"You see," she said a minute later, as if talking to herself, "I have no mother. I never saw her; at least, I cannot remember ever seeing her, and she was not Scotch."
"No?" said Douglas. "Then we have something in common: my people on my father's side were Scotch, but all my mother's people belong to the South."
"And mine, too," said the girl. "But what can it be to you?" And again she seemed to be thinking of something far away.
"Do you know," said the young man, "you are the first person I have spoken to since morning? I have been on the tramp all the day. I had my lunch by the side of a stream, and I have kept away from every house. I wanted to be alone. I expect that is why I want you to tell me why you don't seem happy."
Again the girl looked at him curiously. "I think I should go mad sometimes," she said, "if I did not think my dead mother was near me. I do not mean when I am out here alone on the moors, but it's home that makes it so hard."
"Tell me," said the young fellow. It did not seem to him as though he were talking to a stranger at all. The girl did not belong to his class, and evidently her associations and education removed her far from him, yet he had an instinctive sympathy with her. After all, I suppose every young fellow is attracted by a young pretty face, wild, longing eyes, and beautiful features suggestive of romance and poetry and unsatisfied yearnings.
"You see," said the girl, "my father was a fisherman. Years ago, when he was a young man, he sailed down the West of England, and his boat harboured at a little Cornish village called St. Ives. There he met my mother, and I have heard him say that she had Spanish blood in her veins. Anyhow, they fell in love with each other and got married.
"I suppose her father and mother were very angry, and so he took her away from St. Ives altogether, and came back here to Scotland. Just at that time his father died, and left our farm to him. So my father gave up fishing, and brought mother here, but I had not been born long before mother died, so you see I never knew her. My father did not remain unmarried long: the second time he married a Scotswoman, and I hate the Scotch."
"Why?" asked Graham.
"Oh, well, my father says that the Cornish people are wild and imaginative, and my stepmother hasn't any imagination. Years ago I used to read Burns's poems and Sir Walter Scott's stories, but mother took the books from me. She says a farmer's daughter has no time for poetry and romance, but I love it all the same. That is why I am only happy when I am out on the moors alone."