There are some women whom we admire for their dazzling skin; for their fine hair, or their sparkling eyes; for their dimpled hands, their handsome ankles, or their necks of snow; but in every point of form and feature fair Lily was admirable. She was one of those magnificent beings that appear but once in a century. She was then the wonder, as she is still the boast, of all Cromar and the Garioch.
Her violet-coloured eyes were soft and brilliant, but their lashes were of the darkest brown; and her hair was of that bright hue which alternates between auburn and gold, like the tresses attributed to Venus, or to Scotland's martyred Mary. Her feet and hands were small, but beautifully proportioned, and nothing could be more alluring than the sound of her sweet voice; nothing more attractive than the happy vivacity and brilliance of her manner, which was full of pretty retort and merry repartee.
Cousin Kenneth felt conscious that she was more than beautiful—that she was supremely innocent and good; and he loved her with a quiet depth of passion, which, as it was based on the most perfect feeling of security, knew no warp or interruption in its current. Though he still called her his "dear little wifie," a change had, of course, come over them since he had first been taught to say so; for now the time approached when she was to become—as he said—"his dear little bride in earnest."
Kenneth Logie was, more than ever, all the world to Lily! Save Halbert Gordon, she had never been intimately acquainted with any other man; and, though he was eminently handsome, there was a something in his air and in his aspect, that made her shrink from the man still more than she had shrunk from the boy. Yet Halbert was not without many external graces; he had a swarthy cheek and a dark fierce eye, with a strong and well knit figure. He carried a sword, which he used as if he had been born with it; he could ride the wildest horses, break the strongest lances, throw the heaviest hammers, and hit the most distant targets with the arrow or bullet; but there was a certain air about him, somewhat between the soldier and the bravo, that Kenneth never cared to imitate. Being laird of the moated Tower he was a lesser baron, and head of a branch of the house of Huntly, while poor Kenneth was but a penniless orphan, and in right of his future wife was destined to be merely the gudeman of Culbleine.
At county meetings, at weaponshows, at kirk or market, wherever Halbert presented himself, with a falcon on his dexter thumb, a sword and dagger in his belt, a velvet mantle dangling on his left shoulder; his doublet covered with lace, his bombasted trunk breeches and gold spurs, his bonnet slouched over his fierce and devil-may-care dark eyes—he enforced respect, and completely overshadowed the less assuming, but assuredly not less brave, Kenneth Logie, who was inoffensive and quiet, as the other was offensive and quarrelsome. Gordon was rakish and libertine; so old Jock of the Cleugh had every reason to be satisfied with his pupil, whom he had trained up in the path which he thought most proper for a gentleman and soldier to pursue. Thus, in his twentieth year, Gordon's stormy and licentious manners, together with his fierce disposition, made him a terror and a proverb in the quiet and pastoral district of Cromar.
Save in occasional rides or chance walks, he never now saw the Lily of Culbleine; for, although the chimneys of their dwellings were visible from each other's windows, difference of faith, and certain dark rumours, political and religious, which were then floating through Scotland, made still wider that gulf between "Catholic and Presbyterian" which had always separated their mothers as aliens and enemies. In short, an armed insurrection of the Scottish Catholics, to co-operate with a Spanish invasion of England, and to avenge the murder of Queen Mary, was hourly expected; and James VI., with the Calvinists of the kingdom, were watchful and on the alert. Thus, Gordon, though he cared not a rush for religion or any thing else when a pretty woman was concerned, was restrained from visiting as a man, the scenes where he had played as a boy, for his haughty soul could not brook the idea of being an intruder. In a word, this wild gallant loved Lily as he hated Kenneth, with his whole heart and his whole soul.
A region of fierce and sudden impulses, his breast knew but two sentiments; for one cousin, love—for the other, hatred; and both these sentiments were the offspring of an indomitable pride. The jealousy of the sullen boy had become the settled hatred of the haughty man; and the age was one when the bold Scot owned no laws save those which the heart dictated and the sword enforced.
In the gloomy solitude of his mother's Tower he brooded over these things, and envied Kenneth the society of a being so beautiful and so winning; for he knew—to his agony—that the cousins were ever together, where whilome they had played in childhood—that they read the same books—that they had still but one heart and one soul between them. The children had grown up into lovers, and he knew that, to them, a third companion would be intolerable.
Full of bitterness as these thoughts swelled up in his fiery and resentful heart, he would leap on horseback and gallop towards the Forest or the Lea, in the hope of obtaining a glimpse of Lily; and when he did see her—
"A thousand furies!" he would exclaim, and abruptly turn horse; "that puling ass is ever by her side!" Once he reined in his horse by the margin of the Dee, that it might drink of the gurgling stream. The place was beautiful. Cool and dark, deep and still, the river glided over its brown pebbles, and scarcely a sunbeam reached it through the thick foliage of that leafy glen, for overhead the trees entwined their branches like the arches of a vast cathedral; and the coo of the cushat-dove, or the voice of the mavis alone woke the echoing dingles. From gazing dreamily at the trout darting in the calm depth of the summer pool, the sound of voices made Gordon raise his head, and lo!