“Sir,” said she in a whisper, “I have something to give your father. He will ken best what to do with it. I had something to say to him, but maybe it is as well to say nothing. And what could I say? Tell him not to think ill of me for what I must do.”
“Allison,” said Mr Hadden gravely, “my father loves you dearly. It would break his heart to think of harm coming to you. I am afraid for you, Allison.”
“Can anything worse come to me than has come already? Tell him I will ay try to be good. And he will tell my mother, if he goes first where she has gone—” Her voice failed her.
“Have you friends anywhere to whom you can go?”
“I’ll go to Willie some time, if you take him home with you. Only it must be a long, long time first, for he will keep his eye on Willie, and he would find me. And Willie himself mustna ken where I am, for if he came to me he might be followed. I must just lose myself for a while, for if he—that man—were to find me—”
Her colour had come back, and her eyes shone with feverish brightness. What could he say to her? He tore a leaf from his note-book, and wrote his name and his American address upon it.
“Come to me and you shall have a safe home with my wife and children. Come now, or when you feel that you can come safely, though it be ten years hence. You shall have a welcome and a home.”
She gave him her hand, and thanked him, and prayed God to bless him, and then she turned to do as Janet Mair had bidden her. But first she knelt down beside the new-made grave, and, at the sight, Alexander Hadden bared and bowed his head. When he raised it again she was gone.
When the minister opened the parcel which Allison Bain had sent him, he found folded within it her marriage lines and a plain gold ring.