, though this good-natured speech was -accompanied by shakings of the head and prognostications of dreadful -things that might happen if every thing went wrong. The doctor nodded -his head and made up his mind that he had penetrated the affair. It -would not even have shocked him to hear that it had gone the length of a -secret marriage. Private marriages acknowledged late were not looked -upon in Scotland with very severe eyes. Both law and custom excused -them, though in such a case as Lily’s it was strange that any thing of -the kind should occur.</p> - -<p>But it becomes of very little importance, when such a malady has dragged -along its weary course for weeks, to know what was the cause of it. The -rapid cures which a promise of happiness works, in fiction at least, -very seldom occur in life, and when the spiritual part of the patient -becomes lost, as it were, in the hot running current of fevered blood, -and the predominance of the agitated body is complete over all the -commotions of the mind, it is vain to think of proposing remedies for -the original wrong, even if that were possible. Sir Robert now and then -paid a visit to his niece’s room, short and unwilling, dictated solely -by a sense of duty. He stood near the door and looked at her, tossing on -her pillows, or lying as if dead in the apathy of exhaustion, with an -uneasy sense, partly that he was himself badly used by Providence, -partly that he might, perhaps, be partially himself to blame. He had -left her here very lonely. Perhaps it was a mistake in judgment; but -then he had been entirely ignorant of the circumstances, and how could -it be said to be his fault? When she began to talk, he could not -understand what she<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a>{324}</span> said—nor, indeed, could any one in the quickened -and hurrying incoherence of the utterance—except the cry of Marg’ret, -Marg’ret, Marg’ret! which still sometimes came with a passion that made -it intelligible from her lips. “Who is Marg’ret?” he asked angrily. “I -remember no person of that name.” “Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Marg’ret!” cried -Lily again, her confused mind caught by his repetition of the name. She -flung herself toward the side of the bed which was nearest the door, -opening her eyes wide, as if to see better, and adding, with a cry of -ecstasy: “She has brought him back—she has brought him back!” Sir -Robert hurried away with a thrill of alarm. Who was it that was to be -brought back? Who was the Marg’ret for whom she cried night and day? Was -it the mere delirium of her fever, or was something else—something real -and unknown—hidden below?</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span> Robert had not at this time a happy life. His friends went away at -last, having exhausted the little shootings of Dalrugas and finding that -social amusement of any kind was not to be found there, besides the -ever-present reason of “illness in the house” why they should not -outstay the limits of their invitation. And no one else came. Why should -they, considering how very little inducement he had to offer? This of -itself was a hard confession for the proud old man to make, who, -perhaps, had been tempted now and then to enhance at his club, or in his -favorite society, those attractions of his little patrimony, which were -so very different, as he remembered them, from what they were now. John -Duff of Blackscaur made a call to say chiefly how sorry he was that he -could show no civilities to his neighbor, having only come to a -dismantled house for a few weeks’ shooting, his wife<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_325" id="page_325"></a>{325}</span> being abroad. “I -was glad to give a little sport to one of the young Lumsdens last year,” -he said. “I heard he was a friend of yours.” “No friend of mine!” cried -Sir Robert, suddenly recalled by the name to the original cause, which -he had more than half forgotten, of Lily’s banishment. “Ah!” cried John -Duff indifferently, “it was a mistake, then. Of course I knew his -father.” This was the only social overture made to Sir Robert Ramsay, -and it carried with it a sting, which gave him considerable uneasiness. -“Would the fellow have the audacity to come after her here?” he asked -himself. And he made up his mind wrathfully, when Lily was better, to -enquire into this allusion. When Lily was better! But he was still more -angry when any doubt was expressed on that subject. Katrin’s tearful -looks once or twice when the patient was worse he took as a personal -affront. He would not believe that Providence, however hostile, could -treat him so badly as that.</p> - -<p>When he was in this lonely and unsatisfied state of mind, a letter came -for him one day from the Manse, begging him in his charity to go and see -the minister, who was unable to come to him. “Ah! old Blythe,” Sir -Robert said. He would not have thought very much of old Blythe in other -days, but now he remembered, not without pleasure, the good stories the -minister told, and the good company he was. “Will Rory last with me as -far as the Manse?” he said to Dougal. “Rory, Sir Robert, he’ll just last -till the Day o’ Judgment,” said Dougal. “I have no occasion for him so -far as that!” Sir Robert replied sharply; and he felt that it was not -quite becoming his dignity to ride into Kinloch-Rugas mounted upon a -Highland pony; but what can one do when there is no other way? The -minister sat as usual in his great chair by the fire, which burned dully -still, though the day was August. He said: “Come in, Sir Robert, come -ben! I’m very glad to see you, though it is a long time since we met. -You will, maybe, find the fire too much at this time of the year, but, -you see, I’m a lameter<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a>{326}</span> that cannot move out of my chair, and I never -find it warm enough for me.”</p> - -<p>“You should have a chair that you could move about and get into the sun -now and then; that’s the only thing that warms the blood—at our age.”</p> - -<p>“I am years older than you. I consider you a fine trim and trig elderly -young man.”</p> - -<p>The minister laughed more cordially at this jest than Sir Robert did. He -did not like the faintest suggestion of ridicule. It is true that he was -trim and well dressed, an example of careful toilet and appearance -beside the careless old heavy form in the easy chair. Mr. Blythe had -long since ceased to care what his appearance was. Sir Robert was “very -particular” and careful of every detail.</p> - -<p>“And how are you liking your home-coming?” Mr. Blythe said. “It’s a -trial and a risk when you have been away all the best of your life. I’m -doubting the auld tower looks but small to your eyes by what it did in -the old days.”</p> - -<p>“Things are changed certainly,” said Sir Robert a little stiffly, -“especially among the old neighbors. There used to be plenty of society; -now there seems none, or next to none.”</p> - -<p>“And that is true. The old folk are dead and gone; the young generation -is changed: the lads go away and never come back, the lasses marry into -strange houses. It’s very true; but you are just very fortunate. Like -me, you have a child to your old age; though you did not, like me, Sir -Robert, take the trouble to provide her for yourself.”</p> - -<p>Sir Robert stared a little at this speech, and then said: “If you mean -my niece Lily, Blythe, you probably know that she’s very ill in bed, and -a cause of great anxiety, not of comfort, to me.”</p> - -<p>“Ay, ay,” said the minister, “we had heard something, but did not know -it was so bad as that. But it will be a thing that will pass by; just -some chill she has got out on the moor, or some other bit small matter. -She has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a>{327}</span> very well and blooming, a fine young creature all the time -we have had her here.”</p> - -<p>“I am by no means sure,” said Sir Robert, with a cloud on his brow, -“that I did not make a mistake in sending her here. I had no intention -to send her into a desert. My mind was full of the old times, when we -were cheerful enough, as you will remember, Blythe, whatever else we -might be. There was not much money going—nor perhaps luxury—but there -was plenty of company. However, I’m glad you have so good a report to -give of her. She’s neither well nor blooming, poor lassie, now.”</p> - -<p>The minister cleared his throat two or three times, as if he found it -difficult to resume. “Sir Robert,” he said, and then made a pause, “I am -not a man that likes to interfere. I have as little liking for that part -as you or any man could have—to be meddled with in what you will think -your own affairs.”</p> - -<p>Sir Robert stiffened visibly, uplifting his throat in the stiff stock, -which, in his easiest moment, seemed to hold him within risk of -strangulation. “I fail to see,” he said, “what there is in my affairs -that would warrant interference from you or any man; but if you’ve got -any thing to say, say it out.”</p> - -<p>“I meddle with nobody,” said the minister as proudly, “unless it is for -the young of the flock. I can scarcely call you one of my flock, Sir -Robert.”</p> - -<p>“A grewsome auld tup at the best, you’ll be thinking,” said Sir Robert, -with a harsh laugh.</p> - -<p>“Man!” said the minister, “at the least of it we are old friends. We -know each other’s mettle; if we quarrel, it’ll do little good or harm to -any body. And if you like to fling off in a fit, you must just do it. -What I’ve got to say is just this: Women folk are hard to manage for -them that are not used to them. I’ve not just come as well out of it as -I would have liked myself; and that little thing up at Dalrugas is a -tender bit creature. She has blossomed like the flowers when she has -been let alone, and never lost heart, though she has had many a dull -day. Do not cross<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a>{328}</span> the lassie above what she is able to bear. If you’re -still against the man she likes herself, for the love of God, Robert -Ramsay, force no other upon her, as you hope to be saved!”</p> - -<p>The old minister was considerably moved, but this did not perhaps -express itself in the most dignified way. What with the fervor of his -mind, and the heat of the fire, and the little unusual exertion, the -perspiration stood in great drops on his brow.</p> - -<p>“This is a very remarkable appeal, Blythe,” said Sir Robert. “<i>I</i> force -another man upon her! Granted there is one she likes herself, as you -seem so sure—though I admit nothing of my own knowledge—am I a man to -force a husband down any woman’s throat?”</p> - -<p>“I will beg your pardon humbly if I’m wrong,” said Mr. Blythe, subdued, -wiping the moisture from his face, “but if you think a moment, you will -see that appearances are against you. We heard of your arriving in a -hurry with a young gentleman in your train; and then there came the news -Miss Lily was ill—she that had stood out summer and winter against that -solitude and never uttered a word—that she should just droop the moment -that it might have been thought better things were coming, and company -and solace—Sir Robert, I ask you——”</p> - -<p>“To believe that it was all out of terror of me!” cried Sir Robert, who -had risen up and was pacing angrily about the room. “Upon my word, -Blythe, you reckon on an old soldier’s self-command above what is -warranted! Me, her nearest relation, that have sheltered and protected -her all her life—do you mean to insinuate that Lily is ill and has a -brain-fever out of dread of me?”</p> - -<p>“If you brought another man to her, knowing her wishes were a different -way, and bid her take him or be turned out of your doors!”</p> - -<p>Sir Robert was not a man who feared any thing. He stood before the -minister’s very face, and swore an oath that would have blown the very -roof off the house had Mr. Douglas, the assistant and successor, sat in -that chair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_329" id="page_329"></a>{329}</span> Mr. Blythe was a man of robust nerves, yet it impressed -even him. “<i>I</i> force a young man down a lassie’s throat!” cried Sir -Robert in great wrath, indignation, and furious derision. “Me make -matches or mar them! Is’t the decay of your faculties, Blythe, your old -age, though you’re not much older than I am, or what is it that makes -you launch such an accusation at me?”</p> - -<p>“There’s nothing decayed about me but my legs,” said the old minister -with half a jest. “I’ll beg your pardon heartily, Sir Robert, if it’s -not true.”</p> - -<p>“You deserve no explanations at my hands,” said the other, “but I’ll -give them for the sake of old times. The young man was a chance -acquaintance for a week’s shooting. I’ll perhaps never see him again, -nor did he ever set eyes on Lily. And I have not exchanged a word with -her since I came back. She knows me not—from you, or from Adam. Blythe, -she is very ill, the poor lassie. She knows neither night nor day.”</p> - -<p>“Lord bless us!” said the minister, and then he put forth his large soft -hand. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “See how little a thing makes a big -lie and slander when it’s taken the wrong color. I was deceived, but I -hope you’ll forgive. In whose hands is she? what doctor? There’s no -great choice here.”</p> - -<p>“A man from the other side of the water,” said Sir Robert in the old -phraseology of the countryside. “Macalister, I think.”</p> - -<p>“Well, it’s the best you can do here. Our man’s a cleverer man, if you -could ever be sure of finding him with his head clear. But Macalister is -an honest fellow. I would not say but I would have a man from Edinburgh -if it was me.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think so?” said Sir Robert.</p> - -<p>“If it was my Eelen—Lord, it’s no one, but half-a-dozen men I’d have -from Edinburgh before I’d see her slip through my fingers. But there’s -nothing like your own very flesh and blood.”</p> - -<p>“I will write at once!” cried Sir Robert.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_330" id="page_330"></a>{330}</span></p> - -<p>“I would send a man—the post’s slow. I would send a man by the coach -that leaves to-night; for an hour lost you might repent all the days of -your life, Robert Ramsay,” said the minister, once more grasping and -holding fast in his large, limp, but not unvigorous hand the other old -gentleman’s firm and hard one. “Just bear with me for another word. If -she’s hanging between life and death—and you know not what may -happen—and if there is a man in Edinburgh she would rather see than any -doctor, for the love of God, man, don’t do things by halves, but send -for him, too.”</p> - -<p>“What the deevil do you mean with your ‘man in Edinburgh’?” Sir Robert -said, with a shout, drawing his hand forcibly away.</p> - -<p>He rode home upon Rory, much discomfited and disturbed. It is scarcely -too much to say that he had forgotten much, or almost all, about Ronald -Lumsden in the long interval that had occurred, during which he was -fully occupied with his own life, and indifferent to what took place -elsewhere. He had sent Lily off to Dalrugas to free her from the -assiduities of a young fellow who was not a proper match for her. That -is how Sir Robert would have explained it; and he had never entertained -a doubt that, what with the fickleness of youth and the cheerful company -about, Lily had forgotten her unsuitable suitor long ago. But to have it -even imagined, by the greatest old fool that ever was, that Lily’s -terror of being obliged by her uncle to accept another man had upset her -very brain and brought on a deadly fever was too much for any man to -bear. And old Blythe was not an old fool, though he had behaved like -one. If he thought so, other people would think so, and he—Robert -Ramsay, General, K. C. B., a man almost as well known as the Prince of -Wales himself, a member of the best clubs, an authority on every social -usage—he, the venerated of Edinburgh, the familiar of London—he would -be branded, in a miserable hole in the country, with the character of a -domestic tyrant, with the still more contemptible character of a -match-maker, like<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_331" id="page_331"></a>{331}</span> any old woman! Sir Robert’s rage and annoyance were -increased by the consciousness that he was not himself cutting at all a -dignified figure on the country road mounted upon Rory, for whom his -legs were too long (though he was not a tall man) and his temper too -short. Rory tossed his shaggy head to the winds, and did battle with his -master, when the pace did not please him. He all but threw the old -gentleman, who was famed for his horsemanship. And it was in the last -phase of exasperation, having dismounted, and, with a blow of his light -switch, sent Rory careering home to his stable riderless, that Sir -Robert encountered the doctor returning from his morning’s visit. Mr. -Macalister’s face was grave. He turned back at once, and eagerly, -desiring, he said, a few minutes’ conversation. “I cannot well speak to -you with your people and those women always about.”</p> - -<p>“I am afraid, then,” said Sir Robert, “you have something very serious -to say.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe—and maybe not. In the first place there are indications this -morning of a change—we will hope for the better. The pulse has fallen. -There’s been a little natural sleep. I would say in an ordinary subject, -and with no complications, that perhaps, though we must not just speak -so confidently at the first moment, the turn had taken place.”</p> - -<p>“I’m delighted to hear it!” cried Sir Robert. It was really so great a -relief to him that he put out his hand in sudden cordiality. “I will -never forget my obligations to you, Macalister. You have given me the -greatest relief. When the turn has really come, there is nothing, I’ve -always heard, but great care wanted—care and good food and good air.”</p> - -<p>“That was just what I wanted to speak to you about, Sir Robert,” said -the doctor, with one of those little unnecessary coughs that mean -mischief. “Good air there is—she could not have better; and good food, -for I’ve always heard your housekeeper is great on that; and good -nursing—well, yon woman, that is, your niece’s maid, Bauby or<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_332" id="page_332"></a>{332}</span> Beenie, -or whatever they call her, is little more than a fool, but she’s a -good-hearted idiot, and sticks to what she’s told—when there’s nobody -to tell her different. So we may say there’s good care. But when that’s -said, though it’s a great deal, every thing is not said.”</p> - -<p>“Ay,” said Sir Robert, “and what may there be beyond that?” He had -become suspicious after his experiences, though it did not seem possible -that from such a quarter there should come any second attack.</p> - -<p>“I’m very diffident,” said the doctor in his strong Northern accent, -with his ruddy, weather-beaten countenance cast down in his -embarrassment, “of mentioning any thing that’s not what ye might call -strictly professional, or taking advantage of a medical man’s poseetion. -But when a man has a bit tender creature to deal with, like a flower, -and that has just come through a terrible illness, the grand thing to -ask will be, Sir Robert, not if she has good food and good nursing, -which is what is wanted in most cases, but just something far more hard -to come by—if she’s wanting to live——”</p> - -<p>“Wanting to live!” cried Sir Robert. “What nonsense are you speaking? A -girl of that age!”</p> - -<p>“It’s just precisely that age that fashes me. Older folk have got more -used to it: living’s a habit with the like of us. We just find we must -go on, whatever happens; but a young lass is made up of fancies and -veesions. She says to herself: ‘I would like better a bonnie green turf -in the kirkyard than all this fighting and striving,’ and just fades -away because she has no will to take things up again. I’ve seen cases -like that before now.”</p> - -<p>“And what’s my part in all this?” cried Sir Robert. “You come to me with -your serious face, as if I had some hand in it. What can I do?”</p> - -<p>“Well, Sir Robert,” said the doctor, “that is what I cannot tell. I’m -not instructed in your affairs—nor do I wish to be; but if there is any -thing in this young lady’s road that crosses her sorely—the state of -the brain that made this attack so dangerous evidently came from some<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_333" id="page_333"></a>{333}</span> -mental shock—if it’s within the bounds of possibility that you can give -in to her, do so, Sir Robert. I am giving you a doctor’s advice—not a -private man’s that has nothing ado with it. If you can give her her own -way, which is dear to us all, and more especially to women folk, give it -to her, Sir Robert! It will be her best medicine. Or if you cannot do -that, let her think you will do it—let her think you will do it! It’s -lawful to deceive even in a case like this—to save her life.”</p> - -<p>“You are trying to make me think, doctor, that my niece has been -pretending to be ill all this time in order to get her own way.”</p> - -<p>“You may think that if you like, Sir Robert. It’s a pretending that has -nearly cost you a funeral, and I will not say may not do so yet—but me, -out of my own line, my knowledge is very imperfect. You know your own -affairs best. But you cannot say I have not warned you of the -consequences,” Dr. Macalister said.</p> - -<p>All the world seemed in a conspiracy against Sir Robert. He took off his -hat formally to the doctor, who responded, somewhat overawed by such a -solemn civility. What was it that this man, a stranger, supposed him to -be doing to Lily? It was ridiculous, it was absurd! first old Blythe, -and then the doctor. He had never done any harm to Lily; he had stopped -a ridiculous love affair, a boy and girl business, with a young fellow -who had not a penny. He did not mean his money to go to fit out another -lot of long-legged Lumsdens, a name he could not bear. No, he had done -no more than was his right, which he would do again to-morrow if -necessary. But then in the meantime here was another question. Her life, -a lassie’s life! Nothing was ever more ridiculous: her life depending on -what lad she married, a red-headed one, or a black-headed one, the silly -thing! But nevertheless it seemed it was true. Here was the doctor, a -serious man, and old Blythe, both in a story. Well, if she were dying -for her lad, the foolish tawpy, he would have to see what could be done. -To think of a Ramsay, the last of his race, following her passions<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_334" id="page_334"></a>{334}</span> like -that! But it would be some influence from the other side, from the -mother, James’s wife, who, he had always heard, was not over-wise.</p> - -<p>He was turning over these thoughts in his mind as he approached close to -the house, when he was suddenly aware of some one flying out toward him -with arms extended and a lock or two of red hair dropped out of all -restraint and streaming in the wind. Beenie had waited and watched and -lived half in a dream, never sleeping, scarcely eating, absorbed in that -devotion which has no bounds, for the last six weeks. Her trim aspect, -her careful neatness, her fresh and cheerful air, had faded in the air -of the sick room. Combs do not hold nor pins attach after such a long -vigil. She flew out, running wildly toward him with arms extended and -hair streaming until, unable to stop herself, she fairly ran into the -old gentleman’s arms.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Sir Robert,” cried Beenie, gasping and trying to recover her -breath, but too far gone for any apology, “she’s come to herself! She’s -as weak as water, and white as death. But she’s come to herself and -she’s askin’ for you. She’s crying upon you and no to be silenced. ‘I -am wanting Uncle Robert, I am wanting Uncle Robert!’ No breath to speak, -and no strength to utter a voice, but come to hersel’, come to hersel’! -And, oh! the Lord knows if it’s for death or life, for none of us can -tell!”</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Sir Robert went in somewhat reluctantly to Lily’s room—for he was -not accustomed to illness, and did not know what to do or say, or even -how to look, in a sick room—he found her fully conscious, very white, -very worn, her eyes looking twice their usual size and full of that -wonderful translucent clearness which exhaustion gives. Her face, he did -not know why, disposed the old gentleman<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_335" id="page_335"></a>{335}</span> to shed tears, though he was -very far indeed from having any inclination that way in general. There -was a smile upon it, a smile of wistful appeal to him, such a claim upon -his sympathy and help as perhaps no other human creature had ever made -before.</p> - -<p>“Uncle!” she cried, holding out two thin hands which seemed whiter than -the mass of white linen about her. “Uncle Robert! oh! are you there? I -have been an ill bairn to you, Uncle Robert. I have not been faithful -nor true. You sent me here for my good, and I’ve turned it to harm. But -you’re my only kin and my only friend, and all that I have in the -world.”</p> - -<p>“Lily, my dear, compose yourself, my poor lassie. I am not blaming you: -why should I blame you? When you were ill, what could you do but lie in -your bed and be taken care of? Woman, have ye no sense? She is not fit -yet to be troubled with visits; you might have seen that!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Sir Robert, and so I did! But how could I cross her when she just -said without ceasing: ‘I want my uncle. I want to see my uncle!’ She was -not to be crossed, the doctor said.”</p> - -<p>“It was not Beenie’s fault.” Lily stretched out her hands till they -reached her uncle’s, who stood by her bedside, yet as far off as he -could, not to appear unkind. He was a little horrified by the touch of -those hot hands. She threw herself half out of the bed to reach him, and -caught his hard and bony old hand, so firm still and strong, between -those white quivering fingers, almost fluid in their softness, which -enveloped his with a sudden heat and atmosphere, so strange and unusual -that he retreated still a step, though he could not withdraw his hand.</p> - -<p>“Uncle Robert, you will not forsake me!” Lily cried. “I have only you -now, I have only you. I have been ill to you, but, oh, be good to me! I -am a very lonely woman. I have nobody. I have put my trust in—other -things, and they have all failed me! I’ve had a long dream and now I’ve -awakened. Uncle Robert, I have nobody but you in all the world!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_336" id="page_336"></a>{336}</span></p> - -<p>“Now, Lily, you must just compose yourself, my dear. Who thought of -forsaking you? It is certain that you are my only near relation. Your -father was my only brother. What would ail me at you? My poor lassie, -just let yourself be covered up, and put your arms under the clothes and -try if you cannot sleep a little. A good sleep would be the best thing -for her, Robina, wouldn’t you say? Compose yourself, compose yourself, -my dear.”</p> - -<p>Lily still clung to his hand, though he tried so hard to withdraw it -from her hold. “And I will be different,” she said. “You will never need -to complain of me more. My visions and my dreams they are all melted -away, like the snow yon winter-time, when my head was just carried and I -did not know what I was doing. Oh, I have been ill to you, ill to you! -Eaten your bread and dwelt in your house and been a traitor to you. If -they tell you, oh, Uncle Robert, do not believe I was so bad as that. I -never meant it, I never intended—— It was a great delusion, and it is -me that has the worst to bear.”</p> - -<p>“Robina!” cried Sir Robert, “this will never do. What disjointed -nonsense has the poor thing got into her head? She will be as bad as -ever if you do not take care. No more of it, no more of it, Lily. You’ve -been very ill; you must be quiet, and don’t trouble your head about any -thing. As for your old uncle, he will stand by you, my poor lassie, -whatever you may have done—not that I believe for a moment you have -done any thing.” He was greatly relieved to get his hand free. He went -so far as to cover her shoulders with the bedclothes, and to give a -little pat upon the white counterpane. Poor little thing! Her head was -not right yet. Great care must be taken of the poor lassie. He had heard -they were fond of accusing themselves of all kinds of crimes after an -attack of this sort.</p> - -<p>“I suppose the doctor will be coming to-day?” he said to Beenie as he -hastily withdrew toward the door.</p> - -<p>“It’s very near his hour, Sir Robert.”</p> - -<p>“That’s well, that’s very well! Keep her as quiet as you can, that’s the -great thing, and tell her from me that she is<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_337" id="page_337"></a>{337}</span> not to trouble her head -about any thing—about any thing, mind,” said Sir Robert with an -emphasis which had no real meaning, though it awakened a hundred alarms -in Beenie’s mind. She thought he must have been told, he must have found -out something of the history of these past months. But, indeed, the old -gentleman knew nothing at all, and meant nothing but to express, more or -less in the superlative, his conviction that poor Lily was still under -the dominion of her delusions, and that it was her fever, not herself, -which brought from her lips these incomprehensible confessions. He -understood that it was often so in these cases; probably, if he had let -her go on, she would have confessed to him that she had tried to -murder—Dougal, say, or somebody else equally likely. The only thing was -to keep her quiet, to impress upon her that she was not to trouble her -head about any thing, not about any thing, in the strongest way in which -that assurance could be put.</p> - -<p>Lily lay quite still for a long time after Sir Robert had escaped from -the room. She was very weak and easily exhausted, but happily the -weakness of both body and brain dulled, except at intervals, the active -sense of misery, and even the memory of those events which had ravaged -her life. She was still quite quiet when the doctor came, and smiled at -him with the faint smile of recovered consciousness and intelligence, -though with scarcely a movement as she lay on her pillows, recovered, -yet so prostrated in strength that she lay like one cast up by the -waves, half dead, unable to struggle or even to lift a finger for her -own help. A much puzzled man was the doctor, who had brought her -successfully through this long and dreadful illness, but whose mind had -been sorely exercised to account for many things which connected this -malady with what had gone before. That he divined a great deal of what -had gone before there was little doubt; but he had no light upon Lily’s -real position, and his heart was sore for a young creature, a lady, in -such sore straits, and with probably a cloud hanging over her which -would spoil her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_338" id="page_338"></a>{338}</span> entire life. And he was a prudent man, and asked no -questions which he was not compelled to ask. Had it been a village girl -he would have formed his conclusions with less hesitation, and felt less -deeply; but it was a very different matter with Sir Robert Ramsay’s -niece, who would be judged far more severely and lose much more than any -village maiden was likely to do. Poor girl! he tried as best he could, -like a good man as he was, to save her as much as possible even from the -suggestion of any suspicion. “What has she been doing? You have allowed -her to do too much,” he said.</p> - -<p>“She would see her uncle, doctor; she just insisted that she would see -Sir Robert. If I had crossed her in that, would it no have been just as -bad?”</p> - -<p>The white face on the pillow smiled faintly and breathed, rather than -said: “It was my fault.”</p> - -<p>“And he said she was not to trouble her head about ainy thing, not about -<i>ainy thing</i>, doctor, and that was a comfort to her—she was so vexed, -him coming for the first time to his ain house, and her no able to -welcome him, nor do any thing for him.”</p> - -<p>“That’s a very small matter; she must think of that no more. What you -have to do now, Miss Ramsay, is just to think of nothing, to trouble -your head about nothing, as Sir Robert judiciously says; to take what -you can in the way of nourishment, and to sleep as much as you can, and -to think about nothing. I absolutely proheebit thinking,” he said, -bending over her with a smile. She was so touching a sight in her great -weakness, and with even his uncertain perception of what was behind and -before her, that the moisture came into the honest doctor’s eyes.</p> - -<p>Lily gave him another faint smile, and shook her head, if that little -movement on the pillow could be called shaking her head, and then he -gave Beenie her instructions, and with a perplexed mind proceeded to the -interview with Sir Robert to which he had been summoned. He did not know -what he would say to Sir Robert if his<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_339" id="page_339"></a>{339}</span> questions were of a penetrating -kind. But Sir Robert’s questions were not penetrating at all.</p> - -<p>“She has been havering to me, poor lassie,” said the old gentleman, -“about being alone in the world and with nobody but me to look after -her. It is true enough. We have no relations, either her or me, being -the last of the family. But why should she think I would forsake her? -And she says she has been an ill bairn to me, and other things that have -just no sense in them. But that’s a common thing, doctor? Is it not -quite a common thing that people coming out of such an illness take -fancies that they have done all sorts of harm?”</p> - -<p>“The commonest thing in the world,” said the doctor cheerfully. “Did she -say she had stolen your gear, or broken into your strong-box?”</p> - -<p>“There is no saying what she would have said if I had let her go on,” -said Sir Robert, with a laugh, “though, indeed, I was nearer crying than -laughing to see her so reduced. But all that will come right in time?”</p> - -<p>“It will all come right in time. She’s weaker than I like to see, and -you must send for me night or day, at any moment, if there is any -increase of weakness. But I hope better things. Leave her to the women: -they’re very kind, and not so silly as might reasonably be expected. -Don’t go near her, if I might advise you, Sir Robert.”</p> - -<p>“Indeed, I will obey you there,” said the old gentleman; “no fear of -that. I can do her no good, poor thing, and why should I trouble both -her and myself with useless visits? No, no, I will take care of that.”</p> - -<p>And the doctor went away anxious, but satisfied. If there was a story to -tell, it was better that the poor girl should tell it at least when she -was full mistress of herself—not now, betrayed by her weakness, when -she might say what she would regret another time.</p> - -<p>But Lily asked no more for Sir Robert. It was but the first impulse of -her suddenly awakened mind. She relapsed into the weakness which was all -the greater for that brief outburst, and lay for days conscious, and so -far<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_340" id="page_340"></a>{340}</span> calm that she had no strength for agitation, often sleeping, seldom -thinking, wrapped by nature in a dream of exhaustion, through which mere -emotion could not pierce. And thus youth and the devoted attendance of -her nurses brought her through at last. It was October when she first -rose from her bed, an advance in recovery which the women were anxious -to keep back as long as possible, while the doctor on the other hand -pressed it anxiously. “She will lose all heart if she is kept like this, -with no real sign of improvement,” he said. “Get her up; if it’s only -for an hour, it will do her good.”