Lilias looked up in some surprise.
“Did you think I was Helen Buchanan, Mossgray? No, indeed, I do not make plans. I only do what I am bidden when they please me, and dissent when they do not; but I am no originator, Mossgray—you know I am not.”
Mossgray smiled again.
“Well, Lilias, we shall suppose that I myself form the plan, according to your counsel, and that we make Halbert heir of Mossgray; and now there comes a grave consideration: what am I to do with you, my good Lilias? Will you be content with the little provision I can make for you, independent of these lands? Nay, if you are not like your friend Helen in making plans, I cannot have you resemble her in pride. I speak to you, you know, as if you had been Lilias Graeme; and your future—must I not provide for that?”
“No, Mossgray.” Her head was bent down, but the animated unusual light played about her face like sunshine—her voice was very low, and trembled as with some hidden music. She did not meet the kindly inquiring look which her guardian turned upon her; she only answered—“No, Mossgray.”
“The future is cared for then?” said the gentle old man, in his delicate tenderness. “I must not ask how, Lilias, but I may believe and infer, may I not?—and guess that there is some one labouring under warmer skies for my good child, and hope that he is wise and generous, and worthy of her. Tell him that I too will grow jealous for his honour and good report, though I am not told his name, and that together, you and I, who alone know him here, will bid God speed to his labour:—shall it not be so?”
Lilias could not lift her eyes just then, for the tears’ sake that were under their lids; but when she could, she looked up in simple confidence into the face of her guardian. She did not speak, and they went slowly on, for some time, in silence. Her mind was in a pleasant, grateful tumult; she thought of the time when he to whose labour Mossgray bade God speed should thank the old man for his generous care of the orphan; and over the fair future she looked forth through the sunny haze of hope—the indefinite golden mist which has in it a charm wanting to the clearer landscape—the magic of the unknown.
But as they continued their walk, shy half-sentences fell on the ear of Mossgray—conveying a confidence which he received gladly, though he did not ask it. How the unsettled family, in one of their short sojournings in a great, bustling, commercial town of England, had met this unknown—how he came from an Orcadian island far off in the vexed Northern seas, and in his youthful energy was bound for the golden East—how he did so tenderly regard and honour the mother over whom Lilias still wept tears, because he also had a mother in his solitary home by the sea, and, except this one nearest friend, was alone in the world; but Lilias did not tell Mossgray how her heart throbbed in glad wonder at sight of the ancient portrait, and in sound of the pleasant name in the old house at Murrayshaugh. It was but a fanciful resemblance, and the name was not an unusual one. The pleasure she had in this, she kept as one little secret gladness to herself. It was but a girlish, affectionate fancy; for the son of the far Orcades could have no connection with the old southern family, whose last representatives were wandering on foreign soil, or laid in strange graves. She smiled at herself for setting so great store by the shadowy resemblance of the portrait; it was too small a thing to tell Mossgray.