“Will you write to me, Jeanie? That was why we lost sight of each other. I did not know where you were; but now I will often send you a letter, and then, on the Saturdays, I will probably come over with Randal Burnside.”
“Rob, Mr. Randal is a gentleman, and so will you be a gentleman. No, oh no; you and me should say farewell. I’ll aye think upon you. I’ll pray for you night and morning; but dinna speak about you and me. We’re like the twa roads at Earl’s-ha’ that creep thegither under the trees, and then pairt, ane west, the ither east. Oh, Rob!” said Jeanie, with streaming eyes, “no good will ever come of this. Let us summon up a good courage and pairt. Here we should pairt. No, I’ll no grudge you a kiss, for it will be the last. It’s a’ been meesery and confusion, but if we pairt the warst will be past. Say Farewell, and God bless you, Jeanie!—and ah! with all my heart, I’ll say the same to you.”
“You are trembling so that you can scarcely stand,” he said. “Do you think I will let you leave me like this? I cannot part from you, Jeanie, and why should I? It would break my heart.”
“It has broken mine,” said Jeanie, fervently; “but rather a broken heart as a false life. Rob, Rob, hand me nae longer, but let me gang to my faither. I’m safe when I’m with him.”
But it was not for a long hour after this that Jeanie returned to her father, conducted as near as he could venture to go by her lover, who grew more and more earnest the more he was resisted. She went in very softly, with a flushed and glowing cheek, stealing into the cottage not to disturb the solitary inmate who sat working on by the light of his dim candle.
“Is that you, Jeanie?” he said, placidly; “and how is Katie Dewar, poor body?” This question went to the bottom of her guilty heart.
“I’ll no tell you a lie, faither; I wasna near Katie Dewar. It’s a fine night, and the moon shining; I gaed down the road, and then a little up the road, and then—”
“Oh, ay, my lass, I ken weel what that means,” he said; “but I can trust my Jeanie, the Lord be praised for it. I’m just done with my job, and it’s been a lang job. When the supper’s ready I’ll blow out the candle, and then if you’ve onything to tell me—”
“I have naething to tell you,” she cried. But as they sat together over their supper, which was of “stoved” potatoes, a savory dish unknown to richer tables, Jeanie pressed upon her father once more with incomprehensible energy and earnestness the idea of New Zealand, which had already two or three times been talked of between them before.
Rob, however, left her with little alarm as to New Zealand. He was deeply gratified by that attachment to himself which made her ready to put up with everything, even the bond which bound him to another; and the struggle in Jeanie’s mind between what she wished and what she thought right, which ended in the triumph of himself, Rob, over all other powers and arguments, was very sweet and consolatory to him. It healed the wounds of his amour propre. If Margaret did not give him the devotion he deserved, Jeanie gave him a devotion which he did not hesitate to confess he had not deserved, and this reconciled him to himself. The maid made up for the short-comings of the mistress, and perhaps Jeanie’s simple worship even gave a little license to Margaret as to the great lady, from whom, in her ladyhood and greatness, the same kind of love was not to be expected. She had things in her power to bestow more substantial than Jeanie’s tenderness, and with these she had vowed in due time to crown this favorite of fortune. Rob was a sort of Sultan in his way, and liked the idea of getting from these two women the best they had. He went away from Stratheden a few days after, with his heart quite soft and tender to his Jeanie. He would not forget her this time. He would write to her and say to her what he could not say to Margaret. He would keep a refuge for himself in her soft heart, whatever happened. And, indeed, who could tell what might happen in three years?