</p> - -<p>“It will bring it all back,” said Beenie in despair. She stopped herself -next moment with a terrified glance at him; but he knew how to keep his -own counsel. And he gave no further orders on this subject. Lily, -however, was not to be restrained. When she was first led into the -drawing-room, she went to the window and looked out long and with a -steadfast look upon the moor. It had faded out of the glory of heather -which had covered it everywhere when she last looked upon that scene. -Nearly two months were over since that day, that wonderful day of fate. -Lily looked out upon the brown heather, still with here and there a -belated touch of color upon the end of the long stalks rustling with the -brown husks of the withered bells. The rowan-trees gave here and there a -gleam of scarlet or a touch of bright yellow in the scanty leaves, -ragged with the wind, which were almost as bright as the berries. The -intervals of turf were emerald green, beginning to shine with the damp -of coming winter. The hills rose blue in the noonday warmth with that -bloom upon them, like a breaking forth of some efflorescence responsive -to the light, which comes in the still sunshine, disturbed by no flying -breezes. Lily looked long upon the well-known landscape which she knew -by heart in every variation, resisting with great resolution the -endeavors of Beenie to draw her back from that perilous outlook.</p> - -<p>“Oh, look nae mair, my bonnie leddy!” Beenie said. “You’ve seen it mair -than enough, that awfu’ moor!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_341" id="page_341"></a>{341}</span></p> - -<p>“What ails you at the moor, Robina?” Sir Robert said, coming briskly in. -“You are welcome back, my dear; you are welcome back to common life. -Don’t stand and weary yourself; I will bring you a chair to the window. -I’m glad, Lily, that you’re fond of the moor.”</p> - -<p>Lily turned to him with the same overwhelming smile which had nearly -made an end of Sir Robert before, which shone from her pale face and -from her wide, lucid, liquid eyes, still so large and bright with -weakness; but she did not wait for him to bring her a chair to the -window. She tottered to one that had been placed for her near the fire, -which, however bright the day, was always necessary at Dalrugas. “I am -better here,” she said. She looked so fragile seated there opposite to -him that the old gentleman’s heart was moved.</p> - -<p>“My poor lassie! I would give something to see you as bright-faced and -as light-footed as when you came here.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, that’s so long ago,” she said. “I was light-hearted, too, and -perhaps light-headed then. I am not light in any way now, except, -perhaps, in weight. It makes you very serious to live night and day and -never change upon the moor.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think so, Lily? I’m sorry for that. I thought you were so fond -of the moor. They told me you were out upon it when you were well, -rambling and taking your pleasure all the day.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said, “it’s always bonnie. The heather is grand in its time, -and it’s fine, too, in the gray days, when the hills are all wrapped in -their gray plaids, and a kind of veil upon the moor. But it cannot -answer, Uncle Robert, when you speak, or give you back a look or say a -word.”</p> - -<p>“That’s true, that’s true, Lily. I was thinking only that it’s a -peaceful place, and quiet, where an old man like me can get his sleep in -peace; though there’s that Dougal creature with his pails and pony that -is aye stirring by the skreigh of day.”</p> - -<p>“The pony was a great diversion,” said Lily, “and Dougal, too, who was -always very kind to me.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_342" id="page_342"></a>{342}</span></p> - -<p>“Kind! It was his bounden duty, the least he could do. I would like to -know how he would have stood before me if he had not been kind, and far -more, to the only child of the old house!”</p> - -<p>“Thank you, Uncle Robert,” said Lily, “for saying so. They were all -kind, and far more than kind. They have just been devoted to me, and -thought of nothing but to make me happy. You will think of that—in case -that any thing should happen.”</p> - -<p>“Lily!” said Sir Robert with an angry tone, “I’m thinking you’re both -ungrateful and unkind yourself. God has spared you and brought you back -out of a dreadful illness, and these two women have nursed you night and -day, and though I could do little for you, having no experience that -way, yet perhaps I’ve felt all the more. And here are you speaking of -‘any thing that might happen,’ as if you had not just been delivered out -of the jaws of death.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I am very grateful,” said Lily, holding out her thin hand, “to -both them and you, Uncle Robert, and most of all to you, for it was out -of your way indeed; but as for God, I am not sure that I am grateful to -him, for he might have taken me out of all the trouble while he was at -it, and that would have been the best for us all. But,” she added, -looking up suddenly with one of her old quick changes of feeling and -countenance, “how should you think I meant dying? There are many, many -things that might happen besides that. I might go away, or you might -send me away.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll not do that, Lily.”</p> - -<p>“How do you know, Uncle Robert? You sent me away once before when you -sent me here. You might do it again—or, what is more, I might ask -you—— Oh, Uncle Robert, let me go away a little, let me leave the -sight of it, and the loneliness that has broken my heart!” Lily put her -transparent hands together and looked at him with a pathetic entreaty in -her face.</p> - -<p>“Go away!” he said, startled, “as soon as I come here—<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_343" id="page_343"></a>{343}</span>the first time -you come into the drawing-room to ask that!”</p> - -<p>“It is true,” said Lily, “it’s ungrateful, oh, it’s without heart, it’s -unkind, Uncle Robert, as you say; but only for a little while, till I -get a little better. I will never get better here.”</p> - -<p>“This is a great disappointment to me,” he said. “I thought I would have -you, Lily, to keep me company. I thought you would be my companion and -take care of me for a year or two. I am not likely at my age to trouble -any body for very long,” he added with a half-conscious appeal for -sympathy.</p> - -<p>“And so I will,” said Lily; “I will be your companion. I will be at your -side to do whatever you please—to read or to write, to walk or to talk. -I will look for nothing else in this world, and I will never leave you, -Uncle Robert, and there is my hand upon that. But I must be well first,” -she added rapidly. “And I will never get well here. Oh, let me go! If it -was but for a week, for a fortnight, for two or three days. Is it not -always said of ill folk that when they get better they must have a -change? Let me have a change, Uncle Robert! I want to look out at -something that is not the moor. Oh, how long, how long, if you will only -think of it, I have been looking at nothing but the moor! I am tired, -tired of the moor! Oh, I am wearied of it! I have liked it well, and I -will come back and like it again. But for a little while, uncle, only -for a little while, let me go away from the moor.”</p> - -<p>“Is it so long a time?” he said. “I was not aware you had been here so -long a time. Why, it is not two years! If you think two years is a long -time, Lily, wait till you know what life is, and that a year’s but a -moment when you look back upon it.”</p> - -<p>“It looks like a hundred years to me,” she said, “and before I can look -back as you do it will be a hundred years more. And how am I to bear -them all without a break or a rest? If I were even like you, a soldier -marching here and there, with your colors flying and your drums -beating!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_344" id="page_344"></a>{344}</span> but what has a woman to do but to sit and think and count the -days? Uncle Robert,” she said, putting her hand on his arm as he stood -near her, with his back to the fire, “I’m not unwilling at all to die. I -would never have minded if it had been so. I would have asked for -nothing but a warm green turf from the moor, and maybe a bush of heather -at my feet. But it has not ended like that, which would have been God’s -doing—only I will never get well unless I get away, unless I breathe -other air; and if you refuse me, that will be your doing!” she cried -with something of her old petulance and fire.</p> - -<p>“Did the doctor say any thing about this change?” Sir Robert asked -Beenie, with a cloud upon his face.</p> - -<p>“He said she was to be crossed in naething,” Beenie replied.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">When</span> it was settled that Lily was to have the change upon which she -insisted, her health improved day by day, and with the increase of her -strength, or perhaps as the real fountain-head and cause of her -increased strength, her elasticity of spirit returned to her. By one of -those strange gifts of temperament which triumph over every thing that -humanity can encounter, this young creature, overwhelmed by so many -griefs—a deserted wife, a mother whose child had been torn from her, -her secret life so full of incidents and emotion ending all at once in a -blank—became in the added grace of her weakness and of the spirit and -courage which overcame it as sweet a companion to her old uncle, as full -of variety and freshness, as the heart could desire. He, indeed, had -never known such company before. She had been younger by an age when she -left him in Edinburgh, less developed, half a child, at least in his -eyes, and he had been surrounded by company and cronies of his own of a -very different character. But now, in this lonely spot where there was -nobody, Lily, rising from her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_345" id="page_345"></a>{345}</span> sick-bed, with her eyes still large in -their white sockets, her hands still transparent, her touch and her step -still tremulous with weakness, became his diversion, his delight, making -the long lonely days short, and even the rain supportable when it swept -against the narrow windows, and intensified the brightness of the -fireside and the pleasant talk, or even, when there was no talk, the -sense of companionship within. Sometimes Lily would fall asleep in the -afternoon or at the falling of the day, unawares, in the feebleness of -her convalescence, and perhaps these were the moments in which most of -all the old man of the world felt completely what this companionship -was. He would lay down his paper or his book and look at her—the light -of the fire playing on her face, giving it a faint touch of rose, and -dissimulating the deep shadows under the eyes—feeling to his heart that -most intimate confidence and trust in him, the reliance, almost -unconscious, of a child, the utter dependence and weakness which could -put up no barriers of the conventional, nor stop to think what would be -agreeable: these things found out secret crevices in Sir Robert’s armor -of which neither he nor any one else had dreamed. The water stood in his -eyes as he looked at her, saying “Poor lassie, poor little lassie!” -secretly in his heart. She was as good company then, though she did not -know it, as when she started from her brief sleep and exerted herself to -make him talk, to make him laugh, to feel himself the most interesting -of <i>raconteurs</i> and delightful of companions. Many people had flattered -Sir Robert in his day—he had been important enough in much of his life -for that—but he had never found flattery so sweet as Lily’s demands -upon the stores of his long experience, her questions upon his history, -her interest in what he told her. It was not only that she was herself -such a companion as he had not dreamed of, but that he never had been -aware before what excellent company he was himself. He almost grudged to -see her growing stronger, though he rejoiced in it from the bottom of -his old world-worn heart.</p> - -<p>“And so you are going to leave me, Lily—you’ve settled,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_346" id="page_346"></a>{346}</span> that Robina -woman and you—and you’re off in two days seeking adventures?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, uncle—in two days; but only for a little while.”</p> - -<p>“Without a thought of an old man left desolate—upon the edge of the -moor.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, with a thought that is very pleasant—that there’s somebody there -wanting me back”—she paused a moment with a faint sigh and added: “and -that I am coming back to in a little while. And then, as for the moor, -it is full of diversion. You’re never lonely watching the clouds and the -shadows and all the changes: I have had much experience of it, Uncle -Robert—two years, that were sometimes long, long.”</p> - -<p>“I never knew,” said Sir Robert, a little abashed, “how lonely it was, -Lily, and that all the old neighbors were gone. I pictured you -surrounded with young folk, and as merry as the day was long.”</p> - -<p>“It was not exactly that,” she said, with a smile; and then her face -changed, as it did from moment to moment, like the moor which she loved, -yet hated—shadows flying over it as swift, as sudden, and as deep. “But -it’s all past, and why should we think more of it? When I come back, -Uncle Robert, we’ll be cheery, you and me together by the fireside all -the winter through, and never ask whether there are neighbors or not—or -other folk in the world.”</p> - -<p>“I would not go so far as that,” said the old gentleman. “We’ll get the -world to come to us, Lily, a small bit at a time. But you have never -told me where you are going when you leave me here.”</p> - -<p>“To Edinburgh,” she said.</p> - -<p>“To Edinburgh! I thought you had consulted with the doctor, and were -going to the seaside, or to the Bridge of Allan, or some of the places -where invalids go.”</p> - -<p>“Uncle,” said Lily, “I have been two years upon the moor, and in all -that time I have not got a new gown, nor a bonnet, nor any thing -whatsoever. Oh, yes, we will go to the sea, or the Bridge of Allan, or -to some place. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_347" id="page_347"></a>{347}</span> we are not fit to be seen, neither Beenie nor me. -You do not take these things into consideration. You think, when I speak -to you like a rational creature, that I am above the wants of my kind; -but rational or not, a woman must always have some clothes to wear!”</p> - -<p>Sir Robert laughed and clapped his hands. “Bravo, Lily!” he cried. “You -cannot do better, my dear, than own you’re just a woman and are as fond -of your finery as the rest. By all means, then, go to Edinburgh and fit -yourself out; but do not stay there, go out to Portobello, if you do not -care to go farther, or a little more to the West, where it’s milder, and -you will get a warm blink before the winter weather sets in. And that -reminds me that you will want money, Lily.”</p> - -<p>“A good deal of money, Uncle Robert,” she said, with a smile. “You know -I have had none for two years.”</p> - -<p>It was with a sensation of shame that he heard her allusions to those -two years, and perhaps Lily was aware of it. She wanted money, she -wanted freedom, and that her steps should not be watched nor her -movements constrained. And the old gentleman was startled and humiliated -when he realized that his heiress, his only relation, his brother’s -child, had been banished to this wilderness without a shilling in her -pocket or a friend to help her. He could not imagine how he could have -forgotten so completely her existence or her claims upon him and right -to his support. He was glad to wipe that recollection from his own mind -as well as hers by his liberality now. And Lily received from him an -order upon his “man of business” in Edinburgh for an amount which seemed -to her almost fabulous—for she knew nothing of money, had never had -any, nor required it, although when she retired to her room with that -piece of paper in her hand which meant so much, the reflection of what -might have happened and what she could have done had she only at any -time during these two years possessed as much, or half as much, came -upon her with almost a convulsive sense of opportunities lost. She flung -herself upon Beenie’s shoulder when she<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_348" id="page_348"></a>{348}</span> reached the safe shelter of her -room, where it was no longer necessary to keep herself up and make a -smile for her uncle. “Oh, Beenie!” she cried, “if he had given me the -half of that before, or the quarter! how every thing might have been -changed.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, mem, my bonnie leddy,” cried Beenie, who never now addressed her -mistress as Miss Lily, “it’s little, little that siller can do!”</p> - -<p>Anger flashed in Lily’s eyes. “It could just have done every thing!” she -said. “Do you think I would have been put off and off if I could have -put my hand in my pocket and taken the coach and gone, you and me, to -see to every thing ourselves? Oh! many a time I have wished for it, and -longed for it—but what could we do, you and me, and nothing, nothing to -take us there? Oh, never say siller can do little! It might have spared -us all that’s happened—think! all that’s happened! I might be thinking -now as I thought yon New Year’s time in the snow. I might be as sure and -as full of trust. I might never have learned what it was to deceive and -to be deceived. I might never have been a desolate woman without man or -bairn—without my little bairn, my little baby!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, my darlin’ leddy! but you’ll get him again, you’ll get him again!” -cried Beenie, with streaming eyes.</p> - -<p>“I hope in God I shall,” said Lily, tearless, lifting her eyes and -clasping her hands. “I hope in God I shall, or else that he’ll let me -just lay down my head and die!”</p> - -<p>“He has raised you up from the very grave,” said Beenie. “We had nae -hope, Katrin and me; we had nae hope at all. Here she is hersel’ that -will tell you. There was ae night—oh, come Katrin, come and bear me -out—when you and me just stood over her, and kissed the bonnie white -face on the white pillow, and wrung each other’s hands, and said: ‘If -the baby’s lost and her reason gane, God bless her, she’ll be better -away.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“Whisht with your nonsense,” said Katrin; “that’s a’ past, and now we -have nae such thoughts in our heads. But what will you do, my dear -leddy, my bonnie leddy?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_349" id="page_349"></a>{349}</span> Will ye bring him back here? A fine thriving -bairn like yon you canna hide him. The first day, the first night, and -the secret would be parish news. I was frichtened out of my wits the -first days for Dougal, who is not a pushing man, to do him justice, or -one that asks questions; but with Sir Robert in the house, oh, mem, my -bonnie dear, what will ye do?”</p> - -<p>“I have never wanted to make any secret, Katrin,” Lily said.</p> - -<p>“I ken that; but there will be an awfu’ deal to tell when once you -begin. And the bairn he is an awfu’ startling thing to begin with. Do ye -no think an auld gentleman like Sir Robert had better be prepared for -it? It would give him a shock. It might even hairm him in his health. I -would take counsel about it. Oh, I would take counsel! Do naething in a -hurry, not to scandalize the country, nor to give our auld maister a -fright that might do him harm.”</p> - -<p>“To scandalize the country!” said Lily, pale with anger. “Oh! to think -it’s me, me that she says that to! Do you think it is better to deceive -every-body and be always a lie whatever way you turn?”</p> - -<p>“Mem,” said Katrin, “my dear, you’ll excuse me; I must just say the -truth. It’s an awfu’ thing to deceive, as you say, and well I ken it was -never your wyte. But the worst of it is that when you begin you cannot -end. You just have to go on. I’m no saying one thing or another. It’s no -my business, if it wasna that I just think more of you than one mortal -creature should think of another. Oh! just take thought and take -counsel! The maister is an old man. You’ve beguiled him with your -winsome ways just as you’ve beguiled us a’. Can I see a thing wrong you -do, whatever it is? And yet I have a glimmerin’ o’ sense between whiles. -If he’s looking for you back to be his bonnie Lily and his companion, -and syne sees you come in with a bairn in your arms and another man’s -name, what will the auld man do? Oh, mem, the dear bairn, God bless him, -and grant that you may soon have<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_350" id="page_350"></a>{350}</span> him in your airms! But if you hold by -the auld gentleman and his life and comfort, for God’s sake take -thought! for that is in it, too.”</p> - -<p>“There is nothing, nothing,” cried Lily, “that should keep a mother from -her bairn! You are a kind woman, Katrin, but you’ve never had a bairn. -When once I get him here, how can I ever give him up again?” she said, -straining her arms to her breast as if the child was within them. Beenie -wept behind her mistress’s shoulder, overwhelmed with sympathy, but -Katrin shook her head.</p> - -<p>“When you see Mr. Lumsden there, and go over it all——”</p> - -<p>Lily’s face became instantly as if the windows of her mind had been -closed up. Her lips straightened, her eyes became blank. She said -nothing, but turned away, not looking at either of them nor saying a -word. “And it was no me breathed his name or as much as thought upon -him,” Beenie said a little later in an aggrieved tone, when she had -rejoined Katrin down stairs.</p> - -<p>“It was me that breathed his name, and I’ll do it again till some heed -is paid to what I say. We should maybe have refused yon day to be his -witnesses. But being sae, Beenie, the burden is on you and me as well as -on him. They should have owned each other and spoke the truth from that -day. But now that it has all gone so far and no a whisper risen, and the -countryside just as innocent as if they were two bairns playing, oh, I -wouldna now just burst it all upon the auld man’s head! He’s no an ill -auld man. He’s provided for her all her life; he is very muckle taken up -with her now, maybe in a selfish way, for he’s feeling his age and his -mainy infirmities, and he’s wanting a companion. But, oh! I would not -burst it on him now! He could never abide her man, and, to tell the -truth, Beenie, I’m not that fond of him mysel’, and she, poor thing, has -had a fearfu’ opening to her eyes. How could ye have the bairn here and -no the father? Could she say to her uncle: ‘I was very silly about him -once and married<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_351" id="page_351"></a>{351}</span> him, and now I canna abide him’? Oh, no! that is what -she will never say.”</p> - -<p>“And I hope she’ll never think it either,” Beenie said.</p> - -<p>“Beenie,” said the other solemnly, “you are a real innocent if such a -thing ever was.”</p> - -<p>“No more than yoursel’,” said Beenie, indignant; but she had to return -to her mistress, and further discussion could not be held on this -question.</p> - -<p>They went away on the second morning, which was a little frosty, though -bright. The establishment had widened out by this time. Sir Robert was -not a man to be driven to kirk or market in the little geeg, drawn at -his wilful pleasure by Rory, which had answered all Lily’s purposes. -There was now a phaeton and a brougham, and three or four horses -accommodated <i>tant bien que mal</i> in the old stables, which had to be -cleared of much rubbish and Dougal’s accumulations of years before they -were in a state to receive their costly inmates. It was in the brougham -that Lily, wrapped up in every kind of shawl and comforter, drove with -her maid to Kinloch-Rugas to take the coach, where the best places had -been reserved for them. Beenie’s pride in this journey exceeded the -anxiety with which her mind was full, in respect to her mistress’s -health in the first place, and the many issues of their journey. But it -was not a “pride” which met with much sympathy from her dear friends and -fellow-servants. Dougal for his part stood out in the stable-yard -carefully isolated from all possible connection with the new grooms and -the new horses, though neither was he without a thrill of pride in the -distinction of a kind of part-proprietorship with Sir Robert in these -dazzling articles. He kept apart, however, with an air of conscious -superiority to such innovations. “I wish ye a good journey,” he said; -“maybe it’ll be warmer this fine morning in a shut-up carriage, but, -Lord! I would rather have Rory and the little geeg than all the coaches -in England!”</p> - -<p>Lily was thrilling with nervous excitement, scarcely able to contain -herself, but she made an effort to give a word<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_352" id="page_352"></a>{352}</span> and a smile to the -whilom arbiter of all the movements of Dalrugas. “I would rather have -you and Rory in the summer weather,” she said. “If it is a warm day when -I come back, you will come for me, Dougal.”</p> - -<p>“Na, mem, no me; we’re no grand enough now to carry leddies: which I -wouldna care much for, for leddies, as ye ken, are whiles fantastic and -put awfu’ burdens on a beast—but just because his spirit is broken with -trailing peats from the hill, and visitors’ boxes from the toun. They’re -sensitive creatures, pownies. I just begin to appreciate the black -powny’s feelings now I see the effect upon my ain.”</p> - -<p>“He shall drive me when I come back,” said Lily, waving her hand as the -brougham flashed away, the coats of the horses shining in the frosty -sunshine, and the carriage panels sending back reflections. It was -certainly more comfortable than the geeg. But the light went out of -Lily’s face as they left Dalrugas behind. The little color in her cheeks -disappeared. She leaned back in her corner and once more pressed her -arms against her breast. “Oh, shall I find him? shall I find him?” she -cried.</p> - -<p>“You’ll do that—wherefore should you no do that?” said Beenie -encouragingly.</p> - -<p>“He’ll be grown so big we will not know him, Beenie, and he will not -know his mother; that woman Margaret that took him away will have all -his smiles—she will be the first face that he sees, now that he’s old -enough to notice. Oh, my little bairn! my little bairn!”</p> - -<p>“A bairn that is two months auld takes but little notice, mem,” said -Beenie, strong in her practical knowledge. “You need not fash your head -about that. They may smile, but if ye were to ask me the very truth, I -wouldna hide from you that what they ca’ smiling is just in my opinion -the——”</p> - -<p>“If you say that word, I will kill you!” cried Lily. She laughed and -then she cried in her excitement. “How will I contain myself? how will I -keep quiet and face the world, and the folk in the world, and every-body -about, till the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_353" id="page_353"></a>{353}</span> moment comes—oh, the moment, Beenie!—when I will get -my baby into my arms?”</p> - -<p>“Eh, mem! but you must not make yoursel’ sae awfu’ sure about that,” -said Beenie. “We might not find them just at first—or he might have a -little touch of the cauld, or maybe the thrush in his wee mouth, or -measles, or something. You must not make yourself so awfu’ sure.”</p> - -<p>“He is ill!” cried Lily, seizing her in a fierce grip. “He is ill, oh, -you false, false woman, and you have never said a word to me!”</p> - -<p>“There is naething ill about him; he is just thriving like the flowers. -But I canna bide when folk are so terrible sure. It seems as if you were -tempting God.”</p> - -<p>“It’s you that are tempting me—to believe in nothing, neither Him nor -women’s word. But what would make a woman deceive a baby’s mother about -her own child? A man might do it, that knows nothing about what that -means; but a woman never would do it, Beenie—a woman that has been -about little babies and their mothers all her days?”</p> - -<p>“No, mem, I never thought it,” said Beenie in dutiful response.</p> - -<p>At the coach, where they were received with all the greater honor on -account of Sir Robert’s brougham, and the beautiful prancing horses, -Helen Blythe met them. “They would not let me come to see you,” she -said. “It’s long, long, since I’ve seen you, Lily, and worn and white -you’ve grown—but just as bonnie as ever: there comes up the color just -as it used to do—but you must look stronger when you come back.”</p> - -<p>“I am going away for that,” Lily said.</p> - -<p>“And it is just the wisest thing she could do,” said the doctor, who had -come also to see her off. “And stay away as long as you can, Miss -Ramsay, and just divert yourself a little. You have great need of -diversion after that long time at the old Tower.”</p> - -<p>“She is not one that is much heeding diversion,” said Helen, looking at -her affectionately.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_354" id="page_354"></a>{354}</span></p> - -<p>“We’re all needing it whether we’re heeding it or no,” said the doctor. -“And if you will take my advice, you will just take a little pleasure to -yourself, as you would take physic if I ordered it. Good-by, Miss -Ramsay, and mind what I say.”</p> - -<p>“He’s maybe right,” said Helen; “they say he’s a clever man. I know -little about diversion. But, oh! I would like to see you happy, -Lily—that would be better than all the physic in the world.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I will bring it back with me,” said Lily, with a smile.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was not with a very easy mind that Ronald Lumsden had executed the -great <i>coup</i> which had, so far as Lily was concerned, such disastrous -consequences. He had been deeply perplexed from the moment of the baby’s -birth, nay, before that, as to what his future action was to be. It had -been apparent to him from the first that the child could not remain at -Dalrugas. Much had been ventured, much had been done, to all appearance -successfully enough. No scandal had been raised in the countryside by -his own frequent visits. What might be whispered in the cottages no one -knew; but, apart from such a possibility, nothing that could be called -public, no rumor of the least importance, had arisen. Every thing was -safe up to that point. And he was not much concerned even had there been -any subdued scandal floating about. At any moment, should any crisis -arise, Lily could be justified and set right. What could it matter, -indeed, if any trouble of a moment should arise? He was not indifferent -to his wife’s good name. He considered himself as the best guardian of -that, the best judge as to how and when it should be defended. He had -(he thought) the reins in his hands, the command of all the -circumstances. If he should ever see the moment come when the credit of -his future family should be seriously<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_355" id="page_355"></a>{355}</span> threatened, and the position of -Lily become an affair of vital importance, he was prepared to make any -sacrifice. The moment it became serious enough for that he was ready to -act; but in the meantime it was his to fight the battle out to the last -step, and to defend her rights as her uncle’s heir, and to secure the -fortune for her behalf and his own. He regarded the situation largely as -from the point of view of a governor and supreme authority. As long as -the circumstances could be managed, the world’s opinion suppressed or -kept in abeyance, and the one substantial and important object kept -safe, what did a little imaginary annoyance matter, or Lily’s fantastic -girlish notions about a house of her own, and a public appearance on her -husband’s arm, wearing her wedding ring and calling herself Mrs. -Lumsden? He liked her the better for desiring all that, so far as it -meant a desire to be always with him; otherwise the mere promotion of -being known as a married lady was silly and a piece of vanity, which did -not merit a thought on the part of the arbiter of her affairs. All the -little by-play about the house which could not be got till the term, -etc., had been a jest to him, though it had been so serious to Lily. He -had never for a moment intended that she should have that house. To keep -her quiet, to keep her contented, Ronald did not stint at such a small -matter as a lie. Between lovers, between married people, there must be -such things. If a man intends to keep at the head of affairs, and yet to -keep the woman, who has no experience and knows nothing of the world, -satisfied and happy, of course there must be little fictions made up and -fables told. Lily would be the first to justify them when the necessity -was over, when the money was secured and their final state arrived at—a -dignified life together, with every thing handsome about them. He had no -compunctions, therefore, about the original steps. It might have been -more prudent, perhaps, if they had not married at all, if they had -waited till Sir Robert died and Lily was free, in the course of nature, -to give her hand and her fortune where she pleased. That, no doubt, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_356" id="page_356"></a>{356}</span> -a rash thing to do, but the wisest of men commit such imprudences. And, -with the exception of that, Ronald approved generally of his own -behavior. He did not find any thing to object to in his conduct of the -matter altogether.</p> - -<p>But the baby put every thing out. The prospect, indeed, occupied Lily -and kept her quiet and reasonable for a long time, but the moment he -knew what was coming a new care came into Lumsden’s mind. A baby is not -a thing to be hid. It was certain that nothing would induce Lily to part -with it, or to be reasonable any longer. She would throw away the result -of all his precautions, of all his careful arrangements, of his -self-denial and thought, in a moment, for the sake of this little thing, -which could neither repay her nor know what she was doing for it. Many -an hour’s reflection, night and day, had he given to this subject -without seeing any way out of it. With all his powers and gifts of -persuasion he had not ventured even to hint to Lily the idea of sending -away the child. Courage is a great thing, but sometimes it is not enough -to face a situation of the simplest character. He could not do it. After -the child arrived, when the inconveniences of keeping it there became -apparent, he had thought it might perhaps be easier; and many times he -had attempted to arrange how this could be done, but never had succeeded -in putting it into words. To do him justice, it was he who had sought -out and chosen with the utmost care the nurse Marg’ret, in whose hands -both mother and child would be safe, and he looked forward with that -vague and foolish hope in some indefinite help to come which the wisest -of men, when their combinations fail, still believe in, like the most -foolish; perhaps some suggestion might come from herself, who could -tell? some sense of the trouble and inconvenience arising in Lily’s own -mind might assist him in disposing of the little intruder. Why do babies -thrust themselves into the world so determinedly where they are not -wanted? Why resist the most eager calls and welcomes where they are? -This confusing question was no joke to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_357" id="page_357"></a>{357}</span> Ronald. It made him hate this -meddling baby, though he was not without a young father’s sense of pride -and satisfaction, too.