“Here it is,” said the poor girl, panting with the effort, and holding out in the palm of her worn hand, with a piteous mingling of tears and pride, a ring attached to her ribbon. “Naebody has seen it till now. I’ve carried it next my heart. He was not the one, oh, he was never the one to bring shame on them he loved! I wasna his equal—him a gentleman that made the heart glad to see him, and me an ignorant creature that knew nothing. But I took his fancy. Oh, lady, maybe it’s because you are a lady and kind, that I think you’re sometimes like him, the turns of your voice and the way you put your hands. I took his fancy. When you came and sat under the Spindle Rock, and saw me sitting at my door—some way, oh, mem,” she cried, with a pathetic apology, “I took your fancy too!”
“Go on, go on!” cried Marjory.
But Isabell knew no reason for haste. She looked at the others wondering. They were excited, but she, poor soul, had ceased to be excited. A kind of pensive shadow of happiness stole over her as she traced out the story of her love, and sought that simple apology for her lover.
“I took your fancy too,” she repeated, softly. “I watched, and watched, and wished you would speak, but it was you that came the first. That was just as he did; but men are no made like us. Yours was kindness, but his was love. Oh, lady, dinna hurry me; my heart’s fluttering as if it would break forth; it’s like a bird in my breast. I’m his marriet wife.”
“Whose wife?” cried Marjory, rising up. She came forward in her excitement, her tall figure towering over the others. Her passion of anxiety and wonder took almost the form of anger. “Whose wife?” she repeated, involuntarily taking hold of the ring. “Is this all you have to make you so? Oh, woman, do not make me curse the dead in his grave! Is this all? Did he deceive you so?”
“What does she say—what does she say? Oh, my heart’s fluttering! Was that all? I am his marriet wife,” cried the girl. “I am his marriet wife!”
Marjory turned her eager eyes to the other, breathless, unable to speak. Agnes had her arm round her sister, supporting her. She was defiant, as always, but somewhat subdued by the command in the eyes of the lady, whom she felt to be her rival.
“It was a private marriage,” she said, hurriedly. “No the minister; poor folk are no like leddies. It wasna right, but it’s nae shame. They were marriet—before witnesses. He took her, and she took him. It’s a thing that’s done among the like of us.”
Marjory stood stupefied in the centre of the little dim room, faintly lighted by its green windows. It seemed to her that she could neither move nor speak. Was it a dream? or was it possible? Could it be? All her old thoughts at the reading of Tom’s letter swept over her mind like a gust. If this was Isabell, then what was her real position? and what changes might be involved of which nobody had dreamed? Marjory’s heart began to flutter like the sick girl’s. A cloud of confusion seemed to float round her. She saw the others but dimly out of her hot excited eyes. Isabell—his wife! “God help us,” she stammered, not knowing what she said. “I don’t understand it—I don’t understand it! Whose wife?”
Isabell raised her pathetic eyes, wondering and appealing, to her visitor’s face. Agnes looked at her steadily with an uncommunicating defiance. The one knew nothing of the confusion in Marjory’s mind, but only felt with a painful anguish such as sometimes rends the hearts of the dying, that this sympathy which she longed for, had failed her—the other knew, and confronted the lady who was her rival, daring her to avoid the revelation which was impending, but altogether unconscious and incapable of comprehending Marjory’s thoughts. Neither of them spoke. And in the moment everything that had happened during the last four months whirled through Marjory’s brain, passed before her eyes like a panorama. Poor Tom on his death-bed, playing with the something that he would and would not tell her—then in the last hurried scene of all believing he had told her, thanking God that he had done it. Oh! the pitifulness of that thanksgiving for a confession never made! Had he made it, where would this girl have been now? It might have been life to her instead of death, it might have saved the life of the old father who broke his heart for Tom. It might have—God knows what mazes of sudden fancy she plunged into;—then all in a moment, came back to find herself crouching down for support in her chair, holding by it, looking at Isabell’s pale alarmed face through a darkness that slowly dispersed. “What has happened?” she heard herself saying as she came out of the darkness. She had not fainted nor fallen; but a mist had come about her, parting her from reality, and engrossing her faculties at the very moment when the secret she had sought so long looked at her out of her companions’ eyes.