“Will you come home with me?” she said, with a sweetness of appeal and a wistful look which Aubrey, with some indignation, felt to be false, after the reception she had given to “that Scotch fellow,” yet could not resist.
“I am afraid you must be ill,” he said, half sullenly—“yes, if you wish it, I will go with you; but Aunt Jean, I am afraid, will think this very strange.”
“There was some one that I did not want to see. Ah!” she cried, putting up her hands to her face and sinking back into a corner of the carriage. Aubrey, looking out where her terrified glance had fallen, saw a man turn round and stare after them as they drove away; but he could not see who or what kind of man this was.
CHAPTER XLI.
When Rob Glen accepted the offer that Randal made him and agreed to the conditions, it was done partly in despite, partly in impatience, partly because the novelty tempted him, in the state of discouragement and irritation which Margaret’s troubled response had thrown him into. He had not ceased to be “in love” with her, nor was the impassioned letter he had addressed to her really false, notwithstanding his constant confidential interviews with Jeanie, which would have been the direst offence to Margaret had they been known, or had she really cared for him as he supposed and hoped her to do. Had she been within reach, Rob would have been really as much in love with Margaret as ever; but he was angry and hurt by her indifference, and humiliated, he who had won so much love in his day, that she did not receive his letter with pleasure. Even if she had seen the inexpediency or impossibility of continuing the correspondence, he could not forgive her that she had no word of thanks to send him for the letter, which might have made a girl happy, no breathing of soft response to its impassioned strain. He was pleased to punish her, to revenge himself by the hasty pledge not to write again. Yes, he would punish her. Next time she received one of these letters it should be after months of weary waiting, when she would thank him as she ought.
It was absolutely impossible for Rob to realize that it would be a relief to Margaret not to hear from him at all. The idea was incredible. Never before in all his experience had he met with a girl who was quite insensible to his wooing, and Margaret, who was so young, so artless! She might be afraid to snatch that painful joy; the perils of a clandestine correspondence might alarm instead of exciting her; but that she should not like it, was beyond all Rob’s acquaintance with human nature, and altogether incredible to him. And thus he would punish her. Edinburgh too would no doubt be more cheerful than the farm in the depth of winter, when his mother’s ill-humor and the absence of all amusement would aggravate the short days and long, cold nights, in which even a stroll with Jeanie was no longer practicable. Mrs. Glen, too, looked favorably on the idea. It would “pass the time.” “And you’ll be in the way of seeing a good kind of folk,” his mother said; “plenty of gentry is aye about thae lawyers’ offices. They’re in want o’ siller, or they’re wanting to get rid o’ their siller; and I wouldna lose a chance of a good acquaintance. Then, when the time comes, and when you set up in your ain house with your lady-wife, you’ll no be without friends.”
“Friends made in an Edinburgh writer’s office, of what use will they be in the heart of England?” said Rob, with lofty superiority; but he was not displeased by the suggestion. He no more thought it possible that, with his talents, he could fail to “win forward,” as his mother said, than he thought it possible that Margaret could really be indifferent to such a glowing composition as the love-letter he had sent her. The only thing in the whole matter that he felt any reluctance about was, how he was to break it to Jeanie, whose sweetness, as his confidential friend and adviser, had been very soothing and consolatory to him. As the decision had to be made at once, there was not even much time in which to break it to Jeanie. He strolled past her father’s cottage in the high toun on one of the nights when Margaret lay at her worst in a haze of fever, with her life apparently hanging on a thread. But none of all the little knot of people at the Kirkton, whose lives were tangled with hers, were as yet aware of anything that had occurred to her. Rob went slowly past the little window, all glowing with fire-light, where John Robertson sat tired with his work, while Jeanie put away the cups and saucers after their tea. By-and-by it would be necessary to light “the candle,” for he had still a job to finish before bedtime; but what did they want with the candle when they were at their tea? Fire-light was quite enough for the scanty meal and the conversation which went on, not without a divided attention on Jeanie’s part; for she could not but think that she heard a step outside which she knew.
“I think I will run out for two or three minutes and see Katie Dewar, when you are settled to your work, faither,” Jeanie said; “she is always complaining, and it’s a fine night,” she added, with a little compunction, looking out through the uncurtained window. The sense of deceiving, however, was not at all strong or urgent in her, for such little deceits about a lover’s meeting are leniently dealt with in Jeanie’s sphere.
“You’ll no be very long, Jeanie.” Her father had a sufficiently good notion of what was going on, and, as he was quite unconscious of any complication in Rob Glen’s affections, and quite confident in his daughter’s purity and goodness, it did not disturb him much. “Mind that it’s a cold night, and dinna loiter about.”
“I’ll no be very long, faither.” Jeanie threw a shawl round her, but left her pretty head, with its golden-brown curling hair, uncovered. If it was very cold it was always easy to throw a fold of the shawl over her head. She went out, with her heart beating—not altogether with pleasure. To be with him was still a kind of happiness, and it was better even to be the confidant of his engagement with another—which Rob had so cunningly implied would never have existed had Jeanie’s presence hereabouts been known—than to have nothing at all to do with him. She stole along, half flying, in the shadow of the houses, and finally came out into the cold moonlight, at the corner beyond the little square, where she could see some one waiting. Poor Jeanie! her pleasure and her sadness, and the mixture of the sweet with the bitter which was in these interviews, had become a kind of essential elixir to her life.