‘Had it not been so,’ he answered, ‘do you think I should have been so angry with you for what I saw in the Abbey-garden? Well, he may claim you now before them all. God bless you and him! Farewell! Will you not give me your hand once more for the last time?’
She must have been a strangely unfeeling lady, Mistress Mary Carmichael, to resist such an appeal, and yet the tears were brimming in her eyes despite of a roguish, happy smile on her red lips. She withheld her hand, however. Perhaps she did not wish to part quite so abruptly.
‘You are generous,’ said she, between tears and laughter, ‘and you used to be obedient—at least sometimes. Wilful always, you know, or I should not have had to chide you so often. Will you shake my—my future husband by the hand, and assure him of your good-will?’
He thought she might have spared him this, but he assented cordially. What mattered it, a little suffering, more or less? At least it would put off the parting for a few minutes.
‘Wait here an instant while I bring him!’ said she, and darted off, leaving Walter in that frame of mind which is best described by the metaphor of ‘not knowing whether he stood on his head or his heels.’
He had not long to wait, though in truth he kept no account of time. A light hurrying footstep trod the gallery once more, followed by a heavier and manlier stride. Maxwell turned round to confront his lost love, closely followed by the individual she had promised to bring.
’Tis strange how a vague, misty idea, that has puzzled us for long, will sometimes shine out on a sudden as clear as day. There was a frank, joyous expression on the stranger’s brow, a sparkle of excitement in his eye, that brought back to Maxwell’s recollection for the first time where he had seen him before the well-remembered night in the Abbey-garden. It was the same tall cavalier who had spurred his horse so gallantly into the skirmish near Hermitage, shouting his war-cry the while. It was a kinsman, then, whom she was going to marry after all.
Mary Carmichael stood silent for an instant looking from one to the other. Then she spoke out very quick, as if anxious to tell her story while she could.
‘Farewell, Master Maxwell! farewell, if indeed you mean to leave us all at such short notice. You shall not go, however without knowing my father, my dear father, who has never dared show himself openly in Scotland till to-day. And none of you ever found him out—not even you, with your sharp, suspicious eyes,’ here she began to laugh; ‘and—and—Walter, if I have seemed unkind to you, I am sorry for it now,’ here she began to cry, ‘and I hope you will forgive me, and love my father as well as I do. My dear, dear father, who has got home safe at last!’
And then she flung herself on the paternal breast and hid her face there, laughing and crying together, in a strange, wild mood, very unlike the proud, self-reliant Mary Carmichael whose tears Walter had so often wished he had the power to call forth, if only for the pleasure of drying them; but then these natures, like frozen streams melting in the sun, are proof against everything but the warmth of a great happiness.