“Nothing but her name,” said Marjory; “nothing but her name! and that she cared for my brother. I am not blaming her, or you. I mean no unkindness. I only want to know—to see her—to find out—”
“Miss Heriot,” said the young woman, “you’ll find out nothing with my will; you’re naething to us, and we’re naething that I ken of to you. If ever there was anything to tell, you would hear, like others. But dinna interfere with us. Poor folk have rights as well as their betters. I will answer nae questions, and neither shall any that belongs to me.”
She turned away abruptly; but the man hesitated. He brought her back, plucking at her shawl.
“The lady means no harm,” he said. “She says so; and if there’s nothing to be ashamed of—”
“Oh, hold your tongue!” cried the girl, in a tone of exasperation. “It is me that has to judge, and I’ve made up my mind. Hold your peace, man! You would believe whatever was told you with a soft voice and a pleasant look. She stands up for her ain, and we stand for ours. There’s nae fellowship nor friendship between us. Good night to ye, mem; we’ll disturb you no longer. Man! cannot you hold your tongue?”
“If there was just reason—” he said, still hesitating.
The young woman clutched at his arm, and turned him away almost violently. Marjory watched them with a tumult of feelings which she scarcely understood. It seemed to her strange that she, too, could not turn to some one—tell some one what had happened. But there was no one to tell; and for that matter, nothing had happened. She watched them as they withdrew hastily, driven away by her presence. She stood with her hand upon the rail that encircled the family vault, with all the tablets inscribed with kindred names glimmering behind her. An imaginative observer might have supposed her to be guarding these graves from profanation. She stood as if she had driven off an attack upon them; but what attack was it? who were they? what did it mean? To these questions she could give no answer. She stood and leaned upon the cold rail, and shed a few dreary tears on the marble beneath. There seemed to be nothing left to her but that marble, the iron railing, the chill graves that gave no response.
When she went in again, she had to close up her tears, her wondering pangs of curiosity, her dreary sense of loneliness, within herself. Was there no one in the world, no one left to whom ever again she could say all she was thinking; whom she could consult, who would help her even in such a hopeless inquiry as this? Not Miss Jean, certainly, who looked up with her keen eyes from the tea-table, and said something about wet feet, and needless exposure, and the need to be resigned; nor little Milly, who was ready to cry and kiss her sister, but could do no more to aid her; nor even Uncle Charles, who had arrived suddenly with news of his own to occupy him, and who was impatient if she did not give him her entire attention for his particular business. These were all who belonged to Marjory, now, here or anywhere. Had she dreamt somehow? had she seen a vision? had there been revealed to her in a break of the stormy clouds—some one else?
CHAPTER II.
Fanshawe left Pitcomlie with his head in a maze, affected as he had never been in his life, and had never supposed himself capable of being affected. He had been in love—as who has not, who has lived to be thirty?—but without feeling in the least as he felt now. In the feverish fits of that malady which he had experienced hitherto it was she, the heroine of the moment, that was foremost in his thoughts. He had been full of nothing but how to see her, how to have opportunities of talking to her, how to dance, or ride, or walk with her, according as the occasion favoured. In short, she had always belonged to some holiday version of life, and had been enshrined in a glittering framework of society, in which alone he knew her, and through which alone he could seek her presence. Half a dozen such loves at least, on a moderate computation, Fanshawe had experienced, and after having been made happy and miserable for a certain number of days or weeks, as it happened, society which brought her to him had swept her away again, and he had heard with resignation some time later that the temporary lady of his thoughts had become Mrs. or Lady Somebody Else. Sometimes a passing jar, of what is poetically called the heart-strings, hailed this information, and for a day or so he would be very sorry for himself as a poor devil who could never hope to marry; but there it had ended, and in a week after he had felt better, and decided that, on the whole, everything was for the best. This, however, was not at all the state of his feelings now. He did not know whether he was in love with Marjory Hay-Heriot. Sometimes he did not think he was; but one thing he was sure of, which was that he was very much out of love with himself. None of those complacent self-compassionating plaints of the poor devil order occurred to him. His thoughts were of a kind much less easily managed. He was dissatisfied with himself and everything round him, with his means, his habits, his former life, his want of any actual existence worth speaking of, his complete unimportance to the world. He was young, strong, not badly endowed either in body or mind, with enough to live on, and no cares or trammels of any kind; and yet the fact was certain that, if he died to-morrow it would be no loss to any one; nobody would miss him; nothing would come to a stop. How many men would find themselves in the same position did they inquire into it? He had enough to live on, enough to keep a horse and a servant, to do whatever he pleased, to travel, to surround himself with such luxuries as he cared for, to get most things that he wanted. Except in that matter of a wife, which, to tell the truth, was a thing he had never very warmly wanted, there was nothing which he had denied himself. To be sure he was generally more or less in debt, but never so much that he could not set his affairs right by an effort, if he had a strong enough motive for doing so. He had not thus the burden on his conscience that many other men have. He was a good-for-nothing, if we may use the expression, without being a scapegrace like Tom Heriot. He injured nobody. One time or other, though often considerably after date, he paid his bills. No man, or woman either, so far as he knew, was the worse for his existence, and yet——