I cannot tell you, little book, either what I said, or exactly what happened after that. I only know that the moaning wind outside chanted a triumphal march, and the dying embers on my hearthstone sprang up into a brilliant illumination, and I did not care a straw for all the battles that ever were fought, and envied neither Annas Keith nor anybody else.
“Well, Hatty! I did not think you were going to be the old maid of the family!” said my Aunt Kezia.
“I did not, either, once,” was Hatty’s answer, in a low tone, but not a sad one. “Perhaps I was the best one for it, Aunt. At any rate, you and Father will always have one girl to care for you.”
We did not see Flora till the next morning. I knew that my Uncle Drummond’s letter must be that in which he answered the news of Angus’s escape, and I did not wonder if it unnerved her. She let me read it afterwards. The Laird and Lady Monksburn had plainly given up their son for ever when they heard what he had done. And knowing what I knew, I felt it was best so. I had to tell Flora my news:—to see the light die suddenly out of her dear brown velvet eyes,—will it ever come back again? And I wondered, watching her by the light of my own new-born happiness, whether Duncan Keith were as little to her as I had supposed.
I knew, somewhat later, that I had misunderstood her, that we had misinterpreted her. Her one wish seemed to be to get back home. And Father said he would take her himself as far as the Border, if my Uncle Drummond would come for her to the place chosen.
When the parting came, as we took our last kiss, I told her I prayed God bless her, and that some day she might be as happy as I was. There was a moment’s flash in the brown eyes.
“Take that wish back, Cary,” she said, quietly. “Happy as you are, the woman whom Duncan Keith loved can never be, until she meet him again at the gates of pearl.”
“That may be a long while, dear.”
“It will be just so long as the Lord hath need of me,” she answered: “and I hope, for his sake, that will be as long as my father needs me. And then— Oh, but it will be a blithe day when the call comes to go home!”