</p> - -<p>He had instructed Marg’ret fully beforehand in the part she might be -called upon to play, though he could not tell her either how or when he -would accomplish the purpose which had gradually grown upon him as a -necessity. In these circumstances, while he yet pondered and turned -every thing over in his mind, failing as yet to perceive any way in -which it could be accomplished, the suddenness of Sir Robert’s coming, -which he learned by accident, was like sudden light in the most profound -darkness. Here was the necessity made ready to his hands. Lily could not -doubt, could not waver; whatever might happen afterward, it was quite -clear Sir Robert could not be greeted on his first arrival by the voice -of an infant—an infant which had no business to be there, and whose -presence would have to be accounted for on the very threshold, without -any preliminary explanation—in the face, too, of his friends whom he -brought with him, revealing all the secrets of his house. This was a -chance which made Ronald himself, with all his coolness, shiver. And -Lily, still in her weakness, not half recovered—what might the effect -be upon her? It might kill her, he decided; for her own sake, in her own -defence, not a moment was to be lost. The reader knows how he flashed -into his wife’s room in haste, but not able even then, in face of Lily’s -perfect calm, and utter inability to conceive the real difficulty of the -situation, to suggest it to her, accomplished his design, secretly -leaving her—not even then with any unkind intention, very sorry for -her, but not seeing any other way in which it was to be done—to -discover her loss and bear it as she might. He was any thing but happy -as he drove away with the traitor woman by his side and the baby hidden -in its voluminous wrappings. Marg’ret was not such a traitor either as -she seemed. She had been made to believe that, though no parting was to -be permitted to agitate the young mother,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_358" id="page_358"></a>{358}</span> Lily, too, was aware, and had -consented to this proceeding. “The poor little lassie, the poor wee -thing!” Marg’ret had said, even while wrapping up the baby for its -journey; and she had slipped out into the darkness and waited at the -corner for the geeg with a heavy heart.</p> - -<p>It startled Lumsden very much that no wail of distress, no indignant -outcry, came from Lily on discovering her loss. These were not the days -of frequent communications. People had not yet acquired the habit of -constant correspondence. They were accustomed to wait for news, with no -swift possibility of a telegram or even a penny post to make them -impatient; not, perhaps, that they would have grudged—certainly not -that Ronald would have grudged—the eightpence which was then, I think, -the price of the conveyance of a letter from one end of Scotland to the -other, but that they had not acquired the custom of frequent writing. -When no protest, no remonstrance, no passionate outcry, reached him for -a week or two after the event, Lumsden became exceedingly alarmed. He -said to himself at first that it was a relief, that Lily herself -recognized the necessity and had yielded to it; but he did not really -believe this, and as the days went on, genuine anxiety and terror were -in his mind. Had it killed her? Had his Lily, in her weakness, bowed her -head and died of this outrage? the worst, he now felt in every fibre of -his being, to which a woman could be subjected. He wrote, enclosing his -letter to Beenie; then he wrote to Beenie herself, entreating her to -send him a line, a word. But Lily was unconscious of every thing, and -Beenie of all that did not concern her mistress, when these letters -arrived. They were not even opened until Lily was convalescent, and then -Beenie by her mistress’s orders, in her large sprawling handwriting, and -with many tears, replied briefly to the three or four anxious demands -for news which had arrived one after the other. Beenie wrote:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Sir:</span> My mistress has been at the point of death with what they -call a brain-fever. It has lasted the longest and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_359" id="page_359"></a>{359}</span> been the -fiercest that ever the doctor saw. She is coming round now—the -Lord be praised—but very slow. She has but one thought—you will -know well what that is—and will never rest till she has got -satisfaction, night or day.</p> - -<p class="r"> -<span style="margin-right: 12em;">“I am, sir,</span><br /> - -<span style="margin-right:5em;">“Your obedient servant,</span><br /> - -“<span class="smcap">Robina Rutherford</span>.<br /> -</p> - -<p>“P. S.—I was to tell you the last part, for it is not from me.”</p></div> - -<p>There was not much satisfaction to be got from this letter, and, indeed, -his mind got little relief from any thing, and the time of Lily’s -illness was a time of mental trouble for the husband, which was not, -perhaps, more easy to bear. Had he lost her altogether? It seemed like -that, though he could not think it possible that the child at least -should be allowed to drop, or that the fever could have made her forget, -which it was evident she had not done in his own case. The courts had -begun again, and Lumsden was more occupied than he had ever been in his -life. He made one furtive visit to Kinloch-Rugas, where he heard -something of Lily’s state, and engaged Helen Blythe to communicate with -him any thing that reached her ears. But no one was allowed to see her -in her illness, and this gave him small satisfaction. He did not dare to -go near the house, which Sir Robert guarded more effectually than a -squadron of soldiers. There was nothing for him to do but to wait. The -unusual rush of occupation which came upon him with the beginning of the -session had a certain irony in it, that irony which is so often apparent -in life. Was he about to become a successful man now that the chief -thing which made life valuable was slipping out of his grasp? He went -about his business briskly, and rose to the claims of his business and -profession, so that he began to be mentioned in the Parliament House and -among his contemporaries, and even by elder men of still more -importance, who said of him that young Lumsden, old<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_360" id="page_360"></a>{360}</span> Pontalloch’s son, -though he had hung fire at first, was now beginning at last to come to -the front. Was it possible that this was coming to him, this -exhilarating tide of success, just at the moment when Lily, who would -have stood by him in evil fortune and never failed him, had dropped away -from his side? To do him justice, he had never thought of success, of -wealth, of prosperity, without her to share it. And he did not -understand it now. He could not understand how even a woman, however -ignorant or unreasonable by nature, could be so narrow as not to see -that all he had done had been for the best. The last step, no doubt, -might be allowed to be hard upon her, but what else was possible? Could -she for a moment have entertained the idea of keeping the child—a baby -that cried and made a noise, and could not be hid—at Dalrugas? Even if -there had been no word of Sir Robert, it still would have been -impossible; and he had done no more than he had a right to do. He had -considered, and considered most carefully—he did himself but justice in -this—what as her head and guardian it was best for him to do. It was -his duty as well as his right; and the responsibility being upon him as -the husband, and not upon her as the wife, he had done it. Was it -possible that Lily—a creature full of intelligence on other matters, -who even now and then picked up a thing quicker than he did -himself—should not have sense enough and judgment enough to see this? -But these thoughts, though they mingled with all he did, and accompanied -him night and day, did not make things any better. The fact that she had -taken no notice of him all this time, that she had not written to him -even to upbraid him, that she had not even asked him for news of the -child, was very heavy on Lumsden’s mind—almost, I had said, upon his -heart, for he still had a heart, notwithstanding all that had come and -gone. Perhaps it might have relieved him a little had he known that news -had been obtained of the child, though not through him. Marg’ret—who, -though she had been unfaithful to the young mother, to whom at the same -time<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_361" id="page_361"></a>{361}</span> she had been so kind, certainly had a heart, which smote her much -as being a party to a proceeding which became more and more doubtful the -more she thought of it—had written twice to Beenie, altogether superior -to the question of the eightpence to pay, to assure her of the baby’s -health. He was well, he was thriving, his mother would not know him he -had grown so big and strong, and Marg’ret hoped that ere long she would -put him, just a perfect beauty, into his mother’s arms. These queer -missives, sealed with a wafer and a thimble, had been better than all -the eloquent letters in the world to Lily. When those from Ronald, full -of excellent reason and all the philosophy that could be brought to bear -on the circumstances, were given to her on her recovery, they had but -made her wound more bitter and her resentment more warm; but the nurse’s -letters had given her strength. They had made her able to charm and -please her uncle; they had enabled her to face life again and fight her -way back to a certain degree of health; they had sustained her in her -journey, and this first set out upon the world to manage her own -affairs, which was as novel to her as if she had been fifteen, instead -of twenty-five. They wanted only one thing—they had no address. The -postmark was Edinburgh, but Edinburgh was (to these inexperienced women) -a very wide word.</p> - -<p>What Lily had intended to do when she had found out Marg’ret and -recovered her child—as she was so confident of doing—I cannot tell. -She did not herself know. This was the first step to be taken: every -thing else came a world behind. Whether she was to carry the baby back -in her arms, to beard Sir Robert with it and make her -explanation—though with the conviction that she would then be turned -from the door of her only home forever—or whether she intended, having -escaped, to do what always seems so easy and natural to a girl’s -imagination: to fly away somewhere and hide herself with her child, and -be fed by the ravens, like the prophet—she herself did not know and I -cannot tell. The only thing certain was that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_362" id="page_362"></a>{362}</span> she thought of the little -house among the Edinburgh roofs—that house which could only be got at -the term, and which it now made her heart sick to think of—no more. Had -she found the door open for her and every thing ready Lily would have -turned her back on that open door. She could not endure the thought of -it; she could not even think of the time when it would have been -paradise to her, the realization of her dearest hopes. In the depths of -her injured soul she would have desired to find her child without even -making her presence known to her husband. She had no desire even to see -him again—he seemed to have alienated her too completely for any -repentance. And up to this moment, her mind being altogether occupied by -her child, none of those relentings toward those whom we have loved and -who have wronged us, which make the heart bleed, had come upon Lily. She -thought of nothing but her child, her child! to have him again in her -arms, to possess him again, the one thing in the world that was entirely -her own, altogether her own. The fact that this was not so, that the -child was not and never could be entirely her own, did not disturb -Lily’s mind. Had she been reminded of it she would not have believed. -She thought, as every young mother thinks in the wonderful closeness of -that new relation and the sense of all it has cost her, that to this at -least there could be no contradiction and no doubt—that her baby was -hers, hers! and that no one in the world had the right to him that she -had. It was for him that she hurried, as much as any one could hurry in -these days, to Edinburgh, grudging every moment of delay—the time of -changing the horses, which she felt inclined to get out and do herself, -so slow, so slow was every-body concerned; the time for refreshments, as -if one wanted to eat and drink when one was hastening to recover one’s -child. But however slow a journey is the end of it comes at last. It was -a comfort to Lily that she knew where to go to—to the house of a very -decent woman, known to Beenie, who kept lodgings, and where she could be -quite quiet, out of the way of her former friends. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_363" id="page_363"></a>{363}</span> they arrived -only in the evening, and there was another long night to be gone through -before any thing could be done.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Robina</span> had become more and more anxious and uneasy as they approached -Edinburgh. She did not seem to share the anxious elation with which her -mistress hailed the well-known features of the country, and recognized -the Castle on its rock, and the high line of houses against the sky. -Lily was in a state of feverish excitement, but it was mingled with so -many hopes and anticipations that even her anxiety was a kind of -happiness. “To-morrow! to-morrow!” she said to herself. Beenie listened -with much solemnity to this happy tone of certainty. She would have -liked to moralize, and bid her mistress modify her too great confidence. -As the moment approached when it should be justified Beenie’s mind -became more and more perturbed. It was she who had been instrumental in -bringing Marg’ret from Edinburgh, pretending, indeed, that the woman was -her cousin, and she had till now taken it for granted, as Lily had done, -without any doubt in her mind, that where Marg’ret had been found once -she would be found again. But as the hour came nearer Beenie’s -confidence in this became much shaken. If <i>he</i> wanted to hide the child -from his mother—a course which Beenie acknowledged to herself would be -the wisest one, for how could the baby and Sir Robert ever live under -the same roof?—would he have allowed the nurse to settle there, where -her address was known and she could be found in a moment? Beenie’s -intellect was not quick, but she did not think this was probable. She -was not accustomed to secrecy or to the tricks of concealment: they had -not even occurred to her till now; but when she realized that she was to -be her mistress’s guide on the next morning to the house where<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_364" id="page_364"></a>{364}</span> Lily had -persuaded herself she was certain to find her child, her heart sank to -her boots, and there was no more strength left in her. “And what if we -dinna find her there? and wherefore should we find her there?” Beenie -asked herself. It stood to reason, as she saw now, that Lumsden would -never have permitted her to remain. Why had she not thought of it -before? Why had she come on such a fool’s errand, to plunge her mistress -only into deeper and deeper disappointment? Beenie did not sleep all -night, though Lily slept, in her great fatigue, like a child. Beenie was -terrified of the morning, and of the visit which she now felt sure would -be in vain. Oh, why had she not seen it before? He must have known that -the mother would not give up her child without an attempt to recover him -(“Though what we are to do with him, poor wee man, when we get him!” -Beenie said to herself), and he would never have left the baby where it -could be found at once, and all his precautions made an end of. Beenie -saw now, enlightened by terror, that this plan must have been in -Lumsden’s head all the time, though Sir Robert’s sudden arrival gave the -opportunity for carrying it out. She saw now that after all that had -been done to keep the secret he was not likely to allow it to be thrown -to the winds by the presence of the child at Dalrugas if he could help -it. She divined this under the influence of her own alarm and anxiety. -And would he let the woman bide there in a kent place where Lily could -lay her hands upon the child whenever she pleased, night or day? Oh, no, -no, no! he would never do that, was the refrain that ran through -Beenie’s mind all the night. She had thought how delightful it would be -to hear the clocks striking and the bells ringing after the deep, deep -silence of the moor. But this satisfaction was denied her, for all the -bells and the clocks seemed to upbraid her for her foolishness. “Sae -likely! Sae likely!” one of them seemed to say in every chime. “Cheating -himself! Cheating himself!” said another. And was there not yet one, -heavier than the rest—St. Giles himself for any thing she could -tell—which seemed to echo out:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_365" id="page_365"></a>{365}</span> “You fool, Beenie! You fool, Beenie!” -over all the listening town?</p> - -<p>“Oh, my bonnie leddy!” said Beenie, when Lily, all flushed and eager -with anticipation, took her place in the old-fashioned hackney coach -that was to take them to Marg’ret’s abode. This was in a narrow street, -or rather close, leading off the Canongate—one of those places hidden -behind the great houses which lead to tranquil little spots of -retirement, and openings into the fresh air and green braes, which no -stranger could believe possible. “Oh, my bonnie leddy, dinna, dinna be -so terrible sure! I’ve been thinking a’ the way—what if she should have -flitted? There was nae address to her letter. She may have flitted to -another house. She may be away at other work.”</p> - -<p>“What! and leave my baby!” cried Lily, “when she said in her letter he -was all her occupation, as well as all her pleasure! I almost forgave -her what she’s done to me for saying that.”</p> - -<p>“And so she did,” said Beenie doubtfully. “Oh, I’m no saying a word -against Marg’ret—she would be faithfu’ to her trust. But she might flit -to another house for a’ that. In Edinburgh the folk are aye flittin’. I -canna tell what possesses them. Me—I would bide where I was well off; I -would never think of making a change just for change’s sake. But that is -what they’re aye doing here.”</p> - -<p>“Have you heard any thing, Beenie?” cried Lily, turning pale. She had -been so sure that the cup of joy was within reach, that the thirsting of -her heart would be at once satisfied, that she felt as if a -disappointment would be more than she could bear.</p> - -<p>“Oh, mem,” cried Beenie, producing a bottle of salts from her capacious -pocket, “dinna let down your heart! I have heard naething. I was just -speaking of a common fact that every-body kens. And if she had flitted, -they would maybe ken where she had gone. Oh, ay, they would certainly -ken where she has gone—a woman and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_366" id="page_366"></a>{366}</span> a bairn canna disappear leaving no -sign. It’s not like a single person, that might just be off and away, -and nobody the wiser, mem! I am maybe just speaking nonsense, and we’ll -see her at her door in a moment, with our bonnie boy in her airms.”</p> - -<p>Beenie, however, had succeeded better than she had hoped. She had -conveyed to her mistress that sickening of the heart which, from the -most ancient days of humanity, has been the consequence of hope -deferred. The light went out of Lily’s eyes. She leaned back in her -corner, closing them upon a world which had suddenly grown black and -void. She did not lose consciousness, being far too strongly bound to -life by hope and despair and pain to let the thread drop even for a -moment; but Beenie thought she had fainted, and, heartstruck with what -seemed to her her own work, produced out of the reticule she carried a -whole magazine of remedies—precious eau-de-Cologne, which was no common -thing in those days, and vinegar with a sharp, aromatic scent, more used -then than now, and even as the last resort a small bottle of whiskey, -which she tried hard, though with a hand that trembled, to administer in -a teaspoon. Lily had strength enough to push her away, and, in -self-defence, opened her eyes again, seeing grayly once more the -firmament, and the high houses on either side, and the dull day from -which all light seemed to have gone. It was she, however, who sprang out -of the coach when it stopped at the entrance to the close. Every-body -knows what the Canongate of Edinburgh is—one of the most noble streets, -yet without question the most squalid and spoiled of any street in -Europe, with beautiful stately old houses standing sadly among the -hideous growths of yesterday, and evil smells and evil noises enough to -sicken every visitor and to shame every man who has any thing to do with -such a careless and wicked sacrifice of the city’s pride and -ornament.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> But<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_367" id="page_367"></a>{367}</span> even in the midst of this disgraceful debasement there -remain beyond the screen of the great old houses glimpses of the outlets -which the old citizens provided for themselves—old court-yards, even -old gardens, old houses secure within their little enclosures where the -air is still pure and the sky is still visible. Lily’s heart rose a -little as she came out of the narrow entrance of the close into one of -these unexpected openings. If he were here, he would be well. She could -see the green beyond and the high slopes of Salisbury Crags. There was -something in the vision of greenness, in the noble heights flung up -against the sky, which restored her confidence.</p> - -<p>But it was perhaps well that Beenie had spoken even so little adroitly -on the way, for, indeed, Marg’ret was not found at her old address. She -had never gone back there, they were told, since the time when she was -called away in the summer to attend a lady in the North. She had not, -indeed, been expected back. She had given up her rooms on going away, -and removed her little furniture, and the rooms had been relet at once -to a member of the same profession, who hoped to be sometimes mistaken -for Marg’ret, a person of high reputation in her own line. The landlady -knew nothing of the baby she had now to take care of nor where she was. -The furniture? Oh, yes, she could find out where the furniture had been -taken, but Marg’ret herself, she felt sure, had never come back. She was -maybe with the lady still—the lady in the North. She was so much -thought upon that whiles they would keep her, if the baby were delicate, -for months and months. She had a wonderful way with babies, the woman -said. (At this Lily, who had been leaning heavily on her attendant’s -arm, with her pale face hidden under her veil, and all her courage gone, -began to gather a little spirit and looked up again.) Oh, just a -wonderful way! They just throve wi’ her like flowers in May. What she -did different from ither folk there was not one could tell: if it was -the way she handled them, or the way she fed them, or the pittin’ on o’ -their claithes, with fykes and fancies that a puir buddy with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_368" id="page_368"></a>{368}</span> man’s -meat to get and the house to keep clean had no time for. But the fack -was just this, that there was nobody like Marg’ret Bland for little -bairns. They were just a different thing a’thegither when they were in -her hands.</p> - -<p>As this little harangue went on Lily’s feeble figure hanging on Beenie’s -arm straightened itself by degrees. She put up her veil and beamed upon -the homely woman, who showed evident signs that she had little time, as -she said, to keep herself tidy for one thing. Lily was not discouraged -by so small a matter. She said, holding out her hand: “Then you would -leave a baby in her hands and have no fear?”</p> - -<p>“Eh, my bonnie leddy,” cried the woman, with a half shriek, wiping her -hands upon her apron before she ventured to touch the lady’s glove, “I -would trust Marg’ret Bland maist to bring them back from the deid.”</p> - -<p>“We must find her, that is all,” said Lily, as they turned away, Beenie -trembling and miserable, with subdued sniffs coming from under her deep -bonnet. Her mistress, in the petulance which neither anxiety nor trouble -could quench, gave her “a shake” with her arm, which still leaned upon -hers, though Lily for the moment was the more vigorous of the two. “We -must find her, that is all! She must be clever indeed if she can hide -herself in Edinburgh and you and me not find her, Beenie! We must search -every street till we find her!” Lily cried. The color had come back to -her cheeks and the light to her eyes. That blessed assurance that, -wherever Marg’ret might be, the baby was safe, doubly safe in her -skilled and experienced hands, was to the young mother like wine. The -horror of the disappointment seemed to be disguised, almost to pass -away, in that unpremeditated testimony. If it was for to-morrow rather -than for to-day so long as he was so safe, so well, so assured against -all harm, as that! “We have only to find her,” Lily said, dragging -Beenie back to the hackney coach, in which they immediately drove to the -place where Marg’ret, now to be spoken of as Mistress Bland, had been -supposed to place her furniture. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_369" id="page_369"></a>{369}</span> this was no more than a warehouse, -where the person in charge allowed disdainfully that twa-three auld -sticks o’ furniture in that name were in his charge, but knew nothing -more of the wumman than just that they were hers, and that that was her -name. Lily, however, was not discouraged. She drove about all day in her -hackney coach, catching at every clue. She went to the hospitals, where -Mrs. Bland was known but supposed to be still with the lady in the North -who had secured her services in the summer.</p> - -<p>“If you know where she’s to be heard of,” one of the matrons said, “I -will be too thankful, for there is another place waiting for her or -somebody like her.”</p> - -<p>“And is she such a good nurse as that?” cried Lily, glowing with -eagerness all in a moment, though her face had relapsed into pallor and -anxiety.</p> - -<p>“She is one of the best nurses we have; and especially happy with -delicate children,” the matron answered with some astonishment. And she -tapped Beenie on the shoulder and said an indignant word in her ear. -“Woman!” she said, “are you mad to let your mistress wander about like -this, when it’s well to be seen she’s just out of her bed, and in my -opinion not long past her time?”</p> - -<p>“My mistress,” said Beenie, with a gasp, “is just a young lady—in from -the country.”</p> - -<p>“Just you get her back as fast as you can,” said the experienced woman, -“or you’ll have her worse than ever on your hands again.”</p> - -<p>But this was what Beenie could not do. She had to follow Lily’s -impetuous lead on many a wild-goose-chase and hopeless expedition here -and there from one place to another during the rest of the day; and when -they returned to their lodgings, worn out and cast down, in the evening, -it was still the mistress who had the most strength and spirit left. -“There is only one thing to do now,” she said, while Beenie placed her -on the hard sofa beside the fire, and endeavored to induce her to rest. -Her face was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_370" id="page_370"></a>{370}</span> very pale and her eyes very bright, with a faint redness -round the eyelids accentuating the absence of color. “There is one thing -to do. Mr. Lumsden”—she paused a little after the name, as if it made -her other words more difficult or exhausted her breath—“will have come -back now to his lodging. You know where that is as well as I do. You -will go and tell him that he is to come to me here.”</p> - -<p>“Mem!” cried Beenie in great perturbation.</p> - -<p>“Did you think,” said Lily, very clear, in a high, scornful tone, “that -I would come to Edinburgh and not see my husband? Is it not my duty to -see my husband? You will go to him at once!”</p> - -<p>“It is no that,” cried Beenie; “I thought you would see him first of -all. He’s your man, oh! my dear, dear lassie—you’re married upon him -never to be parted till death comes atween you. I would have had you see -him first of a’, and weel ye ken that; but now when you’re wearied out -body and mind, and nae satisfaction in your heart, and every thing that -is atween ye worse and worse by reason of muckle pondering and dwelling -on it—oh, mem, my dear, no to-night, no to-night! You have a sharp -tongue, though you never mean it, and he is a gentleman that is not used -to be crossed and has aye had his ain way. Oh, mem, he’s a masterful -man, though he’s never been but sweet as sugar to you. Try to take a -sleep and rest, and wait for the morn. The morn is aye a new day.”</p> - -<p>“I am glad,” said Lily, with shining eyes, “that you think I have a -sharp tongue, Beenie; and you may be sure, if ever I meant it in my -life, I will mean it now. But I will not discuss Mr. Lumsden with you or -any one. You will just go to him——”</p> - -<p>“Mem, let me speak once, if I’m never to say a word again!” cried -Beenie. “That your heart should be sore to see the dear bairn, to take -him back into your airms, oh, that I can weel understand. So is mine, -though I’m far, far from being what you are to him, and no to be named -in the same breath. But, mem, oh, my dear leddy, my bonnie<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_371" id="page_371"></a>{371}</span> Miss Lily! -if I may just say that once again, what will ye do with him when you -have him? Oh, let me speak—just this once. You canna, canna take him to -that auld gentleman at hame; you canna do it. He has maybe not been much -to you in the years that are past, but he’s awfu’ fond of you now. He -looks to you to make him a home, to be the comfort of his old age. Oh! -I’m no saying he deserves it at your hands. But what do the best of us -deserve? We just get what we dinna deserve from God the first, and -sometimes from a tender he’rt here below. And he is an auld man and -frail; he has maybe no long to live. Will you tell him a’ that long -story, how we’ve deceived him and the whole world, and about your -marriage, and about the birth, and a’ in his house, that he meant for -such different things?”</p> - -<p>“Beenie,” said Lily, “stop, or you will kill me. If I have deceived him -so long, it was with no will of mine. Oh, God knows, if none of you -know, with no will of mine, nor yet intention! Is that not the more -reason that I should deceive him no longer? He may turn me away. What -will that matter? We will be poor creatures the two of us, you and me, -if we cannot help ourselves and the darling bairn.”</p> - -<p>“But it will maitter to him,” said Beenie steadily, “the poor auld -gentleman in that lonely house. He’s been a kind of a father to you, if -no so tender a father as might have been. I’m no saying you should have -deceived him, but that’s done, and it canna be undone. If you tell him -now, it will maybe kill him at the hinder end, and whether that will be -better you must just think for yoursel’, for I have said all that I’m -caring to say.”</p> - -<p>Lily had covered her face with her hands, and there was a moment of -silence, unbroken save by a sob from Beenie, who naturally, having -spoken forth her soul, was now crying as if her heart would break.</p> - -<p>“Beenie,” said Lily, all at once looking up, “you will go to Mr. -Lumsden, who will be now at his lodgings dressing, I would not wonder, -to go out to dinner—that is<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_372" id="page_372"></a>{372}</span> what is most likely—and tell him I am -here. I would not wish to make him lose his engagement if he has one; -you can say that.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, mem!” murmured Beenie under her breath.</p> - -<p>“But when it suits with his convenience, I would like to see him, to ask -him a question or two. Go now, go,” she said impatiently, “or you will -be too late.”</p> - -<p>Weeping, Beenie went forth to do her mistress’s behest. Weeping, she put -on her big bonnet, with a veil over it, of a kind of Spanish lace with -huge flowers, which was the fashion of the day, and which allowed here -and there a patch of her tearful countenance to appear, blocking out the -rest. She found some difficulty in gaining admittance to Ronald, who -was, his landlady informed her, “dressing to go out to his dinner,” as -Lily had foretold, and it was in the full glory of evening dress that he -came forth upon her after she had fought her way to his sitting-room, -and had waited some time for his appearance. He was very much startled -by the sight of her, and came up taking her hand, demanding: “Lily—how -is my Lily?” with an energy and anxiety which partly quenched Beenie’s -unreasonable exasperation at the sight of his dress.</p> - -<p>“She is here, sir, and wishful to see you,” said Beenie, “when it’s -convenient to you.”</p> - -<p>“Lily here—where? What do you mean? Convenient! Do you mean she is at -the door?”</p> - -<p>“It is not likely, sir,” cried Beenie with indignant disgust.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean, woman? Lily who, you wrote to me, was just recovered -from a nearly fatal illness!”</p> - -<p>“And that’s true. Her blood would have been on the head of them that -brought it on her if it had not been for the mercy of God.”</p> - -<p>“Where is she?” cried Lumsden, seizing his hat.</p> - -<p>“She said,” said Beenie with much intensity: “<span class="lftspc">‘</span>He will most likely be -going out to his dinner. I will not have him break his engagement for -me!’<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_373" id="page_373"></a>{373}</span><span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<p>“I think,” he cried, “that you mean to drive me mad! Where is she? Does -any one know she is here?”</p> - -<p>“It is known she is here,” said Beenie sententiously, “to get change of -air, as is thought, after her long, long illness; but, in fack, to look -for her dear little bairn, which is the object in her ain mind, my poor -bonnie leddy. And, oh, sir! if ye ken where the baby is, as ye must ken, -having taken the responsibility upon your hands, for we canna find him, -we canna find him! and it will just break her heart and she will die!”</p> - -<p>“Here—and looking for the child without consulting me!” he said, with -an exclamation of anger and astonishment. He flung on a coat rapidly, -and, almost thrusting Beenie out of the room before him, hurried her -away. A few more questions put to her as they hastened along the streets -showed him exactly the state of the case. It was no running away. Lily -had not come to him to throw herself upon his mercy, to be owned and -established and have her child restored to her in the legitimate way. -Had it been so it would have been very difficult to reject her, to -silence her prayer and send her back, without losing hold upon her -altogether. Had he lost hold upon her altogether without that? He was -very much alarmed, but yet he felt that the situation was less -impossible than if she had come to demand her place at his side and -public acknowledgment. She did not want him—she wanted her baby; and -what without him could she do with her baby? how produce it, how account -for it? Ronald began to feel more at his ease, to feel himself again -master of the situation as he hurried Beenie, who was very tired and -wretched, and scarcely able to keep up with him, to Lily’s refuge. Let -no one suppose for a moment that he meant to disown her, that any -dishonor was in his thoughts. In the last resort, if nothing else was to -be done, Ronald had no intention but to stand faithfully by his wife. He -had not, indeed, any power of doing otherwise; for were there not Mr. -Blythe and the two witnesses and the marriage lines against him? But, as -a matter of fact, he never thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_374" id="page_374"></a>{374}</span> of that, although he breathed more -freely when he knew no such claim was intended, and felt once again that -the helm was in his own hands.