“Margaret!” he turned round and looked at her quickly now. She was not embarrassed nor blushing, as if the words could bear some happier meaning, but quite pale and serious, looking at the water as he had been doing. Though he had known her all her life, he had of late given up calling her by her Christian name. It was the surprise that forced it from his lips.
“It sounds like wickedness,” she said, fervently. “I can see that, but I do not mean any ill. I could not help it; things had been so strange. How could I help trembling and crying? All had gone wrong, some way. And oh, I was glad, so glad to get away, to be free! But if I had said so you would all have thought me— I don’t know what you would have thought me. But it came into my head that perhaps you guessed my true meaning, and thought it was a lie I was telling, and had no more respect for me.”
“Respect for you! That is not the word I would have used, Margaret. I have always—liked you—taken an interest in you ever since you were a little baby. How could I lose what you call respect?”
“But you looked like it, Randal. Why did you pass me in the gloaming and never say a word, nor even nod your head, or take off your hat?”
“Margaret!” he cried, in great confusion, “I— I thought you did not want to be recognized. I—thought you would like to think I had not seen you— I thought—”
“How could I do that?” said Margaret, seriously; “for that could not have been true. I have wondered ever since if you thought me—a—a—bad girl, Randal? Oh! I think I have no heart! I can laugh, though papa has only been gone a month. I—almost—forget sometimes that I am so unhappy; but I am not a bad girl, Randal. You might always take off your hat to me. You need not think shame to speak to me—”
“Margaret, for Heaven’s sake! who could have imagined you would take it so? I thought you had some one with you whom you cared for more than any one else, and that you would rather I took no notice. I did not think I had any right to interfere between him and you.”
“No,” said Margaret, with a deep sigh, “I suppose nobody could do that;” and after a pause she resumed, half smiling—“But you should not look as if you thought shame of your friends, Randal; you should take off your hat, even when a girl is not very wise. I thought you had no respect for me after that night.”
Margaret pronounced the word wise as if it had been written wice, which the reader who is Scotch will be aware is a word with a quite distinct meaning of its own; a girl who is not wise means a girl who is wildly silly, without any sense—perhaps with not all her wits about her. What would Sir Ludovic have thought had he heard a speech so outrageously Scotch from his little Peggy? How he would have smiled, how he would have scolded! Randal remembered the old man’s amused reproofs; but his heart was too much troubled to permit him to smile. And the inference that lay in Margaret’s words was more than his intelligence could fathom. He was thrown into the wildest commotion of curiosity, anxiety, and wonder. Was it possible that there was no love, after all, between her and Rob Glen? or what did her joy in escaping, her sigh at the thought that no one could interfere, mean? He answered her at last in a strain quite confused and wide of the purpose, like a man in a dream.
“If I should ever be able to do anything for you, to be of any use to you, Margaret, will you send for me? will you let me know? Whatever it may be, and wherever I may be,” he cried, in his confusion, “if you ever tell me you want me, I will come to you if I am at the end of the world!”