“Is that you, Miss Margret? Bell sent me to look for you,” she said, with the same thrill and quiver in her voice.
Rob Glen started violently. It was a new shock to him, and he had already met with many shocks to his nerves that night. Her name came to his lips with a cry; but he had sufficient sense of the position to stop himself. Jeanie! was it possible, in the malice of fate, that this was the Jeanie of whom Margaret had told him? He grasped her in his arms for a moment with vehemence, partly because of that sudden startling interruption, and, with one quickly breathed farewell on her cheek, turned and went away.
“Oh, Jeanie, yes, it is me. I am very, very sorry. I did not want to be so late. Have they found out that I was away? have they been looking for me?” cried Margaret. It was not, perhaps, in the nature of things that Jeanie should be unmoved in her reply.
“You’re no looking after the gentleman,” she said. “He’s gone and left you, feared for me; and you’ve given him no good-bye. You needna be feared for me, Miss Margret. Cry him back, and bid him farewell, as a lass should to her lad. I’m nae traitor. You needna be feared that Jeanie will betray ye. It’s no in my heart.”
“Oh, but he’s gone, Jeanie,” said Margaret, with a ring of relief in her voice. “And oh, I’m glad to be at home! They made me stay when I wanted to be back. Oh, how dark it is! Give me your hand, Jeanie, for I cannot see where you are among the trees.”
Jeanie held out her hand in silence and reluctantly, and Margaret, groping, found it, and took hold of it.
“You are all trembling,” she said.
“And if I am all trembling, it’s easy enough to ken why. Standing out in the dark among the black trees, and thinking of them that’s gone to their rest, and waiting for one that was not wanting me. Eh, it’s no so long since you had other things in your head, Miss Margret—your old papa, that was as kind as ever father was. But nobody thinks muckle about old Sir Ludovic now.”
“Oh, Jeanie! I think upon him night and day!” cried Margaret; and what with the reproach, and what with her weariness and the past excitement, she fell into sudden tears.
“Is that you, my bonnie lamb?” said another voice; and Bell came out of the gloom, where she, too, had been on the watch. “It’s cold and it’s dreary, and you’re worn to death,” she said. “Oh, Miss Margret, where have you been, my bonnie doo, wandering about the house, and greeting till your bit heart is sair? Weel, I ken your heart is sair, and mine too. What will we do without you, John and me? You are just the light of our eyes, as you were to the auld maister, auld Sir Ludovic, that was a guid maister to him and to me. Eh, to think this should be the last night, after sae many years!”