“Then perhaps it would clear the haze a little if I were to name myself,” said Colin. “I am Colin Campbell of Ramore, at your ladyship’s service—once tutor to the learned and witty Charley, that hope of the house of Wodensbourne—and once also your ladyship’s humble boatman and attendant on the Holy Loch.”
“Fellow of Balliol, double-first—Coming man, and reformer of Scotland,” said Miss Matty with a laugh. “Yes, I recognise you; but I am not my ladyship just yet. I am only Matty Frankland for the moment, Sir Thomas’s niece, who has given my lady a great deal of trouble. Oh, yes; I know what she was saying to you. Girls who live in other people’s houses know by instinct what is being said about them. Oh, to be sure, it is quite true; they have been very, very kind to me; but, don’t you know, it is dreadful always to feel that people are kind. Ah! how sweet it used to be on the Holy Loch. But you have forgotten one of your qualifications, Mr. Campbell; you used to be a poet as well as tutor. I think, so far as I was concerned, it was the former capacity which you exercised with most applause. I have a drawer in my desk full of certain effusions; but, I suppose, now you are a Fellow of Balliol you are too dignified for that.”
“I don’t see any reason why I should be,” said Colin; “I was a great deal more dignified, for that matter, when I was eighteen, and a student at Glasgow College, and had very much more lofty expectations than now.”
“Oh, you always were devoted to the Kirk,” said Miss Matty; “which was a thing I never could understand—and now less than ever, when everybody knows that a man who has taken such honours as you have, has everything open to him.”
“Yes,” said Colin; “but then what everybody knows is a little vague. I should like to hear of any one thing that really is open to me except taking pupils. Of course,” said the young man, with dignity, “my mind is made up long ago, and my profession fixed; but for the good of other people in my position—and for my own good as well,” Colin added with a laugh—“for you know it is pleasant to feel one’s-self a martyr, rejecting every sort of advantage for duty’s sake.”
“Oh, but of course it is quite true,” said Matty; “you are giving up everything—of course it is true. You know you might go into Parliament, or you might go into the Church, or you might—I wish you would speak to my uncle about it; I suppose he knows. For my part, I think you should go into Parliament; I should read all your speeches faithfully, and always be on your side.”
“That is a great inducement,” said Colin. “With that certainty one could face a great many obstacles. But, on the other hand, when I have settled down somewhere in my own parish, you can come and hear me preach.”
“That will not be half so interesting,” said Miss Matty, making a little moue of disdain; “but, now, tell me,” she continued, sinking her voice to its most confidential tone, “what it was that made you look so?—you know we are very old friends,” said Miss Matty, with the least little tender touch or pathos; “we have done such quantities of things together—rowed on the Holy Loch, and walked in the woods, and discussed Tennyson, and amused Sir Thomas—you ought to tell me your secrets; you don’t know what a good confidante I should be; and if I know the lady—— But, at all events, you must tell me what made you look so?” she said, with her sweetest tone of inquisitive sympathy, the siren of Colin’s youth.
“Perhaps—when you have explained to me what it means to look so,” said Colin; “after being buried for three years one forgets that little language. And then I am disposed to deny ever having looked so,” he went on, laughing; but, notwithstanding his laugh, Colin was much more annoyed than became his reasonable years and new dignities to feel once more that absurd crimson rising to his hair. The more he laughed the higher rose that guilty and conscious colour; and, as for Miss Matty, she pointed her little pink finger at him with an air of triumph.
“There!” she said, “and you dare to pretend that you never looked so! I shall be quite vexed if you don’t tell me. If it was not something very serious,” said Miss Matty, “you would not change like that.”