</p> - -<p>But in the meantime how to meet Lily was occupation enough for his -thoughts. He walked along the darkling streets, with the wind in his -face and a whirlwind of thought in his mind. How was he to meet -her—what was he to say to her? It was an interview on which might -depend the whole after-course of his life.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was a very little, homely lodging in which Lily was, the little -parlor of an old-fashioned poor little house, intended at its best to -receive an Edinburgh lawyer’s clerk, or perhaps a poor minister or -teacher, on his promotion. Ronald had never seen his wife in such -surroundings. He gave a cry of surprise and dismay as he pushed open the -door. How often had she said that she would share any poverty with him, -and yet it hurt him to see her here, out of her natural sphere, like a -princess banished into a sordid world of privation and ugliness. At the -sound of his voice Lily sprang up from the slippery black hair-cloth -sofa on which she had been reposing. He thought at first it was to meet -him as of old with open arms and heart to heart, but of this she showed -no sign, nor even when he rushed forward to take her into his arms did -she make any movement. She had seated herself on the sofa again, drawing -back in an attitude of repulsion which could not be mistaken. “Lily!” he -cried, “Lily! Is this the way you receive me? Have you nothing to say to -me?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, I have a great deal to say to you. Give Mr. Lumsden a chair, -Beenie. It is as I thought; you were going out to dinner,” said Lily, -with a gleam of exasperation at the sight of his evening dress, which -was of course<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_375" id="page_375"></a>{375}</span> wholly unreasonable. “Why should you have broken your -engagement for me?”</p> - -<p>“You know well I would break any engagement for you,” he said. “You must -know all that I have suffered during the past two months, unable to see -you, even to hear of you, and not a word, not a word from yourself all -that time.”</p> - -<p>“What hindered you coming to see me?” she asked. “What prevented you? If -I had died, as seemed likely, it could have done you no harm in the -world, for with me every hope of Uncle Robert’s money, which is what has -been my destruction, would have fallen to the ground.”</p> - -<p>“Lily, you never will understand! I did go to Kinloch-Rugas. I was once -under your windows, but got no satisfaction. A man has to be silent and -endure where a woman cries out. I did what I could to——”</p> - -<p>“That is enough,” said Lily, waving her hand. “Between you and me there -need be no more talking. I sent for you for one thing, to ask you one -question—where is my baby? You took him out of my arms; bring him back -again to me, and then there may be ground to speak.”</p> - -<p>“He is my baby as well as yours, Lily. I have the responsibility of the -family. I did what I felt to be best both for him and you.”</p> - -<p>“What was best?” she cried. “Are you a god to judge what is best? But I -will not argue with you. Give me my baby back! His mother’s arms—that -is his natural place! Give me back my child, and then, perhaps, I may -hear you speak.”</p> - -<p>He had thought this matter over as he came along with the rapidity of -highly stimulated thought, and a sudden great necessity for decision; he -had thought of it often before, looking at the subject from every point -of view. To give her back the baby was to ruin every thing for which he -had fought. He had not deprived himself of the company of a wife he -loved, he said to himself, for a small motive; not for nothing had he -encountered all the difficulties of the position in the past, and all -her reproaches,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_376" id="page_376"></a>{376}</span> tacit and expressed. Her very look at him had often -been very hard to bear, and yet he paused now before making his last -stroke. Once more, like lightning, the question passed through his mind, -what other way was there? Was there any other way in which her mind -could be satisfied and her foolish search made an end of? Could he in -any other way secure her return to her home, and the carrying out to the -end of his scheme? But on the other hand would she ever forgive him for -what he must now do? He had not more than a moment to carry on that -controversy, to make his final decision. And she was looking at him all -the time: Lily’s eyes, which so often had smiled upon him, so often -followed him with tenderness and met him with the sudden flash of love -and delight, were fixed upon him steadily now, shaded by curved brows, -regarding him sternly without indulgence, without wavering or softening. -He was no longer to Lily covered with the glamour of love. She saw him -as he was, nay, worse than he was, with a look that took no account of -his real feeling toward herself, or of what was in fact a perverted -desire to do the best, as he saw it, for her as well as for himself. -Would these eyes ever soften, whatever he might do or say? Would she -ever forgive him even now?</p> - -<p>“Lily,” he said with an effort, overcoming the dryness of his throat, -trying still to gain a little time. “I am your husband, I am your -natural head and guide; it is my part to judge what is wisest, what is -the best thing for you. I am older than you, I am more experienced in -the world. I know what can be done, and what cannot be done. Whatever -you may wish and whatever you may say, it is for me to judge what is the -best.”</p> - -<p>It is not often that a woman hears an uncompromising statement of this -kind with patience, and Lily was little likely to have done so in her -natural condition of mind, but at present she had no thought but one. “I -have told you,” she cried, “that you can speak after, and that I will -hear. But in the meantime bring me back my little<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_377" id="page_377"></a>{377}</span> baby. I ask nothing -but that, I’ve no mind for reasoning now. Give me back my baby, my -little bairn; that’s all I am asking. My baby, my baby! Ronald, if ever -in your life you had a kind thought of me, a thought that was not all -interest and money, and for the love of God, if ever you knew that, give -me back my baby! and then,” she cried with a gasp—“then we can talk!”</p> - -<p>His mind was made up now; there was nothing else for it. His face -assumed an air of the deepest gravity; that was not difficult, for, -indeed, his situation was grave enough. He put out his hand and laid it -upon hers for a moment. “Lily,” he said, “I’ve been endeavoring to put -off this blow. It was perhaps foolish, but I thought you would feel it -less were you kept in ignorance than if all your hopes were cut off. -Fain, fain would I bring back your baby and lay him in your arms again! -You think I am a harsh man with no softness for a mother and a child, -but you are mistaken, Lily. All that I am worth in this world I would -give to bring him back. But there is but one hand that could do that.”</p> - -<p>She raised herself up with a start, flinging off his hand, which again -had touched hers. “What do you mean? What do you mean?” she cried, with -wild staring eyes, eyes that seemed to be bursting from her head. She -had been leaning back on the hard sofa in her weakness. Now she sat -upright, her hands raised before her as if to push off some dreadful -fate.</p> - -<p>“You know what I mean, Lily,” he said, looking at her with a determined -steadiness of gaze. “What is the life of an infant like that? It is like -a new-lighted candle that every breath can blow out. Oh! blame me, blame -me; I will not say a word. Tell me it was the night journey, the plunge -into the cold, after the warm bosom of his mother. I thought it was the -only thing I could do, but I will not say a word if you tell me I was to -blame. Anyhow, whosever blame it was, the baby, poor little thing——”</p> - -<p>“You mean he is dead!” said Lily, with a great cry.</p> - -<p>He thought she had fainted: they all were in the way<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_378" id="page_378"></a>{378}</span> of thinking she -had fainted when all her life went from her, except pain, which is the -strongest life of all. Every thing was black before Lily’s eyes; her -heart leaped with a wild movement and then seemed to die and become -still in her breast; her lips dropped apart, as if the last breath had -passed there with that cry. Ronald thought she had fainted for the first -moment, and then he thought she had died. He sprang up with anguish in -his heart; he had done it, braving all the risks, knowing her weakness, -yet Beenie, rushing in at the sound of Lily’s cry, with all her battery -of remedies, forgave him whatever he might have done at the sight of his -face. “I have killed her! I have killed her!” he cried; “it is my -fault!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, sir, you should mind how weak she is!” cried Beenie, bringing forth -her essences, her salts, her aromatic vinegar. Their words came faintly -to Lily’s brain. She struggled up again from the sofa, on which she had -fallen back, beating the air with her hands, as if to find and clutch at -something that would give her strength. “My baby is dead!” she cried, -stumbling over the words. “My baby, my baby is dead, my baby is dead!” -It seemed as if the wail had become mechanical in the completeness of -her downfall and misery, body and soul.</p> - -<p>“Oh, sir!” cried Beenie again. She looked at him once more with another -light in her eyes. She was but a simple woman, but to such there comes -at times a kind of divination. But Ronald’s look was fixed upon Lily, -his eyes were touched with moisture, the deepest pain was in his face. -Could it be that a man could look like that and yet lie?</p> - -<p>“Say nothing to her!” she cried almost with authority; “let her get her -breath. But tell you me, sir, when was it that this came about? I heard -you tell her to blame you if she pleased. What for were you to blame? -Tell me that I may explain after. Mr. Lumsden, she has a right to ken. -When did it happen and what was the cause? For all so little as a bairn -is, it’s no without a cause when the darlings die.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_379" id="page_379"></a>{379}</span></p> - -<p>“You take too much upon you, Beenie,” he said. “You have no right to -demand explanations. And yet, why should not I give them?” he said, with -a tone of resignation. “I fear the poor little thing never got the -better of that night journey. What could I do? I could not stay there to -face Sir Robert on his first arrival. I could not leave Lily to bear the -brunt. I had but little time to think, but what was there else to do? I -felt even that to snatch him away at a stroke would be better for her -than a lingering parting with him, and the anticipation of it. There was -every cause. Beenie, you’re a reasonable woman.”</p> - -<p>“I will not say, sir,” said Beenie, “that it was without reason; me and -Katrin have said as much as that between ourselves, seeing a’ that had -gone before.”</p> - -<p>“Seeing all that had gone before,” Ronald repeated with readiness. “But -Providence,” he added, “turns all our wisest plans sometimes to nought. -I know nothing about children——”</p> - -<p>“But Marg’ret kent weel about children!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, she was perhaps the more to blame, if any one is to blame. Anyhow, -the poor little thing—I can’t explain it, you should see her, she would -tell you—caught cold or something. How could I send you word when <i>she</i> -was so ill? I would have kept it from her now, at least till she was -stronger and better able to bear it.”</p> - -<p>“It would, maybe, have been better,” Beenie said, with a brevity that -surprised Ronald and made him slightly uneasy. The woman did not break -forth into lamentations, as he had expected, but that might be for -Lily’s sake, who, lying back again upon the white pillow which Beenie -had placed behind her head, with the effect of making her almost -transparent countenance, with its faint but deepened lines, look more -fragile than ever, was coming gradually to herself. Tears were slowly -welling forth under her closed eyelids, but she was very still. Whether -she was listening, or whether she was absorbed in her own sorrow and -careless of what was going on, he could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_380" id="page_380"></a>{380}</span> tell. Anyhow, it was a -relief to him that she was silent, and that the woman who was her -closest attendant and confidant was so easily satisfied. He began to -question her anxiously as to where Lily should go for her convalescence -now that her object in coming there was so sadly ended. Portobello, -Bridge of Allan, wherever it was, he would go at once and look for -rooms. He would come when she was settled and spend as much time as -possible with her. He took the whole matter at once into his own hands. -And it was with a sensation of relief that he concluded after all this -was said that he could now go away. “You will do well to get her to bed -and give her a sleeping-draught if you have one,” he said, bending over -Lily with a most anxious and tender countenance as she lay, still with -her eyes closed, against the pillow. It was not how he had expected her -to take this dreadful news which he had brought: he had expected a -passion of grief, almost raving; he had expected violent weeping, a -storm of lamentation. He had, on the contrary, got through very easily; -the tears even had ceased to hang upon Lily’s closed eyelids. He bent -down over her and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. She shrank from -the touch, indeed, but yet he felt that he must expect so much as that.</p> - -<p>“There is but one thing, sir,” said Beenie: “the woman Marg’ret, that -does not seem to me to be such a grand nurse as we heard she was—you -say we should see her and she would tell us a’. And that is just what -I’m wanting, to see her, if you could tell me where to find her.”</p> - -<p>“I tell you! How should I know?” he said. “She will be in the same place -where we found her before, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>“No, sir, she is not there.”</p> - -<p>“Then she will have gone off to nurse somebody else. That’s her way of -living, isn’t it? No, I can tell you nothing about her. You may suppose -the sight of her was not very pleasant to me after—— But she is a -well-known person. You will find no difficulty in finding her out.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_381" id="page_381"></a>{381}</span></p> - -<p>“If that’s your real opinion, Mr. Lumsden——”</p> - -<p>“Of course it is my opinion. I will take a run to the Bridge of Allan -to-morrow, and in the evening I will bring you word.”</p> - -<p>With this, and with careful steps, not to disturb Lily, but yet with an -uneasy soul and no certainty that he had succeeded in his bold stroke, -Lumsden went away, Beenie respectfully accompanying him to the door. But -when it was closed upon him, Beenie, though no light-footed girl, flew -up the stairs, and rushing into the room with her hands outstretched, -was met by Lily, who fell upon her maid’s shoulder, both of them saying -together: “It is not true! it’s no true!”</p> - -<p>“The Lord forgive him!” said Beenie. “And, oh, I hope you’ll be able to -do it, but no me! I’m not a good woman, I’m just a wild Highlander, and -I could have put a pistol to his head as he stood there!”</p> - -<p>“I can forgive him easier,” said Lily, with the tears now coming freely, -“than if it had been true. Oh, Beenie! if it had been true!”</p> - -<p>“Whisht, whisht, my darling leddy! but no, my dear, just greet your -fill. Eh, mem, how little a man kens! They’re so grand with their -wisdom, and never to think that a woman would send a scart of a pen -whatever to let us ken the dear lamb was well. I’ve often heard the -ministers say that the deevil’s no half as clever as he seems, and now I -believe it this day. But you’ll just go to your bed and I’ll give you -the draught, as he said, for this has been an awfu’ day.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’ll go, to be strong for to-morrow,” said Lily, and then she -turned back and caught Beenie again, throwing her arms round her. “But -first,” she cried, “we’ll give God thanks on our bended knees that my -baby is safe. Oh, if it had been true!”</p> - -<p>They both felt the baby’s life to be more certain and more assured -because his father had sworn he was dead, and they knew that was not -true.</p> - -<p>Next morning they were both up betimes and had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_382" id="page_382"></a>{382}</span> changed their lodging -early, going not to Portobello nor to the Bridge of Allan, but to a -village on the seaside, very obscure and little thought of, where, late -as the season was, they could still spend a week or two without being -remarked; and when she had settled her mistress there, Beenie went back -to Edinburgh to search again and again through every corner that could -be thought of, where Marg’ret might be heard of, but in vain.</p> - -<p>They went again next day, and every day, together, and I think traversed -Edinburgh almost street by street on a quest so hopeless that both had -given it up in their heart before either breathed a word of her despair. -Then they did what seemed even to Lily (and still more to Beenie) a most -terrible and unparalleled thing to do, and to which she had great -difficulty in bringing her mind. This was to apply to the police on the -subject, what we should call putting it into the hands of the -detectives. Perhaps even now there are innocent persons to whom the idea -of “sending the police after” an innocent wanderer still seems a -dreadful thing to do. And these were days in which the idea of the -detective was little developed and still less understood. They are not -always still the most successful of functionaries, but they have at -least become heroes of the popular imagination, and a certain class of -fiction is full of the wonderful deeds they have succeeded in doing, -when all things were arranged to their hand. I do not know that there -was a single individual of the order at that time in Edinburgh under the -present title and conditions, but the thing must have existed more or -less always; and when, with many hesitations and much trouble of mind, -Lily made her appeal to the ingenuity of the police service to find the -missing woman, it was with a little flutter of hope that she saw -Margaret Bland’s name and description taken down. Beenie would not even -be present when this was done. She lifted up her testimony, declaring -that nothing would induce her to send the police after a decent honest -woman that had never done any body any harm. “Oh, mem, you may say what -you like,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_383" id="page_383"></a>{383}</span> Beenie cried. “She has had no ill intention. Send the -pollisman after Anither if you will. It wasna her contrivancy, it wasna -her contrivancy! I would sooner die myself than harry a woman to her -ruin and take away her good name!” This had been the peroration with -which Beenie had broken away, slamming the door in the face of the -official who came to take Miss Ramsay’s orders. Lily was very unhappy -and deeply depressed. She had no one to stand by her. “It is for no -harm. You will understand she is to come to no harm. Her address -only—that is all I want,” she cried. “We’ll put it,” said the man, -writing down his notes in his little book, “that it will be something to -her advantage. That or a creeminal chairge is the only way of dealing -with yon kind of folk.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes—let it be something to her advantage,” Lily cried. “And it -will,” she said, “it will! it will be more to her advantage than any -thing she has ever known. You will take care that she is not frightened, -not harmed in any way, not in any way!”</p> - -<p>“How should it harm an innocent person, if this person is an innocent -person?” the functionary said, and left Lily trembling for what she had -done, and unable to bear the eye of Beenie, who would scarcely for a -whole day after forgive her mistress. They themselves lived in terror of -being found, perhaps, in their turn, hunted down by the pollis, Beenie -cried—“for if you can do it for her, mem, what for no him that has nae -scruples for you?” Lily in her heart trembled too at this thought. It -seemed to her that if such means were set in action against herself she -would die of misery and shame.</p> - -<p>Ten days later she returned to Dalrugas, a little stronger, for her -youth and vigor, and the distraction of her thoughts, even though so -painfully, from all preoccupation with herself, had given her elastic -vitality its chance of recovery: but a changed and saddened woman, never -again to be the Lily of the past. Her husband had not sought her, at -least had not found her, nor had she wished him to do so; but yet that -he should not have penetrated so very easy a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_384" id="page_384"></a>{384}</span> mystery seemed to prove to -her that he had not wished to do so, and, despite of all that had come -and gone, that was a very different matter. Lily’s heart was as heavy as -a woman’s heart could be as she went home. The whole secret of her -existence, the mystery in which she had been wrapped, which she had felt -to be so guilty a secret, and a mystery so oppressive, seemed now to be -about to melt away, leaving her for her life long a false and empty husk -of being, an appearance and no reality. All this tremendous wave of -existence seemed to have passed over her head and to be gone, leaving -her, as she was, Lily Ramsay, her uncle’s companion, the daughter of the -desolate house, and no more, neither wife nor mother, nothing but a -false pretence, a pitiful ghost, the fictitious image of something that -she was not, and never again could be.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was not without much thought that Lumsden decided to leave his wife -unmolested when she fled from him. It did not cost him much trouble to -discover where she had gone, and he watched her proceedings and those of -Beenie carefully, and had little difficulty in discovering what their -object was. But he had foreseen all that and taken his precautions, and -he had no doubt as to the result. With Lily’s absolute inexperience, and -the few facilities which existed at that period, a very simple amount of -care would have been enough to baffle her. But he had taken a great deal -of care. Margaret Bland and her charge were out of the reach of any -researches made in Scotland, and his mind was quite easy as to the -chances of further investigation, for Scotland was very much more -separated from the rest of the world in those days than it is now. I do -not say that it did not cost him a pang to know that Lily herself was -within reach and to refrain from seeing her, from saying a word further -to excuse or explain, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_385" id="page_385"></a>{385}</span> from making at least an endeavor to recover -her confidence. But he had gone too far now for excuses and expedients, -and he felt that it was wiser to refrain from every thing of the kind -until the moment came when, in the course of nature, he would be -liberated from all restrictions and be able to go to her and claim her -freely, without fear of interference. If he could do so, bringing a -great joy and surprise in his hand, he felt that he was more likely to -be received and forgiven than if he were able only to establish a -reconciliation upon the old basis of concealment and clandestine -meetings, which now, indeed, would be impossible. He thought that -absence would draw her heart toward him, and that in the silence she -would make his excuses to herself better than he could do; and what -would not a man merit who would bring back to a mother, who had mourned -for him as dead, her living child? He said over to himself, being a man -of literary taste, some verses of Southey’s, who was more thought of -then as a poet than now:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“When the fond mother meets on high<br /></span> -<span class="i1">The babe she lost in infancy.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>Would not all be forgiven for the sake of that? But then came in the -question, had they believed him? Had they not believed him? Had there -been some channel of which he knew nothing by which they had procured -information in respect to the child? This was the one doubtful matter -which would be enough to crush all his most careful schemes. But he -could not see how it was possible they could have obtained any -information. That Margaret Bland should have written did not occur to -him. Persons of her class did not write letters daily then as they do -now; and he thought he had secured her devotion wholly to himself, and -made it quite clear to her that for his wife’s sake this was the only -thing that could be done. Margaret had understood him completely. She -was a person of superior intelligence. She was an admirable nurse and -devoted to the baby. But she<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_386" id="page_386"></a>{386}</span> was quite unaware at first that the -arrangement made with her was unknown to Lily, nor had she known that in -writing to Robina she had transgressed her contract with the child’s -father. It was her duty to be silent now, she was informed, in order to -avoid all danger of a correspondence that might be discovered; but -nothing even now had been said to Margaret which could have made her -feel herself in the wrong, or led her to confess what she had done. Thus -the one thing which would have made him see how fatally he had risked -all his possibilities was concealed from Lumsden. He could still -honestly, or almost honestly, persuade himself that, though what he had -done might be cruel for the moment, it was, in reality, the best thing -for Lily. Nothing else would have satisfied her, nothing less. She would -never have had a moment’s peace had she understood that her child might -be found. She would have thought nothing of any sacrifice involved. Her -inheritance would have been of no value to her in comparison with the -possession of her baby. She was capable of making every thing known to -her uncle at any moment if by this means she could have secured the -child. He had not ceased to love her, nor to entertain for her the -admiration, mingled with indulgence, which makes a young woman’s faults -almost more attractive than her virtues to her lover. It would be like -Lily to do all that; it was like Lily to give him all that trouble about -the house which he never intended to get for her, but which it cost him -so many fictions, so much exercise of ingenuity, to satisfy her about. -There were very pardonable points in that foolishness. The desire to be -with him, to identify her life altogether with his, was sweet: he loved -her the better for it, though, as the wiser of the two, he knew that it -was impracticable, and that it must be firmly, but gently, denied to -her. And to desire to have her baby was very natural and very sweet, -too. What prettier thing could there be than a young mother with her -child? But there were more serious things in the world than those -indulgences of natural affection, which are in themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_387" id="page_387"></a>{387}</span> so blameless -and so sweet, and this, in her own best interests, he, her husband, her -natural head and guide, was forced to deny her, too.</p> - -<p>I do not think that Lily was aware of the tenor of these reasonings. She -made very little allowance for her husband; at no time had she been -disposed to allow that in these matters, which were of such great -importance in her life, he knew best. He had deceived her first of all, -and then he had made her a reluctant accomplice in deceiving others. -Nature, truth, honor, honesty, had all been from the beginning on her -side, and she had thought Ronald as little wise as he was right in -setting them all at defiance for the preservation of a secret which -ought never to have been made a secret at all. She had endured it all -when there was only herself in question, but from the moment in which -there was hope of the baby Lily had felt with a leap of the heart that -here was the solution of the problem, and that every thing must now be -made open to the light of day. It may be supposed that when, after all -this dreadful episode, she returned alone, like, yet so unlike, the Lily -Ramsay who was sent to Dalrugas two years before into banishment with -Robina, her maid, the whole matter was turned over and over in her mind -with all those dreadful visions of past chances, steps which, if taken, -might have changed every thing, which are the stings of such a review. -To Lily, as she pondered, there seemed so many things she might have -done. She might have resisted the marriage first of all. She might have -refused to be married in secrecy, in a corner—the very minister, she -had always felt sure, though he had been kind, disapproving of her all -the time; but then (she excused herself) she had not foreseen that the -marriage was to be kept a secret: it was only, she had understood, an -expedient to secure quietness and speed without preliminaries that would -have called the attention of the whole parish. And then, when she -followed her own story to that time after Whit-Sunday, when she had -expected her husband to secure the house, which could not, he swore, be -obtained<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_388" id="page_388"></a>{388}</span> till the term, Lily now saw that she should have taken the -matter into her own hand, that she should have permitted no more playing -with the question, that, whether he liked it or not, she should have -insisted on having some home and shelter of her own. Especially before -the birth of her baby should she have insisted upon this. She clasped -her hands with impatience and a sense of bitter failure as she thought -it all over. She ought not to have allowed herself to be silenced or -hindered. Her child should have been born in her own house, where he -could have been welcomed and rejoiced over, not hidden away. She cried -out in her solitude, with that clasp of her hands, that it was all her -fault, her own fault, that she was responsible for the child above all, -and that it was she who should have done this had not only her husband, -but all the powers of the earth gone against it. Then Lily reflected, -with the impulse of self-defence, that she had no money, and did not -know how to get any, and that it would have been hard, very hard for -her, without her present enlightenment, to have gone against Ronald, to -have flown in his face and thwarted him so completely in a matter upon -which he had so firmly made up his mind. Oh, what a difference there was -between the Lily of that time—hesitating, miserable to yield and yet -unable to resist, not knowing how to take a great step on her own -authority, to oppose her husband and all the lesser chain of -circumstances, the unconscious influence even of the women who held her -with a softer bond of watchfulness and affection—and this Lily now, -braced to any effort, having withdrawn and separated herself from him -and from every other restraint of influence, as she thought, standing -alone against all the world, deeply disenchanted, and considering every -pretence of love and happiness as false and deceitful. Had it been now -how little would she have hesitated! But was not this the bitterness of -life: that it was then only she could have acted effectually, and not -now?</p> - -<p>She settled down to the winter at Dalrugas with these thoughts. She was -Miss Ramsay, the daughter and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_389" id="page_389"></a>{389}</span> mistress of the house. She did not -know and did not care what was thought of her in the countryside. If -stories were told of the gentleman who had come so often from Edinburgh, -but now came no longer, Lily heard none of them. Some faltering -questions from Helen Blythe, who, instinctively, though she did not know -why, never referred to Ronald in presence of Sir Robert, were all the -indications she ever had that his disappearance was commented on, and -Lily did not care who spoke of Ronald, or how or where their secret -might be betrayed; and this indifference delivered her from many doubts -and questionings. She had no objection that any body should tell in -detail the whole thing to Sir Robert. She held her head very proudly -above all terrors of being found out. She was afraid of nothing now. -Every thing, she thought, had happened that could happen. She was -separated from her husband, not by any formality, not by any such motive -as had kept the secret hitherto, but by a great gulf fixed, which Lily -felt it was impossible should ever be bridged over. He had wronged her -as surely never woman had been wronged before, lied to her, made her -herself a lie, deprived her—last and greatest wrong of all—of her -child. Oh, how much time, leisure, quiet, she had to think over and over -all these thoughts, to persuade herself that happiness and truth were -mere words, and that nothing but falsehood flourished in this world! -Gradually she sank into silence on the subject even to Beenie. Her -life-history, over, as it seemed, at twenty-five, dropped out of -knowledge as if it had never been. She received no letters. Ronald, -indeed, continued to write at intervals for some time, addressing his -letters boldly to Miss Ramsay, but she never replied to them, and by -degrees they ceased. She heard nothing at all from the outside world. -She heard nothing of her child. They had concluded between them, Robina -and she, that if “any thing happened” to the child, Margaret would be -restrained by no man, but would let his mother know in any case. This -was all the sustenance upon which Lily lived. Her enquiries far and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_390" id="page_390"></a>{390}</span> -near had come to nothing. The harmless detectives of the old-fashioned -Edinburgh police had not succeeded in tracking the fugitive. They had no -news of Margaret to send. They had never found out any thing about her, -except what all the world knew. By one thread, and one only, Lily clung -to life, and that was her vague faith in Margaret, notwithstanding all -things, that the child’s life was safe as long as she made no sign.