“I have no light,” said Kirsteen with suppressed impatience, “as to what you’re meaning, father!”
“Oh, ye have no light! Then I’ll give ye one, and a fine one, and one that should make ye thankful to me all your days. I’ve settled it all with Glendochart. I thought he was but a daidlin’ body, but that was in appearance, not in reality. He’s just very willing to come to the point.”
Kirsteen said nothing, but she clasped her hands before her with a gesture which was Marg’ret’s, and which had long been known to the young people as a sign of immovable determination. She did not adopt it consciously, but with the true instinct of hereditary action, an impulse so much misrepresented in later days.
“Very willing,” said Drumcarro, “to come to the point; and all the settlements just very satisfactory. Ye will be a lucky woman. Ye’re to have Glendochart estates for your life, with remainder, as is natural, to any family there may be; and it’s a very fine downsitting, a great deal better house than this, and a heap of arable land. And ye’re to have——”
“For what am I to have all this, father?” said Kirsteen in a low voice with a tremble in it, but not of weakness.
“For what are ye to have it?” He gave a rude laugh. “For yourself I suppose I must say, though I would think any woman dear at the price he’s willing to pay for ye.”
“And what does Glendochart want with me?” said Kirsteen with an effort to steady her voice.
“Ye fool! But you’re not the fool ye pretend to be. I cannot wonder that you’re surprised. He wants to mairry ye,” her father said.
Kirsteen stood with her hands clasped, her fine figure swayed in spite of her with a wave of agitation, her features moving. “Glendochart!” she said. “Father, if he has friends ye should warn them to keep him better and take care of him, and not let him be a trouble to young women about the country that never did any harm to him.”
“Young women,” said Drumcarro, “there is not one I ever heard of except yourself, ye thankless jaud!”