“Oh! Come now, ain’t you a little too hard on Rosie,” said Mr Snow, expostulatingly. He could not bear that his pet should be found fault with. “I call that as cruel a thing as a woman can do, and Rosie would never do it, I hope.”
“Not with a conscious desire to give pain. But she is a bonny creature, and she is learning her own power, as they all do sooner or later; and few make so good a use of such power as they might do;” and Mrs Snow sighed.
“You don’t think there is anything in what Mrs Grove said about Graeme and her friend I have heard so much about?” asked Mr Snow, after a pause.
“I dinna ken. I would believe it none the readier that yon foolish woman said it.”
“She seems kind of down, though, these days, don’t she? She’s graver and quieter than she used to be,” said Mr Snow, with some hesitation. He was not sure how his remark would be taken.
“Oh! well, maybe. She’s older for one thing,” said his wife, gravely. “And she has her cares; some of them I see plainly enough, and some of them, I daresay, she keeps out of sight. But as for Allan Ruthven, it’s not for one woman to say of another that, she has given her heart unsought. And I am sure of her, that whatever befalls her, she is one of those that need fear no evil.”
Chapter Thirty Five.
“It is a wonder to me, Miss Graeme,” said Mrs Snow, after one of their long talks about old times—“it is a wonder to me, that minding Merleville and all your friends there as well as you do, you should never have thought it worth your while to come back and see us.”