“Ae queston afore I gang, Peter,” he said. “—What for didna ye tell me what fowk was sayin’ aboot me—anent Lizzy Findlay?”
“’Cause I didna believe a word o’ ’t, an’ I wasna gaein’ to add to yer troubles.”
“Lizzy never mootit sic a thing?”
“Never.”
“I was sure o’ that!—Noo I’ll awa’ to Kirkbyres—God help me! I wad raither face Sawtan an’ his muckle tyke.—But dinna ye expec’ ony news. Gien yon ane kens, she’s a’ the surer no to tell. Only ye sanna say I didna du my best for ye.”
It was the hardest trial of the will Malcolm had yet had to encounter. Trials of submission he had had, and tolerably severe ones: but to go and do what the whole feeling recoils from is to be weighed only against abstinence from what the whole feeling urges towards. He walked determinedly home. Stoat saddled a horse for him while he changed his dress, and once more he set out for Kirkbyres.
Had Malcolm been at the time capable of attempting an analysis of his feeling towards Mrs Stewart, he would have found it very difficult to effect. Satisfied as he was of the untruthful—even cruel nature of the woman who claimed him, and conscious of a strong repugnance to any nearer approach between them, he was yet aware of a certain indescribable fascination in her. This, however, only caused him to recoil from her the more—partly from dread lest it might spring from the relation asserted, and partly that, whatever might be its root, it wrought upon him in a manner he scarcely disliked the less that it certainly had nothing to do with the filial. But his feelings were too many and too active to admit of the analysis of any one of them, and ere he reached the house his mood had grown fierce.
He was shown into a room where the fire had not been many minutes lighted. It had long narrow windows, over which the ivy had grown so thick, that he was in it some moments ere he saw through the dusk that it was a library—not half the size of that at Lossie House, but far more ancient, and, although evidently neglected, more study-like.
A few minutes passed, then the door softly opened, and Mrs Stewart glided swiftly across the floor with outstretched arms.
“At last!” she said, and would have clasped him to her bosom.