“I am one of the ‘all’ Alick, remember,” she said, laughing.
There had been a time when Alick would indignantly have denied this assertion; but he remembered North Kemms church, and held his peace.
“You are angry with me,” she went on, noticing his hesitation. “Perhaps, if you knew everything, you would be sorry.” And, with that, Bessie turned and walked into the house, leaving Alick, who certainly did not know everything, in a state of wonderment.
Why should he be sorry for Bessie? For himself he might feel sorry that two men stood between him and the prize he had vaguely began to covet; but where was the need of pitying her? If she did not like Gilbert, why had she accepted him? If she did like him, why had she gone to North Kemms to meet another lover?
But was he a lover? Alick had read a sufficient number of old romances obtained from Miss Carfort, who kept a very small circulating library in South Kemms, to be well aware that the walk across the fields, the evidently pre-arranged meeting, the note secreted between the leaves of Bessie’s prayer-book, did not of themselves justify him in the conclusion that Miss Ormson was carrying on a clandestine love affair. The man might have some hold on her. He might have known her before her engagement to Gilbert; he might have some power over her father; he might be in possession of some secret of the family: so the lad argued; but still the conviction remained strong within him that Bessie was playing a double game; though how she contrived to do so puzzled him beyond measure.
No more walks across the fields; no lonely excursions to Fifield post-office; no solitary rambles, even within the limits of the farm.
It might not perhaps be generous on his part to do so, but he watched the young lady as a cat might watch a mouse, and the more he watched the more mystified he grew.
If she were carrying on a secret correspondence with any one, it was impossible she could treat Gilbert Harcourt as she did. From morning till night the pair were together “like a pair of dear turtle-doves,” as Mrs. Black sentimentally declared. Never a cross word did Bessie bestow on her betrothed; never a saucy speech did she address to him. Let who else would, feel the sharpness of her tongue—and it was sharp at times, as a serpent’s tooth, according to Mrs. Ormson; and a wasp’s sting, to quote Mr. Black—Mr. Harcourt always escaped scot-free.
Not even to Heather was Bessie so uniformly agreeable as to Mr. Harcourt; and another strange thing Alick noticed came to pass about the same time—Bessie ceased in her conversation to be either sententious or melancholy.
In Mr. Harcourt’s presence she never spoke about desiring to ripple by, like the Kemm; she never talked concerning the world’s barrenness; about the dreariness of human life.