</p> - -<p>Sir Robert found himself very comfortable in Dalrugas during that -winter. He had no idea he could have been so comfortable in the old -lonely place on the edge of the moor. It was wonderful how possible it -was to live without amusement—nay, to feel thankful that he was no -longer burdened with amusement and with the thought of what he was to do -with himself and how he was to find a little distraction season after -season. When a man is over seventy, the care of these things is perhaps -more trouble than the advantage is worth when secured; but so long as he -is in the old habitual round it is difficult to learn this. He had -thought that he detested monotony, but now it appeared that he rather -liked monotony—the comfort of getting up with the certainty that he had -no trouble before him, no change to think of, no decision to make—to -read his newspaper, to read his book, to take his walk or his drive. Sir -Robert’s horses and carriages very much enlarged his sphere and modified -its loneliness. A longish drive now brought him to a neighbor’s house, -and introduced Lily to the ladies of the county, who made explanations -to her and regrets not to have made her acquaintance before. And callers -became, if not numerous, yet occasional, thus adding something to the -little round of Sir Robert’s distractions. An old gentleman or two in -the distant neighborhood who had known him as a boy would come -occasionally with the ladies, or a younger one, whose father had known -him. And there were occasional dinner-parties, though these occurred but -seldom. Sir Robert liked them all, but at bottom was more than contented -when the clouds hung low and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_391" id="page_391"></a>{391}</span> rain or snow fell and put it out of -the question that he should be disturbed at all. He liked Lily’s talk -best of all, or her silence, when they sat together by the fireside, -where comfort and quiet reigned. He had not been such a good man in his -life that he deserved any such halcyon time at its end, or to feel so -virtuous, so satisfied, so peaceful as he did. But the sun shines and -the rain falls alike on the just and the unjust, and he had, by good -fortune, the art to take advantage of the good things which Providence -sent him. Lily played a game of piquette with him, “not so very badly,” -he said with happy condescension, and was in time advanced to chess; but -there showed signs of beating her instructor, which made Sir Robert -think chess was a little too much for his head. In moments of weakness -they even came down to simple draughts, and thus got through the long -evenings which the old gentleman had so much feared, but which now were -the happiest part of the day.</p> - -<p>“I am told you have been here for a long time, Miss Ramsay,” Lady -Dalzell said, who was the great lady of the neighborhood: “how was it we -never knew? We are here, of course, only for a short time in the year, -but long enough to have driven over to Dalrugas had we known.”</p> - -<p>“I have been here,” said Lily, “for two years—but how it is my -neighbors have not known I cannot tell. I could scarcely send round a -fiery cross to say that a small person of no great account had arrived -at her uncle’s house.”</p> - -<p>“I should have thought Sir Robert would have written or made some -provision. Do you really mean that you have been without a chaperon, -without protection?”</p> - -<p>“Even as you see me,” said Lily, with a laugh.</p> - -<p>“And nothing ever happened,” said the great lady, “to make you feel -uncomfortable?”</p> - -<p>Did she look at Lily with some meaning in her eyes? Did she mean -nothing? Who could tell? There might have been a whole world of -<i>sous-entendus</i> in what Lady<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_392" id="page_392"></a>{392}</span> Dalzell said, or there might be nothing at -all. Lily met her gaze with perhaps a little more directness than was -necessary, but she did not change color.</p> - -<p>“There was no raid made upon the house,” said Lily. “I never was in any -danger that I know of. There was Dougal, who would have fought for me to -the death—perhaps, or, at all events, till some one came to help him. -And I had two women who took only too much care of me.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, it was not perils of that kind I was thinking of,” said Lady -Dalzell, shaking her head.</p> - -<p>“I am sorry,” said Lily—“or perhaps I should rather be glad—that I -don’t know what perils your ladyship was thinking of.”</p> - -<p>Then the young lady of the party, Lady Dalzell’s daughter, interposed, -and began to talk of the approaching Christmas and the entertainments to -be given in the neighborhood. “If we had only known, we should have had -you to the ball,” she said. “We had not one last New Year, but the year -before, and you were here then.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I was here then.”</p> - -<p>“It was the year of that dreadful snow-storm. How lonely it must have -been for you, shut up for that long fortnight. Mamma, imagine! Miss -Ramsay was here all alone the year of the snow-storm, shut up in -Dalrugas—and we had our ball and all sorts of things.”</p> - -<p>“I hope Miss Ramsay had some friends or something to amuse her,” said -Lady Dalzell.</p> - -<p>“I had Helen Blythe from the Manse up to tea,” cried Lily, with a little -burst of laughter, which did not seem out of place in the violent -contrast which was thus implied, though she felt it herself almost like -a confession. The two ladies looked at her strangely, she thought, and -hastened to change the subject. Did they look at her strangely? Did they -think of her at all? Or was it the thought of their own shortcomings in -respect to this lonely girl, who was Sir Robert’s niece and heiress, -which made a shade upon their brows? They invited her to the ball,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_393" id="page_393"></a>{393}</span> -which was to happen this year, with much demonstration of friendliness. -Not to tire Sir Robert, she and her uncle were asked to go a day or two -before this important festivity and join the home party, and Miss -Dalzell conveyed to Miss Ramsay the delightful intelligence that there -would be “plenty of partners”—all the county, and the officers from -Perth, and a large party from Edinburgh. The girl spoke of all these -preparations with sparkling eyes.</p> - -<p>“Well, Lily,” said Sir Robert, when the visitors were gone, “this will -be something for you: you will have one ball at least.” He did not much -relish the prospect for himself, but he was grateful, and felt that he -must face it for her.</p> - -<p>“I don’t feel so much enchanted as I ought,” said Lily. “Would it -disappoint you much, uncle, if I wrote to say we could not go?”</p> - -<p>“Disappoint <i>me</i>, my dear! But you must go, for you would like it, Lily. -Every girl of your age likes a ball.”</p> - -<p>“My age, Uncle Robert! Do you know I am five-and-twenty? I would rather -sit alone all night and sew, though I am not very fond of sewing. Unless -you want to dance and flirt and behave yourself as gentlemen of your age -ought not to do, I think we’ll stay at home and play piquette. I am -going to no ball,” cried Lily, her patience breaking down for the -moment, “not now, nor ever. I—to a ball! after all these years!”</p> - -<p>“Lily,” said Sir Robert, with a disturbed look, “I have expressed my -regret that you should have had such a lonely life, but it hurts me, my -dear, to hear you express yourself with such bitterness about those -years; there were but two of them, after all.”</p> - -<p>“That is true,” she said, recovering herself quickly, “but when one has -a great deal of time to think, one changes one’s mind about a great many -things, especially balls.”</p> - -<p>“That is true, too,” he said, “so long as you are not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_394" id="page_394"></a>{394}</span> bitter about it, -as I sometimes fear you are inclined to be, my dear.”</p> - -<p>“Not bitter at all,” she cried, with a smile that quivered a little on -her lip. She got up and stood at the window, with her back to him, -looking out upon the moor. The clouds were hanging low, almost touching -the hills, the sky so heavy that it seemed to be closing down, in one -deep tone of gray, upon the dumb, unresisting earth. “I hope,” said -Lily, “that they will get home before the snow comes down.” She stood -there for some time looking out upon that scene, which had seen so much. -“It was the year of that dreadful snow-storm,” the girl had said. And -the ball to which they had asked her was on the anniversary of her -wedding day.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">It</span> did not snow that year: the weather was mild and wet. There was not -the exhilaration, the mystery, the clear-breathing chill, of the snow, -the great gorgeous sunsets over the purple hills. But the little world -was closed in with opaque walls of cloud; the sky low, as if you could -almost touch it; the hills absent from the landscape, replaced by banks -of watery mist, indefinite, meaning nothing; and all life shut up within -the enclosure, where there was shelter to be had, and warmth, if nothing -else. It was thus that the anniversary of Lily’s honeymoon passed by. -Her mind was like the sky, covered by heavy mists, falling low, as if -there were no longer earth and heaven, but only a land of darkness and -of despair between. Behind these mists all her existence had -disappeared. Her child, perhaps, was there, her husband was there, the -woman she might have been was there, so was the old Lily, the girl full -of laughter and flying thoughts, full of quick resolutions and plans and -infinite hope. The woman who stood by the window was a woman whom Lily<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_395" id="page_395"></a>{395}</span> -scarcely knew, who did what she had to do mechanically, whether it was -ordering Sir Robert’s dinner, or playing piquette with him, or gazing, -gazing out of that window before he came down stairs. She gazed, but she -looked for no one upon the distant road; her gaze meant nothing, any -more than her life did. She had no hope of any thing, scarcely, she -thought to herself, any desire left. A ball! to go to a ball! which her -uncle thought every one of her age must wish to do. <i>He</i> had been going -out to dinner <i>that</i> night; most likely he was going to balls also, -about the New Year time, when there were so many in Edinburgh. He could -not well get out of it, he would probably say to himself. At the New -Year time! the New Year!</p> - -<p>That season passed over, and so did many more. Miss Ramsay of Dalrugas -became almost well known in the county. She went nowhere, being very -much devoted, every-body said, to her old uncle, and perhaps a little -bitter at being tied to him, never able to do any thing to please -herself; for it was only natural to suppose it would please her better -to see her friends, to see the world, to have her share of the -amusements that were going, than to sit over the fire with that old man. -“I must say that she is goodness itself to him,” Lady Dalzell said; “now -at least, whatever she may have been.” These words fired the imagination -of her company, who were eager to know what Miss Ramsay might have been -in the past, but Lady Dalzell was very discreet, all the more that she -knew nothing and was unprovided with any story to tell. “Whatever she -may have done, she is not the least what she used to be when she was a -girl in Edinburgh,” she said. And every-body was disposed to believe -that Lady Dalzell referred to the recollections of her own youth, when -she was herself a girl in Edinburgh, and Miss Ramsay of Dalrugas perhaps -a little younger and something of a contemporary. There was nobody who -did not add on ten years at least to Lily’s age.</p> - -<p>The little population at Dalrugas itself almost felt the same. To them, -too, it seemed that ten years and more<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_396" id="page_396"></a>{396}</span> had suddenly been added to their -young mistress’s age. They themselves had departed to an incredible -distance from her or she from them. To think how they had surrounded her -with their almost protecting and familiar love so short a time before, -watching every movement, feeling every variation of feeling in her, -knowing all her secrets, giving her their most zealous guardianship, and -that now they should be pushed so far away—the servants of the house, -to receive their orders, but all silence between them, every thing that -had been ignored, not a word said. It was Katrin who felt it most, -having been aware all the time that she herself had much more to do in -the matter, and was a more responsible person, than Beenie, who often -would have been very little fitted to meet any such emergencies as had -occurred, but who was now the best off, receiving from time to time a -scrap of confidence, perhaps, at least the chance of close attendance, -while Katrin had to be thinking of her dinner, and of all that was -wanted in the enlarged and much more troublesome household. Lily never -looked at Katrin, even, as if there had been any thing more intimate -between them than the ordinary relations of mistress and servant. Had -she forgotten how Katrin had stood by her, all she had seen, all she had -known? Sometimes Katrin asked herself, with indignation and a sense of -injured affection, what Lily, with more reason, asked herself, too: had -these scenes ever existed but in imagination? had it been all a dream? -Sometimes as she came down stairs with her orders for the day, and with -a full heart, swelling with disappointment after some little implied -appeal to the past, of which Lily had taken no notice, Katrin had hard -work to keep from crying, which would, she felt, be an eternal disgrace -to her “afore thae strange women”—the maids, who now took the work of -the house from her shoulders, and enforced the bondage of the -conventional upon her life. Katrin felt this as deeply as if she had -been the most high-minded of visionaries. Nowadays she had always to -“behave herself,” always to be upon her <i>p’s</i> and <i>q’s</i>. She could not -even<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_397" id="page_397"></a>{397}</span> fly out upon Dougal, which sometimes might have been a -consolation, lest these strange women should exchange looks, and say to -each other how little dignified for Sir Robert’s housekeeper this person -was. Dougal, indeed, in the emergency, was the only one who gave her a -rough support. He would say, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder -in the direction of the stairs: “She’s no just hersel’ the noo. Ye -should ken that better than me; but ye make nae allowance. I would like -to get her out some day for a ride upon the powny, and maybe she would -open her heart.”</p> - -<p>“To you!” Katrin said, with a sort of shriek, pushing him from her, the -strange women for once being out of the way.</p> - -<p>“She might do waur,” said Dougal, pushing his bonnet to his other ear. -“But, my faith! if I ever lay my hand on that birky frae Edinburgh, him -or me shall ken the reason!” he cried, bending his shaggy brows, and -swinging his clenched fist through the air.</p> - -<p>“You’re a bonnie person to interfere in my mistress’s affairs,” Katrin -cried, “your pownies and you! If she’s mair distant and mair grand, it’s -just what’s becoming, and the house full of gentlemen and ladies, no to -speak o’ thae strange women, that are at a person’s tails, spying every -movement, day and night. For gudeness’ sake, gang away and let me be -quit of ye, man! If you come in on the top o’ a’ to take up ony moment’s -peace I have, I will just gang clean out of the sma’ sense that’s left -me, and pison ye all in your broth!” cried Katrin, with flashing eyes.</p> - -<p>Dougal withdrew to the place in which he was most at home in the altered -house, Rory’s stable, where he and his favorite rubbed their shaggy -heads together in mutual consolation. Rory, too, had fallen from his -high estate. Never now did he carry the young lady of the house (which, -truth to tell, was not an honor he had ever appreciated much), never -convey a guest to the coach or the market. Rory went to the hill for -peat; he was ridden into the town, helter-skelter, by a reckless young -groom,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_398" id="page_398"></a>{398}</span> for the letters; instead of the gentleman of the stable, with -the black pony under him to do all the rough work, it was he who had -become, as it were, the black pony, the pony-of-all-work of the -establishment. Yet what things he had known! What scenes he had seen! -There was a consciousness of it all, and a choking, no doubt, of honest -merit undervalued in his throat, too, as he rubbed his nose against -Dougal’s shoulder. He had been even “further ben” than Dougal in the -secrets of the life that was past.</p> - -<p>And Lily did not console Katrin, said nothing to Robina, did not even -attempt to save the pony from his hard fate. She was as hard as Fate -herself, wrapped up as in robes of ice or stone, smiling as if from a -pinnacle of chill unconsciousness upon all those spectators of her past -existence, the conspirators who had helped out every contrivance, the -accomplices. And yet it was not the rage which sometimes silently -devoured her which separated her from her humble friends. She was angry -with them, as with all the world, and herself most of all. But sometimes -her heart yearned, too, for a kind word, for a look from eyes which knew -all that had been and was no more. But I think she dared not let it be -seen, lest the flood-doors, once opened, should give forth the whole -tide and could never close again.</p> - -<p>When all this came to an end, I do not think Lily was aware how long it -had been: if it had been two years or three years, I believe she never -quite knew; the dates, indeed, established the course of time, but when -did she think of dates, as the monotonous seasons followed each other, -day by night, and summer by winter, and meal by meal? Routine was very -strong in Sir Robert’s house, where every hour was measured, and every -repast as punctual as clockwork, and there was nothing which happened -to-day which did not happen to-morrow, and would so continue, -unwavering, unending, till time was over. Such a routine makes one -forget that time will ever be over: it looks as if it might go on -forever, as if no breach<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_399" id="page_399"></a>{399}</span> were possible, still less any conclusion; and -yet, in the course of time, the conclusion must always come at last.</p> - -<p>One of these winters was a bad one for the old folk; something ungenial -was in the air. It was not actually that the temperature was much lower -than usual, but the cold lasted long, without breaks or any intervals of -rest: always cold, always gray, with no gleams in the sky. The babies -felt it first, and then the old people; every-body had bronchitis, for -influenza was not in those days. There was coughing in every cottage, -and by degrees the old fathers and mothers began to disappear. There -were not enough of them to startle people in the newspapers as with any -record of an epidemic, but only the old people who were ripe for -falling, and wanted only a puff of wind to blow them away like the last -leaves on a tree, felt that puff, and dropped noiselessly, their time -being come. It began to appear of more decided importance when Mr. -Blythe was known to be very ill, not in his usual quiet chronic manner, -but with bronchitis, too, like all the rest. There had not been very -much intercourse between Dalrugas and the Manse since Sir Robert’s -arrival. He had been eager to see the old minister, who was almost the -only relic of the friends of his youth, and they had found a great deal -to say to each other on the first and even on the second visit. But Sir -Robert liked his visitors to come to him, and Mr. Blythe was incapable -of moving from his chair, so that their intercourse gradually lessened -even in the first year, and in the second came almost to nothing at all. -There was an embarrassment, too, between the two old gentlemen. Mr. -Blythe felt it, and would stop short even in the midst of one of his -best stories, struck by some sudden suggestion, and grow portentously -grave, just where the laugh came in. Sometimes he would look round at -Lily, half angry, half enquiring. He could not be at ease with his old -friend when so great a secret lay between them, and though Sir Robert -knew nothing about any secret, nor even suspected the existence of such -a thing, he yet felt also that there was something on Blythe’s mind. -“What is<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_400" id="page_400"></a>{400}</span> it he wants to speak to me about?” he would say to Lily. “I am -certain there is something. Is it about his girl? He should be able to -leave his girl pretty well off, or at least to provide for her according -to her station. Does he want me to take the charge of his girl?” “Helen -will want nobody to take care of her,” said Lily. “Then what is it he -has on his mind?” Sir Robert asked, but got no reply. Thus it was that -their intercourse had been checked. And there was a cloud between Lily -and Helen, who was deeply troubled in her mind by the complete -disappearance of Lumsden from the scene. There were many things about -him, and her friend’s connection with him, that had disturbed Helen in -the past. She had not known how to account for many circumstances in the -story: his constant reappearance, the mystery of an intercourse which -never came to any thing further, yet never slackened, had troubled her -sorely. She had not asked, nor wished to hear, any explanation which -might be, in however small a degree, derogatory to Lily. She would -rather bear the pain of doubt than the worse pain of knowing that her -doubts were justified. And there were a host of minor circumstances -which had added to her confusion and trouble just before Sir Robert’s -arrival, when Lily had, as she thought, withdrawn from her society, and -even made pretexts not to see her, to Helen’s astonishment and dismay. -And then there came Lily’s illness, and Ronald’s anxious visit, and -then—nothing more: a curtain falling, as it were, on the whole confused -drama; an end, which was no end. Ronald’s name had never been mentioned -since; he had never been seen in the country; he had gone out of Lily’s -life, so far as appeared, totally without reason given or word said. And -Helen had not continued to question Lily, whom she, like every-body -else, found to be so much changed by her illness. There was something in -the face which had been so sweet and almost child-like a little time -before which now stopped expansion. Helen looked into it wistfully, and -was silent. And thus the veil which had fallen between the two old men -came down still<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_401" id="page_401"></a>{401}</span> more darkly between the other two, and the intercourse -had grown less and less, until, in the cold wintry weather of this -miserable season, it had almost died away.</p> - -<p>But it was a great shock to hear, one gray, dull morning when every -thing seemed more miserable than ever, the sky more heavy, the frost -more bitter, that the minister had died in the night. This news came to -them with the letters and the early rolls, for which every morning now a -groom rode into Kinloch-Rugas upon the humiliated Rory. The minister -dead! Sir Robert was more impressed by it than could have been imagined -possible. “Old Blythe!” he said to himself, with a shock which paled his -own ruddy countenance. Why should he have died? The routine of his life -was as fixed and certain as that of Sir Robert himself. There seemed no -necessity that it should ever be broken. He was part of the landscape, -like one of the hills, like the gray steeple of his church, a landmark, -a thing not to be removed. Yet he was removed, and Mr. Douglas, the -assistant and successor, was now minister of Kinloch-Rugas. In a little -while the place which had known him so long would know him no more. Sir -Robert ate very little breakfast that morning; he had himself a bad cold -which he could not shake off; he got up and walked about the room, -almost with excitement. “Old Blythe!” he repeated, and began to recall -audibly to himself, or at least only half to Lily, the time when old -Blythe was young, as young as other folk, and a very cheery fellow and a -good companion and no nonsense about him. And now he was dead! It was -probably the fault of that dashed drunken doctor, who fortunately was -not Sir Robert’s doctor, who had let him die. Lily on her part was -scarcely less moved. Dead! The man who had held so prominent a place in -that dream, who had never forgotten it, in whose eyes she had read her -own history, at least so far as he knew it, the last time she met his -look, with so living a question in them, too, almost demanding, was that -secret never to be told? ready to insist, to say: “Then I must tell it -if you will not!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_402" id="page_402"></a>{402}</span> She had read all that in his look the last time she -had seen him, and in her soul had trembled. And now he was dead and -could never say a word. She had a vague sense, too, that she had one -less now among the few people who would stand by her. But she wanted no -one to stand by her, she was in no trouble. The mystery of her existence -would never now be revealed.</p> - -<p>“I think I ought to go and see Helen, uncle,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Certainly, certainly!” he cried, more eager than she was. “Order the -brougham at once, and be sure you take plenty of wraps. Is there any -thing we could send? Think, my dear: is there any thing I could do? I -would like—to show every respect.”</p> - -<p>He made a movement as if he would go to the <i>escritoire</i> in which he -kept his money; for checks were not, or at least were not for individual -purposes, in those days.</p> - -<p>“Uncle,” she said, “they are not poor people; you cannot send -money—they are like ourselves.”</p> - -<p>“Let me tell you,” he said, with a little irritation, “that there are -many families even like ourselves, as you say, which the Blythes are -not, who would be very thankful for a timely present at such a moment. -But, however—— Is there nothing you can take—no cordial, or a little -of the port, or—or any thing?”</p> - -<p>“Helen wants nothing, uncle—but perhaps a kind word.”</p> - -<p>“Helen! Ah, that’s true: the auld man’s gone that would have known the -good of it. Well, tell her at least that if I can be of any use to -her—— I always thought,” he cried, with a little evident but quickly -suppressed emotion, “that he had something he wanted to say to me, -something that was on his mind.”</p> - -<p>How little he thought what it was that the old minister had on his mind! -and how well Lily knew!</p> - -<p>Helen was very calm, almost calmer than Lily was, when they met in the -old parlor where the great chair was already set against the wall. “You -are not to cry, Lily. He was very clear in his mind, though sore wearied -in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_403" id="page_403"></a>{403}</span> body. He was glad at the last to get away. He said: ‘I’ve had my -time here, and no a bad time either, the Lord be praised for all his -mercies, and I’ll maybe find a wee place to creep into that She will -have keepit for me: not a minister,’ he said, oh, Lily! ‘but maybe a -doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.’ Is that not all we could wish for, -that his mind should have been like that?” said Helen, with eyes too -clear for tears. She was arranging every thing in her quiet way, -requiring no help, quite worn out with watching, but incapable of rest -until all that was needful had been done. The darkened room where so -much had happened, isolated now from the common day by the shutting out -of the light, seemed like a sort of funereal, monumental chamber in all -its homely shabbiness, a gray and colorless vault, not for him who had -gone out of it, but for the ghosts and phantoms of all that had taken -place there. Lily’s heart was more oppressed by the gray detachment of -that room, in which her own life had been decided, than either by the -serene death above or the serene sorrow by her side.</p> - -<p>When she got back, Sir Robert, very fretful, was sitting over the fire. -He was hoarse and coughing, and more impatient than she had seen him. -“If it goes on like this, I’ll not stay here,” he said, “not another -week, let them say what they like! Four weeks of frost, a measured -month, and as much more in that bitter sky. No. I will not stay; and, -however attached you are to the place, you’ll come with me, Lily. Yes, -you’ll come with me! We’ll take up my old travelling carriage and we’ll -get away to the South, if I were but free of this confounded cold!”</p> - -<p>“We must take care of you, uncle. You must let us take care of you, and -your cold will soon go.”</p> - -<p>“You think so?” he said eagerly. “I thought you would think so. I never -was a man for catching cold. I never had a bronchitis in my life; that’s -not my danger. If that doctor man would but come, for I thought it as -well to send for him?”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_404" id="page_404"></a>{404}</span></p> - -<p>He looked up at her with an enquiring look. He was anxious to be -approved in what he had done. “It was the only thing to do,” she said, -and he was as glad she thought so as if she had been the mistress of his -actions.</p> - -<p>But by the evening Sir Robert was very ill. He fought very hard for his -life. He was several years over seventy, and there did not seem much in -life to retain him. But nevertheless he fought hard for it, and was very -unwilling to let it go. He made several rallies from sheer strength of -will, it appeared. But in the end the old soldier had to yield, as we -must all do. The long frost lasted, the bitter winds blew, no softening -came to the weather or to Fate. Sir Robert died not long after the old -minister had been laid in the grave. It was a dreadful year for the old -folk, every-body said; they fell like the leaves in October before every -wind.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">I do</span> not think that Lily in the least realized what had happened to her -when her uncle died. She grieved for him with a very natural, not -excessive, sorrow, as a daughter grieves for an old father whose life -she is aware cannot be long prolonged. He was more to her than it was to -be expected he could have been. These two years of constant intercourse, -and a good deal of kindness, which could scarcely be called unselfish, -yet was more genuine on that very account, had brought them into real -relationship with each other; and Lily, who never had known what family -ties were, had come to regard the careless Uncle Robert of her youth, to -whom she had been a troublesome appendage, as he was to her the -representative of a quite unaffectionate authority, as a father, who, -indeed, made many demands, but made them with a confidence and trust in -her good feeling which were quite natural and quite irresistible, -calling forth in her the qualities to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_405" id="page_405"></a>{405}</span> which that appeal was made. Sir -Robert had all unawares served Lily, though it was his coming which was -the cause of the great catastrophe in her life. She did not blame him -for that—it was inevitable; in one way or other it must have come—but -she was grateful to him for having laid hands upon her, so to speak, in -the failure of all things, and given her duties and a necessity for -living. And now she was sorry for him, as a daughter for a father, let -us say a married daughter, with interests of her own, for a father who -had been all that was natural to her, but no more.</p> - -<p>She was a little dazed and confused, however, with the rapidity of the -catastrophe, the week’s close nursing, the fatigue, the profound feeling -which death, especially with those to whom his presence is new, -inevitably calls forth; and very much subdued and sorrowful in her mind, -feeling the vacancy, the silence, the departure of the well-known -figure, which had given a second fictitious life to this now doubly -deserted place. And it did not occur to Lily to think how her own -position was affected, or what change had taken place in her life. She -was not an incapable woman, whom the management of her own affairs would -have frightened or over-burdened, but she never had possessed any -affairs, never had the command of any money, never arranged, except as -she was told, where or how she had to live. Until her uncle had given -her, when she went to Edinburgh, the sum which to her inexperience was -fabulous, and which she had spent chiefly in her vain search after her -child, she had never had any money at all. She did not even think of it -in this new change of affairs, nor of what her future fate in that -respect was to be.</p> - -<p>This indifference was not shared by the household, or at least by those -two important members of it Katrin and Robina, who had been most -attentive and careful of Sir Robert in his illness, but who, after he -was dead, having little tie of any kind to the old gentleman, who had -been a good enough master and no more, dropped him as much<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_406" id="page_406"></a>{406}</span> as it was -possible to drop the idea of one who lay solemnly dead in the house, the -centre of all its occupations still, though he could influence them no -more. “What will happen now?” they said to each other, putting their -heads together, when the “strange women,” subdued by “a death in the -house,” were occupied with their special businesses, and Sir Robert’s -man, his occupation gone, had retired to his chamber, feeling himself in -want of rest and refreshment after the labors of nursing, which he had -not undergone. “What will happen noo?” said Katrin. “And what will we do -with her?” Beenie said, shaking her large head. “I’ll tell you,” said -Katrin, “the first thing that will happen: Before we ken where we are -we’ll hae <i>him</i> here!”</p> - -<p>“No, no,” said Beenie; “no, no! I am not expecting that.”</p> - -<p>“You may expect what ye like, but that is what will happen. He will come -in just as he used to do, with a fib about the cauld of the Hielands, -and a word about the steps that are so worn and no safe. Woman, he has -the ball at his fit now. Do you no ken when a man’s wife comes into her -siller it’s to him it goes? She will have every thing, and well he kens -that, and it’s just the reason of all that has come and gone.”</p> - -<p>“He’ll never daur,” said Beenie, “after leaving her so long to herself, -and after a’ that’s come and gone, as you say.”</p> - -<p>“It’s none of his fault leaving her to hersel’. He has written to her -and written to her, for I’ve seen the letters mysel’; and if she has -taken no notice, it is her wyte, and not his. She will have a grand -fortune, a’ auld Sir Robert’s money, and this place, that is the home o’ -them all.”</p> - -<p>“I never thought so much of this place. She’ll not bide here. Her and me -will be away as soon as ever it’s decent, I will assure you o’ that, to -seek the bairn over a’ the world.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll never find him,” said Katrin.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_407" id="page_407"></a>{407}</span></p> - -<p>“Ay, will we! Naebody to say her nay, and siller in her pouch, and the -world before her. We’ll find him if he were at its other end!”</p> - -<p>“Ye’ll never find him without the father of him!” cried Katrin, becoming -excited in her opposition.</p> - -<p>“That swore he was dead!” cried Beenie, flushing, too, with fight and -indignation, “that stood up to my face, me that kent better, and -threepit that the bairn was dead! And her that was his mother sitting -by, her bonnie face covered in her hands!”</p> - -<p>“Woman!” cried Katrin, “would you keep up dispeace in a house for any -thing a man may have said or threepit? I’m for peace, whatever it costs. -What is a house that’s divided against itsel’? Scripture will tell ye -that. Even if a man is an ill man, if he belongs to ye, it’s better to -have him than to want him. It’s mair decent. Once you’ve plighted him -your word, ye must just pit up with him for good report or evil report. -If the father’s in one place and the mother’s in another, how are ye to -bring up a bairn? And a’ just for a lie the man has told when he was in -desperation, and for taking away the bairn when we couldna have keepit -him, when it was as clear as daylight something had to be done. Losh! -Dougal might tear the hair out o’ my head, or the claes frae my back, he -would be my man still.”