What she thought of the episode I know not. A horror of what all well-bred people deem a scene no doubt prevailed, for she took her mother's arm, and passed away, while Cora and I followed them.
Jealousy suggested that much must have passed between them prior to my arrival, otherwise Berkeley, with all his assurance, dared not have acted as he did. This supposition was to me a source of real torture and mortification.
"When love steals into the nature," says a writer, "day by day infiltrating its sentiments, as it were, through every crevice of the being, it will enlist every selfish trait into the service, so that he who loves is half enamoured of himself; but where the passion comes with the overwhelming force of a sudden conviction, when the whole heart is captivated at once, self is forgotten, and the image of the loved one is all that presents itself."
Sleepless that night I lay, tormenting myself with the "trifles light as air," that to young men in my condition are "confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ."
At last I slept; but my dreams—those visions that come before the sleeping mind and eye towards the hours of morning—were not of her I loved, but of my pretty and playful cousin, fair-skinned and dark-haired Cora Calderwood.
CHAPTER VII.
What though our love was never told,
Or breathed in sighs alone;
By sighs that would not be controlled
Its growing strength was shown.
The touch that thrilled us with delight,
The glance, by heart untamed,
In one short moon, as brief as bright,
That tender truth proclaimed.
ALARIC WATTS.
Next morning I resolved that, if possible, it should not pass without some attempt being made to discover the state of Lady Louisa's heart—how she was affected towards me, and whether I had any chance, however remote, of reviving or securing the interest I trusted she had in me when last we met in England. But over night the snow had fallen heavily; it was six inches deep on the lawn, as Willie Pitblado told me. The Lomonds were clothed in ghastly white to their summits, and as we seemed fated to be caged up in doors all day, my chances of seeing Louisa alone would be remote indeed.
In the library and drawing-rooms I found all the guests of last night assembled, save the minister, doctor, and lawyer, who had ridden home, and save her I sought.
The snow caused universal regret, for various excursions had been in progress—some for visiting the ruined castle at Piteadie; some for riding as far as Lochleven; and others, farther still, to see the fragments that remain of the old abbey of Balmerino.