“I dare say ye may have a guess as to what her answer might be?”
“Mr Dawson, give me your leave to ask her. I have not seen her for years. Yes, I have seen her—but she has not seen me, and we have not spoken a word to each other, since the day before May’s marriage.”
“And I mind ye left in a hurry. Did she send ye awa’?”
“No. I did not speak to her; but if I had stayed I must have spoken. And what would you have thought of my pretensions beside those of Captain Harefield? And indeed, I knew well that, except for my love of her, I wasna her equal. So I said, I will forget her and I went away?”
“That’s a long time since. And ye have never seen her again?”
“Yes. I have seen her. I saw her once in the Park riding with her brother and Captain Harefield, and I saw her looking at the pictures among all the great folk, and I used to see her whiles, playing in the garden with her sister’s bairns.”
“And that was the way ye took to forget her?” said Mr Dawson dryly.
“No. I had given that up as impossible. That was the way I took to teach myself the folly of remembering her.”
“And what has happened to make it less like folly now?”
“Well,” said Captain Calderwood after a pause, “the first gleam of hope I got was when Sir Percy Harefield proposed to take ship with me on the ‘Ben Nevis.’ He has gotten his answer, I thought. And I vowed that if ever I came home again I would speak to you—”