Here Aggie broke down. A burst of silent weeping, like that of one desiring no comfort, followed. Suddenly she ceased and rose, and they walked home without a word.
When Cosmo came down in the morning, Aggie was gone.
CHAPTER LX.
REPOSE.
Cosmo had no need of a very searching examination of his heart to know that it was mainly the wish to make her some poor return for her devotion, conjoined with the sincere desire to retain her company, that had influenced him in the offer she had been too wise and too genuinely loving to accept. He did not fall into any depths of self-blame, for, whatever its kind, his love was of quality pure and good. The only bitterness his offer bore was its justification of Agnes’s departure.
But Grizzie saw no justification of it anywhere.
“What I’m to du wantin’ her, I div not ken. No becomin’ , quo’ he, for a lass like her to bide wi’ a bachelor like himsel’!
“H’ard ever onybody sic styte! As gien she had been a lady forsooth! I micht wi’ jist as muckle sense objec’ to bidin’ wi’ him mysel’! But I s’ du what I like, an’ lat fowk say ’at they like, sae lang as I’m na fule i’ my ain e’en!
I’m ower white, Mr. Gled, for you.
Ow na! ye’re no that, bonny doo.”
But by degrees Cosmo grew gently ashamed of himself that he had so addressed Agnes. He saw in the thing a failure in respect, a wrong to her dignity. That she had taken it so sweetly did not alter its character. Seeming at the time to himself to be going against the judgment of the world, and treating it with the contempt it always more or less deserves, he had in reality been acting in no small measure according to it! For had there not been in him a vague condescension operant all the time? Had he not been all but conscious of the feeling that his position made up for any want in his love? Had she been conventionally a lady, instead of an angel in peasant form, would he have been so ready to return her kindness with an offer of marriage? There was little conceit in supposing that some, even of higher position than his own, would have accepted the offer on lower terms; but knowing Aggie as he did, he ought not to have made it to her: she was too large and too fine for such an experiment. This he now fully understood; and had he not been brought up with her from childhood as with an elder sister, she might even now have begun to be a formidable rival to the sweet memories of Joan’s ladyhood. For he saw in her that which is at the root, not only of all virtue, but of all beauty, of all grandeur, of all growth, of all attraction. Every charm—in its essence, in its development, in its embodiment, is a flower of the tree of life, whose root is the truth. I see the smile of the shallow philosopher, thinking of a certain lady to him full of charm, who has no more love for the truth than a mole for the light. But that lady’s charm does not spring out of her; it has been put upon her, and she will soon destroy it. It comes of truth otherwhere, and will one day leave her naked and not lovely. The truth was in Agnes merely supreme. To have asked such a one to marry him for reasons lower than the highest was good ground for shame. Not therefore even then was he painfully ashamed, for he felt safe with Agnes, as with the elder sister that pardons everything.
It was some little time before they had any news of her; but they heard at last that she had rented Grannie’s cottage from her grand-daughter, her own aunt, and was going to have a school there for young children. Cosmo was greatly pleased, for the work would give scope to some of her highest gifts and best qualities, while it would keep her within reach of possible service. Nothing however can part those who are of the true mind towards the things that are .