She did not follow out her thought at the moment, but it came back to her afterwards, and on the high rocks as they watched the departing ship, she thought she saw it all clearly, and that she was content. He was her friend, and if he were May’s lover, he would still be her friend, and all the more because of that, and time would make all things that might hinder their friendship now, clear to them both.
But she did not speak to her sister about this. It was for May to speak to her, she thought at first, and after a while it would not have been easy to speak, and on the whole, silence was best. Then as she listened to her aunt’s story of their brother and Elsie, and of their father’s opposition and anger, she was not sure that silence was best. How much of it May might know, she could not tell; but sooner or later she must know it all, and if there was trouble before her, it would make it none the easier to bear, but all the heavier, the longer the knowledge was kept from her. But she shrank from speaking all the same.
“I will tell her to-night,” she said as she sat by her aunt’s side. But she did not, nor the next, and even on the third night she sat long in the dark when the house was silent, listening to the wind among the trees, and the dull sound of the sea, and the painful beating of her own heavy heart, before she found courage to go into her sister’s room.
“If she is asleep, I will not wake her.”
But May was not asleep. She had been lingering over various little things that she had found to do, and had only just put out her light when her sister softly opened the door. She seemed to sleep, however, as Jean leaned over to listen, but as she turned away, May laughed softly.
“Well, what is it? I dinna think I have done any thing so very foolish to-day—not more than usual, I mean.”
For, in her elder sisterly care for her, Jean thought it wise to drop a word of counsel now and then, and this was the hour she usually chose to do it. She stooped down and kissed her as she turned, a circumstance that did not very often occur between them. For though they loved one another dearly, they were—after the manner of their kin and country—shy of any expression of love or even of sympathy in the way of caresses.
“Is there any thing wrong?” said May startled. “Did any one ever tell you about—about our Geordie and Elsie Calderwood, May? Auntie Jean has been speaking about them to me lately.”
It was not a very good beginning, but she did not know what better to say. May raised herself up, and looked eagerly in her sister’s face.
“I have heard something. Do you mean that you only heard it the other day?”