“You will not do that,” said Kirsteen with a smile. She might have been his mother’s contemporary instead of his own, so far remote did she feel from all such agitation as was expressed in the young man’s awkwardness and earnestness. It did not occur to Kirsteen as it might have done to an ordinary young woman of her age that these agitations could have any reference to herself. She smiled upon him as over a long blank of years—“You are not one that will ever stay still long enough to cumber the ground.”
“Miss Douglas,” he said, “I have seen several of your family—I feel a great interest. Will you forgive me if I take a liberty? You are in mourning?”
The light faded altogether out of Kirsteen’s face. She made a little pause for a moment clasping her hands. “Not for any of my family,” she said. He begged her a thousand pardons, brightening up in a moment. She fell back into the pale shadows; he roused up to pleasant brightness of life. These two different moods do not understand each other. They are almost antagonistic without some special bond of sympathy. He went on after a moment—
“I saw much of your family—in Argyllshire—before I went to India. You will perhaps remember that Glendochart invited me for the shooting—which was very kind.”
Kirsteen’s attention flagged. She assented merely with a bow.
“I have been three years in India,” said the young man. “She was nearly seventeen when I saw her last.”
“Who was nearly seventeen?”
“Oh, Miss Douglas, forgive me!—your lovely little sister—a flower that seemed born to blush unseen.”
The light came back to Kirsteen’s face. “Jeanie!” she said with a little flush of pleasure, “is she so bonny? I always thought she would be so—but it’s long, long since I have seen her.”
“Bonny is not the word,” said the young soldier, “though bonny is a very bonny word. She is—she is—I wish,” he cried, breaking off abruptly with a nervous laugh, “that I could show you her picture—in my heart.”