‘Yes,’ resumed his mother, as if she would be fair, ‘she does ride well! If only she were a lady, that I might ask her to ride with me! After all it’s none of my business what she is—so long as you don’t want to marry her!’ she concluded, with an attempt at a laugh.
‘But I do want to marry her, mother!’ rejoined Francis.
A short year before, his mother would have said what was in her heart, and it would not have been pleasant to hear; but now she was afraid of her son, and was silent. But it added to her torture that she must be silent. To be dethroned in castle Weelset by the daughter of one of her own tenants, for as such she thought of them, was indeed galling. ‘The impudent quean!’ she said to herself, ‘she’s ridden on her horse into the heart of the laird!’ But for the wholesome consciousness of her own shame, which she felt that her son was always sparing, she would have raged like a fury.
‘You that might have had any lady in the land!’ she said at length.
‘If I might, mother, it would be just as vain to look for her equal.’
‘You might at least have shown your mother the respect of choosing a lady to sit in her place! You drive me from the house!’
‘Mother,’ said Francis, ‘I have twice asked Kirsty Barclay to be my wife, and she has twice refused me.’
‘You may try her again: she had her reasons! She never meant to let you slip! If you got disgusted with her afterwards, she would always have her refusal of you to throw in your teeth.’
Francis laid his hand on his mother’s, and stopped her horse.
‘Mother, you compel me!’ he said. ‘When I came home ill, and, as I thought, dying, you called me bad names, and drove me from the house. Kirsty found me in a hole in the earth, actually dying then, and saved my life.’