It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

Miss Margaret answered with that monosyllabic sound which it is common to spell, "Humph," and went back to her newspaper; and then the little group fell again into soft silence, full of thinkings and dreamings. Miss Jean, indeed, did not do much beyond counting the stitches of her knitting. She was capable of refraining even from thought. She had no harsh conclusions in her mind, nor anything to disturb her. The hours slid on softly. She was happy to see the others occupied, to have no jar in the air, nothing to derange the harmony of the gentle silence. The little oppositions between her sister and herself never came to any discord. And, as for Lilias, she had begun to occupy herself, with the pleasure of a child, in stringing some pretty blue Venetian beads, which it was quite a pleasure to find loose. The girl was delighted with the task—she threaded them one by one, letting each drop upon the other with a little tinkle. This made a sort of merry accompaniment to her thoughts, and, after the foregoing interruption, she took up those thoughts—if thoughts they can be called—just where she had left them, and resumed the dialogue she had been carrying on. It was a dialogue between herself and—the other. He had just saved her life (for the hundredth time), and she was thanking him, and he, with words which meant far more than they sounded, was giving her to understand that for him to save her life was mere selfishness, for what would the world be without her? It was Katie's communication which had emboldened Lilias to carry on a conversation like this in the very presence of her sisters. She indulged generally in it only in snatches, in the uttermost retirement. Now at the very table sitting with them she ventured upon it. What would they think if they knew? This gave her a quiver of laughter and pain and pleasure all together—laughter to think how little they knew, pain to contemplate the possibility that they might find out. But in fact that did not come into the bounds of possibility. Thus the three sisters sat together, and knew just as much and as little of each other as is common with human folk.

It was about this time that Lewis first came to the house to play to Miss Jean; but of this Lilias was not supposed to know anything. She had seen him to be a stranger when they had first met on the road, and she had perceived, with a mixture of amusement and pique that whereas he looked with a good deal of curiosity at her sister, her own blue veil had been a sort of sanctuary for herself. Lilias could not but think he must be a stupid young man not to have divined. It tickled her to think that he had passed her quite over and gazed at Margaret and Jean. But he did not interest her much. Nothing could be more unlike the fine specimen of manhood over six feet high, with dark eyes that went to your very soul, who was in the habit most evenings of saving Lilias' life, than this commonplace young man who never looked at her. Lewis was not tall; there was not much colour about him. He did not seem at all like a person who could stop a runaway horse, or burst through a flaming door, or leap a wall to render instant and efficient help as that hero had now done so often that Lilias felt a little variety would be desirable. When she met him again at the new castle, she was still more amused by his startled look at her, and by the way in which he permitted Miss Margaret to swoop upon him and carry him off. There was something amiable, something nice about him, she thought. He was like a brother. Sometimes in novels the heroine will have a brother who is completely under her control, who takes his opinions and views from her, and is useful at last in marrying her confidant, as well as in backing herself up generally, whatever she may have to do. It seemed to Lilias that he would do very well for that rôle. She was seized with sudden kindness for him after that second encounter. And then it amused her much that Margaret thought it necessary to carry off this mild, colourless, smiling youth out of her way. From the moment this happened she made up her mind to make his acquaintance, and it was not in such utter innocence as Jean supposed that Lilias made that sudden appearance in the drawing-room, cutting short a proposal upon the very lips of Lewis, and interrupting the high tension of the situation. The dinner that followed, the startled look which he had cast upon herself, his silence and bewildered absorption when he sat opposite to her, and the discomfiture of Margaret, had all been exceedingly amusing to the young plotter. She meant no harm, neither to Lewis nor to her sisters. She neither meant to make a conquest of the stranger, nor to alarm her anxious guardians. She wanted a little fun. She was a girl full of imagination, full of poetical attributes: but by times an imperious desire for a little fun will overwhelm the sagest bosom of eighteen. She could not resist the impulse. To see the agitation she had caused was delightful. She could scarcely contain her laugh as she sat down opposite to him and saw his wondering looks, and perceived the efforts of Miss Margaret to keep his attention engaged. Lilias had been very demure. She had sat at table like an innocent little school-girl who thought of nothing but her lessons. She became conscious after a while that he had once or twice met her eye when she was off her guard, and probably had caught the sparkle of malice in it; and then Lilias began to feel guilty, but this was not till the meal was nearly over, and she had got her amusement out of it. She disappeared the moment they rose from table, determined to show Margaret that she meant no harm. And indeed Miss Margaret was too anxious to put "nothing in her head," to suggest no ideas to the young mind which she believed so innocent, to say a word as to this incident. It was quite natural that the child in her guilelessness should ask the stranger to come to dinner.

"I feel it a reproach on myself," Margaret said. "It's not the habit in any house of ours to let a visitor go without breaking bread. I did not do it myself because of a feeling, that is perhaps an unworthy feeling, that he came of none of the Murrays we know of, and that I'm not fond of sitting down with a person that might not be just a——"

"Oh, don't say not a gentleman, Margaret," cried Jean. "He might be an angel to hear him play."

"Ah! well, that might be: an angel is not necessarily——" Miss Margaret said, with a curious dryness. "But you were quite right, Lilias. It's what I desire that a creature like you should just do what is right without thinking of any reason against it."

Margaret's brow had a pucker of care in it even when she said this, and Lilias felt so guilty that she had nearly fallen on her knees and confessed her little trick. But to what good? Had she confessed, they would have thought her far more to blame than she really was; they would have thought she wanted to make the stranger's acquaintance, or had some secret inclination towards him, whereas all that she wanted was fun, a thing as different as night from day.

"This young man was probably saying something to you about himself," Miss Margaret said. "Lilias, you may go to your books, and I will come to you in half-an-hour or so. You have the air of being a little put about, Jean. I would be glad of your confidence, if you have no objection. I hope there is nothing that can occur that will come between you and me."

"Come between you and me!" cried Miss Jean, in astonishment. "I know nothing that could do that, Margaret; but, dear me! you must mean something. You would not say a thing like that just merely without any cause. Confidence!—I have no confidence to give. You know me just as well as I know myself."

"Is that so?" said the elder sister, looking at her with penetrating eyes.

"Why should it not be so? There must be something on your mind, Margaret."