</p> - -<p>“Seeing he is little like to do either the one thing or the other, it’s -easy speaking,” Beenie said.</p> - -<p>Lily did not come so far as this in her thoughts till a day or two had -passed, and then there came upon her, as Beenie had divined, the sudden -impulse, which nevertheless had been lying dormant in her mind all this -time, to get up and go at once in pursuit of her baby. All the people -she had employed, all the schemes she had tried, had come to nothing. At -first her ignorant efforts had been balked by that very ignorance -itself, by not knowing what to do or whom to trust, and then by distance -and time and agents who were not very much in earnest. To look for a -great criminal—that was a thing which might<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_408" id="page_408"></a>{408}</span> waken all the natural -detective qualities even before detectives were. But to look for a baby, -with no glory, no notoriety, whatever might be one’s success! Lily saw -all this now with the wisdom that even a very little practical -experience gives. But his mother—that would be a very different matter. -His mother would find him wheresoever he was hidden. And after the first -day of consternation, of confusion and fatigue, this resolution flashed -upon her, as it had done at times through all the miserable months that -were past. She had been obliged to crush it then, but now there was no -occasion to crush it any longer. She was free; no one had any right to -stop her; she was necessary to nobody, bound to nobody. So she thought, -rejecting vehemently in her mind the idea of her husband, who had robbed -her, who had lied to her, but who should not restrain her now, let the -law say what it would. Lily did not even know how much the property of -her husband she was. Even in the old bad times it was only when evil -days came that the women learned this. The majority of them, let us -hope, went to their graves without ever knowing it, except in a jibe, -which was to the address of all women. She did not think of it. Ronald -had robbed her, had lied to her, and was separated from her forever; but -that he would even now attempt to control her did not enter into Lily’s -mind. He was a gentleman, though these were not the acts of a gentleman. -She did not fear him nor suspect him of any common offence against her. -He had been guilty of these crimes—that was the only word to use for -them—but to herself, Lily, he could do nothing. She had so much -confidence in him still. Nor, indeed (she thought at first), would he -have any thing to do with it. He would know nothing; she would go after -her child at once, as was natural, his mother’s right. And he surely -would not be the man to interfere.</p> - -<p>Then as she began to wait, to feel herself waiting, every nerve tingling -and excitement rising in her veins every hour, in the enforced silence -of the shadowed house, until<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_409" id="page_409"></a>{409}</span> the funeral should set her free, Lily came -to life altogether, she could not tell how, in a moment, waking as if -from the past, the ice, the paralysis that had bound her. She had lived -with her uncle these two years, and she had not lived at all. She had -not known even what was the passage of time. Her existence had been -mechanical, and all her days alike, the winter in one fashion, the -summer in another. The child, the thought of the child, had been a -thread which kept her to life; otherwise there had been nothing. But -now, when that thought of the child became active and an inspiration, -her whole soul suddenly came to life again. It was as when the world has -been hid by the darkness of night, and we seem to stand detached, the -only point of consciousness with nothing round us, till between two -openings of the eyelids there comes into being again a universe that had -been hidden, the sky, the soil, the household walls, all in a moment -visible in that dawn which is scarcely light, which is vision, which -recreates and restores all that we knew of. To Lily there came a change -like that. She closed her eyes in the wintry blackness of the night, and -when she opened them, every thing had come back to her. It was not that -she had forgotten: it was all there all the time; but her heart had been -benumbed, and darkness had covered the face of the earth. It was not the -light or warmth of the sunrise that came upon her; it was that -revelation of the earliest dawn that makes the hidden things visible, -and fills in once more the mountains and the moors, the earth and the -sky.</p> - -<p>It was with a shock that she saw it all again. She had been wrapped in a -false show, every thing vanity and delusion about her—Miss Ramsay, a -name that was hers no longer; but in reality she was Ronald Lumsden’s -wife, the mother of a child, a woman with other duties, other rights. -And he was there, facing her, filling up the world. In her benumbed -state he had been almost invisible; so much of life as she had clung to -the idea of the baby. When he appeared to her, it was as a ghost from -which she shrank, from which every instinct turned her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_410" id="page_410"></a>{410}</span> away. But now he -stood there, as he had stood all the time, looking her in the face. Had -he been doing so all these years? or had she been invisible to him as he -to her? She was seized with a great trembling as she asked herself that -question. Had he been watching her through the dark as through the -light, keeping his eye upon her, waiting? She shuddered, but all her -faculties became vivid, living, at this touch. And then there were other -questions to ask: What would he do? Failing that, more intimate still, -what would she do, Lily, herself? What, now that she was free, alone, -with no bond upon her, what should she do? This question shook her very -being. She could go on no longer with her life of lies: what should she -do?</p> - -<p>Sir Robert’s man of business came from Edinburgh as soon as the news -reached him. He told her that she was, as she had a right to be, her -uncle’s sole heir, there being no other relation near enough to be taken -into consideration at all. Should she tell him at once what her real -position was? It was a painful thing for Lily to do, and until she was -able to set out upon that search for her child, which was still her -first object, she had a superstitious feeling that something might -happen, something that would detain or delay her, if she told her secret -at once. She had arranged to go away on the morning after the funeral. -That day, before Mr. Wallace left Dalrugas, she resolved that she would -tell him, and, through him, all who were there. Her heart beat very loud -at the thought. To keep it so long, and then in a moment give it up to -the discussion of all the world! To reveal—was it her shame? Oh, shame, -indeed, to have deceived every one, her uncle, every creature who knew -her. But yet not shame, not shame, in any other way. Much surprised was -Mr. John Wallace, W. S., Sir Robert’s man of business, to find how -indifferent Miss Ramsay was as to the value and extent of the property -her uncle had left her. She said “Yes,” to all his statements, sometimes -interrogatively, sometimes in simple assent; but he saw that she did -not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_411" id="page_411"></a>{411}</span> take them in, that the figures had no meaning for her. Her mind was -otherwise absorbed. She was thinking of something. When he asked her, -not without a recollection of things he had heard, as he said to -himself, “long ago,” when Sir Robert’s niece had been sent off to the -wilds out of some young birky’s way, whether there was any one whom she -would like specially summoned for the funeral, Lily looked up at him -with a quick, almost terrified glance, and said: “No, no!” She had, he -felt, certainly something on her mind. I don’t know whether, in those -days, the existence of a private and hidden story was more common than -now: there were always facilities for such things in Scotland in the -nature of the marriage laws, and many anxious incidents happened in -families. A man acknowledging a secret wife, of whose existence nobody -had known, was common enough. But a young lady was different. At all -events there could be no doubt that this young lady had something on her -mind.</p> - -<p>The arrangements were all made in a style befitting Sir Robert’s -dignity. The persons employed came from Edinburgh with a solemn hearse -and black horses, and all the gloomiest paraphernalia of death. A great -company gathered from the country all about. They had begun to arrive, -and a number of carriages were already waiting round to show the respect -of his neighbors for the old gentleman, of whom they had actually known -so little. The few farmers who were his tenants on the estate, which -included so little land of a profitable kind among the moors (not yet -profitable) and the mountains, waited outside in their rough gigs, but -several of the gentlemen had gathered in the drawing-room, where cake -and wine were laid out upon a table, and Mr. Douglas, now the minister -of Kinloch-Rugas, stood separate, a little from the rest, prepared to -“give the prayer.” The Church of Scotland knew no burial service in -those days other than the prayer which preceded the carrying forth of -the coffin. Two ladies had driven over, with their husbands, to stay -with Lily when the procession left the house.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_412" id="page_412"></a>{412}</span> They did not know very -much of her, but they were sorry for her in her loneliness. The -appearance of a woman at a funeral was an unknown thing in those days in -Scotland, and never thought of. This little cluster of black dresses was -in a corner of the room, in the faint light of the shadowed windows, -Lily’s pale face, tremulous with an agitation which was not grief, -forming the point of highest light in the sombre room, among the -high-colored rural countenances. She meant to tell them on their return.</p> - -<p>It was at this moment, in the preliminary pause, when Mr. Douglas, -standing out in the centre of the room, was about to lift his hand as -the signal for the prayer—about to begin—that a rapid step became -audible, coming up the stairs, stumbling a little on the uppermost steps -as most people did. It was nothing wonderful that some one should be a -little late, yet there was something in the step which made even the -most careless member of the company look round. Lily, absorbed in her -thoughts, was startled by the sound, she could not tell why. She moved -her head a little, and it so happened that the gentlemen standing about -by an instinctive movement stepped aside from between her and the door, -so as to leave room for the entrance of the new-comer. He was heard to -quicken his pace, as if fearing to be too late, and the minister stood -with his hand raised, waiting till the interruption should be over and -the tardy guest had appeared.</p> - -<p>Then the door opened quickly, and Ronald Lumsden came in. He was in full -panoply of mourning, according to the Scotch habit, his hat, which was -in his hand, covered with crape, his sleeves with white “weepers,” his -appearance that of chief mourner. “I am not too late?” he said, as he -came in. Who was he? Some of those present did not know. Was he some -unacknowledged son, turning up at the last moment to turn away the -inheritance? Mr. Wallace stepped out a little to meet him, in -consternation. Suddenly it flashed through his memory that this was the -young fellow out of whose way<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_413" id="page_413"></a>{413}</span> Lily Ramsay had been sent by her uncle. -He knew Lumsden well enough. He made a sign to him to be silent, -pointing to the minister, who stood interrupted, ready to begin.</p> - -<p>“I see,” said Ronald in the proper whisper, with a nod of his head; and -then he stepped straight up, through the little lane made for him, to -where Lily sat, like an image of stone, her lips parted with a quick, -fluttering breath. He took her hand and held it in his, standing by her -side. “Pardon me that I come so late,” he said, “I was out of town; but -I am still in time. Mr. Wallace, I will take my place after the coffin -as the representative of my wife.” This was said rapidly, but calmly, in -the complete self-possession of a man who knows he is master of the -situation. There was scarcely a pause, the astonished company had -scarcely time to look into each other’s face, when the proceedings went -on. The minister’s voice arose, with that peculiar cadence which is in -the sound of prayer. The men stood still, arrested in their excitement, -shuffling with their feet, covering their faces with one hand so long as -they could keep up that difficult position. But this was all unlike a -funeral prayer. The atmosphere had suddenly become full of excitement, -the pulsations quickened in every wrist.</p> - -<p>Lily remained in her chair; she did not rise. It was one of the points -of decorum that a woman should not be able to stand on such an occasion. -The two ladies, all one quiver of curiosity, stood behind her, and -Ronald by her side, holding her hand. He did not give it up, though she -had tried to withdraw it, but stood close by her, holding his hat, with -its long streamers of crape, in his other hand, his head drooped a -little, and his eyes cast down in reverential sympathy. To describe what -was in her mind would be impossible. Her heart had given one wild leap, -as if it would have choked her, and then a sort of calm of death had -succeeded. He held her hand, pressing it softly from time to time. He -gave no sign but this of any other feeling but the proper respectful -attention, while she sat<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_414" id="page_414"></a>{414}</span> paralyzed. And then came the stir—the -movement. He let her hand drop, and, bending over her, touched her -forehead with his lips; and then he made a sign to the astonished men -about, even to Mr. Wallace, who had been, up to this moment, the chief -authority, to precede him. There was a sort of a gasp in the astonished -assembly, but every one obeyed Ronald’s courteous gesture. There was -nothing presumptuous, nothing of the upstart, in it: it was the calm and -dignified confidence of the master of the house. He was the last to -leave the room, which he did with another pressure of Lily’s hand, and a -glance to the ladies behind, which said as distinctly as words: “Take -care of my wife.” And he was the first in the procession, placing -himself at once behind the coffin. The burying-ground was not far away; -it was one of those lonely places among the hills, with a little chapel -in ruins, a relic of an older form of faith, within its gray walls, -which are so pathetic and so solemn. The long line of men walking two -and two made a great show in their black procession, their feet ringing -upon the hard frost-bound road. But Ronald walked alone, in front, as if -he had been Sir Robert’s son. And his heart was full of a steady and -sober elation. It had been a hard fight, but he had conquered. Though he -was not a son, but an enemy, he was, as he had always intended, Sir -Robert’s heir.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">“But</span> this is all very strange and requires explanation. I do not doubt -in the least what you say, but it requires explanation,” Mr. Wallace -said.</p> - -<p>Only a few of the gentlemen returned with him to the house. Two of them -were the husbands of the two ladies who had been with Lily, and who now, -with each a volume in her face, joined the surprised and curious men. -Lily, too, had come back to the room. It was now that she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_415" id="page_415"></a>{415}</span> intended -to make her statement, and it had become unnecessary. She was saved -something, and yet there was worse before her than if this had not been -saved.</p> - -<p>“There is no explanation we are not ready to give,” said Ronald calmly. -“We were married four years ago, in the Manse of Kinloch-Rugas, by Mr. -Douglas’s predecessor, dead, I am sorry to hear, the other day. My wife -has the lines, which she will give you. Two witnesses of the marriage -are in the house. Every thing is in perfect order and ready for any -examination. The reason of the secrecy we were obliged to keep up was -the objection of Sir Robert, whom we have just laid with every respect -in his grave.”</p> - -<p>“With every respect!” Mr. Wallace said with emphasis, and there was a -murmur of agreement from the company round.</p> - -<p>“These are my words—with every respect. One may respect a man and yet -fail to sacrifice one’s own happiness entirely to him. My wife and I -were in accord as to saving Sir Robert any thing that might vex him in -his old age.”</p> - -<p>Here Lily raised her head as if about to speak, but said nothing by a -second thought, or perhaps by inability to utter any thing in the midst -of the flow of his address.</p> - -<p>“It is unnecessary to say what it has cost us to keep up this, but we -have done it at every risk. Our duty now is changed, and it is as -necessary to make our position clearly understood as it was before to -keep it private to ourselves. I would not allow Mrs. Lumsden to take -this avowal upon herself, as I am sure she would have done had I not -been here, or to encounter the fatigue of the day alone. I have -preferred to look like an intruder, as I fear some of the gentlemen here -must have thought me.”</p> - -<p>“No intruder,” said one. “No, no, to be sure, no intruder,” said -another. “Not,” said a third, “if this extraordinary story is true.”</p> - -<p>“That’s the whole question,” said Mr. Wallace. “My client knew nothing -of it. He left his money to his niece<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_416" id="page_416"></a>{416}</span> as to a single woman. The lady -has always been known as Miss Ramsay. How are we to know it is true?”</p> - -<p>“You know me, however,” said Ronald, with a smile: “Ronald Lumsden, -advocate, son of John, of that name, of Pontalloch. I think I have taken -fees from you before now, Mr. Wallace. It is not very likely I should -tell you such a lie as that in the lady’s face.”</p> - -<p>“Miss Ramsay,” said Mr. Wallace—“Lord! if I knew what to call the -lady!—madam, is this true?”</p> - -<p>“It is true that I have deceived my uncle and every one who knew me. It -has been heavy, heavy on my conscience, and a shame in my heart. I can -look no one in the face!” cried Lily. “I meant to confess it to you -to-day, as he says. Yes, it is true!”</p> - -<p>Though the house was still the house of death, according to all -etiquette, and the blinds not yet drawn up from the windows, Mr. -Wallace, W. S., uttered, in spite of himself, a low whistle of -astonishment. And then he coughed, and drew himself up that nobody -should suspect him of such an impropriety. “This is a strange case, a -very strange case! These gentlemen must understand that I had no inkling -of it when I invited them here to-day.”</p> - -<p>“What would it have mattered what inkling you had, Wallace?” said one of -the most important of the strangers. “We cannot change what is done. -Perhaps, indeed, there’s no occasion. It is a dreary moment for -congratulations, Mrs.—Mrs. Lumsden, or I would wish you joy with a good -heart.”</p> - -<p>“You will let me thank you on my wife’s account,” said Ronald. “As you -say, it’s a dreary moment—and we have had a dreary time of it; but that -I hope is all over now.”</p> - -<p>“Over by the death of the poor gentleman that suspected nothing; that -has treated his niece like his own child,” said Mr. Wallace. “It is not -a pretty thing, nor is it a pleasant consideration. I hope you will not -think I am meaning any thing unkind to you, Miss Lily—I beg your -pardon, the other name sticks in my throat. It was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_417" id="page_417"></a>{417}</span> with any thought -of this that my old friend left all his money to his niece; and we are -met here to mourn his death, not to give thanks with these young people -that it’s over. He was a good friend to me, gentlemen. You’ll excuse me; -it sticks in my throat—it sticks in my throat!”</p> - -<p>“The feeling is very natural, and I’m sure we’re all with you, Wallace; -but, as I was saying, what’s done cannot be undone,” said the first -gentleman again.</p> - -<p>“And no doubt it is a painful thing for the young people,” said another -charitably, “to have to tell it at this moment, and to have it received -in such a spirit. No doubt they would rather have put it off to another -season. It’s honest of them, I will say for one, not to put it off.”</p> - -<p>“And there’s the will, I suppose, to read,” said another, “and the days -are short. My presence is certainly not indispensable, and I think I -must be getting home.”</p> - -<p>“You will not take it unkind, Mrs. Lumsden, if we all say the same. It’s -enough to give the horses their deaths, standing about in the cold.”</p> - -<p>“There’s no difficulty about the will,” said Mr. Wallace. “It is just -leaving all to her, and no question about it. Scarcely any thing more -but a legacy or two to the servants. He was a thoughtful man for all -that were kind to him. You can see the will when you please at my -office, and the business can be put into your hands, Lumsden, when you -please. I suppose you’re not intending to remain here?”</p> - -<p>“That is as my wife pleases,” said Ronald. “In that respect I can have -no will but hers.”</p> - -<p>And then they all stood for a moment, in the natural awkwardness of such -a breaking up. No will read; nothing to make a natural point of -conclusion. The ladies came to the rescue, as was their part. One of -them, touched by pity, took Lily into her arms, and spoke tenderly in -her ear.</p> - -<p>“My dear, you must not blame yourself beyond measure,” she said. “You -were very good to the old man. I have thought for a long time you had -something on<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_418" id="page_418"></a>{418}</span> your mind. But if you had been his daughter ten times -over, and had a conscience void of offence, you could not have been a -better bairn to the old man.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you for saying so,” said Lily. “I will remember you said it as -long as I live.”</p> - -<p>“Hoot!” said the kind woman, “you will soon be thinking of other things. -I will come back soon to see you, and you must just try to forgive -yourself, my dear.” She paused a moment, and Lily divined that she would -have said, “and <i>him</i>,” but these words did not come.</p> - -<p>“We will all come back—and bring our good wishes—another day,” said -this lady’s husband, and then they all shook hands with her, with at -least a show of cordiality, the half-dozen men feeling to Lily like a -crowd, the other lady saying nothing to her but a half-whispered -good-by. Ronald elaborately shook hands with them all, with a little -demonstration again as of the master of the house. He went to the door -with them, seeing them off, enquiring about their carriages. He was -perfectly good-mannered, courteous, friendly, but showing a familiarity -with the place, warning the strangers of the dark corners, and -especially of that worn step at the top of the stairs, which was -positively dangerous, Ronald said, and must be seen to at once, and with -an assumption of the position of the man of the house which did not -please the country neighbors. He was too well acquainted with every -thing, too pat with all their names, overdoing his part.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Miss Lily, Miss Lily,” cried old Wallace, who had not called her by -that name since she was a child, “how could you deceive him? a man that -trusted in you with all his heart!”</p> - -<p>“Nobody can blame me,” said Lily drearily, “as I blame myself.”</p> - -<p>“You would never have had his money had he known. The will’s all right, -and nobody can contest it, but that siller would burn my fingers if it -were me. I would have no enjoyment in it. I would think it a fortune -dearly bought.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_419" id="page_419"></a>{419}</span></p> - -<p>“The money—was I thinking about the money?” Lily cried, with a touch of -scorn which brought back its natural tone to her voice.</p> - -<p>“No, I dare swear you were not,” said the old gentleman; “but if not -you, there were others. It’s never a good thing to play with money: -either it sticks to your fingers and defiles you, or it’s like a canker -on your good name. He’s away to his account, that maybe had something to -answer for. He should have given you your choice—your lad or my siller. -He should have put it into words. He should have given you your choice.”</p> - -<p>“He did,” said Lily, almost under her breath.</p> - -<p>“He did! I’m glad to hear it—it was honest of him—and you—thought it -better to have them both. I understand now. It was maybe wise, but not -what I would have expected of you.”</p> - -<p>Lily had not a word to say; she had hidden her face in her hands.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Wallace,” said Ronald, coming back, “I cannot have my wife -questioned in my absence about things for which, at the utmost, she is -only partially to blame. I am here to answer for her, and myself, too.”</p> - -<p>“You will have enough to do with yourself. Did you think, sir, you were -to come and let off a surprise on us all, and claim Sir Robert’s money, -and receive his inheritance, and never a word said?”</p> - -<p>“If it eases your mind, say as many words as you like!” cried Ronald -cheerfully; “they will not hurt either Lily or me—precious balms that -do not break the head!”</p> - -<p>“I would just like, my young sir, to punish ye well for your mockery of -the Holy Scriptures, if not of me!”</p> - -<p>“The punishment is not in your hand,” said Lily, uncovering her pale -face. “We are not clear of it, nor ever will be; it will last as long as -our lives.”</p> - -<p>“I can well believe that,” said old Wallace. He put up the papers with -which the table was strewn into his bag. “You can come to me in my -office when you like, Mr. Lumsden, and I will show you every thing. It’s -unnecessary<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_420" id="page_420"></a>{420}</span> that you and me should go over it here,” he said, snapping -the bag upon them, almost with vehemence. “She’s badly hurt enough; -there is no occasion for turning the knife in the wound. I will leave -you to make it up within yourselves,” he said.</p> - -<p>Once more Ronald accompanied the departing guest down stairs. He called -Mr. Wallace’s clerk; he helped Mr. Wallace to mount into the geeg which -awaited him. No master of a house could have been more attentive, more -careful of his guest. He wrought the old gentleman up to such a pitch of -exasperation that he almost swore—a thing which occurred to him only in -the greatest emergencies; and that it was all he could do to prevent -himself from using his whip upon the broad shoulders of the interloper -who was thus speeding the parting guests. But the exigencies of the -coach, which he had to get at Kinloch-Rugas at a certain hour, prevented -much further delay. And Ronald stood and watched the departure of the -angry man of business in the Kinloch-Rugas geeg with a sensation of -relief. Was it relief? He was glad to get rid of him, no doubt, and of -all the consternation and disapproval with which his appearance had been -greeted. No one now had any right to say a word—the first and greatest -ordeal was over. But yet there remained something behind which made -Ronald’s nerves tingle; all that was outside had passed away. He had now -to confront alone an antagonist still more alarming: his Lily, whom he -loved in spite of every thing, whose image had filled this gray old -place with sweetness, who had always, up to their last meeting, been -sweet to him, sweeter than words could say—his first and only -sweetheart, his love, his wife. Now all the strangers were gone the -matter was between him and her alone. And Ronald, though he was so -sensible and so strong, was, for the first time, afraid.</p> - -<p>He came upstairs slowly, collecting himself for what was before him; not -without a pause at the top to examine again that defective step, which -he had so often remarked upon, which now must be seen to at once. He had -accomplished<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_421" id="page_421"></a>{421}</span> all he had hoped. Sir Robert had not even kept him long -waiting. Two years was not a very long time to wait; two years in -comparison with the lifetime that lay before Lily and himself was -nothing. They were young, and with this foundation of Sir Robert’s -fortune every thing was at their feet: all that his profession could -give, all its prizes and honors, all that was best in life—the ease of -never having to think or scheme about money, the unspeakable freedom and -exemption from petty cares which that insures. To do him justice, he did -not think of the money itself. He thought that now, whether he was -successful or unsuccessful, Lily was safe—that she would have no -struggle to undergo, no discomfort—while, at the same time, he was very -sure now that he would be successful, that every thing was possible to -him. A modest fortune to begin with, enough to keep the wife and family -comfortable, whatever happens, and to free him from every thought but -how to make the best of himself and his powers—was not that the utmost -that a man could desire, the best foundation? He went back to his Lily, -saying all this to himself, but he could not get his heart up to the -height of that elation which had possessed him when he had put on his -weepers and his crape for Sir Robert. He had not quite recognized the -drawbacks then. Half of them—oh, more than half of them—had been got -over. There only remained Lily: Lily, his wife, who loved him, for whom -he had in store the most delightful of surprises, to whom he could show -now, fully and freely, without fear of any man, how much he loved her, -whose future life he should care for in every detail, letting her feel -the want of nothing; oh, far better than that—the possession of every -thing that heart of woman could desire.</p> - -<p>She was sitting as he had left her, in a large chair drawn out almost -into the centre of the room—a sort of chair of state, where she, as the -object of all sympathy, had been surrounded by her compassionate -friends. It chilled him a little to see her there. She wanted that -encirclement the ladies behind her, supporting her, the surrounding of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_422" id="page_422"></a>{422}</span> -sympathetic faces. Now that position meant only isolation, separation; -it gave the aspect of one alone in the world. He went up to her, making -a little use of this as a man skilled in taking advantage of every -incident, and took her hand. “Lily, my darling, let me put you in -another place. Here is the chair you used to sit in. Come, it will be -more like yourself.”</p> - -<p>“I am very well where I am,” she said.</p> - -<p>There was the chair beside the fire where she had once been used to sit. -How suggestive these dumb things, these mere articles of furniture, are -when they have once taken the impress of our mortal moods and ways! It -had been pushed by chance, by the movement of many people in the room, -into the very position which Lily had occupied so often, with her lover, -her husband, hanging over her or close beside her, in all the closeness -of their first union, when the snow had built its dazzling drifts on -every road, and shut them out from all the world. To both their minds -there came for a moment the thought of that, the sensation of the chill -fresh air, the white silence, the brilliance of the sun upon the -sparkling crystals. But it was a hard and bitter frost that enveloped -them now—black skies and earth alike, every sound ringing harshly -through. Lily sat unmoving. She looked at him with what seemed a stern -calm. She seemed to herself to have suffered all that could be suffered -in so short a space of time, the shame of her story all laid bare—her -story, which had so different an aspect now, no longer the story of a -true, if foolish and imprudent, love, but of calculation, of fraud, of a -long, bold, ably planned deception for the sake of money. Her neighbors -did not, indeed, think so of her, or speak so of her, as they jogged -along the frost-bound roads, talking of nothing but this strange -incident; but she thought they were doing so, and her heart was seared -and burned up with shame.</p> - -<p>He drew a chair near to her and laid his hand upon hers. “Lily!” he -said.</p> - -<p>She did not move; the touch of his hand made her start,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_423" id="page_423"></a>{423}</span> but did not -affect her otherwise. “There is no need for that,” she said, somehow -with an air as if she scorned even to withdraw her hand, which was so -cold and irresponsive. She added with a long-drawn breath: “You can tell -me what you want—now that you have got what you want. It is all that -need be said between you and me.”</p> - -<p>“Lily,” he said, lifting her hand, which was like a piece of ice, and -holding it between his, “what I want is you. What is any thing I can get -or wish for without you?”</p> - -<p>She withdrew her hand with a little force. “All that,” she said, “is -over and past. Why should so sensible a man as you are try to keep up -what is ended, or to go on speaking a language which is—which has lost -its meaning? You and I are not what we were; I at least am not what I -was.”</p> - -<p>“You are my wife, Lily.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, the more’s the pity—the more’s the pity!” she cried.</p> - -<p>“That’s not what I should ever have expected from you. You are angry, -Lily, and I confess there are things which I have done—in haste, or on -the spur of the moment, or considering our joint interests perhaps more, -my dear, than your feelings——”</p> - -<p>“It would be well,” cried Lily with some of her old animation, “to -decide which it was—a hasty impulse, as you say, on the spur of the -moment, or our joint interests, which I deny for one! I never for a day -was for any thing but honesty and openness, and no interest of mine was -in it. But at least make up your mind. It was either in your haste or it -was your calculation—it could not be both.”</p> - -<p>“I did not think you would ever bring logic against me,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Because I was an ignorant girl—and so I was, believing every thing you -said, so many things that turned out one after another to be untrue: -that you were to take me home at once as soon as the snow was over; that -you were to get a house at Whit-Sunday, at Martinmas, and then at -another Whit-Sunday, and then——” Lily had allowed<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_424" id="page_424"></a>{424}</span> herself to run on, -having once begun to speak, as women are apt to do. She stopped herself -now with an effort. “Of these things words can be said, but of what -remains there are no words to speak. I will not try! I will not try! You -have trampled on my heart and my soul and my life to your own end—my -uncle’s money, my poor uncle that believed me, every word I said! And -now I ask, what do you want more? Let me know it, and if I can, I will -do it.”</p> - -<p>“Do you know,” he cried, suddenly grasping her hand again with an almost -fierce clutch, “that you can do nothing but what I permit? You are my -wife, you have nothing, your uncle’s money or any other, but what I give -you. You’re not your own to do what you like with yourself, as you seem -to think, but mine to do what I like, and nothing else. If we’re to play -at that, Lily, you must know that the strong hand is with me!”