'But the miller uttered an execration under his silver beard, put his battle-axe to the grindstone, and kept watch when next the young knight came; and then, behold, his heart seemed to die within him as he recognised—the king!
'And so in time it quickly came to pass that Edana became the wife of Duncan, King of Scotland—the same king who was slain at Cawdor—and the mother of Malcolm III., who was born at the Holy Hill, and hence an ancestress of Queen Victoria.'
With a soft yet strange smile on his face, Colville listened to this old story, and, brief though it was, Sleath, as it was not to his taste, would have yawned, had not good breeding forbade him.
'Perhaps love and romance, too, still linger among the Birks of Invermay,' said he, laughingly, and with some point in his manner; and there came a time when Mary recalled these words and saw their meaning; and now, deeming that their visit had been protracted long enough, the gentlemen rose to depart—Sleath only lingering to kiss his hand to Ellinor—surreptitiously, as he thought, but the jaunty action was detected by Colville.
Somehow, Mary thought she wished that Captain Colville—Miss Blanche Galloway's fiancé—had not called that afternoon; yet, if asked, she could not have told the reason why.
Was an interest in him growing in her heart unknown to herself—one beyond the wish that she and Ellinor had such a brother? It almost seemed so, for she felt altered in some way, but in what way she knew not, though the present and the future became curiously mingled in her thoughts, as they were just then in those of Ellinor.
Sleath was fast winning the fancy of the latter, if not her heart. She had been content with the love of Robert Wodrow and the prospect of a future with him; she thought now how different it would be to become the wife of a man who would give her rank, position, wealth, and she thought the time and 'the prince' had now come. Yet with all this it was strange that her heart never thrilled at his voice or approach, nor did her pulses quicken at the touch of his hand, as they had often done at the honest clasp of Robert Wodrow.
'Why was this?' she asked of herself.
'You are very silent, Colville,' observed Sleath, as they walked homeward together cigar in mouth.
'There is something in that girl's face which seems familiar to me, as if I had foreshadowed it in some dream!' exclaimed Colville.