“Oh! nothing,” cried Gussy, crying. “I was unhappy, that was all. I did not know what you would say to me. I thought you did not care for me. I had doubts, dreadful doubts! Don’t ask me any more.”
“Doubts—of me!” cried Edgar, with a surprised, frank laugh.
Never in her life had Gussy felt so much ashamed of herself. She did not venture to say another word about those doubts which, with such laughing, pleasant indifference, he had dismissed as impossible. She sat in a dream while he told her everything, hearing it all like a tale that she had read in a book. He brought out the old watch and gave it to her, and she kissed it and put it within her dress, and cried when he described to her the last words of his old mother. Loch Arroch and all its homely circumstances became as a scene of the Scriptures to Gussy; she seemed to see a glory of ideal hills and waters, and the moonlight filling the sky and earth, and the loveliness of the night which made it look “but a step” between earth and heaven. Her heart grew so full over those details that Edgar, unsuspicious, never discovered the compunction which mingled in that sympathetic grief. He told her about his journey; then paused, and looked her in the eyes.
“Last year it was you who travelled with me. You were the little sister?” he said. “Ah! yes, I know it was you. You came and kissed me in my sleep——”
“Indeed I did not, sir!” cried Gussy, in high indignation. “I would not have done such a thing for all the world.”
Edgar laughed, and held her so fast that she could not turn from him.
“You did in spirit,” he said; “and I had it in a dream. Ever since I have had a kind of hope in my life; I dreamt that you put the veil aside, and I saw you. When I woke I could not believe it, though I knew it; but the other sister, the real one, would not tell me your name.”
“Poor sister Susan!” cried Gussy, the tears disappearing, the sunshine bursting out over all her face; “she will not like me to go back into the world.”
“Nor to go out to Italy as a Consul,” said Edgar, gay as a boy in his new happiness, “to talk to all the ships’ captains, and find out about the harbour dues.”
“Foolish! there are no ship captains, nor ships either, nor dues of any kind—”