MARION DECIDES
"Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth,
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
"Love is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind."
After Donald left his father he went straight to his aunt's room and, when she had finished making her pastry, she found him there, nursing his anger and sorrow with passionate tears and words of self-justification. He had kept a brave face to his father, but to his aunt-mother he wept out all his trouble, and he was comforted as one whom his mother comforteth. When Dr. Macrae asked her if she knew where Donald was she had truthfully answered, "No," but she instantly suspected, and shortened her work as much as possible in order to go to him.
They talked cautiously of his plans and prospects and, when dinner time arrived, she surreptitiously carried him a good meal upstairs; for she was not willing that the servants should discuss Donald's quarrel with his father—the Master being to them, first of all, an ecclesiastic with a suggestion of the surplice ever around him. She knew their sympathy would veer decidedly toward the Master, for Donald played the "wee sinfu' fiddle" too much, and, as he went through the halls and parlors, was always whistling some irreligious reel, or strathspey, forbye hardly keeping himself from dancing it.
He was in his aunt's sitting-room while Marion related to her the conversation she had just had with her father and, no doubt, Mrs. Caird's short and rather indifferent attention to her niece's trouble arose from the stress of his unacknowledged presence. For Donald had begged not to see Marion that evening. "She will ask me all kinds of questions about Richard," he said, "questions I cannot answer until I see him." So Marion felt as if she had been snubbed and sent off to bed with a little sermon just when she wanted to talk of Richard more than she had ever before done. Mrs. Caird explained the circumstances to her the following day, but she was more offended than satisfied by the explanation.
"You supposed, Aunt," she answered, "that I was so selfish as to be insensible to Donald's anxiety and trouble, and would put my own before his. You must have a poor opinion of me. It hurts me."
"You are too sensitive, Marion. Donald is going away from us."
"Where is he going to?"