“I have been on the moor,” said Lily dreamily. “I’ve had a fine walk, half the way to the town, while you have been taken up with your bannocks and your cheese and your cracks. I had a great mind to come round to the window and put something white over my head and give you a good fright, sitting there telling stories and thinking nothing of me.”
“Eh, I wasna telling stories—no me!”
Why Beenie made this asseveration I cannot tell, for she did nothing but tell stories all the time that Dougal, Katrin, and she were together; but it was natural to deny instinctively whatever accusation of neglect was brought against her. “And eh,” she cried, with natural art, turning the tables, “what a time of night to be out on that weary moor, a young lady like you. Your feet will be wet with the dew, and no a thing upon your shoulders to keep you from the cold. Eh, Miss Lily, Miss Lily!” cried Robina, with all the fictitious indignation of a counter accusation, “them that has to look after you and keep you out of mischief has hard ado.”
“Perhaps you will get me a little supper now that you have had plenty for yourself,” said Lily, keeping up the advantage on her side. But she was another Lily from that pale flower which had looked so sadly over the moor before Robina went down stairs to her prolonged meal, a radiant creature with joy in every movement. What could it be that had happened to Lily while her faithful woman was down stairs?
CHAPTER XI
Lily kept the secret to herself as long as it was in mortal power to do so. She sent Beenie off to bed, entirely mystified and unable to explain to herself the transformation which had taken place, while she herself lay down under the canopies of the “best bed” and watched the misty moonlight on the moor, and pictured to herself that Ronald would be only now arriving, after his long walk, at his homely lodging. But what did it matter to him to be late, to walk so far, to traverse, mile after mile in the dark, that lonesome road? He was a man, and it was right and fit for him. If he had been walking half the night, it would have been just what the rural lads do, proud of their sweethearts, for whom they sacrifice half their rest.
“I’ll take my plaid and out I’ll steal,
And o’er the hills to Nannie O.”
That was the sentiment for the man, and Lily felt her heart swell with the pride of it and the satisfaction. She had thought—had she really thought it?—that he was too careful, too prudent, more concerned about her fortune than her happiness, but how false that had all been! or how different he was now! “To carry you off some day and laugh at Sir Robert, for that is what it must come to, Lily.” Ah, she had always known that this was what it must come to; but he had not seen it, or at least she had thought he did not see it in the Edinburgh days. He had learned it, however, since then, or else, which was most likely, it had always been in him, only mistaken by her or undeveloped; for it takes some time, she said to herself, before a man like Ronald, full of faith in his fellow-creatures, could believe in a tyranny like Sir Robert’s, or think that it was any thing but momentary. To think that the heartless old man should send a girl here, and then go away and probably forget all about her, leaving her to pine away in the wilderness—that was a thing that never would have entered into Ronald’s young and wholesome mind. But now he saw it all, and that passiveness which had chilled and disappointed Lily was gone. That was what it must come to. Ah, yes, it was this it must come to: independence, no waiting on an old man’s caprices, no dreadful calculations about a fortune which was not theirs, which Lily did not grudge Sir Robert, which she was willing, contemptuously, that he should do what he pleased with, which she would never buy at the cost of the happiness of her young life. And now Ronald thought so too. The little flat high up under the tiles of a tall old Edinburgh house began to appear again, looming in the air over the wild moor. What a home it would be, what a nest of love and happiness! Ronald never should repent, oh, never, never should he repent that he had chosen Lily’s love rather than Sir Robert’s fortune. How happy they would be, looking out over all the lights and shadows with the great town at their feet and all their friends around! Lily fell asleep in this beatitude of thought, and in the same awakened, wondering at herself for one moment why she should feel so happy, and then remembering with a rush of delightful retrospection. Was it possible that all the world had thus changed in a moment, that the clouds had all fled away, that these moors were no longer the wilderness, but a little outlying land of paradise, where happiness was, and every thing that was good was yet to be?
Beenie found her young mistress radiant in the morning as she had left her radiant when she went to bed. The young girl’s countenance could not contain her smiles; they seemed to ripple over, to mingle with the light, to make sunshine where there was none. What could have happened to her in that social hour when Robina was at supper with her friends, usually one of the dullest of the twenty-four to lonely Lily? Whom could she have seen, what could she have heard, to light those lamps of happiness in her eyes? But Robina could not divine what it was, and Lily laughed and flouted, and reproached her with smiles always running over. “You were so busy with your supper you never looked what might be happening to me. You and Katrin and Dougal were so full of your cracks you had no eyes for a poor lassie. I might have been lost upon the moor and you would never have found it out. But I was not lost, you see, only wonderfully diverted, and spent a happy evening, and you never knew.”
“Miss Lily,” said Beenie, with tears, “never more, if I should starve, will I go down to my supper again!”