“And you think they have run away together?” said the schoolmaster, his face beaming with what, to Clementina’s surprise, looked almost like merriment.
“Yes, I think so,” she answered. “Why not, if they choose?”
“I will say this for my friend Malcolm,” returned Mr Graham composedly, “that whatever he did I should expect to find not only all right in intention, but prudent and well-devised also. The present may well seem a rash, ill-considered affair for both of them, but——”
“I see no necessity either for explanation or excuse,” said Clementina, too eager to mark that she interrupted Mr Graham. “In making up her mind to marry him, Lady Lossie has shown greater wisdom and courage than, I confess, I had given her credit for.”
“And Malcolm?” rejoined the schoolmaster softly. “Should you say of him that he showed equal wisdom?”
“I decline to give an opinion upon the gentleman’s part in the business,” answered Clementina, laughing, but glad there was so little light in the room, for she was painfully conscious of the burning of her cheeks. “Besides, I have no measure to apply to Malcolm,” she went on, a little hurriedly. “He is like no one else I have ever talked with, and I confess there is something about him I cannot understand. Indeed, he is beyond me altogether.”
“Perhaps, having known him from infancy, I might be able to explain him,” returned Mr Graham, in a tone that invited questioning.
“Perhaps, then,” said Clementina, “I may be permitted, in jealousy for the teaching I have received of him, to confess my bewilderment that one so young should be capable of dealing with such things as he delights in. The youth of the prophet makes me doubt his prophecy.”
“At least,” rejoined Mr Graham, “the phenomenon coincides with what the master of these things said of them—that they were revealed to babes and not to the wise and prudent. As to Malcolm’s wonderful facility in giving them form and utterance, that depends so immediately on the clear sight of them, that, granted a little of the gift poetic, developed through reading and talk, we need not wonder much at it.”
“You consider your friend a genius?” suggested Clementina.