[CHAPTER XIV.]
While the Big House was going on its way from cellar to attic, as if it had been within the sound of Bow Bells instead of in a remote Highland glen, Marjory for the first time in her life felt time heavy on her hands; a thing not to be tolerated for an instant by a young person of her views and prospects. She told herself that if this was the result of her holiday, the sooner she set to work and forgot that pleasant, idle time the better. For it had been pleasant, and Paul Macleod had been kind. But what of that? His ways were not her ways--his thoughts were not her thoughts; and then suddenly would come the memory of that short instant on Isle Shuna when they had stood hand in hand watching the Green Ray. Or was that only another result of idleness?--that she should be growing fanciful. Paul himself had denied seeing it, and after all, despite his kindness, he was the last person to have sympathy with her ideals; yet such sympathy was the only thing which could make her care for him or his society. She told herself all this, over and over again, until she believed it; for Marjory had not yet learnt to differentiate her head from her heart. Many women never learn the art, and though some, no doubt, find the difficulty lies in discovering their heads, a far greater number stop short at a calm affection in the catalogue of their emotions.
Still, for some reason or another, as yet inexplicable to the girl herself, the melodious carol of a blackbird singing his heart out in a cherry tree sent a pain to her own. It seemed to fill the world with unrest, even though the house lay still as the grave; for Mrs. Cameron and the lassies were away at the milking. She covered her ears to shut out the sound and bent closer to her book, until suddenly she found herself blindfolded by a pair of strong, slender, supple hands--hands that could not be mistaken for an instant.
"Tom!" she cried. "Oh, Tom! is it you?"
"Tom it is," said a voice with a pleasant intonation scarcely foreign, and yet assuredly not wholly English. "E' bene! Mademoiselle Grands-serieux! So this is the way you hold high holiday?"
He pointed to the open book, then, as she clung delighted to his arm, put on an air of simulated disgust, perhaps to conceal the keen joy which her welcome afforded him.
"Conic sections again, and I wandering round 'permiskus' calling for some of my relations to kill the fatted calf!"
"The prodigal didn't come 'permiskus.' He wired ahead and they saw him from afar."
"Then he didn't get an unexpected holiday, come express from Paris to Oban, and then walk thirty miles over the hills because he had missed the mail cart and was a fool----"
"But why a fool?"