</p> - -<p>“So it appears,” she said, with a fierce smile, looking at her fingers, -crushed together, with the blood all pressed out of them, as he dropped -her hand. His threat, his defiance, did not enter into her mind in all -its force. Even in those days such a bondage of one reasonable creature -to another was at first impossible to conceive. And Ronald was quick to -change his tone. Of all things in the world the last he wanted was to -enter into the enjoyment of Sir Robert’s fortune without his wife.</p> - -<p>“Lily,” he said, “Heaven knows it is far from my wish to be tyrannical -to you. There is no happiness for me in this world without you. If you -can do without me, I cannot do without you. Am I saying I am without -fault? No, no! I’ve done wrong, I’ve done many things wrong. But not -beyond forgiveness, Lily—surely not that? What I did I thought was for -the best. If I had thought you would not understand me, would not make -allowance for me—but I believed you would trust me as I trusted you. -Anyway, Lily, forgive me. We’re bound till death us part. Forgive me; a -man can say no more than that.”</p> - -<p>He was sincere enough at least now. And Lily’s heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_425" id="page_425"></a>{425}</span> was torn with that -mingling of attraction and strong repulsion which is the worst of all -such unnatural separations. She said at last: “I am going away -to-morrow, Beenie and me. I had it settled before. You will not stop -that. If you will give your help, I will be thankful. Nothing in this -world, you or any other, can come between me and <i>that</i>! If it is a -living bairn, or if it is a green grave——” Lily stopped, her voice -choked, unable to say a word more.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI" id="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a>CHAPTER XLVI</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Lily</span> was no more visible that day. She retired to her room, having, -indeed, much need of repose, and to be alone and think over all that had -passed. He said a great deal more to her than is here recorded; but -Lily’s powers of comprehension were exhausted, or she did not listen, or -her mind was so much absorbed in her own projects that she was not aware -what he said. His presence produced an agitation in her mind which was -indescribable. At first the sense that he was there, the mere sight of -him, after all that had come and gone, was intolerable to her. But after -a while this changed; his voice became again familiar to her ears, his -presence recalled a hundred and a hundred recollections. This was the -man whom she had chosen from all the world, whose coming had made this -lonely house bright, who had changed her lonely life and every thing in -it, who was hers, her love, her husband, the one man in the world to -Lily. There was no such man living, she said to herself sternly, as the -Ronald of her dreams; but yet this was the being who bore his name, who -bore his semblance, who spoke to her in a voice which had tones such as -no other voice had, and made her heart beat in spite of herself. This -was Ronald—not her Ronald, but Ronald himself—the man who had deceived -her and made her a deceiver, who had robbed her of her child in her -weakness, when she could not go after him, and swore to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_426" id="page_426"></a>{426}</span> her a lie that -the child was dead. All that was true; but it is not much of a love -which dies with the discovery that the object of it is unworthy. She had -thought it had done so; all things had seemed easy to her so far as he -was concerned. But now Lily discovered that life was not so easy as -that. The sound of his voice, that so familiar voice which had said so -much to her, had gone through all these delusions like a knife. Was he -to blame that she had made a hero of him, that she had endowed him with -qualities he did not possess? This was Ronald, the real man, and there -was between him and her the bond of all bonds, that which can never be -broken. And she saw confusedly that there had been no false pretences on -his part, that he had been the same throughout, if it had not been that -her eyes were blinded and she saw her own imagination only. The same -man; she did not do him the injustice to think that he had been a cheat -throughout, that he had not loved her. It was not so simple as that -either; but he had determined with that force which some men have that -she should not lose her fortune. Already her heart, excusing him, put it -that way; and he had, through all obstacles, carried out this -determination. Was it her part to blame him? and even if that were her -part, was it the part of a woman never to forgive?</p> - -<p>I do not say that these were voluntarily Lily’s thoughts; but she had -become, as she had never been before, the field of battle where a combat -raged in which she herself seemed to have comparatively little part. -When the one side had made its fiery assault, then the other came in. -There rose up in her with all these meltings and softenings a revulsion -of her whole being against Ronald, the man who had made her lie. Into -what strange thing had he turned her life for all these years? A false -thing, full of concealments, secrets, terrors of discovery. He had led -her on from lie to lie, and then when the climax of all came, there had -been no mercy, no relenting, no remorse in his breast. He had torn her -child from her without care for him or for her, risking the lives of -both, and leaving in the bosom of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_427" id="page_427"></a>{427}</span> outraged mother a wound which -could never be healed. She felt it now as fresh as when she awakened -from her illness and came to life again by means of the pain—even now, -when perhaps, perhaps that wrong was to be put right and her child given -back to her. If he were in her arms now, it would still be there. Such a -blow as that was never to be got over; and it had been inflicted for -what? For no high motive of martyrdom—for the money, the horrible -money, which now, at the cost of so many lies and outrages of nature, -had fallen into his hands.</p> - -<p>Oh, no, no! things are not so easy in this world between human creatures -made of such strange elements as those of which it has pleased the -Master of all things to compound us. It is not all straightforward: -love—or else not love, perhaps hate. Love was on every side, the heart -crying out toward another that was its mate, and at the same time an -insupportable repugnance, revulsion, turning away. He was all that she -had in the world; all protection, companionship, support, that was -possible to her was in him; and yet her heart sickened at him, turning -away, feeling the great gulf fixed which was between them. This great -conflict within deadened Lily to all that was going on outside. She was -too much occupied with the struggle even to see, much less feel, the -state of affairs round her. What she did herself she did mechanically, -carrying on what she had intended beforehand, with the waning strength -of that impulse which had originated in her before this battle began. -She remembered still what she had resolved to do then, and did it dully, -without much consciousness. She had made up her mind to go off at once -upon her search. Had any thing occurred to prevent her doing this? She -could not tell, but she went on in so different a way, carrying out her -resolution. She counted her money, which was all hers now, about which -she could have no scruples. There was some of the housekeeping money, -which still she herself felt was her uncle’s, intrusted to her, but -which certainly, when she came to think of it, was her own now, and some -which Sir Robert<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_428" id="page_428"></a>{428}</span> had given her, about which there could be no question. -It seemed a large sum of money to her inexperience—if only she knew -where to go, and what to do!</p> - -<p>Robina was packing, or appearing to pack—a piece of work which ought to -have been done before now. Lily reproved her for being so late, but not -with any energy. The things outside of her were but half realized, she -was so busy within. Beenie was in a curious state, not good for much. -She wept into the box over which she stooped, dropping tears on her -mistress’s linen when she did not succeed in intercepting them with her -apron. But though she wept all the time, she sometimes broke into a -laugh under her breath, and then sobbed. It was evident that she had no -heart for her packing. She put in the most incongruous things and then -took them out again, and would rise up stealthily from her knees when -Lily’s back was turned, and run to the window, coming back again with a -hasty “Naething, naething, mem!” when her mistress remarked this, and -asked what she wanted. Down stairs—but Lily did not see it, nor would -have remarked it had she seen—Katrin stood at the open door. She had -her hand curved over her eyes, though there was no sunshine to prevent -her from seeing clearly any thing that might appear on the long, dark, -frost-bound road. Half the morning, to the neglect of every thing -within, Katrin stood looking out. It was a curious thing for the -responsible housekeeper of the house—the cook, with her lunch and her -dinner on her mind—to do; and so the other servants said to themselves, -watching her with great curiosity. Were there any more “ferlies” coming, -or what was it that Katrin was expecting from the town?</p> - -<p>Of these things Lily took no notice. She went into the drawing-room -ready for her journey, conscious that she must see her husband before -she left the house, but with a great failing of heart and strength, -wishing only to get away, to be alone, to go on with the terrible -struggle in her thoughts. There was no one there when she went in, and -it was a relief to her. She sat down to recover her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_429" id="page_429"></a>{429}</span> strength, to -recover her breath. She had told him that she was going, and so far as -she could remember he had made no opposition. She had appealed to him to -help her, but so far as she knew he had not attempted to do so. It was -not yet quite time to go, and Beenie was behindhand, as she always was. -Lily was glad, if the word could be used at all in respect to her -feelings at this moment, of the little quiet, the time to breathe.</p> - -<p>There was, however, some strange commotion going on in the house—a -sound outside of cries and laughter, a loud note of Beenie’s voice in -the adjacent room, and then the rush of her heavy footsteps downstairs. -There arose in Lily’s mind a vague wonder at the evanescence of all -impressions in the women’s minds. They had all wept plentifully the day -before at the funeral, and spoken with sickly stifled voices, as if they -had been not only sorrowful, but bowed down with trouble. And now there -was Beenie, loud with a shriek of what sounded like joy, and Katrin’s -voice rising over a little babel of confused sound, in exclamations and -outcries of delight. What could have changed their tone so suddenly? But -Lily asked herself the question very vaguely, having no attention to -give to them. The only external thing that could have thoroughly roused -her would have been her husband’s step, and the thrill of being face to -face with him again.</p> - -<p>It was not long before the sound of approaching footsteps made her heart -leap into the wildest agitation again. The noise had gone on down -stairs, the cries of delight, the sound of sobbing, and for one moment -something—a small brief note which made Lily start even in her -self-absorption. But she had not heeded more than that one quick -heart-beat of surprise. Was that at last Ronald’s step coming quickly up -the winding stair? She clasped her hands firmly together, and wound -herself up as best she could for this meeting, the interview which would -perhaps be their last. Her eyes were fixed upon the door. She was -conscious of sitting there rigidly, like a figure of stone, though her -being was full of every kind of agitation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_430" id="page_430"></a>{430}</span> And then there was a pause. -He had not come in. Why did he not come in?</p> - -<p>Finally the door was slowly opened, but at first no one appeared. Then -there was a whisper and another sound—a sound that went through and -through the listening, waiting, agitated woman, who seemed to have no -power to move, and then——</p> - -<p>There came in something white into the room, a little speck upon the -darkness of the walls and carpet—low down, white, with something like a -rose above the whiteness. This was what Lily saw: her eyes were dim and -every thing was confused about her. Then the speck moved forward slowly -with tottering, uncertain movements, the whiteness and the rose -wavering. There came a great cry in Lily’s heart, but she uttered not a -word; a terror, lest any movement of hers should dispel the vision, took -possession of her. She rose up noiselessly, and then, not knowing what -she did, dropped upon her knees. The little creature paused, and Lily, -in her semi-conscious state, became aware of the blackness of her own -figure in her mourning, and the great bonnet and veil that covered her -head. Noiselessly she undid the strings and threw them behind her, -scarcely breathing in her suspense. The child moved again toward her, -relieved, too, by the removal of that blackness, and Lily put out her -arms. How can I tell what followed? She could not, nor ever knew. The -child did not shriek or cry, as by all rules he should have done. He -rolled and wavered, the rose growing distinct into a little face, with a -final rush into his mother’s arms. And for a moment, an hour—how long -was it?—Lily felt and knew nothing but that again she had her baby in -her arms—her baby, that had been snatched from her unconscious, that -came back to her with infantile perceptions, smiles, love in its face! -She had her baby in her arms, not shrinking from her, as she had figured -him to herself a hundred times, but putting up his little hands to her -face, pleased with her, not discomposed with her kisses, putting his -soft cheek against hers; the one was as soft as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_431" id="page_431"></a>{431}</span> other, and as the -warm blood rose in Lily’s veins and the light came to her eyes and the -joy to her heart, as softly, warmly tinted, too, one rose against -another. She forgot herself and all about her—time and space, and all -her resolutions and her struggle and strain with herself, and her -mourning and her wrongs. Other people came into the room and stood -round, women crying, laughing, unable to do any thing but exclaim and -sob in their delight. But Lily took no notice. She had her child against -her heart, and her heart was healed. She could not think where all the -pain had gone. Her breath came free and soft, her life sat lightly on -her, her cares were over. She wanted to know nothing, see nothing, hear -nothing more.</p> - -<p>But this could not be. In another minute Ronald came into the room -quickly, no doubt full of anxiety, but full also of the energy of a man -who has the command of the situation and means to settle it in every -way, not unkindly, but yet authoritatively. With a word he dispersed the -women, stopping their outcries, which had been a sort of accompaniment -to the song of content that was in Lily’s heart, and then he came -quickly forward and put his arm round the group of the mother and child. -He pressed them to him and kissed them, first his wife and then the -baby, who sat on her knee. “Now all is well,” he said; “my Lily, all is -well! Every thing is forgiven and forgotten, and you and me are to begin -again!”</p> - -<p>Then Lily came suddenly back out of her rapture. She came back to the -life to which he called her, in which he had played so strange a part. -How her heart had melted toward him when he was not there! To be Ronald -had seemed to her by moments to be every thing. But now that he was -here, kneeling before her, his child on her knee, his arms around her, -his kiss on her cheek, there rose up between them a wall as of iron, -something which it seemed impossible should ever give way, a repulsion -stronger than her own will, stronger than herself. She made an -involuntary movement to free herself. And her face changed, the -rose-hues went out of it, the light from<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_432" id="page_432"></a>{432}</span> her eyes. All well! How could -all be well? Two years, during which this child had been growing into -consciousness in another house, with other care, with neither father nor -mother; and she left widowed and bereft, to play a lying part and be -another creature—not what she was! And all for money, money—nothing -better! And now the money was won by all those lies and deceptions, now -all was to be well?</p> - -<p>“Let me be,” she said hoarsely, “let me be! A little rest, I want a -rest. I am not equal to any more.”</p> - -<p>He got up to his feet, repulsed and angry. “You do not think what I am -equal to,” he said, “or hesitate to inflict on me what punishment, what -cruelty, you please! And yet every thing that has been done was done in -your own interests, and who but you will get the good of it all?”</p> - -<p>“My interests?” Lily cried.</p> - -<p>And then there came an unexpected interruption. The baby, for all so -young as he was, became aware of the change of aspect of things around -him. His little roselip began to quiver, and then he set up a lamentable -cry which, to the inexperienced heart of Lily, was far more dreadful -than ever was the cry of a child. As she tried to soothe him there -appeared in the doorway Margaret Bland, the woman who had taken him -away. And Lily gave a cry like that of her child, and clung to the baby, -who, for his small part, struggled to get to his nurse, the only -familiar figure to him in all this strange place. “Not you,” cried Lily, -“not that woman who stole him from me! Beenie! not you, not you!”</p> - -<p>“And yet, mem,” said Margaret, “it is me that has been father and mother -and all to him when none of you came near. And the darling is fond o’ me -and me of him like my own flesh and blood.”</p> - -<p>“Beenie, Beenie!” cried Lily, wild with terror, as the child slid and -struggled out of her arms. “Katrin, Katrin! oh, don’t leave her, not for -a moment—don’t let her take him away!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_433" id="page_433"></a>{433}</span></p> - -<p>Once more the cloud of women appeared at the door, all the maids of the -house delighted over the child, and Beenie in the front, seizing -Margaret by the skirts as she gathered up the child in her arms. “Na, -na, she’ll no take him an inch out o’ my sight!” Beenie cried.</p> - -<p>Lily stood up trembling, breathless, confronting her husband as this -little tumult swept away. A passion of terror had succeeded her rapture -of love and content; and yet there was a compunction in it and almost a -touch of shame. That chorus of excited women did not add to the dignity -of her position. He had not said any thing, but was walking up and down -the room in impatience and annoyance. “Who do you think would take him -from you <i>now</i>?” he cried in his exasperation, adding fuel to the fire.</p> - -<p>Oh, not now! There were no interests to be involved now; the money was -safe, for which all these hideous plans had been laid. If this was meant -to soothe, it was an ill-chosen word. And for a moment these two people -stood on the edge of one of those angry recriminations which aggravate -every quarrel and take all dignity and all reason from the breach. -Ronald perceived his mistake even before Lily could take any advantage -of it, had she been disposed so to do.</p> - -<p>“Lily,” he said, “your life and mine have to be decided now. There is -neither credit nor comfort in the position of deadly opposition which -you have taken up. I may have sinned against you. I told you what was -not true about the child, I acknowledge that. I should not have -pretended he was dead. I saw my mistake as soon as I had committed it, -but it was as ineffectual as it was wrong. You did not believe me for a -minute, therefore I did no harm. The rest was all inevitable; it could -not be helped. Enough has been said on that subject. But all necessity -for these expedients is over now. Every thing is plain sailing before -us; we have the best prospects for our life. I can promise that no woman -will have a better husband than you will find me. You have a beautiful -healthy child<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_434" id="page_434"></a>{434}</span> who takes to you as if you had never been parted from him -for a day. We have a good house to step into——”</p> - -<p>“What house?” she cried, surprised.</p> - -<p>“Oh, not the garret you were so keen about,” he answered, a smile -creeping about the corners of his mouth, “a house worthy of you, fit for -you—the house in George Square!”</p> - -<p>“Uncle Robert’s house!” she cried, almost with a shriek.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he said, “to which you are the rightful heir, as you are to his -money. They are both very safe, I assure you, in <i>my</i> hands.”</p> - -<p>“You are,” she said breathlessly, “the proprietor—now?”</p> - -<p>“Through you, my bonnie Lily; but there is no mistake or deception about -that,” he said, with a short laugh; “they are very safe in my hands.”</p> - -<p>No man could be less conscious than Ronald, though he was a man full of -ability and understanding, of the effect of these words of his triumph -upon his wife’s mind. He thought he was setting before her in the -strongest way the advantages there were for her, and both, in agreement -and peaceful accord, and how prejudicial to her own position and comfort -any thing else would be. He was perhaps a little carried away by his -success. Even the experiment of this morning—how thoroughly successful -it had been! The child might have been frightened and turned away from -the unknown mother: instead of this, by a providential dispensation, he -had gone to her without hesitation and behaved himself angelically. How -any woman in her senses could resist all the inducements that lay before -her, all the excellent reasons there were to accept the present and -ignore the past—in which nothing had been done that was not for her -interest—he could not tell. He began to be impatient with such folly, -and to think it might be well to let her have a glimpse of what, if she -rejected this better part, lay on the other side.</p> - -<p>Lily had seated herself once more in her chair; it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_435" id="page_435"></a>{435}</span> the great chair -she had occupied when the funeral party assembled, and gave her -something of the aspect of a judge. She had lost altogether the color -and brightness that had come into her face. She was very pale, and the -blackness of her mourning made this more visible. And, she sat silent, -oh, not convinced, as he hoped—far from that—but struck dumb, not -knowing what to say.</p> - -<p>At this moment, however, there was another interruption, and the little -figure of Helen Blythe, covered, too, with crape and mourning, but with -a natural glow and subdued brightness as always upon her morning face, -appeared at the door.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII" id="CHAPTER_XLVII"></a>CHAPTER XLVII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Helen</span> was in all her crape, and yet her upper garment was not “deep,” -like that of a woman in her first woe. It was a cloak which suggested -travelling rather than any formality. And it appeared that the bright -countenance with which she came in was one of sympathy for Lily, rather -than of any cheerfulness of her own. She came forward holding out both -her hands, having first deposited her umbrella against the wall. “I am -glad, glad,” she said, “of all this that I hear of you, Lily: that you -have got your husband to take care of you, and, it appears, a delightful -bairn. I knew there was something more than ordinary between you two,” -she said, stopping to shake hands with Ronald in his turn. “And vexed, -vexed was I to see that Mr. Lumsden disappeared when old Sir Robert -came. It must have been a dreadful trial to you, my poor Lily. But I -never knew it had gone so far. Married in my own parlor, by my dear -father, and not a word to me—Lily, it was not kind!”</p> - -<p>Lily had no reply to make to this. It carried her away into a region so -far distant, so dim, like a fairy-tale.</p> - -<p>“But my dear father,” said Helen, “had little confidence<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_436" id="page_436"></a>{436}</span> in my -discretion, and he might think it better I should know nothing, in case -I should betray myself—and you. Oh, how hard it must have been many a -time to keep your secret; and when your child came, poor Lily, poor -Lily! But I do not yet understand about the bonnie bairn. They tell me -he is a darlin’. But did he come to you in a present, as we used to -think the babies did when we were children, or by what witchcraft did -you manage all that, Lily, my dear?”</p> - -<p>“And where did you hear this story that you have on your fingers’ ends?” -said Ronald, interrupting these troublesome questions.</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Helen, half offended, “if I have it on my fingers’ ends, it -is that I take so much interest in Lily and all that concerns her—and -you, too,” she added, fearing that what she had said might sound severe. -“You forget that there were two years when we saw you often, and then -two years that we saw you not at all; and often and often my father -would ask about you. ‘Where is that young Mr. Lumsden?’ ‘Have you no -word of that young Mr. Lumsden?’ He was very much taken up about you, -and why you did not come back, nor any word of you. To be sure, he had -his reasons for that, knowing more than the like of me.”</p> - -<p>“Those very reasons should have shown him how I could not come back!” -said Ronald sharply. “But you have not told me where it was you got this -story, which few know.”</p> - -<p>“Well—not to do her any harm if you think she should have been more -discreet—it was Katrin that told me. She is a kind, good, honest woman. -She was just out of herself with joy at the coming of the dear bairn. -You will let me see him, Lily?”</p> - -<p>“You look as if you were going on a journey. Oh, Helen, where are you -going?” cried Lily, glad to interrupt the questions, and to give herself -also a moment’s time to breathe.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I am going on a journey,” Helen said, steadfastly<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_437" id="page_437"></a>{437}</span> looking her -friend in the face. Her eyes were clear; her color, as usual, softly -bright, not paled by the crape, or by her genuine, but not excessive, -grief. She had mourned for her father as truly as she had nursed him, -but not without an acknowledgment that he had lived out his life and -departed in the course of nature. By this time, though but ten days of -common life had succeeded the excitement and commotion of Mr. Blythe’s -funeral, at which the whole countryside had attended, Helen had returned -to the ordinary of existence, and to the necessity of arranging her own -life, upon which there was now no bond. The plea of the assistant and -successor (now minister) of Kinloch-Rugas that there should be no breach -in it at all, that she should accept his love and remain in the house -where she was born as his wife, had not moved her mind for a moment. She -had shaken her head quietly, but very decisively, sorry to hurt him or -any creature, yet fully knowing her own mind; and, in so far as she -could do so in the village, Helen had made her preparations. She had a -little land and a little money, the one in the hands of a trustworthy -tenant, the other very carefully, very safely, invested by her father -with the infinite precautions of a man to whom his little fortune was a -very great matter, affecting the very course of the spheres. Helen had -boldly, with indeed an unspeakable hardihood, notwithstanding the horror -and remonstrances of the man of business, taken immediate steps to -withdraw her money and get it into her possession. All this was done -very quietly, very quickly, and, by good luck, favorably enough. And -then she made arrangements for her venture, the great voyage into the -unknown.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said, “I am going on a journey. You will perhaps guess -where—or if not where, for I am not just clear on that point myself, -you will at least know with what end. I have nothing to keep me back -now”—a little moisture came into Helen’s eyes, but that did not affect -her steady, small voice—“and only him in the world that needs me. I am -going to Alick, Lily. You will tell me<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_438" id="page_438"></a>{438}</span> it’s rash, as every-body does, -and maybe it is rash. If he has wearied at the last and given up all -thoughts of me, I will never blame him; but that I cannot think, and it -is borne in on my mind that he has more need of me than ever. So I am -just taking my foot in my hand and going to him,” she said, looking at -Lily, with a smile.</p> - -<p>“Helen! oh, you will not do that! Go to him, to you know not where, to -circumstances you are quite, quite ignorant of? Oh, Helen, you will not -do that!”</p> - -<p>“Indeed, and that will I,” said Helen, with the same calm and steady -smile. “I am feared for nothing, but maybe that he might hear the news -and start to come to me before I could get to him.”</p> - -<p>“That is enough!” cried Lily. “Oh, wait till he comes; send for him! -Rather any thing than go all that weary way across the sea alone.”</p> - -<p>“I am feared for nothing,” Helen said, still smiling, “and who would -meddle with me? I am not so very bonnie, and I am not so very young. I -am just as safe, or safer, than half the women in the world that have to -do things the other half do not understand.”</p> - -<p>“Like myself, you think,” Lily said; and it was on her lips to add: “If -you succeed no better than me!” But the bondage of life was upon her, -and of the pride and the decorum of life. Ronald had taken no part in -this conversation, but he was there all the time, standing against the -window, looking out. He was very impatient that his conversation with -his wife, so important in every way, should be interrupted. His own -affairs were so full in his mind, as was natural, that any enforced -pause in the discussion of them appeared to him as if the course of the -world had been stopped. And this country girl’s insignificant little -story, perfectly wild and foolish as it was, that it should take -precedence of his own at so great a crisis! He turned round at last and -said in a voice thrilling with impatience: “I hope, as Lily does, that -you will do nothing rash, Miss Blythe. We have a great deal to do -ourselves with our own arrangements.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_439" id="page_439"></a>{439}</span></p> - -<p>“And I am keeping Lily from you? You will excuse me,” cried Helen, -wounded, “but I am going to do something very rash, as you say, and I -may never come back; and I cannot leave a friend like Lily, and one my -father was proud of, and thought upon on his death-bed, and one that -knows where I am going and why, without a word. There is perhaps nobody -but Lily in the world that knows what I mean, and what I am doing, and -my reasons for it,” Helen said. She took her friend’s hands once more -into her own. “But I will not keep you from him, Lily, when no doubt you -have so much to say.”</p> - -<p>“You shall not go,” said Lily, with something of her old petulance, -“till you have seen what I have to show you, and till you have told me -every thing there is to tell. Oil, my baby, my little bairn, my little -flower! I could be angry that you have put him out of my head for a -moment. Come, come, and see him now.”</p> - -<p>Ronald paced up and down the room when he was left alone; his impatience -was not, perhaps, without some excuse. He was very anxious to come to -some ground of agreement with Lily, some basis upon which their life -could be built. He had hoped much from the great <i>coup</i> of the morning, -from the bringing back of the child, which he had intended to do -himself, taking advantage of the first thrill of emotion, and -identifying himself, its father, with the infant restored to her arms; -but the women, with their folly, had spoiled that moment for him, and -lost him the best of the opportunity, and now there was another woman -thrusting her foolish story into the midst of that crisis in his life. -Ronald was out of heart and out of temper. He began to see, as he had -never done before, the difficulties that seemed to close up his path. He -had feared, and yet not feared, the tempest of reproaches which no doubt -Lily would pour upon him. He did not know her any better than this, but -expected what the conventional woman would do in a book, or a malicious -story, from his wife; and he had expected that there would be a great -quarrel, a heaping up of every grievance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_440" id="page_440"></a>{440}</span> and then tears, and then -reconciliation, as in every story of the kind that had ever been told. -But even if she could resist the sight of him and of his pleading, -Ronald felt a certainty that Lily could not resist the return of her -child; for this she would forgive every thing. This link that held them -together was one that never could be broken. He had calculated every -thing with the greatest care, but he had not thought it necessary to go -beyond that. When she had her child in her arms, Lily, he felt sure, -would return to his, and no cloud should ever come between them more.</p> - -<p>But now this delusion was over. She had not showered reproaches upon -him. She had not done any thing he expected her to do. The dreadful, the -astounding revelation that had been made to him was that this was not -Lily any longer. It was another woman, older, graver, shaped by life and -experience, without faith, with a mind too clear, with eyes too -penetrating. Would she ever turn to him otherwise than with that look, -which seemed to espy a new pretence, a new deception, in every thing he -said? Ronald still loved his wife; he would have given a great deal, -almost, perhaps, the half of Sir Robert’s fortune, to have his Lily back -again as she had been; but he began now for the first time to feel that -it would be necessary to give up that vision, to arrange his life on -another footing. If she would but consent at least to fulfil the -decorums of life, to remain under his roof, to be the mistress of his -house, not to flaunt in the face of the world the division between these -two who had made a love-marriage, who had not been able to keep apart -when every thing was against their union, and now were rent asunder when -every thing was in its favor! What ridicule would be poured upon him! -What talk and discussion there would be! His mind flashed forward to a -vision of himself alone in Sir Robert’s great house in George Square, -and Lily probably here at Dalrugas with her child. Sir Robert’s house -was his, and Sir Robert’s fortune was his. Except what he chose to give -her, out of this much desired fortune—for<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_441" id="page_441"></a>{441}</span> which, indeed, it was he who -had planned and suffered, not she—she had no right to any thing. There -was so much natural justice in Ronald Lumsden’s mind that he did not -like this, though, as it was the law, and he a lawyer, it cost him less -than it might have done another man; but he meant to make the strongest -and most effective use of it all the same. He meant to show her that she -was entirely dependent upon him—she and her child; that she had nothing -and no rights except what he chose to allow her: and that it was her -interest and that of her child (whom, besides, he could take from her -were he so minded) to keep on affectionate terms with him.