“You are still staying here?” said Randal, still more contemptuous of the lie, and feeling a secret desire, which almost mastered him, to push his companion into the chill ooze under the hedge-row. “Though the country,” he added, “has not the same attraction as when we met last.”
“No,” said Rob, with a slight falter, “that is true; but necessity has no law. I am here because— I have nothing to do elsewhere. I am not so lucky as you, to be able to hold by and follow out the trade to which I have been bred.”
“That is a misfortune, certainly.”
“Yes, it is a misfortune—and such a misfortune in my case as you can scarcely realize. I have disappointed my friends and put them out of temper. There could be no harm in abandoning the law, but there is great harm in abandoning the Church.”
“There is always harm, I suppose,” said Randal, “in throwing up the career in which our training can tell. Church or law, it does not so much matter; there is always disappointment in such a drawing back.”
“Perhaps that is true; but most in the first, and most of all in my class. Yes,” said Rob, suddenly, “you may say there is less attraction now. The last night we met, it was just before the Leslies left Earl’s-hall.”
“I remember the night,” said Randal, with some irrestrainable bitterness in his tone.
“I am sure you do. I felt it in your tone to-night. You disapproved of me then; and now,” said Rob, with an air almost of derision, and he laughed a little nervous, self-conscious laugh.
“I don’t pretend to any right either of approval or disapproval,” said Randal. Anger was rising hotter and hotter within him; but what was it she wanted him to do?
“No right; but people don’t wait for that,” said Rob. He was not comfortable nor happy about his good-fortune. He had got Margaret’s note, and it had stung him deeply. And here was one who could communicate with her, though he could not—who belonged to her sphere, which he did not. “We all approve or disapprove by instinct, whatever right we may have. If you had felt more sympathy with me, I might have found a friend in you,” Rob went on, after a pause. “When two people, so different in external circumstances as Margaret and myself, love each other, a mutual friend is of the greatest advantage to both.”