“That is just what I say,” said Ronald; “we will have a train—all the old servants that cannot endure their lives without Miss Lily, perhaps Katrin and Dougal, too.”
Lily stood looking at him for a moment, with her eyes enlarged and her face pale. “Is it in fun, or in earnest?” she said, with a little gasp.
“Oh, in fun, in fun,” he said hastily, “though considering how they have fulfilled their duty to Sir Robert, it would not be strange if he turned them out of his doors—and whom, then, could they turn to but you and me?”
“It is not for you and me to blame them,” said Lily, still under the impression of what he had said, “and this is not the kind of fun that is good fun. But it is true, after all, though I never thought of that before. Katrin is kind, but she has, perhaps, not been quite as true to Uncle Robert as to me; but Dougal, he knows nothing. Dougal has never known any thing; he has never meant to desert Uncle Robert. Ronald,” cried Lily, with sudden affright, “we have all been cheating Uncle Robert! This is what we have done, and nothing else, since you first came here.”
“I am well aware of it, Lily,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “and for my part I am quite agreed to go on cheating Uncle Robert for as long as you please.”
“It does not please me!” she said; “I would like to cheat nobody. It is a new thing to me—I did not think of that. Oh, Ronald, take me away! I laugh and I chatter, but my heart’s breaking. We are cheating every body—not Uncle Robert only, but Helen Blythe and every creature that knows me. What do I care how poor we are, or if I have to work for my living? I will work, oh, with a good heart! but take me away, take me away!”
Ronald held her hands in his and steadied her against her will. He had foreseen such an outburst, as well as the other manifestations of her agitated and disturbed life. He was ready to allow even that it was no wonder she became excited by times, that she had been more patient than he could have hoped. He was himself very cool, and could afford to be moderate and humor her. He held her hands in his, and restrained the violence of her feelings by that steady clasp. “My Lily, my Lily!” he said. The girl yielded to that restraining influence in spite of herself. She could almost have struck him in the vehemence of her passion and in the intolerable sensation of this sharp light upon the situation altogether; but the cool touch of his hands, his firm hold, his soothing voice, subdued her. The question between two people at such a crisis is almost entirely the question which is stronger, and on this occasion Ronald was certainly the stronger. When Lily’s passion ended in the natural flood of tears, she shed them on his shoulder, encircled by his arm, all her resistance quenched. And he was very kind to her; no one could have consoled her more lovingly, or more tenderly soothed the nervous and excited feelings which had got beyond her control. He was master of the situation, and felt it, but used his power in the most gentle way. And Lily said not a word more—what was there to be said? She had put herself in the wrong by her passion and by her tears. This was not the calm reason with which a woman ought to discuss the beginning of her life—with which, she said to herself, a man expected his wife to consider and discuss these affairs. She had neither been calm nor reasonable. She had been passionate, excited, perhaps hysterical. Lily was deeply ashamed of herself. She was humble toward him who must, she thought, be disappointed in her, and find her like the women in books, all folly and excitement, instead of a creature able to take all the circumstances into consideration. Nothing could have subdued her spirits like that sense of being in the wrong.
Later in the evening she endeavored to make up for her foolishness by returning to the mood of gayety with which she began the evening. She gave Ronald a little sketch of the humors of Rory, and the respect in which Dougal held that small and fiery personage. She told him about Katrin’s cows and her chickens, and the amusement which these living creatures had given during the long winter days to the little family at Dalrugas.
“But spring is coming,” he said.
“Oh, yes; spring is coming; the moor will soon be dry enough for walking, and many a ramble I will have. I am beginning,” said Lily, “to grow very fond of the moor. You see, it is all we have. It’s cross and market and college and court and all together to me. In the morning the bees will be busy among the whins—there is always a bud somewhere on a whin bush—and full of honey as they can hold; and then in the evening there is the sunset, and the hills all standing out against the west, with their old purple cloaks around them. What with the barnyard and what with the moor, there’s no want of diversion here.”