</p> - -<p>This, though it gave him a certain angry satisfaction, was a very -different thing, it must be allowed, from what he had dreamed. He had -thought of recovering Lily as she was in the freshness of her love and -faith before even the first stroke of that disappointment about the -house, the garret in Edinburgh, upon which her hopes had been fixed: -full of brightness and variety, a companion of whom one never would or -could tire, whose faith in him would make up for any failure of -appreciation on the part of the rest of the world, nay, make an end of -that—for would not such a faith have inspired him to believe in -himself, to be all she believed him to be? Did he live a hundred years, -and she by his side, Ronald now knew that he would never have that faith -again. And the absence of it would be more than a mere negative: it -would inspire him the wrong way, and make him in himself less and less -worthy—a man of calculations and schemes—all that she most objected -to, but of which he felt the principle in himself. It is not to be -supposed that he himself called, or permitted himself to imagine, these -calculations base. He thought them reasonable, sagacious, wise, the only -way of getting on in the world. They had succeeded perfectly in the -present instance. He was conscious, with a sort of pride, that he had -thus fairly gained Sir Robert’s fortune, which he had set before him as -an object so long ago. He had won it, as it were, with his bow and his -spear, and it was such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_442" id="page_442"></a>{442}</span> gain to a young man as was unspeakable, -helping him in every way, not only in present comfort, but in -importance, in his profession, in the opinion of the solicitors, who had -always more confidence in a man who had money of his own. Ah, yes, he -had won in this struggle—but then something cold clutched at his heart. -He was a young man still, and he loved his wife—he wanted her and -happiness along with all those other possessions; but when he won Sir -Robert’s money, he had lost Lily. Was this so? Must he consent that this -should be so? Were they separated forever by the thing that ought to -unite them? He said to himself: “No, no!” but in his heart he felt that -cold shadow closing over him. They might be together as of old—more -than of old—each other’s constant companions. But Lily would never be -to him what she had been; they would be two, living side by side, -unconsciously or consciously criticising each other, spying upon each -other. They would no more be one!</p> - -<p>To meet this, when one had expected the flush and assurance of success, -has of all things in the world the most embittering and exasperating -effect upon the mind. Ronald had looked for trouble with Lily—the -ordinary kind of trouble, a quarrel, perhaps <i>à outrance</i>, involving -many painful scenes—but he had never thought of the real effect of his -conduct upon her mind, the tremendous revulsion of her feelings, the -complete change of his aspect in her eyes, and of that which she -presented to him. A moment of disgust with every thing—with himself, -with her, with his success and all that it could produce—succeeded the -other changes of feeling. It is not unnatural at such a moment to wish -to do harm to somebody, to throw off something of that sense of the -intolerable that is in one’s own mind upon another. And Ronald bethought -himself of what Helen Blythe had said, her complete acquaintance with -the story which had been so carefully concealed from her, and her -confession that she had it from Katrin. A wave of wrath went over him. -Katrin had been in the secret from the beginning, not by any<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_443" id="page_443"></a>{443}</span> desire of -his, but because the circumstances rendered it inevitable that she -should be so, and nothing could be done without her complicity. He said -to himself that he had never liked her, nor her surly brute of a -husband, who had looked at him with so much suspicion on many of his -visits here. They thought themselves privileged persons, no doubt; -faithful servants, who had been of use, to whom on that account every -thing was to be forgiven; who would be in his own absence, as they had -been in Sir Robert’s, a sort of master and mistress to Dalrugas, -recounting to every-body, and to the child when he grew up, the history -of his parents’ marriage, entertaining all the country neighbors with -it—an intolerable suggestion. With them at least short work could be -made. He rang the bell hastily and desired that Katrin should be sent to -him at once, she and her husband, and awaited their appearance -impatiently, forming sharp phrases in his mind to say to them, with the -full purpose of pouring on their heads the full volume of his wrath.</p> - -<p>Katrin received that summons without surprise. She had thought it likely -that something would be said to her of gratitude for her faithful -service, and for her care of Lily; perhaps a little present given, which -Katrin did not want, but yet would have prized and guarded among her -chief treasures. She called in Dougal from the stable, and hastily -brushed the straws and dust from his rough coat. “But they ken you’re -aye among the beasts!” she said. She herself put on a spotless white -apron, and tied the strings of her cap, which in the heat of the kitchen -were often flying loose. Dougal followed her, with no such look of -pleasure on his face. To him Ronald was still “that birky from -Edinburgh,” whose visits and absences, and all the mystery of his -appearance and disappearance, had so often upset the house and wrought -Miss Lily woe. The wish that he could just have got his two hands on him -had not died out of his mind, and it was bitter to Dougal to feel that -this man was to be henceforth his master, even though he believed he was -about to receive<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_444" id="page_444"></a>{444}</span> nothing but compliments and gratification from his -hand. Ronald was still walking up and down the room when the -pair—Katrin with her most smiling and genial looks—appeared at the -door.</p> - -<p>“Oh, you are there!” he said hastily with a tone of careless disdain. “I -wished to speak to you at once to let you know what I have settled, that -you may have time to make your own arrangements. There are likely to be -many changes in the house—and the way of living altered altogether. I -think it best to tell you that, after Whit-Sunday, Mrs. Lumsden will -have no further occasion for your services.”</p> - -<p>He had not found it so easy as he thought, in face of Katrin’s changing -face, which clouded a little with surprise and disappointment at his -first words, then rose into flushed amazement, and then to -consternation. “Sir!” she cried, when he paused, aghast, and without -another word to say.</p> - -<p>“I kent it would be that way,” Dougal muttered, behind her, in the -opening of the door.</p> - -<p>“Well!” said Ronald sharply, “have you any thing to say against it? I am -aware you have for a long time considered this house your own, but that -was simply because of the negligence of the master. That time is over, -and it is in new hands. You will understand, though it is not the usual -time for speaking, that I give you lawful notice to leave before the -Whit-Sunday term in this current year.”</p> - -<p>“Sir,” said Katrin again, “I’m thinking I canna rightly trust to my -ears. Are you meaning to send me—me and Dougal, Sir Robert’s auld -servants, and Miss Lily’s faithful servants—away? and take our places -from us that we’ve held this twenty year? I think I maun be bewitched, -for I canna believe my ears!”</p> - -<p>“Let us have no more words on the subject,” said Ronald; “arguing will -make it no better. You are Sir Robert’s old servants, no doubt, but Sir -Robert is dead and buried; and how far you were faithful servants to -him—after all<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_445" id="page_445"></a>{445}</span> that I know of my own experience—the less said of that -the better, it seems to me.”</p> - -<p>“Dougal,” said Katrin, with a gasp, “haud me, that I dinna burst! He is -meaning the way we’ve behaved to him!”</p> - -<p>“And he has good reason!” said Dougal, his shaggy brows meeting each -other over two fiery sparks of red eyes. “<span class="lftspc">’</span>Od, if I had had my will, -many’s the time, I would have kickit him out o’ the house!”</p> - -<p>Dougal’s words were but as a muttering—the growl of a tempest—but the -two people blocking the door, meeting him with sudden astonishment and a -quick-rising fury of indignation which matched his own, wrought Ronald’s -passion to a climax; he seized up his hat, which was on the table, and -pushed past them, sending the solid figures to right and left. “That’s -enough. I have nothing more to say to you!” he said.</p> - -<p>It was Katrin that caught him by the arm. “Maister Lumsden,” she said, -“ye’ll just satisfy me first! Is it because of what we did for -you—takin’ ye in, makin’ ye maister and mair, keepin’ your secret, -helpin’ a’ your plans—that you’re now turnin’ us out of our daily -bread, out o’ our hame, out o’ your doors?”</p> - -<p>“Cheating your master in every particular,” said Ronald, “as you will -me, no doubt, whenever you have a chance. Yes; that is one of my -reasons. What did you say?”</p> - -<p>He raised the cane in his hand. The movement was involuntary, as if to -strike at the excited and threatening countenance of Dougal behind. They -were huddled in a little crowd on the top of the winding stair. Ronald -had turned round, on his way out, at Katrin’s appeal, and stood with his -back to the stair, close upon the upper step. “What did you say?” he -cried again sharply. Dougal’s utterances were never clear. He said -something again, in which “Go-d!” was the only articulate word, and made -a large step forward, thrusting his wife violently out of the way.</p> - -<p>It all happened in a moment, before they could draw<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_446" id="page_446"></a>{446}</span> breath. Roland, it -is to be supposed, made a hasty, involuntary step backward before this -threatening, furious figure, with his arm still lifted, and the cane in -it ready to strike, but lost his footing, and thus plunged headforemost -down the deep well of the spiral stair.</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII</h2> - -<p><span class="smcap">Lily</span> was very reluctant to let Helen go. She kept her on pretence of the -child, who had to be exhibited and adored. A great event annihilates -time. It seemed already to Lily that the infant had never been out of -her arms, that he had always found his natural refuge pressed close to -her, with his little head against her breast. She had at first, with -natural but unreasonable feeling, ordered Margaret out of her sight, she -who had been the instrument of so much suffering to her; but the woman -had defended herself with justice. “It is me that have done every thing -for him all this time,” she said. “It is me that have trained him up to -look for his mammaw. Eh, it would have been easy to train the darlin’ to -look to nobody but me in the world; but I have just made it his daily -thought that he was to come to his mammaw, and summer and winter and -night and day I have thought of nothing but that bairn.” Lily had -yielded to that appeal, and Beenie had already made Margaret welcome. -They sat in the little outer room, already established in all the old -habits of their life, sitting opposite to each other, with their -needle-work, and all its little paraphernalia of workboxes and reels of -thread, brought out as if there had never been any interruption of their -life, and the faint, half-whispered sound of their conversation making a -subdued accompaniment; while Lily, with her child on her knee, pausing -every moment to talk to him, to admire him, to respond to the countless -little baby appeals to her attention, appeared to Helen an image of that -perfect<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_447" id="page_447"></a>{447}</span> happiness which is more completely associated to women with the -possession of a child than with any other circumstance in the world. -Helen did not know, except in the vaguest manner, of any thing that lay -below. She divined that there might be grievances between the two who -had been so long parted. But Helen herself would have forgiven Ronald on -the first demand. His sins would have been to her simply sins, to be -forgiven, not a character with which her own was in the most painful -opposition. She would have entered into no such question. Lily detained -her as long as possible, enquiring into all her purposes, which it was -far too late to attempt to shake. Helen, in her rustic simplicity and -complete ignorance of the world, was going to America, to its most -distant and rudest part, the unsettled and dubious regions of the West, -the backwoods, as they were then called, which might have been in -another planet for any thing this innocent Pilgrim knew of them, and, -indeed, at that time, unless to those who had made it a special study, -those outskirts of civilization were known scarcely to any. “There will -aye be conveyances of some kind. I can ride upon a horse if it comes to -that,” Helen said, with her tranquil smile. “And no doubt he will come -to meet me, which will make it all easy.”</p> - -<p>“And that is the whole of your confidence!” cried Lily.</p> - -<p>“No, no! my confidence is in God, that knows every thing; and, Lily, you -should bless his name that has brought you out of all your trouble, and -given you that darlin’, God bless him, and a good man to stand by you, -and your settled home. Oh, if I can but get Alick to come back, to -settle, to work my bittie of land, and live an honest, quiet life like -our forbears”—the tears stood for a moment in Helen’s eyes—“but I will -think of you, a happy woman, my bonnie Lily, and it will keep my heart.”</p> - -<p>What a strangely different apprehension of her own position was in -Lily’s heart as she sat alone when Helen had gone. The baby had gone to -sleep and had been laid on the bed, and she began to pace slowly about -in her room,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_448" id="page_448"></a>{448}</span> as Ronald was doing so near to her, with a heavy heart, -notwithstanding her joy, wondering and questioning with herself what the -life was to be that lay before her. A settled home, a good man to stand -by her, a lovely child. What more could woman want in this world? The -crisis could not continue as it was now; some ground of possibility must -be come to, some foundation on which to build their future life. To -think of accompanying her husband to Edinburgh, taking possession of her -uncle’s house, establishing herself in it, he the master of every thing, -made her heart sick. If they had stolen his money from old Sir Robert, -it would have been less dreadful than thus to take every thing from him, -in defiance of all his wishes, as soon as he was dead, when he could -assert his own will no more. If she could remain where she was, Lily -felt that she could bear it better. But this was only one part of the -question before her which had to be settled. She—who had become -Ronald’s wife in the fervor and enthusiasm of a foolish young love, who -had lived on his coming, on the hope of his return, on the dream of that -complete and perfect union before God and man in which nobody could -shame them or throw a shadow on their honor—to find herself now, after -being betrayed and deceived and outraged, her heart torn out of her -breast, her child out of her arms, the truth out of her life, in the -position of the happy woman, her home assured, her husband by her side, -her child in her arms—to be called upon to thank God for it, to take up -her existence as if no cloud had covered it, and face the world with a -smiling face, forgetting all that interval of misery and deprivation and -falsehood! Her steps became quicker and quicker as the tide of her -thoughts rose. Amid all the surroundings, which were those of perfect -peace—the child asleep in its cradle, the soft undertones of the -attendant women—yet all that passion and agony within!</p> - -<p>But Lily knew this could not be. Dreadful reason and necessity faced her -like two dumb images of fate. Some way of living had to be found, some -foundation on which<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_449" id="page_449"></a>{449}</span> to build the new, changed, disenchanted life. She -had no desire to shame Ronald in the sight of his friends, to make her -indignation, her disappointment, the property of the world. There would -be critics enough to judge him and his schemes to secure Sir Robert’s -money. It was hers, in the loyalty of a wife, to take her share of the -burden, to let it be believed, at least, that all had been done with her -consent; and obnoxious as this was to Lily, she forced her mind to it as -a thing that had to be. That was, however, an outside matter; the worst -of the question was within: how were they to live together side by side, -to share all the trivialities of life, to watch over together the growth -of their child, to decide together all the questions of existence, like -two who were one, who were all in all to each other—these two who were -so far and so fatally apart? But Lily did not disguise from herself that -this must be done. She calmed herself down with a strong exertion of her -will, and prepared herself to meet her husband, to discuss with him, as -far as was possible, the future conditions of their life.</p> - -<p>She had turned to leave her room in order to join Ronald and proceed to -this discussion when the silence of the house was suddenly disturbed by -a shriek of horror and dismay: no little cry, but one that pierced the -silence like a knife, sharp, sudden, terrible, followed by a voice, in -disjointed sentences, declaiming, praying, crying out like a prophet or -a madman. The two women came rushing to Lily from the outer room, struck -with terror. What was it? Who was it that was speaking? The voice was -not known to any of them; the sound of the broken words, loud, as if -close to their ears, gradually becoming intelligible, yet without any -meaning they could understand, drove them wild with terror. “What is -it?” they all cried. Was it some madman who had broken into the house? -Lily cast a glance—the mother’s first idea—to see that all was safe -with the child, and then hastened through the empty drawing-room, where -she expected to find Ronald. The door was open, and through the doorway -there appeared<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_450" id="page_450"></a>{450}</span> a tragic, awful figure, a woman with her hands sometimes -lifted to her head, sometimes wildly flung into the air, her voice -growing hoarser, giving forth in terrible succession those broken -sentences, in wild prayer, exhortation, invective, it was impossible to -say which. Some locks of her hair, disturbed by the motion of her hands, -hung loose on her forehead, her eyes were wildly enlarged and staring, -her lips loose and swollen with the torrent of passionate sound. For a -moment Lily stood fixed, terrified, thinking it a stranger, some one she -had never seen before, and the first words were like those of a prayer.</p> - -<p>“Lord hae mercy! Lord hae mercy! Swear ye didna lay a finger on him, no -a finger! Swear ye didna touch him, man! Oh, the bonnie lad! oh, the -bonnie lad!” Then a shriek again, as from something she saw. “Tak’ him -up gently, tak’ him softly! his head, his head! tak’ care of his head! -Oh, the bonnie lad, the bonnie lad! Lord hae mercy, mercy! Say ye didna -lay a finger on him! Swear ye didna touch him! Oh, his head, his head, -it’s his head! Oh, men, lift him like a bairn! Lord hae mercy, hae -mercy! Say ye didna lay a finger on him! Oh, the bonnie lad, the bonnie -lad!” The wild figure clasped its hands, watching intently something -going on below, which now became audible to the terrified watchers -also—sounds of men’s footsteps, of hurried shuffling and struggling, -audible through the broken shrieks and outcries of the woman at the top -of the stairs.</p> - -<p>“Who is it?” cried Lily, breathless with terror, falling back upon her -attendants behind her.</p> - -<p>“Katrin, Katrin, Katrin!” cried Beenie, carried away by the wild -contagion of the moment; “she’s gone mad, she’s gone out of her senses! -Mem, come back to your ain room; come back, this is nae place for you!”</p> - -<p>Katrin! was it Katrin, this wild figure? Lily darted out and caught her -by the arm.</p> - -<p>“Katrin! what has happened? Is it you that have been crying so? Katrin, -whatever it is, compose yourself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_451" id="page_451"></a>{451}</span> Come and tell me what has happened! -Is it Dougal? What is it? We will do every thing, every thing that is -possible.”</p> - -<p>Katrin turned her changed countenance upon her mistress; her swollen -lips hanging apart ceased their utterance with a gasp. She looked wildly -down the stairs, then, putting her hands upon Lily’s shoulders, pushed -her back into the room, signing to Robina behind. “Keep her away, keep -her——” she seemed to them to say, making wild motions with her hands -to the rooms beyond. Her words were too indistinct to be understood, but -her gestures were clear enough.</p> - -<p>“Oh, mem,” cried Beenie, “it will be something that’s no for your eyes! -For mercy’s sake, bide here and let me gang and see!”</p> - -<p>“Whatever has happened, it is for me to see to it,” said Lily. And then, -disengaging herself from them, she said, for the first time very gravely -and calmly: “My husband must have gone out. Go and look for him. -Whatever has happened, it is he who ought to be here.”</p> - -<p>She got down stairs in time to see the stumbling, staggering figures of -the men carrying him into the library. But it was not till some time -afterward that Lily had any suspicion what it was. She thought it was -Dougal, who had met with some dreadful accident. She had the calmness in -this belief to send off at once for a doctor in two different -directions; and, having been begged by her uncle’s valet not to go into -the room till the doctor came, obeyed him without alarm, and went out to -the door to look for Ronald. It was strange he should have gone out at -this moment, but how could he know that any thing would be wanted to -make his presence indispensable? Most likely he was angry with her for -keeping him waiting, for talking to Helen Blythe when there were things -so much more important in hand. She went out to the door to look for -him, not without a sense that to have him to refer to in such an -emergency was something good, nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_452" id="page_452"></a>{452}</span> without the thought that it would -please him to see her looking out for him over the moor.</p> - -<p class="cspcb">. . . . . . . . . . . . .</p> - -<p>Ronald never spoke again. If his death was not instantaneous in point of -fact, it was so virtually, for he never recovered consciousness. He had -fallen with great force down the stairs from the worn upper step, which -had failed his foot as he made that recoil backward from Dougal’s -threatening advance—the step of which he had so often spoken in half -derision, half seriousness, as a danger for any old man. Neither he nor -any one else could have supposed it was a danger for Ronald, so young, -so full of energy and strength. And many were the reflections, it need -not be said, upon the vicissitudes of life and the fate of the young -man, just after long waiting come into possession of all that was best -in life—fortune and happiness, and all the rest. The story was told all -over the country, from one house to another, and in Edinburgh, where he -was so well known. To have waited so long for the happiness of his life -and then not to enjoy it for a week, to be seized by those grim fangs of -fate in the moment of his victory, in the first hour of his joy! The -papers were not as bold in those days as now. The fashion of -personalities had not come in unless when something very scandalous, -concealed under initials, was to be had. But there was nothing -scandalous in Ronald Lumsden’s story.</p> - -<p>In the enquiry that followed there was at first an attempt to suggest -that Dougal, who was shown to have been always in opposition to him, and -sometimes to have uttered half threats of what he would do if he could -get his hands on that birky from Edinburgh, was instrumental in causing -his death. And poor Katrin, changed into an old woman, with gray hair -that would not be kept in order under her white cap, and lips that hung -apart and could scarcely utter a word clearly, was examined before the -procurator, especially as to what she meant by the words which she had -been heard by all in the house to repeat as<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_453" id="page_453"></a>{453}</span> she stood screaming at the -head of the stairs: “Swear you never lifted a finger upon him!” Were -these directions she was giving to her husband in case of any future -investigation? or was she adjuring him to satisfy her, to let her know -the truth? But Katrin was in no condition to explain to any one, much -less to the procurator in his court, what she had meant. But there was -no proof against Dougal, and every evidence of truth in his story; and -any doubt that might subsist in the minds of persons apt to doubt every -thing, and to believe the worst in every case, died away into silence -after a while. It is possible that the possibility harmed him, though, -as he retained his place and trust in Dalrugas, even that was of no -great consequence; but Katrin never was, as the country folk said, “her -own woman” again. She never could get out of her eyes the horror of that -sudden fall backward, the sound against the stone wall, on the stone -steps. In the middle of the night, years after, she would wake the -house, calling upon her husband, with pathetic cries, to swear he never -laid a finger on him. This made their lives miserable, though they did -not deserve it; for Katrin knew at the bottom of her heart, as Dougal -knew—but having said it once, would not repeat—that he laid no finger -on Ronald, nor ever, save in the emptiest of words, meant him any harm.</p> - -<p>Lily was lost for a time in a horror and grief of which compunction was -the sharpest part. Her heart-recoil from her husband, her sense of the -impossibility of life by his side, her revulsion against him, -overwhelmed her now more bitterly, more terribly, than the poignant -recollections of happiness past which overwhelm many mourners. The only -thing that gave her a little comfort in those heavy depths was the -remembrance of the moment when, all unknowing that he could never again -come to her, she had gone out to look for Ronald over the moor. There -might have been comfort to her after a while in that moor, which had -been the confidant of so many of her thoughts of him; but to go up and -down, in all the common<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_454" id="page_454"></a>{454}</span> uses of life, the stairs upon which he died was -impossible. She felt a compunction the more to leave the scene of all -the happier days, the broken life which yet was often so sweet, which -had been the beginning of all. It seemed almost an offence against him -to leave a place so connected with his image, but still it was -impossible to remain. There was a little mark upon the wall which made -them all shudder. And Lily was terrified when her baby was carried up or -down those stairs: the surest foot might stumble where he had stumbled, -and it is not true that the catastrophes of life do not repeat -themselves. Life is all a series of repetitions; and why not that as -well as a more common thing?</p> - -<p>It was this above all things else that made her leave the house of her -fathers, the place where her tragedy had been played out, from its -heedless beginning to its dreadful, unthought-of end. It was not so -common then as now for the wrecked persons of existence to betake -themselves over the world to the places where the sun shines brightest -and the skies are most blue; but still, when the wars were all well -over, it was done by many, and the young widow, with her beautiful -child, and her two women attendants, was met with by many people who -knew, or were told by those who knew, her strange story and pitied her -with all their hearts. They pitied her for other sufferings than those -which were really hers. Those that were attributed to her were common -enough and belong to the course of nature; the others were different, -but perhaps not less true. But it cannot be denied either that as there -was a certain relief even in the first shock of Lily’s grief, a sense of -deliverance from difficulties beyond her power to solve, so there was a -rising of her heart from its oppression, a rebound of nature and life -not too long delayed. Her child made every thing easy to her, and made, -all the more for coming back to her so suddenly, a new beginning of -life. And that life was not unhappy, and had many interests in it -notwithstanding the fiery ordeal with which it began.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_455" id="page_455"></a>{455}</span></p> - -<p>Helen Blythe came back to Kinloch-Rugas within the year, bringing her -husband with her. He was not, perhaps, reformed and made a new man of, -as he vowed he would be in her hands. Perhaps, except in moments of -exaltation, she had not expected that. But she did what she had soberly -declared to be the mission of many women—she “pulled him through.” They -settled upon her little property and farmed it more or less well, more -or less ill, according as Alick could be kept “steady,” and Helen’s -patience. Two children came, both more or less pathetically careful, -from their birth, of their father; and the household, though it bore a -checkered existence, was happy on the whole. When Helen saw the Manse -under the chill celibate rule of the new minister, she was very sorry -for him, but entertained no regrets; and when, later in life, he -married, the preciseness of the new establishment moved her to many a -quiet laugh, and the private conviction, never broken, that, in her own -troubled existence, always at full strain, with her “wild” Alick but -partially reformed, and the many roughnesses of the farmer’s life, her -ambitions for her boy, and her comfort in her girl, she was better off -than in her old sphere. She did not make her husband perfect, but she -“pulled him through.” Perhaps, had she taken the reins of that wild -spirit into her hands at first, she might have made him all that could -have been wished; but as it was she gave him a possible life, a -standing-ground when he had been sinking in the waves, a habitation and -a name.</p> - -<p>Lily came back to the North to establish herself in a house more modern -and comfortable, and less heavy with associations, than Dalrugas, some -years after these events, and there was much friendship between her and -the old minister’s daughter, who had been so closely woven with the most -critical moments of her life. They were different in every possible -respect, but above all in their view of existence. Helen had her serene -faith in her own influence and power to shape the other lives which she -felt to be in her charge, to support her always. But to Lily there<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_456" id="page_456"></a>{456}</span> -seemed no power in herself to affect others at all. She, so much more -vivacious, stronger, to all appearance of higher intelligence, had been -helpless in her own existence, able for no potent action, swept by the -movements of others into one fated path, loved, yet incapable of -influencing any who loved her. She was now a great deal better off, her -life a great deal brighter, with all manner of good things within her -reach, than Helen, on her little bit of land, pushing her rough husband, -with as few detours as possible, along the path of life, and smiling -over her hard task. Lily was a wealthy woman, with a delightful boy, and -all those openings of new hope and interest before her in him which give -a woman perhaps a more vivid happiness than any thing strictly her own. -But the one mother trembled a little, while the other looked forward -serenely to an unbroken tranquil course of college prizes and bursaries, -and at the end a good manse, and perhaps a popular position for her son. -What should Lily have for hers? She had much greater things to hope for. -Would it be hers to stand vaguely in the way of Fate, to put out -ineffectual hands, to feel the other currents of life as before sweep -her away? Or could she ever stand smiling, like simple Helen, holding -the helm, directing the course, conscious of power to defeat all harm -and guide toward all good? But that only the course of the years could -show.</p> - -<p class="c">THE END<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_457" id="page_457"></a>{457}</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="cbig"><span class="smcap">By</span> W. D. HOWELLS.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50.</p> - -<p>THE COAST OF BOHEMIA. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50.</p> - -<p>THE WORLD OF CHANCE. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50; Paper, 60 cents.</p> - -<p>THE QUALITY OF MERCY. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50; Paper, 75 cents.</p> - -<p>AN IMPERATIVE DUTY. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00; Paper, 50 cents.</p> - -<p>A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. Two Volumes. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00; -Illustrated, 12mo, Paper, $1 00.</p> - -<p>THE SHADOW OF A DREAM. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00; Paper, 50 cents.</p> - -<p>ANNIE KILBURN. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50; Paper, 75 cents.</p> - -<p>APRIL HOPES. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50; Paper, 75 cents.</p> - -<p>CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY, <span class="smcap">and Other Stories</span>. Illustrated. Post 8vo, -Cloth, $1 25.</p> - -<p>A BOY’S TOWN. 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Y. Tribune.</i></p> - -<p>There are no suggestions of mediocrity. The pathos is true, the -irony delicate, the satire severe when its subject is unworthy, the -comedy sparkling, and the tragedy, as we have said, inevitable. One -or two more such books, and the fame of the artist would be dim -beside that of the novelist.—<i>N. Y. Evening Post.</i></p></div> - -<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Published by</span> HARPER & BROTHERS, <span class="smcap">New York</span>.</p> - -<div class="blockquott"><p>☛ <i>The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be -sent by publishers, postage prepaid, to any part of the United -States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnotes"><p class="cb">FOOTNOTE:</p> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> There is a scheme in consideration now, I believe, to -restore that noble street out of its degradation to something like the -stateliness of old, through the patriotic exertions of Professor -Geddes.</p></div> -</div> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Sir Robert's Fortune, by Margaret Oliphant - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE *** - -***** This file should be named 53744-h.htm or 53744-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/7/4/53744/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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