"When you ran away from school," he interrupted with unexpected coldness. "I was almost inclined, when you refused to enter the carriage, to leave you on the road. If I have given you protection it is for reasons I do not care to explain. I have told you, I do not want gratitude. The tie between us is a voluntary one. You are free as air, young lady, but always with a risk. Your acts will not be disobediences, though they may be imprudences. Distinctly remember you are your own mistress. Keep your secrets if you have any. I do not demand your confidence."
"Free as air!" rang through Meg's heart. "I am my own mistress; free to meet my friend again."
After this extraordinary ebullition of candor from Sir Malcolm, the old gentleman's kindness seemed to regain its late level. Meg even fancied that he was kinder, as if he endeavored thus to salve any wound to her feelings which his temporary harshness might have occasioned.
Still he had said she was free as air, and Meg now felt justified in acting as her heart impelled her. The winter came and went, but it brought no sense of dreariness or bleakness to Meg. She had found the friend of her childhood, and the reflection of her childhood's days shone over everything. It was no wonder that she felt some of the charm of the old companionship with him who had been good to her when all the world had neglected her; and the memory of whose kindness had set a halo about the memory of her forlorn life.
She asked herself no questions concerning the nature of this new interest; she knew only that until it came back to her she was as one walled in, and without daylight. The real Meg had lived captive in a state of repression; to no one had she ventured to tell her impressions; but to this friend she could speak of the most trivial event, and confide the most intimate thought. He drew her out with a frank tenderness that won her simple trust. There grew a fascination to walk and to talk with him; to tell him all that had happened to her since the day of their parting. She had never forgotten him; the thought of him had ever dwelt in her mind, ready to start up and welcome him at his coming. And although it was still her pleasure and her duty to minister to her benefactor's need, yet by his own injunction she felt herself free to yield to the refreshment and delight of those meetings.
They met at sunset, after the journalist's work was done, in the wood behind the house; and their trysting-place was an elm.
"It looks like an old wizard," said Mr. Standish, pointing to the leafless tree standing gaunt against the dying light.
"Old Merlin!" said Meg; "and there is the eerie brightness about him. He is going to throw a spell over us."
The prediction proved true; a spell was cast about Meg's life, and she loved no spot on earth as she loved the place by that tree.
No young girl ever set forth to her first ball with more expectation and longing than did Meg feel in anticipation of some new chat with the lost friend whom she had found again. Endless, endless appeared to her the sources of interesting conversation and of sentiment that he had at his command, and each time they met and talked it seemed to her that he opened a new world of thought and imagination for her spirit to dwell in.