But when the neighbours were gone, and he found himself alone with her for a moment, he felt sorely tempted to change his mind. As he watched her sitting there with folded hands, so quiet and grave and sweet, so unconscious of his presence, as it seemed to him, a fear came over him—a fear as to the answer his question might receive. It was not at all a pleasant state of mind. He endured it only while he walked up and down the room two or three times; then pausing beside her, he said softly,—
“Is this my Shenac?”
She looked up with only wonder in her eyes, he saw, with a little shock of pain; but he went on,—
“Hamish gave his sister to me, to keep and cherish always. Did he never tell you?”
“I do not understand you, Mr Stewart,” said Shenac; but the sudden drooping of the eye and the rush of colour over her face seemed to say something else.
“To be my wife,” he said, sitting down beside her and drawing her gently towards him. She did not resist, but she said hastily,—
“Oh, no; I am not fit for that.”
“But if I am content, and can make you content?”
“But that is not enough. I am not fit. No; it is not humility. I know myself, and I am not fit.”
It is just possible that Mr Stewart wished that he had for that night “let well alone.”