“You look so strangely bright!” she said, “as if you had seen something both marvellous and beautiful!”
The words revealed a quality of insight not hitherto manifested by Florimel. In truth, Malcolm’s whole being was irradiated by the flash of inward peace that had visited him—a statement intelligible and therefore credible enough to the mind accustomed to look over the battlements of the walls that clasp the fair windows of the senses. But Florimel’s insight had reached its limit, and her judgment, vainly endeavouring to penetrate farther, fell floundering in the mud.
“I know!” she went on: “—You’ve been to see your lady mother!”
Malcolm’s face turned white as if blasted with leprosy. The same scourge that had maddened the poor laird fell hissing on his soul, and its knotted sting was the same word mother. He turned and walked slowly away, fighting a tyrannous impulse to thrust his fingers in his ears and run and shriek.
“Where are your manners?” cried the girl after him, but he never stayed his slow foot or turned his bowed head, and Florimel wondered.
For the moment, his new-found peace had vanished. Even if the old nobility of heaven might regard him without a shadow of condescension —that self-righteous form of contempt—what could he do with a mother whom he could neither honour or love? Love! If he could but cease to hate her! There was no question yet of loving.
But might she not repent? Ah, then, indeed! And might he not help her to repent?—He would not avoid her. How was it that she had never yet sought him?
As he brooded thus, on his way to Duncan’s cottage, and, heedless of the sound of coming wheels, was crossing the road which went along the bottom of the glen, he was nearly run over by a carriage coming round the corner of a high bank at a fast trot. Catching one glimpse of the face of its occupant, as it passed within a yard of his own, he turned and fled back through the woods, with again a horrible impulse to howl to the winds the cry of the mad laird: “I dinna ken whaur I cam frae!” When he came to himself, he found his hands pressed hard on his ears, and for a moment felt a sickening certainty that he too was a son of the lady of Gersefell.
When he returned at length to the House, Mrs Courthope informed him that Mrs Stewart had called, and seen both the marquis and Lady Florimel.
Meantime he had grown again a little anxious about the laird, but as Phemy plainly avoided him, had concluded that he had found another concealment, and that the child preferred not being questioned concerning it.