For love and life; vol. 1 of 2

COLLECTION OF B R I T I S H A U T H O R S TAUCHNITZ EDITION. VOL. 1419. FOR LOVE AND LIFE BY MRS. OLIPHANT. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
“The device on his shield was a young oak tree pulled up by the roots, with the Spanish word Desdichado , signifying Disinherited.”

BY MRS. OLIPHANT, AUTHOR OF “CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,” “OMBRA,” “MAY,” ETC. COPYRIGHT EDITION. I N T W O V O L U M E S. VOL. I. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 1874. The Right of Translation is reserved.


FOR LOVE AND LIFE.
Three people were walking slowly along together by the side of the water. One of them an invalid, as was apparent by the softly measured steps of her companions, subdued to keep in harmony with hers. These two attendants were both young; the girl about twenty, a little light creature, with the golden hair so frequent in Scotland, and a face of the angelic kind, half-childish, half-visionary, over-brimming with meaning, or almost entirely destitute of it, according to the eyes with which you happened to regard her. Both she and the invalid, a handsome old woman of about seventy, were well and becomingly dressed in a homely way, but they had none of the subtle traces about them which mark the “lady” in conventional parlance. They were not in the smallest degree what people call “common-looking.” The girl’s beauty and natural grace would have distinguished her anywhere, and the old lady was even dignified in her bearing. But yet it was plain that they were of a caste not the highest. They moved along the narrow path, skirting the newly-cut stubble, with the air of people entirely at home, amid their natural surroundings. The homely farm-house within sight was evidently their home. They belonged to the place and the place to them. Notwithstanding the angelic face of the one, and the natural stateliness of the other, they were farmer folk, of a kind not unusual on that proud half-Highland soil. I will not even pretend to say that good blood gave a grace to their decayed fortunes; I do not believe their race had ever held a more exalted position than it did now. They were independent as queens, proud yet open-hearted, sociable, courteous, hospitable, possessed of many of the special virtues which ought to belong to the nobly born; but they were only farmer folk of Loch Arroch, of a family who had lived for ages on that farm, and nothing more.