“Indeed I am very sorry!” said Donal, “—though hardly so much to blame as I fear you think me.”
“You mistake me at once! You suppose I imagine you took too much wine last night! It would be absurd. I saw what you took! But we must not talk here. Come.”
She turned again, and going down, led the way to the housekeeper’s room.
They found her at work with her needle.
“Mistress Brookes,” said lady Arctura, “I want to have a little talk with Mr. Grant, and there is no fire in the library: may we sit here?”
“By all means! Sit doon, my leddy! Why, bairn! you look as cold as if you had been on the roof! There! sit close to the fire; you’re all trem’lin’!”
Lady Arctura obeyed like the child Mrs. Brookes called her, and sat down in the chair she gave up to her.
“I’ve something to see efter i’ the still-room,” said the housekeeper. “You sit here and hae yer crack. Sit doon, Mr. Grant. I’m glaid to see you an’ my leddy come to word o’ moo’ at last. I began to think it wud never be!”
Had Donal been in the way of looking to faces for the interpretation of words and thoughts, he would have seen a shadow sweep over lady Arctura’s, followed by a flush, which he would have attributed to displeasure at this utterance of the housekeeper. But, with all his experience of the world within, and all his unusually developed power of entering into the feelings of others, he had never come to pry into those feelings, or to study their phenomena for the sake of possessing himself of them. Man was by no means an open book to him—“no, nor woman neither,” but he would have scorned to supplement by such investigation what a lady chose to tell him. He sat looking into the fire, with an occasional upward glance, waiting for what was to come, and saw neither shadow nor flush. Lady Arctura sat also gazing into the fire, and seemed in no haste to begin.
“You are so good to Davie!” she said at length, and stopped.