“Tak me, than, an’ luik efter me at yer wull, Aggie; I mean what I say!” persisted Cosmo, bewildered with embarrassment and a momentary stupidity.
“Ance mair, Cosmo, dinna be a gowk,” said Agnes with severity. “Ye loe me ower little, an’ I loe you ower muckle for that.”
“Ye’re no angry at me, Aggie?” said Cosmo, almost timidly.
“Angry at ye, my bonny lad!” cried Aggie, and looking up with a world of tenderness in her eyes, and a divine glow of affection, for hers was the love so sure of itself that it maketh not ashamed, she threw her two strong, shapely honest arms round his neck; he bent his head, she kissed him heartily on the mouth, and burst into tears. Surely but for that other love that lay patient and hopeless in the depth of Cosmo’s heart, he would now have loved Aggie in a way to satisfy her, and to justify him in saying he loved her! And to that it might have come in time, but where is the use of saying what might have been, when all things are ever moving towards the highest and best for the individual as well as for the universe! —not the less that hell may be the only path to it for some—the hell of an absolute self-loathing.
Just at that moment, who should appear on the top of a broken mound of the moorland, where she stood in the light of the setting sun, but Elsie, neatly dressed, glowing and handsome! A moment she stood, then descended, a dark scorn shadowing in her eyes, and a smile on her mouth showing the whitest of teeth.
“Mr. Warlock,” she said, and took no notice of his humble companion, “my father sent me after you in a hurry as you may see,” —and she heaved a deep breath—“to say he doesn’t think the bear o’ the Gowan Brae ’ill be fit for cutting this two days, an’ they’ll gang to the corn upo’ the heuch instead. He was going to tell you himsel’, but ye was in such a hurry!”
“I’m muckle obleeged to ye, Miss Elsie,” replied Cosmo. “It’ll save me a half-mile i’ the mornin’.”
“An’ my father says,” resumed Elsie, addressing Agnes, “yer wark’s no worth yer wages.”
Aggie turned upon her with flashing eyes and glowing face.
“I dinna believe ye, Miss Elsie,” she said. “I dinna believe yer father said ever sic a word. He kens my wark’s worth my wages whatever he likes to set me til. Mair by token he wad hae tellt me himsel’! I s’ jist gang straucht back an’ speir.”